Better Business: Advice for advisers

Tiger Woods strikes a perfect ball yet still employs a coach, so how can advisers ensure they continue to improve? FP Advance chief executive Brett Davidson says friends, family and even clients can help...

"Why is it that the high achievers continue to seek input from others? Tiger Woods has a coach. Chris Hoy won gold at the Olympics, yet still trains hard and seeks new ways to ply his trade. You would think that once you were so good at what you did you could stop seeking external input, but that is not the case.

With your business it is just the same; it always remains a work in progress. So what do the high-performance, high-profit practices do that the others don't? They create a formal process for seeking regular external input into every aspect of their business and that could come from a variety of sources.

• Consultants: Obviously business consultants can play a role in developing your business and there is a consultant for just about everything you can think of. Assuming you can find a good one with whom you get on well, their specialist knowledge can take you straight to the answer and save you months or years of wasted effort.

• Friends: Often you will have friends who have skills that you might tap into, even if they are in another industry or profession.

• Peers: Other advisers that you know could also play the role of second set of eyes and have the advantage of knowing your industry better than most.

• Accountants: Some advisers choose to work closely with their own accountant, who may be skilled in identifying issues across a range of businesses

• Other entrepreneurs: Other business people could also play this external role for you. Business issues tend to be similar across the board, and sometimes a fellow entrepreneur can see things that you cannot, while retaining a grounded and practical business focus.

• Retired executives: There is a world of talent available in the retired executive ranks, so why not engage someone with all that experience and let them apply it to your business? Some of them are semi-retired, independently wealthy and happy to just remain involved and to give something back, which might mean you can get them for the right price as well.

• Clients: Some of your better clients may have the skills you are looking for. If they have been successful in their line of work they may be able to add something to your business. Do not be afraid of showing them the dirty underside of your business; the things you do not do so well. You will be amazed how keen some clients can be to help you succeed and improve. The benefit they have is that they are also on the receiving end of your service, which gives them a unique perspective.

External input

Here are some guidelines to follow when structuring the external input for your business:

• Ad hoc or infrequent input does not work. While one-off visits from a friend might yield some initial insights that have value, without ongoing meetings and a level of accountability it is unlikely to create the continued impetus for change that you need to achieve your business goals. To maximise value, a regular and frequent timetable needs to be established and kept to quarterly or monthly, depending on your requirements.

• It is best to perform an initial diagnostic on your own business to identify the areas where you may need some assistance. There are online tools available in the marketplace to help you do this. Once you have identified your strengths and weaknesses and ideally, benchmarked your performance against industry best practice or industry averages, you can then shortlist or prioritise the most important challenges you wish to address first. This is a critical step because you cannot do everything in the first five minutes.

• Choose one area and one external adviser to help you address it. Trying to do too much at once, or working with too many external people at the same time can be confusing for everyone and often leads to poor outcomes. Once you have worked through the issue with your first external adviser, by all means select another to continue or review your initial work, or to move onto another area that requires improvement."