Products & Services
Your business runs on the products and services you provide to your customers and clients. It has and will be the thing that keeps you going and is the greatest source of your pride.
This is why it is so important to continue to refine and develop your products and to ensure they meet your standards and are always attractive to your customers. The changes you face are many and will come from many different sources and this is why a well-planned review process is needed to keep your products and services as fresh and as relevant as the day you started.
Product & Service Development
There is no more important element of running a successful business than having the best products and services in your field. This is why ongoing product and service development is just as important as the initial development of an idea of what to sell to your customers. Regardless of whether it is a child’s toy, a clean house, a sparkling swimming pool or a healthy sandwich, every product and service has the beginnings of an idea. That idea was yours and from that idea came the business you have today.
Glenn Cossar Consulting can help in the development of your great idea, through continuous improvement and the creation of the “next big thing”. We do not pretend to replace the creative genius behind your business and its place in the market, but rather lend a helping hand in the process of taking a good idea and testing it against your existing business goals and into a set of planned actions that will streamline your idea into reality.
Market Analysis & Planning
Your market will vary from business to business as there is no one single marketplace for any of us to live, sell and succeed in.
It is vital that each business knows its own market and has a good understanding of what is being sold and bought every day, every month and every year. The act of Market Analysis involves a thorough study of who is selling goods and services similar to your business and how they are getting their products and services to their customers. Each action along the “supply chain” is a part of the market you are operating in. Careful analysis of suppliers, distributors, stakeholders is necessary to ensure your product arrives safe and whole to the intended customer and that you are paid for its delivery. In order to have this success an analysis of the market and what influences it will need to be done regularly so that your business is best able to adapt to changes and to compete with all the others who are also there to make a living.
Naturally, this takes careful planning and Glenn Cossar Consulting can help you develop good Marketing Plans that are specifically tailored to your business needs and specifications.
Financials & Budgets
Your financial management and budgeting skills are essential to any business success. If you do not yet have a good Tax Accountant we suggest you arrange this immediately. Glenn Cossar Consulting does not specialise in financial advice. However, we can assist in basic budgeting and good management practices that link and align with your business needs where this is over and above what a good accountant will advise you as necessary for running a successful business.
Every State and Territory has specific tax and accounting requirements and you will need to be sure your accountant is adequately providing a service for your business that addresses your local business needs. The function and actions relating to good budgeting do have a natural link to Measurement and Recordkeeping, which we do provide extensive advice for. Please refer to this business essential elsewhere on this website.
Sales
The selling of a product and or service is key to the success of your business. Without those sales, you don’t have a happy customer nor do you have an income to base your business on.
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With every successful product comes a cost per unit value and a marketing strategy and a deliberate sales plan. Glenn Cossar Consulting can help you develop each of these key sales elements for every product or service in your amazing business. Without these sales plans, you may find you can sell things but you may not know what is the optimal sales price and or what sort of margins you can be prepared to vary it by in order to meet local and seasonal market fluctuations.
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After all your products are unique and deserve to be bought at the right price and not just the lowest to capture a sale. The quick auction off of your business will not be good for a long term commitment and you deserve to be paid for the great work you and your team invest in making your business great.
Public Relations & Promotion
Public Relations and Promotion
Public Relations and the Promotion of your business are two entirely different things. Whilst they are related each has a specific targeted set of actions and expected outcomes.
Public Relations
This is the ongoing act of ensuring your business is in the public eye and has its goals and products well presented in accordance with your stated business goals and your “Statement of Purpose”.
A general approach is to develop a policy of how you will deal with advertising, product placement, interactions with customers and suppliers, volunteers if you have them and any community involvement you may have. A policy of this kind need not be complex or overly detailed, but will need to be understood by all staff and team members who operate in your business.
Promotion
This is the very specific strategy of taking deliberate actions to ensure your products and services are presented to the buying public. If you were to place a box of your best tomatoes out on the roadside to sell, this may be very profitable. However, should you live in a back road away from the passing trade then it is likely you won’t sell any of your fresh and tasty fruit. Good promotion can bring each product and service to those who are looking for what you have to offer and to present it at the best possible price and availability.
Glenn Cossar Consulting can help you develop an effective Public Relations policy and Promotion strategy and facilitate many more individual promotions that will be needed to continue your business success and profitability.
Measurement & Records
Measurement and Records
Good record keeping can be the saviour of businesses when you need to either review a product line for profitability or prepare documents for a day in court.
Record Keeping
Record keeping involves all financial transactions, the costs of every purchase and the time cost for every staff member, and management team member, including all stock, product, service, asset and savings in the bank. The best approach is to record everything that involves money. Good record keeping also includes other aspects of your business and these can be a collection of details relating to a specific project or product line, especially when that product is in development and you want to know about how long something takes to build before it gets to a customer or how much it costs to change something that improves the value for the customer.
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Measurement
This refers to the things you are measuring, how and why you are measuring. The standard units of measure for any business include the three basics if time, cost and quality. However, you can add to this by breaking down each build process for your product or service and apply these three elements again and this can give you amazing data that you can refer to when changes occur in the marketplace for just one component of the product or service. For example, if you are selling honey by the jar and the jar manufacturer has decided to change the jar shapes and sizes and at the same time the cost of these you can quickly calculate what will be the new optimal size you can sell your honey by simply substituting the jar sizes accordingly. If you did not keep these measurements and records you would be faced with either not knowing what will be the most profitable size or a lot of trial and error in testing it with your customers.
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Glenn Cossar Consulting can help you develop the most applicable measurement and offer advice on the best way to record these important details of your business. A natural lead on from good measurement and record-keeping is to benchmark your business with others in the marketplace and maintain details of how you stack up or measure against their business. Benchmarking is an effective tool for ensuring you know where you stand in the marketplace and enables you to further analyse any adjustments you need to make to increase both profitability and market share.