When business owners fail to follow through on an action, they put their profits and cash flow at unnecessary risk. The lack of reliable follow-through is the number one challenge holding small-business owners back from owning profitable businesses with more predictable cash flows.
Overview
You control your business through disciplined actions. In every business, there are always more smart actions one could take than time available to do so. The hard reality is that not every activity you complete will produce the results you lay out in your Profit Plan.
The key to long-term success lies in having a high bias for action and a passion for results. If your disciplined actions aren’t creating the intended results, then change your actions to ensure that you realize your desired results.
When you are stressed about cash or worried about profits, you know with 100 percent certainty that the right actions have not been taken. You know this definitively based on the poor results produced. Every time you are left with less cash and smaller profits at the end of a month, quarter, or year, you know your actions—even if they involved a lot of hard work—weren’t what they needed to be.
The best way to realize your monthly sales and profit goals, identified in B-CPR Step 2, is through disciplined action every day. The key is to focus on the “critical few,” not the “relevant many” things needing to get done. Prioritize your weekly actions according to B-CPR Step 1—Cash Velocity, Step 3—Cash Quality, and Step 4—Stop the Losses. These three steps of the B-CPR model combine to help ensure that your planned actions are producing your desired results.