2014 | Teik Oh

How non-financially trained people can prepare a budget in 5 easy steps

Nov 25 2014

Preparing a budget is “easy” for an accountant and small business people who have some finance training. However for many it is the stuff of voodoo.

But when you break it down, there is no real mystery around the preparation of a budget, it is based on your plans and intentions, costs that you can obtain from suppliers, and some judicious making of assumptions and estimates. In truth, any non-finance executive or business owner can do it if they approach the task logically.

Here are 5 basic steps to take to compile your budget.

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Four Steps To Simplify Your Message

Nov 19 2014

Do you want to explain difficult facts to clients? Do you want to get a sales message across?

The first few seconds of any interaction is critical, whether you know the other person or not.

This is particularly important in any business interaction today where people’s time seem so limited, people seem so aware of “that sales pitch” coming and are ready to tune off. Today’s SMS and social media world seem to do nothing but ready for us to listen to tweets.

If you want to put your business message across, whether it is advice, technical information or a sales pitch you need to tune yourself and your communication to that frequency which is most clear.

I have found that the best way to do this is to use four simple steps in any business communication.
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Stop Micro-managing!

Nov 18 2014

I had a meeting with a client yesterday. Amongst other issues we discussed the fact that even as her company grew, she had to continually look over people’s shoulders, tell them not only what to do, but also how to do it in a satisfactory way.

When I asked her what was a “satisfactory way” she explained that it was the way she would have done it, the way her customers had come to expect how her company would do it. She gave me an example where her version of “satisfactory” included a hand-written note to the customer the next day to see if the product met his needs and if she needed to explain any aspect of it to him. In other words quality was not a fixed value but a set of behaviours that had come to represent what the customer wanted. Only, she seemed to be the only one in the growing company who seemed to understand that, despite her experienced (and expensive) new hires.

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Change your business model with great care!

Nov 03 2014

Businesses who decide to change the way they do business need to be careful of unintended consequences. They need to think of the effects to the customer first, but also to the not so obvious stakeholder groups.

For example businesses that generate significant business through referral networks need to be careful how any changes affect their referral base and not just their customers.

In some imagined country, the leading provider of accounting software to SME’s is a company called Record Your Amazing Business or Ryab. Knowing that SME’s made purchasing decisions about accounting software based on their accountants’ opinions, Ryab provided their software free to all public accounting firms. These firms could use multiple copies of the software on a single free license as long as they used it on their own entities – clients would have to buy their own licenses, and accountants even received commissions on these sales to clients.

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Three things to check to find the “best-fit” staff to your team

Oct 27 2014

I provide strategic consulting services to Not-for-Profit clients who perhaps are not best equipped or experienced to apply corporate procedures that most of us would find “normal”. However, when an NFP has a highly-paid CEO that once worked senior positions in significant banking and investment companies, you’d expect better.

I was asked to assist in recruitment interviews for a General Manager position by the CEO of an NFP that I have had a relationship with earlier in their history. In fact, I had participated in earlier interviews for various finance staff recruited by this CEO when he had first arrived, and in the process had provided to the organisation a recruitment “checklist” for those earlier interviews. So, imagine my surprise when the CEO asked me to assist in the GM interviews, and I discovered that a complete Job Description was still being discussed, that an advertisement had been published without reference to key details such as employer industry and location (regional town), and before other details such as remuneration ranges and basic terms had been agreed internally. Having heard this, it was no surprise to me to learn that various highly qualified potential candidates had made initial inquiries, and when told that “what you ask has not been determined yet,” did not bother calling again. Read More

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Archive - 2014

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How non-financially trained people can prepare a budget in 5 easy steps

Four Steps To Simplify Your Message

Stop Micro-managing!

Change your business model with great care!

Three things to check to find the “best-fit” staff to your team