Ann Massie Nelson is an interviewer and writer with more than 35 years of experience in marketing and communications, working primarily in financial services and trade associations. She has interviewed people on a wide range of topics for news and features articles that have appeared in print, video, web, broadcast and social media. Nelson has facilitated meetings and focus groups, developed and presented continuing education seminars, and taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She returned to the university in 2010 to earn a certificate in consumer health advocacy from the Law School. She holds bachelors and master’s degrees in life sciences communications from the UW-Madison.

Life Messages Media, LLC, offers video storytelling services to individuals, organizations and small businesses. We come to your location, guide you through the interview, and record other footage to tell your unique story. Our high quality production process - using professional cameras, lights and sound - results in a video you will be proud to share with others. Your finished video is a natural reflection of you that speaks volumes more than text or photographs alone can do.

MABC is proud to announce that we recently published an in-depth volume of tips, advice and tools to help other business owners succeed. "We Wish We Had Known" is a compilation of expertise from 30 successful consultants who are members of MABC.

According to Forbes, the consulting industry is worth a whopping $100 billion per year and is expected to grow around 80% per year over the next few years. Simply put, they agree there’s never been a worse time to be an employee, and there’s never been a better time to start your own consulting business.

Being a small business owner or consultant has its advantages and struggles. We usually love the work we do but languish with the other tasks that are not in our area of expertise.

This book’s mission is to offer step-one tips to improve your work on those other essential tasks. Each chapter stands alone as it is written directly by the author, using their voice, their industry jargon, and their style. This anthology of authors also gives the reader expertise in the topics to use exactly when you need them.

Think of this book as a directory of advice to pick up and skim through to learn something new or to target read a single chapter on a specific need for your business. Either way, these authors are here to support your business journey. Feel free to reach out to any of them individually to work more closely in their area of expertise!

We, at MABC, have a strong commitment to perfecting our craft through professional growth and supporting other professionals along the way. Order your copy of We Wish We Had Known today!

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MEDIA COVERAGE

"We Wish We Had Known" was featured by In Business Magazine, which talked about the book as drawing on decades of experiences from 30 Madison-area business consultants aims to cut through the clutter and provide tips and tricks that both new and seasoned consultants can use in their own consultancy endeavors. READ THE ARTICLE

Click Here To Watch the Video Presentation
Madison Area Business Consultants is proud to present How to Get the Appointment with John Russell of The Business Source LLC and Gap Selling presented by Bob McDonald of Midwest Sales Consultants.  If you are needing help to increase your sales here's a great one hour program to help you gain momentum towards increased sales success.

MABC August 12^th, 2021 Program

HOW TO GET THE APPOINTMENT

There’s 3 main considerations to begin the process to get the appointment with the decision maker.

• 1.      Prequalify through research to establish an understanding of the client situation and problem you can solve.
• 2.      Open the relationship and begin to establish trust with the gatekeeper and the decision maker.
• 3.     Earn the opportunity to set up an executive briefing where you can ask preliminary questions to determine if there’s a natural fit between your prospects business opportunity and your consulting specialty.

Answer your own pre-qualifying questions:

Does this prospect have problems that my consulting can solve?

Is this company in a growth pattern?

Are there multiple locations in my territory?

Is this a market leader or prestige client who will help me sell others in the category?

Are they doing business with other consultants?

Can I reach the ultimate decision maker?

Is this prospect business cost-effective to pursue?

Do I have a referral?

Is there a chance for a long term relationship?

Do your research.

Can you find someone who can introduce you or that you can reference as a referral?

Learn about the person who is the economic buyer.  Start at the top and work down.

Get to know and build a relationship with the gatekeeper to the decision maker.

Confirm who the decision maker is.  It can change.

Send letter #1:  The first letter of introduction about you, your company, your purpose and who you help.

Include why you’re contacting them? 

What’s your purpose for the letter?  Why are you interested in speaking with me?

What’s your reason for contacting the company?

What are you hoping to communicate?

What problem does your service solve?

How is your solution different than the others?

What’s the benefit to meeting with you?

What is your prospects company passionate about?

What are your prospects competitors doing to solve the same problem?

Send letter #2(within 3 days of letter #1): Noting a recent article about the prospects company, their competitor or their industry.  Demonstrate you have insight into the prospects issues.

Send letter #3(within 3 days of letter #2): Note a recent story about a triggering event in the industry that could have implications for your prospects company, which you determined through your pre-meeting research.

Send letter #4(within 3 days of letter #3): Research your prospects customer.  Demonstrate you are a critical thinker in touch with their industry, company and challenges.

Prepare your follow up voice mail scripts. Call after each letter politely to ask if they’ve received it and if you can meet with them for 15 minutes to exchange information to see if their might be a fit between your two companies.  Your only goal is to get the meeting, not to sell.  It’s not about you at this point.

Don’t email.

Can you physically walk into the business to meet just the gatekeeper?

“GOOD MORNING SUSAN, MY NAME IS JOHN RUSSELL.  IS MARY JONES THE PERSON I SHOULD SPEAK WITH ABOUT SALES TRAINING?  I WOULD LIKE TO SCHEDULE A SHORT MEETING WITH HER.  CAN YOU SHARE WITH ME THE BEST TIME TO REACH MARY DURING THE WEEK?

MY PLAN IS TO FOLLOW UP WITH A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.  SHOULD I SEND IT TO THIS OFFICE?

I’LL BE SENDING OUT MY LETTER OF INTRODUCTION ON FRIDAY.  THEN I’LL FOLLOW UP WITH A PHONE CALL AFTER THAT TO ASK IF I CAN SCHEDULE A SHORT MEETING WITH MARY TO INTRODUCE MYSELF.

From Jill Konrath – Selling To Big Companies
Getting meetings with C-level execs or their senior designate isn’t hard. In fact, it’s often much, much quicker to get an appointment with (or referral from) the CEO than getting a meeting with a mid-ranking exec who is vested in the status quo. This applies in all B2B sales – even if the CEO isn’t the main buyer for the product, service, or solution you sell.

#1: Make sure your value proposition focuses on the outcomes and impact your client can expect – and that other clients get – because of working with you. Rather than saying, “We help companies to…” (which is how most value props start, and why they sound the same) demonstrate immediate credibility and social proof by saying, “Clients like ABC and XYZ say they get (results/outcome/impact) because they choose to work with [name of your company].” “Choose to work with [name of your company]” is actually an embedded suggestion that pre-conditions your potential customer to choose to work with you.

#2: Go high! Once your messaging is more client focused, just switching your attention on getting meetings with more senior executives will mean you get meetings with more senior executives – as senior executives are always on the lookout for new initiatives that will accelerate time to market, increase revenue, decrease costs, improve efficiencies, and more. They’re wired that way. And research shows they appreciate salespeople who bring new ideas to them. 

#3: Write several different opening scripts.  Try each repeatedly and identify which emails/letters that generate the most meetings. Tweak them to appeal to senior execs’ motivations.

9 Tips to Get Prospects to Call You Back

• 1.     Get down to business right away.
• 2.     Reference any referrals up front and state your referrals name.
• 3.     Show you’ve done your homework and prepared for the meeting.
• 4.     Mention a recent newsworthy event related to your prospects industry or business.
• 5.     Can you share a strong value proposition?
• 6.     Share a fresh perspective.
• 7.     Eliminate any self-serving language.
• 8.     Sound like a trusted partner.
• 9.     Use a series of scripts for voice mails.

One you get the appointment, prepare, send and follow up with a pre-meeting agenda.

When you confirm your meeting via phone say, “In preparation for this meeting, I’ve sent you a pre-meeting agenda. Is there anything you’d like to add to the agenda or questions you have that we can prepare for in advance?” 

This demonstrates that the meeting time will be used efficiently and will be focused on the prospects situation.

Enjoy Walters great talent and passion for helping others succeed in business.  

I’m a big believer in the power of networking. I could tell you hundreds of stories about how it’s helped me and how my being an avid networker has helped others.  You never know “who knows who” and how we can help each other.

While I was a full time CFO for an entrepreneurial tech company I started taking on side projects. I enjoyed doing that kind of work and when I helped the owner of the tech company sell it last year, I decided I wanted to do it full time. I became a “fractional CFO” – helping companies who needed a CFO’s skills and experience but not on a full-time basis.  I had become a “consultant”.

I continued to network and I quickly realized that my doing so with other consultants brought additional benefits especially with those I had gotten to know well like those in the Madison Area Business Consultants group (MABC).  In addition to the benefits of traditional networking, our skills can be helpful to other consultants when our clients or contacts turn to us for advice beyond what we normally help them with. For example, one of my clients might ask me if I know someone who specializes in online marketing – and I have a few to recommend from MABC. Or someone might ask me if I know a business coach – again I know a few. Someone might ask you if you know a fractional CFO and you do.  Being able to suggest someone you trust and can recommend is “win win”.

I have found MABC to be a great group made up of authentic, smart and helpful people. I’ve tried to get to know as many of you as I can. I look forward to getting to know you better and to being able to recommend you to clients and other people I know who ask me “Do you know someone who……?”

People use Google, the most popular search engine, to perform 3.5 billion searches a day! Today, if your consulting business doesn’t have a website, it might as well not exist to the millions of people using search engines to find products and services.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and creating content that ranks well on the Google search results pages. The higher you rank, the more traffic your website will get, and ultimately the more revenue you will drive.

There is no magic bullet to get the coveted top spots on Google (other than paid ads, of course). You have to earn it! The good news is, if you are willing to put in some work, you don’t need a big budget to see results.

Read these top 5 tips from an SEO consultant to learn more about search engines and the things you can do to improve your ranking on Google.

People Still Read

People constantly say to us, “No one reads anymore, so I don’t want my website to have a lot of text.”

While it’s true that video and audio content are growing in popularity (more on that later), certain types of long-form written content are still being read and ranking very well on search engines like Google.

Long-form content (typically 2,000 words or longer) on your website might include things like:

• Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
• How-to articles
• Case studies
• Behind the scenes / process
• Buyer’s guides
• Sales landing pages
• Lists and in-depth reviews (best of, top 10, etc.)
• Storytelling and long-form journalism

Your goal when creating long-form, high-ranking content is to create a combination of high-quality, trustworthy, useful, interesting, and remarkable content. Keep in mind if the article is long, it should also likely include images, videos, graphics, tools, downloads or anything else that the user might find useful. In addition, you’ll want to format the content with headers, bullets and other elements that will make it easy to skim.

When you create a piece of great content, users will stay on your page to read the in-depth content, which is a great signal for Google that your content is high quality.

Words on Your Website Matter

When designing your website, and also any content you create later such as blog articles, services pages, etc. keep in mind that the actual words you use on the site matter.

Keyword research is the process of using a data aggregation tool to learn what people are searching on the Internet and how many people are searching for it.

By using a free tool such as Neil Patel’s Uber Suggest, you can test your assumptions about what you think users would type into Google to find a business like yours.

Once you know the correct keywords to use on the site, you’ll want to optimize each page for a different keyword phrase. Use those words in the page title, the body copy, in links and in the meta title and meta description of the page.

Video Content is High Value

There is no doubt that consumer preference for video is rising, especially among Millenials. Video content is quickly becoming one of the most high value types of content you can have on your website to help you rank for Google.

Videos engage multiple senses and convey emotion better than plain written copy or still photos. Because of that, videos are simply more engaging and can hold people’s attention longer.

Videos help your SEO by keeping people on your website for longer (also known as “dwell time”), which is a signal to Google that your website has good content.

In addition to video content on your website, YouTube has quickly become the second largest search engine in the world with over a global billion users. So even if you never post the video on your website, your business can still get found on YouTube.

Video content may take more effort and resources to produce, but your effort will most certainly pay off in the way of search engine optimization.

User Intent is Intuitive 

Without doing a bunch of keyword research, it’s actually not difficult to try to guess what types of things people might type into Google, just by looking at your own user behavior when it comes to searching the Internet.

User intent is the concept behind understanding how people search on the Internet and why.

Think about the last time you went to buy a new laptop. Maybe you searched for “best laptops 2021.” The user intent of this query is pretty obvious. You are a potential buyer, but you’re not yet ready to buy. You’re still in the research phase. So Google’s top results are likely going to show you a review website that runs down the best laptops that came out in 2021. This is the type of content that will be most helpful to you at this phase in the buying process.

Once you have narrowed it down to a few laptops, you might search for “Inspiron 15 5000 Laptop reviews.” Then Google will likely show more in-depth reviews of this specific laptop from trustworthy sites (that’s where that long-form content will shine).

When you are ready to buy and you want to check prices, you might type in “buy Inspiron 15 5000 Laptop.” This is where the product page for the Inspiron laptop will likely be in the top results, as well as websites or marketplaces that sell that model such as Amazon or Best Buy.

When you do your keyword research for your own website, consider what the user intent is during each phase of the sales funnel or buying process, and create content that meets those needs.

SEO Takes Ongoing Work

The process of optimizing your website for Google or other search engines is not a one-time thing. There are many technical aspects to SEO that are performed when your website is created that happen only one time. However, to have truly good search engine optimization and ongoing benefits from SEO, it takes an ongoing commitment of time and/or money.

The amount of resources you will have to invest is dependent on how competitive your industry is on Google and how much effort those competitors are putting in. It’s a bit of an arms race. If you are ranking one day for a particular keyword, but then your competitor creates a better piece of content, you’ll lose your position. But then you also have the opportunity to improve your position with more optimization or new content.

In the end, Google will always award the website that has the best, most relevant content to what the user is looking for.

Working Capital is the excess of current assets (including cash, accounts receivable, and inventory) over current liabilities (including accounts payable and accrued expenses).

• Net Working Capital = Current Assets - Current Liabilities

It is a measure of both liquidity and operational efficiency. Ideally, you want to maintain your net working capital (NWC) so you have enough to invest and grow your business. However, too much net working capital can indicate you are not reinvesting cash, not collecting accounts receivable (A/R) efficiently, or over investing in inventory. An important point to note: Inventory is generally thought of as pertaining to businesses that sell products, not services. However, I have always told service providers to think of work completed but not billed as their inventory. A billable hour worked but not invoiced is essentially the same as a widget purchased but not sold. It is an asset that needs to be converted to cash.

Dollars tied up in accounts receivable and inventory are dollars not currently earning a return for your company. Keeping inventory at the optimal level will free up those dollars for investment elsewhere. Likewise, dollars you are entitled to but have not received represent an interest free loan to the party you have extended the payment terms to. The flip side of managing accounts receivable is managing your accounts payable (A/P). These are other firms' extensions of credit to you for the length the payment terms. These represent expenses you have incurred but have not yet outlaid the cash for. Ideally, you will pay these at the end of the payment term period because you want to delay the outlay of cash as long as possible. One possible exception to this is if the vendor offers a discount on early payment (ex. 2/10, net 30). Ordinarily, you should take the discount, especially if you have enough cash on hand and adequate buffer in your cash flow forecast. If you will have to borrow to take advantage of the discount, you will have to calculate the costs of not taking the discount (see equation 1 below) and compare that to the cost of the sources of financing you would utilize.

See original article for equation

Effectively managing your collections, inventory, and payments to outside vendors are essential for good working capital management. Specific working capital needs will vary from industry to industry. Different industries have significantly different payments terms (to both suppliers and customers), inventory values, inventory turn rates, etc. There are various metrics you can use to evaluate your firm compared to other players in your industry. Some of these include:

• Current Ratio - a measure of liquidity. Current Ratio = Current Assets/Current Liabilities

• Cash conversion cycle (CCC)- the number of days it takes to convert a dollar spent on inventory into a dollar inflow from sales, Calculating this number requires you to know your Days Sales Outstanding (a measure of A/R collection efficiency), Days Inventory Outstanding (a measure of inventory management efficiency), and Days Payable Outstanding (a measure of A/P management).

• Working Capital Turnover - measures the effectiveness in using working capital to generate sales. Working Capital Turnover = Net Sales / Net Working Capital

• Return on capital employed (ROCE) - while not strictly a working capital ratio, it provides a measure of efficiency of generating income from total capital. ROCE = Earnings Before Interest & Taxes / (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Finally, a lesser known fact about working capital management is that it often has substantial ramifications on the sale of a business. Commonly buyers of businesses include a NWC target in their agreement, normally based on the 12-month average of the NWC prior to sale (the target amount). This is because the sale price is often based on a multiple of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA). Thus, all items included in the EBITDA number need to be accounted for. A/R appears in EBITDA as revenue, and A/P shows up as expenses. The working capital needed to generate the selling EBITDA has to be maintained for the price to be fair. Normally the terms of the sale require an adjustment to the purchase price if the working capital varies from the 12-month average. If the NWC at the close of the sale is above the target amount, the seller's closing proceeds are increased by the difference. Conversely, if the NWC is below the target amount at sale, the seller's proceeds are reduced by the difference. Owners considering an outside sale have an additional incentive to manage their working capital, and they should begin managing it at least 18 months prior to going to market to find a buyer. Managing working capital effectively ensures owners (sellers) will have a true representation of the NWC required to run the firm when the buyer calculates the 12-month average, and they will have a strong negotiating position to argue it should be lower if an anomaly has driven it higher in the past few months.

Overall, the goal of net working capital management is to maximize the efficiency of your operations. Effective management of working capital will improve profitability and growth, while ensuring your ability to cover your obligations.

If you’d like to learn more about these topics, please visit Augelli Consulting for multiple other free resources related to value creation and business exit planning.

About the Author:

Jon Augelli is a licensed Professional Engineer, Certified Management Accountant, Certified in Strategy and Competitive Analysis, Certified Financial Modeling and Valuation Analyst, and the founder of Augelli Consulting, LLC. He has a passion for helping business owners achieve their dreams by growing their businesses and preserving their legacy. He does this by offering Fractional CFO and Exit Planning Services to small to mid-sized business owners across Southern Wisconsin. He has advised companies in a variety of fields including engineering, legal, healthcare, fitness, and e-commerce, and has navigated multiple business ownership transitions. For questions regarding topics discussed or CFO & Exit Planning services contact him at: jaugelli@augelliconsulting.com or 608-352-3332