Over time
we have fielded many questions concerning The Business Doctor.
The following dialog may be helpful to you:
Q.
What does The
Business Doctor do?
A. The same thing a medical doctor does for patients except that
it is being done for a business.
Q. How does the
Business Doctor do it?
A. Initially, by meeting with the CEO who knows that his or her
business is ill and in need of attention.
Q. What are
some examples of a sick business?
A. Growing too fast; Losing customers; Slowly bleeding to death? Devoid
of new ideas;
Q. How does the Business Doctor examine the
business?
A. By looking at the vital signs of cash flow, the balance sheet,
the P&L, trends in customers via value analysis.
Q. What
are some of the tell tale symptoms of a sick company?
A. Insufficient cash generation-cash negative. No idea of the
break even point. No concept of the value of a customer. No key
performance indicators. Frustrated and unhappy employees. No unique
selling proposition (USP),
Q. What is the
typical initial prescription?
A. Do a serious SWOT analysis.
Q. What comes out of that?
A. Strengths - Things the company does well.
Weaknesses - Things the company does not
do well.
Opportunities - Obvious actions that need
to be taken as fast as possible.
Threats - Things that could destroy the
business.
Q. Isn't it now up to the management?
A. Yes, now the Business Doctor takes on the individual managers
as patients.
Q. How does he deal with them?
A. Each manager gets his or her own prescription - one or more of
the SWOT's to deal with.
Q. How
monitors them?
A. They do under the guidance of the Business Doctor.
Q. Do they have
to take their own prescription?
A. In reality . . .yes.
Q. So the
Business Doctor is more of a facilitator . . .right?
A. Yes, much like going to Weight Watchers©
Q. What is the result
of the entire prescriptive process?
A. A Business Plan for the
management team to follow that enables the business to get better.
Q. Who then monitors
the business plan?
A. The Business Doctor does on a quarterly basis.
Q. What is this
process called?
A. The Business Doctor calls it "The Plan For Planning".
Q. How can I
find out more about it for my business?
A. An e-mail
will bring a response from the Business Doctor.
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