THE X FACTOR BLOG

A case study on performance planning with In2Bathrooms

All businesses should have a business plan which acts as the ‘road map’ for the enterprise. After all, if you don’t know where you’re heading, how can you take appropriate actions to get you there? Have you ever sat down and asked yourself where you really want your business to go? Have you decided what you’d like your life to look like in 20 years time and what part your business will play in that vision?

If you haven’t committed your goals for your business’ future to paper in a proper business plan, you won’t move ahead at a consistent speed with anything like consistent growth. To 10X Performance Planner clients Tracey and Tai from In2Bathrooms, these truths were self evident, given they’d struggled to keep up with the pace of their previous business and were gun shy about starting a new business. In their new venture Tracey and Tai decided a proper business plan would be critical to their success, so approached a 10X Coach for help.

Planning to succeed

Tracey and her husband Tai had previously run their own business, but after initially experiencing burn-out, then attempting to start up the business a second time, with little success, they’d both been left feeling worse for wear. However, always on the look-out for new opportunities, Tracey attended an Edge event in September 2009, was tremendously excited by what she heard and decided it could be a case of ‘third time’s a charm’. This time, Tracey felt that with the right support and backup, she and Tai could get the business running as they’d always wanted.

In the first instance, Tracey and Tai went to their 10X Coach for assistance with their accounting, as they hadn’t had their financial accounts prepared for two years. A 10X Coach spoke to them about business and discussed what level of time and financial commitment would be required to start again from scratch. Tai also attended a Boardroom Edge event and following that, they signed up for Performance Planner (10X’s industry-leading business planning, coaching and improvement program) in November of the same year.

The leap of faith that paid off

Tracey remembers it being a huge leap of faith to have another shot at their business and knew that they would have to stay focused in order to achieve a different outcome to their previous two attempts. The December/January period was a challenging time for In2Bathrooms, with little incoming work and six children for Tracey and Tai to support. However, they pressed on, put new systems in place and concentrated on creating a more up-market appearance. Tracey was studying marketing at the time and used her knowledge to create some promotional material that generated a fantastic response for the business in February.

One-on-one coaching gave an added ‘push’

When their cashflow was short, Tai and Tracey had a session with their 10X Coach which was based around the concept of “Be, Do, Have” – reinforcing that they needed to focus on what they had to ‘Be’ and ‘Do’ to achieve what they wanted to ‘Have’. This encouraged them to have faith, believe in themselves, their product, their service and to keep on ‘keeping on’.

From the monthly meetings in the Performance Planner process, Tracey and Tai mastered their quoting system with the introduction of a basic phone call process, monitored why they didn’t win the quotes and methodically challenged client objections moving forwards. They improved their communication - both verbal and written - created a better flow of production, to allow more to work to be handled and also improved their customer service. As a result of this, in early June they had four jobs lined up with deposits paid, averaging at around $7,500K each.

How Performance Planner hones your direction

Tracey and Tai feel that the process of Performance Planner has given them the opportunity to ‘talk business’, resulting in greater clarity on the direction they are heading in. No longer are they ‘plodding along’, but instead are more focused on dollar-producing activities. As Tracey explains, “One of the hardest things to do in business, especially in this financial climate is to keep a positive focus. 10X keeps you focused on your business from day one.

It forces you to look at where your money is coming from and where it is going out, what things are necessary and what can be pruned back, how efficient your team and your systems are, what you can be doing to convert more sales, whether your legals are sufficient for your business, whether your marketing is working for you and if so to what extent it’s working. This is just a sample of the things we’ve explored in the 10X program.”

The benefits of a personal coach

Tracey and Tai say that having their own 10X Coach has also provided a forum for them to voice ideas and have the ramifications of them fully explained. “Having a 10X coach go through each process step by step and being able to talk with them about ideas and concerns is a real bonus,” says Tracey. “Our coach sets up goals that need to be achieved in a certain time frame, so there’s no putting things off to a later date. Even in our darkest hour at times when I felt a little defeated our 10X Coach was there giving me encouragement and ideas that I hadn’t thought of to keep things going”.

Now In2Bathrooms is more organised and Tracey and Tai are happy that they are achieving what they set out to do – in fact, they believe that anything is possible with their current understanding of who they need to ‘be’ in order to ‘do’ what’s necessary for them to ‘have’ what they desire.

If you’d like more information on 10X Performance Planner, 10X Coaching Club or how a 10X Coach can help you grow your business to even better levels of performance and success, call us now on 1300 855 109.