The Race Car
Introduction
Today I want to talk to you about the race car, and how the race car can be aligned up against your business.
It really helps you sort of dial down to what’s important to you at the moment, and maybe where you want to focus your efforts to sort of get improvements.
The race car model really came out when I was at the PLC business.
I was really fortunate to work with a gentleman called Bill McGraw, who was my non-exec.
Bill was the ex-Chief Executive of Wickes, the DIY chain, and really helped me dial down and craft my skill as both a CEO and a high growth business entrepreneur.
It was quite fitting because he was in the contract, I was in leasing, we would use the race car model and let me just give you a quick breakdown of what it is.
Model’s In Your Business
The business model is the race car.
The finance model is the journey you’re going to go on.
Your operations model is the management team and your employees.
The driver is the sales team and then the marketing is the fuel in the tank.
Let’s just break that down and talk a couple of minutes around it.
The business model is realistically how you acquire customers, how you generate revenue and how you trade.
At the time of recording this video the economy is good, it’s okay, but it might tighten up a little bit what with political instability.
While the banks and everybody else and the LEPs out there might be saying “Hey, give us a three or forecast of the “big plan.”
Realistically I’d ask you to search growth plan on google.
Growth plan is really something that is going to be a 12-month sort of strategy focusing on the main driver which is acquiring customers and driving revenue in your business.
Yeah, sure, forecast out and look at it over three years if you need to, especially if you have a flat start, but drill down on the next 12 months, that’s where your real change is going to be.
So the business model is the race car.
Finance model.
I talked earlier, just forecast out 12 months how far are you trying to move this vehicle down that journey?
What does it look like?
Are you trying to move it from Leeds to London, or Leeds to Milton Keynes, or Leeds to Derby?
Obviously, that’s your forecast, how far are you trying to get down there and how you want to curve.
If you go ahead and look at your operations team that’s your pit crew.
The Right Employee’s
We talked about this earlier, the management team.
Have you got the right people in the right places?
Have the right skills.
- What’s the training gaps?
- What’s the skill gaps?
- What’s the recruitment gaps?
If you’re in a race car, you need people to change the wheels, you need people to put fuel in, you need people to clean the driver’s visor, people to keep an eye on the stopwatch, people to lift jacks up and you need to have a look at that.
Is everybody in the right positions?
Are they all skilled at what they do?
Then the driver itself.
Now I get a lot of debate on this with Mike, he’s the driver, not the management team.
Well, to a degree yes, but I use the driver as your sales team, because they’re the people on the track, competing, overtaking competitors, negotiating with customers, and really taking that message, that vision to market, so how’s your sales team?
- Have you got one?
- Are they trained?
- Do they understand the difference?
- Can they qualify?
- Are the competitors aware?
- Have they got an outreach strategy in place?
Have a strong on LinkedIn?
- What’s the lead generation rate?
- What’s the close rate?
- What’s the appointment rate?
Do we really have all that dialled down and drilled down?
Then the marketing model, the fuel.
If you think about it, again, I mentioned earlier you want to move from Leeds to London, how much fuel do you want to move in your tank?
If you’ve really got the alignment on your race car and your business model how far of a journey you want to go, you might want to go from a million to five million or five million to 15 million in the next 12 months, three years, five years, whatever it might be.
You’re starting to readjust your pit crew and your organisation, you’ve got the drivers in place to take your message to market, then it’s just what type of fuel that you’re going to need to get that vehicle moving down that journey resourced with a pit crew and your drivers being your sales team there.
So see your marketing as your fuel in your tank and that’s what we call it here at Mike Midgley Executive the power of alignment.
