The Clifton Review 

The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.

While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.

Successful Strategy Implementation Requirements

By P.J. Malone

Is entrepreneurship bringing you more of a sense of joy or stress? 

While there is a definite sense of pride and fulfillment from starting your own business, it can be a daunting task to ensure its success. That’s why we have been presenting a series of discussions modeled after the principles fashion mogul Peter Nygard used to experience fifty years of unprecedented success with his fashion empire.

We have been discussing how business leaders should avoid the pitfall of setting goals and strategies for achieving their business goals without ensuring that all aspects of the organization are set up to ensure success.

Previously, we outlined the types of questions you must ask in your business to ensure that when you establish a business goal and identify strategies for achieving them that you can increase the likelihood of your goal being achieved.

Now, we want to apply this type of a review to your organization in light of the goal and strategy we set previously. We discussed several strategy examples based on the threat of new competition to your business.

In this practical application, we’ll use the SMART goal of increasing the business income by 20% for the upcoming fiscal year’. Like we said previously, this requires first understanding what 20% translate to in actual dollars.

For our example, let’s use actual figures. Say your business makes about $240,000 a year. 20% of that would be $24,000. So the aim would be to increase the year’s income by $24,000. We need to break that down further. 24,000 would be 2,000 a month.

So, the aim is to make $2,000 more a month. In our example, let’s use the strategy of ‘offering more add-on items to products’. The question to then ask is what add-on items can we offer customers that they will want to purchase? And, how many add-on items do we need to sell to achieve $2,000 more each month?

For our company example, let’s use a small coffee shop, or a bakery, or an ice cream shop. Next, identify potential add-on items, then calculate how many of each would need to be sold to total a minimum of $2,000 in sales each month.

With embarking on this strategy, you now have to look at your organization and what changes may be required to ensure that you can successfully implement your strategy. Begin with these questions:

• What structures, systems and processes are required to achieve our goal? What structures, systems and processes are required to effectively implement our strategies?

One example in applying this question is to review your bookkeeping or accounting system. Does your business have a way to differentiate the sales? 

It’s not good enough to just use an inventory record to note how much is sold each month and when. You need an actual system that tells you what amount of each product you sell is sold each month and when they are sold. Here’s why it matters:

Let’s say that in your coffee shop, you tend to sell out of your cakes but at different times. If you keep track of the specific products sold and when they are sold, that information can help you with your strategy.

If you discover that your coffee cake is popular in the mornings, you can offer that as an add-on item to other customers in the mornings who may not have initially requested it. If it is popular, it’s probably very good. If you offer small bites for tasting, you’ll likely get more add-on sales from people who didn’t intend to purchase.

Without a way to assess what items are popular, and when, from a record of your sales, you may choose the wrong cake to offer as an add-on. This means you would not likely hit your monthly targets and not achieve your goal.

We’ll continue with this example and the practical applications of these principles.