Finding Answers

Business Coaching tools, tips, and other information you can use today!

Welcome to the Finding Answers Blog

Here you will find tips, skills, and other information you can put into practice immediately after reading them. Our lions are hunting far and wide to bring you valuable and usable information. Feel free to share, subscribe, and comment! We love engagement and we all learn from such exchanges.

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have our clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

March 17th, 2010

What A Top Business Coach Brings You

I am currently involved in a discussion with an old friend over what a business coach brings to a business. The fundamental question is does the business coach act as a therapist at times. The answer is a qualified yes. Qualified because the business coach has been hired to help a team solve a specific issue, train new skills to beat the competition, or help a business launch. A business coach is not hired to exorcise personal daemons.

A business coach is not hired to exorcise personal daemons.

Yet, it is invariable that a business coach – really any trusted advisor – will have a bonding experience with the coachee. In that experience the coach will help the coachee improve in other areas than just the business issues that need to be resolved. This comes from the mutual trust and respect that is built during the coaching relationship.

They help their clients focus on the basics that build success. The continuing practice of fundamentals tends to spill over into the private lives of the clients.

In sports, top coaches get more out their players than what happens on the field. These coaches help their players become more responsible members of their communities and better individuals. The sports coaches have their players focus on the fundamentals of their sport and their lives. This happens because the sports coach is able to establish a bond built on trust. Coaches like Phil Jackson, Guus Hiddnik, and John Wooden come to mind as top coaches that have done that.

The result is a better-run business, a high functioning team, and improved personal relations.

Top Coaching Benefits

The same is true when it comes to top business coaches. They help their clients focus on the basics that build success. The continuing practice of fundamentals tends to spill over into the private lives of the clients. The result is a better-run business, a high functioning team, and improved personal relations. The nearby chart shows the benefits of a business coach. What is apparent in the chart is that most of the benefits are personal.

So my friend is right. A business coach, any coach, is a bit of tactician, motivator, and therapist. Just remember that the latter is a beneficial side effect of coaching.

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

March 16th, 2010

Secret of Success: Meet The Unmet Needs

I ran into an old colleague in the supermarket yesterday. (No, no one got hurt.) We were discussing the current business climate and how our respective businesses are going. His is in a breakout stage right now, which means he feels a bit overworked but happy. He is working for a medical device company that does not make a unique product but has improved on current technology. Which got us into the conversation about what makes a successful start-up company and how do entrepreneurs discover new ideas.

The Secret Recipe

We are all bombarded through media about those who discover a break-through product or a completely new way of doing business. The pressure on most entrepreneurs, or would be ones, is to discover a fantastic new way to do business. Yet, there is tons of money to be made by improving existing products, services, and methods of doing businesses. In fact, if you review most of the break-through products of the last decade and they are improvements on products/services that were already out there. iPod: improvement on portable CD player and the Walkman. Notebook computers: improvement on the laptop. Facebook: improvement on MySpace.

These improvements represent a new direction on existing products/services that were not meeting a need by the market. That is what it all comes down to in the end… meeting an unmet need.

So, if you are looking to start a new company or create a new product it has to meet the following test:

Will it meet an unmet need? This is the test that must be passed in order to have any success. It would do you no good to launch a buggy-whip business where there is not a need for them. You must do your research to make sure that there are needs that are not being met. If your product meets and exceeds those needs then you are well on your way to launching a successful business.

If it is so easy then why do most companies fail? Well, the answer to that question is a hydra of responses. It could be poor quality of the product, bad business plan, unsuccessful value propositions, et cetera. Regardless, most of the time it is because the unmet need has been overstated and not vetted. Think of Crystal Pepsi (I think I am the only person in the world that drank it) and New Coke. Both of those products were failures because the need was overstated in the research. There simply was not a need for them.

If you have a great idea, don’t keep it to yourself. Well, keep the secret recipe and all to yourself, but not the idea. You need to test if there really is an unmet need that your business idea will fulfill. That means that you need to seek out beyond your social circle to receive feedback.

This is the toughest part, because the feedback can be brutal. Yet, it is important as it helps you gauge how much desire there is out there for the services you wish to offer. It also helps you not be myopic in your vision.

Coming back to my conversation with my friend. We were both shopping for groceries for different reasons. It was time to stock up the fridge and cupboards for him. For me, I needed a few ingredients to complete a recipe I was trying on items I already had. Another trip, that when you add time and gas, was becoming costly. If only there was a website where I can plug-in the basic ingredients and it could spit out a recipe. Hey! That’s an idea!

How would you test if your business idea is ready?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

March 15th, 2010

A Manager, an Executive, and a Business Lion Went to Fill a Customer’s Needs

Customers have a never ending thirst that must be quenched on a continuous basis. They return to the same source of water that will quench the majority of their thirst because of familiarity and trust. Customers will desire for that source of water to be the answers or solutions to myriad of diverse needs. Yet, no business can fulfill every single need a customer has.

The manager, when faced with this dilemma, will look first to procedures or guidance from above to fulfill the need of the customer. When those fail, as they eventually will, the manger resorts to the last defense that all managers know, “I am sorry. I cannot help you.” Or “I am sorry, you’ll have to call this number. We do not do that here.” The manager does this, because the manager only knows of the watering hole they have been assigned to.

The business lion understands that while its business cannot satisfy every thirst a customer may have, there are other businesses that might.

The executive, with more power than the manager, has access to more sources of water for the customer. The executive too will look towards procedures, policies, and guidance from its most successful sources of water to meet the needs of the customer. The executive does the latter because they believe that if success is to be had at one watering hole, then it should easily be copied to the next one and the next one. Sadly that fails as well. In frustration of being drawn away from managing multiple sources of water, the executive will tell the customer that, “We will look into it.” Or “It is in the pipeline.” Both being statements that have no end and definitive satisfaction for the customer’s thirst, the executive hopes to string the customer along until conditions change or the need wanes.

The Business Lion Is Calm

The business lion understands that while its business cannot satisfy every thirst a customer may have, there are other businesses that might. It may even be a competitor. The business lion knows that the breadth of every policy or procedure cannot cover every thirst a customer may have. Knowing that they are there to define what is wrong and/or illegal they will help guide the business lion in finding the right source for the customer’s thirst.

The business lion will scour far and wide for new watering holes if none have been discovered for the client. Once found the business lion will lead the customer to it and if need be guide them in how to drink from it. The business lion will always follow back to ensure that the customer’s thirst has been quenched.

If there is nothing available to quench the thirst of the customer, then the lion knows it has found a new opportunity to fulfill an unmet need. Helping the business grow and create a new class of customers the business lion can lead.

By taking the extra step to find a means to meet a customer’s need the business lion knows that it has gained a new member to its pride. It has learned about new needs that have never been met. It has built a bound of trust that will strengthen the business the lion is part of.

There are always new watering holes and other means to fulfill a customers needs. Customers value the integrity a business has in helping the customer fulfill their needs, even if it something a business cannot do. Businesses that act this way, that discover new watering holes for the customer, never go out of business. Managers and executives do not understand this. A business lion never forgets it.

Are you a business lion? Do you know of any business lions?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.