Budget Question

Most companies are well into budget planning for 2010, using what's known as "incremental" budgeting. I prefer "zero based" budgeting, a process I shared with students at Mount Royal University earlier this week.

Essentially, zero based budgeting is the opposite of incremental (aka “use it or lose it”) budgeting. With incremental budgeting, if your department had a $50,000 budget in 2009, they will automatically get a $50,000 budget in 2010 with a small percentage increase based on negotiations with management.

With zero based budgeting, you negotiate for your entire budget each year based on your strategic plans for the upcoming year. Under current economic conditions, incremental budgets are being maintained (after cutting earlier in this year) or being reduced for 2010.

By taking a “zero based” approach to your projects, you should go into a presentation with management with all relevant quotes and estimates from your suppliers in hand so when management says, “so as part of our awareness campaign you want to do a direct mail campaign to every household in Okotoks, how much will that be,” you can confidently respond, “we received 3 quotes and the best value is $0.50 per house or $3,125” (Okotoks caps their population at 25,000, assuming 4 individuals per house, there are 6,250 houses in Okotoks). That response, as opposed to “I don’t know” or “Um, we’ll get back to you on that” increases your chances of getting close to the budget you asked for.

So which do you prefer, incremental or zero based budgeting? How are you doing more with less going into 2010?

Special thanks to Amy, who inspired this post.

Commodity Sellers

Ideas are like opinions. There's a cliche about opinions that's not coming to mind right now, help me out in comments.

Essentially, ideas are a commodity and there's supposed to be no value in commodities, right?

What I've found though, is if your idea a) saves your audience time (like consolidating suppliers) or b) adds tangible value to your audience (like creating a new market segment) ideas elevate from commodities to valuable assets.

Next time you're prepping to pitch an idea highlight the ways your idea would meet the criteria above to your audience. You'll have greater success in selling ideas if you do.

Time Management

A client once told me about a salesperson that used to call them "just to chat." My client said to me, "just to chat? I'm busy! Tell me something new, ask for a meeting or don't call!"

It should be obvious that the people to whom we pitch our ideas are busy; however, when we take focus off to who we are pitching and focus on the pitch itself respect for our audience's time drops down our list of importance.

What works best for me is to acknowledge my audience's limited time for me then ask for a specific amount of time at a specific date and time. In some meetings I've brought and oven timer and let my audience set the time for our meeting.

Any successful pitch revolves around trust and respect. If your audience feels you respect their time and trusts that you will execute your commitments (more on that later) your pitches should be regularly successful.

Greyhound Opportunity

Greyhound’s announcement of service cuts is a fantastic opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs. Small, nimble companies with a focus on serving rural customers could fill the void left by Greyhound and make money doing it.

Here’re my ideas on how it would work.

1. Copy the Southwest Air model – instead of the hub (Winnipeg) and spoke (everywhere else in Manitoba) system used by Greyhound, run point to point service between rural communities. This would end up being less expensive because smaller coaches could be used (see below) more frequently

2. Use smaller coaches – growing up in rural Canada, I used to ride Greyhound. Their 50+ seat coaches were never even half full until we stopped at a mid-major centre like Kelowna, Red Deer or Brandon. Smaller coaches mean fewer seats which translates into few fares to break even

3. Automate as much as possible – Reduce overhead by equipping drivers with mobile credit card scanners for last minute purchases and routing all other purchases through a call centre. As Internet access is slow at best in rural Canada, an e-commerce option wouldn’t be highly used, but should be available

4. Increase frequency – as many rural towns, including my hometown, lack services such as a grocery store, doctor, dentist, video store and registry, increased frequency of service between “small town A” and “slightly larger town with services small town A doesn’t have” would provide steady, recurring revenue

Admittedly, the above ideas are just a shell of a plan. Let me in comments would it work? Wouldn’t it? How would you tackle this opportunity?

What, Specifically is Your Idea?

One of the more frustrating aspects of most pitches I see is vagueness. Mark Cuban did a fantastic job of breaking down a hilariously vague pitch in his blog recently.

I see vague pitches most often from volunteer groups (including not-for-profits and amateur sport organizations). These pitches can generally be summed up as “we will do stuff and it will be wonderful.” Occasionally a target group that might benefit from said wonderful program will be tossed in to make a pitch less vague.

This isn’t to say that these pitches aren’t created by intelligent individuals who may achieve some degree of success with a program; however, by leaving specifics out of their pitches they fail to maximize the potential for success (or as Seth Godin said, minimize potential for blame if that program fails).

Some of you reading may disagree with this post so far, if so I hope you’ll be public with your disagreement by commenting, as you had success getting a “yes” to vague pitches. Vague pitches may work; however, by adding specifics to your pitch you accomplish two things.

1. More individuals will pay attention so you increase the potential target pool for your pitch

2. Individuals who aren’t committed to your idea will lose interest

Seems counter-intuitive, no? Think of it this way. At this point in our careers, all of us have worked in a group. Group theory says that in a majority of groups a small part of a group will take on more than their fair share of work, most of a group will do their fair share of work and another small part will be “free riders” who do little to no work. Number “2” seriously reduces the potential for free riders.

Out of the theoretical and into the practical...

· Initial idea – “to increase moral, we will create an employee blog”; interesting, but

o how will an employee blog increase moral

o by how much do we want to increase moral

o who will create the employee blog

o who will monitor and publish the blog

o what content will be published on the blog

At first blush the initial idea is great; however, without answers to the above questions (and several more I’m sure you can come up with) the idea lacks substance and is destined to collapse.

Don’t walk away from this post thinking that your ideas must fill a 3 inch binder or 120 PowerPoint slides to be effective. At the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference, finalists from the 52 companies selected to present at the conference were asked to describe their revenue models in 5 words or less.

Communicating versus micro-managing

Had an interesting conversation with a friend recently about managing a team of direct reports, specifically as it related to inter-team dynamics and informal leadership.

My position was that inter-team issues would arise from a lack of communication around where each team member fit within the team. I felt that it is the responsibility of the team's manager to establish role clarity and inter-team communication norms.

My friend's position was that my position sounded too much like micro-managing, which got me thinking. Where does the line exist between effective communication and micro-managing?

To me, the line exists in follow up communications.

If, after expecations are communicated clearly to a team, observation of the team and individual communication between manager and team members doesn't uncover any confusion with expectations, no follow up is necessary. Reiteration of expecations at this point crosses the line into micro-managing either at a group or individual level.

If the team's manager identifies a disconnect with expectations by one member of their team, follow up communications should occur solely with that individual.

Where is your line for effective communications versus micro-managing?

Who's pitching?

Is it you or your PowerPoint? If your PowerPoint is pitching your idea for you, you are wasting your time and your targer audience's time.

My stance on PowerPoint has softened a bit recently as some ideas, software and marketing specifically, do lend themselves to visuals.

Visuals, including financials, should only come into play after your target audience has bought into your idea at a high level. For example, a very common response to any idea pitch is "how much does it cost?" Reality is that unless your idea is free your pitch will be unsuccessful because your audience is looking for an easy way to say "no."

Getting your audience to buy in conceptually, saying for example, "so if the numbers are right, how do you see this idea working for you?" opens a door for you to produce your visuals to confirm in your audience's mind the reason why they said "yes."

Remember that you're pitching your idea to a person whose first response to most pitches is "no." Falling back in visuals or pounding through PowerPoint slides helps them say "no" more than it helps you get them to say "yes."

Having confidence in your ideas, getting high level buy in and then confirming buy in with visuals will give your pitches more chance of success.