Business Consulting Solutions, LLC

12/25/2025

MERRY CHRISTMAS Everyone! May the spirit of the day last throughout the year.

03/16/2025

It is humbling to receive enough votes for this special recognition to be received - for the third year in a row.

My greatest thanks to all who cast a vote for me.

03/07/2025

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
YOUR BUSINESS MAY BE WORTH MORE (OR LESS) THAN YOU THINK

Over the years many business owners have said, “If someone offered me ____ dollars for my business, I would walk out the door tomorrow.” The problem with that statement is the value stated by the business owner is almost always based on emotion – even though that business owner has, over the years, made many sound and objective decisions.

Well, then. How does a business owner determine the current value of the business?

The first and most important step is to lose the emotions and accept that harsh reality that the business is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it. Once that acceptance is made, then, and only then, should a business owner move forward to determine a possible current market value of the business.

Next, there are five often used methods to calculate the possible values. However, some specifics need to be known before the calculations can be made.

The first specific is to determine the value of the assets of your particular business.

A manufacturing firm will have a significant amount of hard assets (i.e., production machinery), whereas an administrative support firm will have comparatively few hard assets (i.e., office furniture, computers, and file cabinets).

Then, have a well-respected appraiser who is familiar with your industry complete an in-depth appraisal of your hard assets. Contacting three to five appraisal firms to find the appraiser with the best credentials and with whom you are the most comfortable.

DO NOT contact a real estate appraiser who does equipment appraisals “on the side.” DO contact a well-respected real estate appraiser if one of your firm’s assets is the property on which your company sits.

Be prepared that the hard asset appraisal has a 2/3 chance of being acceptable: the value is about what you expected, higher than you expected, or lower than you expected.

Next, gather your financial statements for the past five years. Chances are you have them in your filing cabinet, so retrieval will be quick and easy. If you never held onto them, your accountant should have copies. (If you don’t have an accountant, get one.)

Then construct a five-year comparative spreadsheet for the balance sheets, the profit and loss statements, and the cash flow statements.

Now it is time to enter the hard asset appraisal value and the financial statement data into each of the following five methods (as applicable):

• Asset-based
• Capitalization of Earnings
• Excess earnings
• Multiple of discretionary earnings
• Discounted cash flow

As your numbers are inputted into the above formulas a value picture will start to come into focus. The five methods will generate a value that is very high and one that is very low. Throw them out.

The remaining three values will be the value corridor within which your company’s market value lies – assuming you do not make any substantial operational changes.

02/23/2025

SALES MANAGEMENT vs. SALES LEADERSHIP: THEY ARE NOT THE SAME

You may take issue with the title of this report … and that is fine. Now, let’s address the differences.
Scholastic discussions have concluded that “Managers manage processes, while leaders manage
people.”

That conclusion begs two questions: Is a sales leader also a sales manager? Yes. Is a sales manager also a sales leader? Sometimes.

I believe that a sales leader must be both, with an emphasis on being more of a leader than manager. However, a sales manager can 1) be evolving into a sales leader, or 2) remain a sales manager.

Quite often, a sales manager can be found doing a considerable amount of administrative duties such as tracking the number of sales calls being made, preparing for a sales meeting, ordering supplies and other activities that do not require direct interpersonal actions with any sales team members.

On the other hand, a sales leader is directly involved with the team members. To be a worthy sales leader, compassion and empathy are must-have traits.

A sales leader will employ the Pygmalion Effect while leading the sales team members. Essentially, the Pygmalion Effect can be explained as “people’s results will rise or fall based on the expectations of
them.”

Here is the link to the Harvard Business Review article that motivated true leaders implementing the Pygmalion Effect. https://hbr.org/2003/01/pygmalion-inmanagement

The next key (and necessary) ingredient is the flip side of the successful sales leadership coin: understanding the Galatea Effect. “What’s that?” you ask.

The Galatea Effect is how a person feels about his or her capability to meet the expectations.

Competent sales leaders will seek to gain an understanding of each sales team member’s sense of the Galatea Effect.

If a sales leader determines that a salesperson’s sense must be given the opportunity to develop, a third element is needed: positive patience – the necessity to “wait” for the salespeople to develop (via competent confidence-building guidance) and to ultimately meet the expectations placed upon them.

Positive patience is the third side of the sales leadership “coin”. It’s what makes the understanding of Pygmalion and Galatea work. It is the culmination of guiding the intrinsic motivation of each sales team member.

With all this being said and done, a sales leader must set the pace for the entire sales team by leading by example and engaging in the right sales activities as well as sales leadership activities that include providing relevant training the team members.

Someone once said, “The speed of the leader equals the speed of the team.”

For that matter, I know of a sales leader who led his sales team to national (intracompany) recognition by earning a first-level sales award while training his team members to earn two higher level awards – which seven of eight team members achieved.
Hopefully, the distinction between a sales leader and a sales manager is clear.

A sales leader’s team will achieve significant results while a sales manager will wonder why team success is so elusive.

© 2025 Business Consulting Solutions, All rights Reserved

11/10/2024

ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-ASSESSMENT - WHAT'S MOTIVATING YOU? (Part 1)

SPECIAL NOTE: Doing a considerable amount of homework helps to minimize the risk of owning your own business. This article, geared to those who are considering becoming an entrepreneur is the first in a series of three articles regarding the entrepreneurial self-assessment process.

NAIVETE when starting a business can prove to be financially and emotionally disastrous. This particularly holds true for the reason(s) for wanting to become an entrepreneur in the first place.
A half-dozen reasons are regularly heard. Some of them indicate an individual’s clear-headed under-standing of what lies ahead. Others don’t.
BEING YOUR OWN BOSS: An individual usually wants to be his/her own boss because: a) entrepreneurship is the person’s true destiny, or b) it is time to escape from the hostility, frustration, and stagnation found in some corporate environments.
It’s not easy to say whether one ever knows what his/her true destiny really is. However, if you find yourself contemplating self-employment even when all is going well with your present job, that inner voice may be trying to you something.
If getting into your own business is simply to get away from your current ogre of a boss, change your attitude or go to work for someone else – self-employment is not necessarily the solution to the problem.

06/08/2024

A successful entrepreneur must do a number of things correctly.

There are a few things that shouldn't be done ...

Use the QR code to find out what seven of those "shouldn't do" things are ...

06/05/2024

When an adviser understands your business ... that's a good thing!

Thus, the short video below ...

05/31/2024

A sales manager and a sales leader are not the same.

A sales manager can get good results from the sales team.

A sales leader can get GREAT results!!

Which are you? Which do you want to be?

Use the QR code to reach the BCS Special Report explaining the difference.

05/04/2024

Charging the right price for your product or service will give you some financial breathing room.

01/11/2024

This is a recent conversation with a business associate about having a meaningful business plan.

Feel free to post your thoughts and comments ... even if you disagree with any point made.

Welcome to Aspiration Avenue! In this video, we unravel the significance of business plans and provide you with valuable insights into crafting a comprehensi...