Achieve Your Dreams, Perth’s pre-eminent business coaching service, specialising in lead generation strategies to increase sales, customers and clients and give you, the business owner, greater success and control over your business, presents another insight into Coaching.

The famous song I am referring to above is the theme from Ghostbusters. Expert advice is invaluable and no sane person would argue with that statement, but are you getting the kind of advice that you really need?

In our system in Australia, you can’t go and find a specialist, you have to have a referral from a GP, so the system goes like this – you see your GP, who charges you a fee, he refers you to a specialist, who charges you a fee, and then you have to return to your GP to get the results and another fee is charged, and people wonder why private health insurance is so expensive. But, what if you complained of chest pains and your GP referred you to a brain surgeon, you would hardly be impressed, and even though the surgeon would be able to advise you, they would lack the specific knowledge regarding the cause of your chest pains. You would, however, be charged a fee, and the referring doctor would no doubt receive a terse letter from the surgeon regarding the referral. I am not criticising doctors, they do a fabulous job; the accepted way in Australia is consult a doctor if you have a health issue.

The same applies to a legal issue – if you have a legal problem you consult a lawyer or solicitor. Here you can choose your own specialist, but you would be less than impressed if a friend or trusted colleague suggested you consult a solicitor who specialised in the preparation of wills if you needed a specialist criminal lawyer. The point I am making is you need a specialist related to the problem you are experiencing in every case. I am not criticising the legal profession – most do a wonderful job.

And so to the point of this article. In every society there is a system of referral. In ancient times, if you got sick you called the Shaman or Witchdoctor and they performed various rights over you and because you believed in their curing abilities you were often cured. These people knew nothing about viruses, bacteria, infections etc., so they couldn’t treat those, and if you contracted a serious infection, or got a serious virus, you died. Again no criticism of these people – they were recognised as the ‘go to’ person in these societies.

In our society it is believed that if you have a financial problem you see an accountant, and there are many specialists within the accounting industry – some specialise is Tax, some in Administration, some in Corporate Advice, some in Liquidations, some in Auditing and even some in Forensic Accounting, to name but a few, but most are Compliance Accountants – they do your Tax Returns and offer advice to small business, investors and individuals. Almost every business has to submit an annual tax return, and if you don’t have the skills and knowledge to do this yourself, you need an accountant or tax agent.

Again, accountants are fine people, I was in the industry for over 45 years and I have known many. I have also heard many complaints from clients that they went to see an accountant before starting a business venture and he didn’t tell them very much. My answer was always, “You have to know what questions to ask.” Most accountants are conservative my nature, (and I apologise to those who aren’t right now), and have to act that way by regulations governing their industry, and to get Professional Indemnity Insurance for their practice and remain a member of their governing body, mostly CPA or CA in Australia. Accountants mostly deal with events that have happened in the past – they record transactions and compile reports from these transactions. So, you can see that they are sort of hamstrung in that they deal only with facts – you will hear of a few ‘Creative accountants’, but not many. Accountants are not forward looking, although they can advise on future events, such as known future transactions; provided the laws governing these transactions do not change. Many can also compile forecasts and forward cash flows, but only on known base figures, adjusted for CPI, or some other known input.

So who do you seek out if you are a business who is losing sales, having to cope with increased competition, or is working with an outdated business model? Accountants have little training in these areas and their forced conservative approach forces them to be wary of signing off on future projections. There is a group of relatively new professionals who can assist you and these are called Business Coaches / Consultants. Many of these are trained in exactly how to generate lead funnels, increase sales, and get new customers / clients while ensuring existing customers / clients remain loyal.

Income / sales are the lifeblood of any small business, and without them the business will not last long, certainly not long enough to engage an accountant, unless to finalise the businesses failure. Most small business owners are ‘technicians’ – they can do the task really well i.e. they may be a brilliant accountant, but have no idea how to get clients, or more clients. This is very common in small business and I have heard many stories; the contract ended and they had no other work so they waited for someone to call and no one did, they had one large client and worked day and night, but the contract was terminated for some reason and they didn’t know what to do, or they started a business and waited for the huge demand for their services that never happened, and many more – I could write for pages. The problem common to most of these business owners is they didn’t seek assistance in time, or got the wrong advice or advice from friends, relatives and well meaning family members, and often lost their home and other personal assets. The statistics about small business failure are horrendous – don’t become part of that statistic.

There is always an answer for every problem, but is it extremely hard to find one alone and in a constant state of worry or depression. Every small business owner needs to invest, both in themselves and in their business, and this is often the key to becoming a successful business owner – there are some statistics here https://ayd.net.au/benefits-of-hiring-a-business-coach/.

Invest in finding customers / clients – without them you effectively have no business! If you know of anyone who is struggling for sales / income send them a link to this blog, or request they make an immediate appointment for their FREE initial consultation. Don’t let them perish – it’s a very long road back!

Don’t worry about cost – all our services come with 100% money back guarantee and can start from $100 +GST per month, plus a contingency fee of your increased sales (paid quarterly from collected sales only), and can be paid by bank transfer or Credit Card.

Hopefully you will now have some idea about whom to refer where. Thanks for reading this blog, why not subscribe to get it send directly to your inbox weekly?

I would welcome approaches from other business bloggers to write a guest post, or be invited to write a guest post.