• Is your brand still relevant to your products, services, and customers?
• Design a brand that is up to date and relevant
• Ensure the market knows your full product / service offering
• Design and write an up-to-date website or provide a website developer with the requirements to complete this task
• Keep your website fresh and up to date including a blog page
• Creating or enhancing your digital footprint through the use of social media that is linked to your website
• Write blogs / newsletters that can be sent to customers via Mailchimp.

• Business Planning – to help plan to avoid the daily chaos of what job you should be doing next, through to longer term planning such as future capacity issues.  
• Business Process Improvement – Improve or develop business processes that follow the critical path and eliminate waste & duplication (rework), improve business efficiency and reduce complexity.
• Financial Management – how to read Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet Statements. Reporting by business segment to better identify both segment mix changes and underperforming areas of the business. Develop key financial drivers. These will help to make more informed financial and management decisions.
• Business Systems – identify key business systems requirements and complete a needs analysis to ascertain whether the current systems are meeting your requirements.
• Business Sustainability – helping you to recognise what needs to be done to improve the business’s sustainability in the marketplace.
• Governance (working on the business) – developing better practices to enable you to have dedicated time to work on the business during working hours.
• Procurement – best practices including supplier reviews.
• Resource Management Planning – being prepared and knowing when you need to purchase, replace or release resources.
• Marketing strategy – know your competitive advantage, tailor your marketing to the market conditions and increase your value proposition from a client perspective.
• Customer Satisfaction – Ensure your customer are happy. Good communications are key. Annual customer surveys to get a better understanding of what your clients think of your business.
• Human Resource Planning – Are owner / management and employee cultures aligned? Understanding of Team dynamics. Plan resources to meet customer demand. The subcontractor / employee trade-off in times of skill shortages.

Business Mentoring is not Business Advisory or Business Consulting.  Business Mentoring is teaching Business Owners and Business Managers from personal experience on how to better manage and run their business.

Business Mentoring includes the following benefits:

• How to optimise your personal positioning and potentially make it a unique selling tool – your competitive advantage or competitive edge.
• Identifying a path to potential customers and converting that opportunity into actual clients.
• Optimising both your brand and digital presence.
• How to grow your own trusted network.
• How to systemize your marketing and sales activities with a growth operating system or spreadsheet.
• Ensuring your costing models are accurate and up to date.
• Building a quick win strategy including upselling, cross-selling, bundling, and down-selling.
• Reviewing your product / service range for both redundant and new offerings.
• Building your lead generation structure.
• Maximising your prices and stabilising revenue streams.
• Reviewing supplier agreements to ensure that you are receiving the best prices, quality and service.
• Reducing waste – duplication, rework and redundant services.
• Creating and managing your customer funnel and associated network.
• Identifying multiple revenue streams.
• Defining your approach to both vertical and target markets.
• Personal success planning and ongoing one on one support.
• Access to potential affiliate and membership portals with multiple business resources such as training books and podcasts.

Into The Blue NZ Limited’s point of difference is that it can rapidly identify and add fast-tracked profits to businesses.

Zero Risk Business Reviews

Owing to the unsettled economic environment and my confidence to add value, Into The Blue is offering zero risk Business Reviews to help Business Owners and Senior Managers increase their business’s profits.

This entails a no fees Business Review unless Into The Blue can find and identify profit initiatives to the value of at least the cost of the investment into the Business Review.  After finding and identifying the profit initiatives to cover the cost of the investment in the business review payment is expected within 5 -working days.  After payment, the full findings will be released to the Business Owner / Senior Manager.

The Business Review, depending on the size of the business, will usually take 5 to 10 working days.

Into The Blue has Track Record of Adding 300%+ ROI to every Business that it has helped.

Conditions of a Zero Risk Business Reviews

1. It applies only to existing businesses – no start-ups.
2. The Business Owner of Senior Manager must be the Decision Maker.
3. During the Discovery Meeting Decision Maker must disclose:
   1. All known issues including past, present, and future as they will identify potential opportunities.
   2. Any profit improvement initiatives currently in place to avoid any potential disputes.
4. Authority for Into The Blue to implement fast-tracked profit initiatives during the Business Review.
5. Into The Blue accepts no responsibility for the Decision Maker not implementing any of the initiatives, however, Into The Blue can provide the resources to implement the initiatives if the reason for not carrying out the initiatives is a resource issue.

• Help business owners better understand their businesses
• Helps identify both the business’s competitive edge and competitive advantage from robust market analysis
• Provide robust forecasts which can be used to help raise capital for the purchase of new or replacement plant and other assets
• Set realistic and measurable targets including key ratios and benchmarking
• Provide capacity plans to prepare for potential growth and resourcing issues
• Creating immediate workarounds to solve immediate short-term issues
• Create medium-term plans for known up-coming issues
• Create long-term plans based on forecast capacity issues

• Develop employee incentive schemes based on business profit improvement
• Develop a business continuity plan for times of extreme need

• Develop a feasibility study to determine whether the business idea is practical and achievable.
• Develop a 5-year plan which can also be used to form the basis of a project plan and capital raising to obtain a banking facility and other investment requirements.
• Provide specific investor information requirements to raise capital.
• Establish financial management practices including how to setup and read Profit & Loss and Balance Sheets to help you manage the business.
• Business Planning – develop plans to avoid the daily chaos up to longer-term planning requirements.
• Business Processes – develop processes that follow the critical path to eliminate waste (rework) and reduce business efficiency
• Identify key business system requirements that will meet both current and future requirements.
• Governance (working on the Business) – developing practices to enable you to have dedicated time to work on the business.
• Procurement negotiations and supplier reviews.
• Marketing strategy – know your competitive advantage. Tailor your marketing to your target market and market conditions. Increase your value proposition from a client perspective.
• Customer Satisfaction – ensure clients are happy. Communications are key.
• Human Resource Planning – plan resources to meet demand, don’t over-staff. Know the timeline to employ and train new staff plus the subcontractor employee trade-off.
• Into The Blue NZ Limited is a Ministry of Social Development (MSD) registered supplier of consultancy services to Work and Income (WINZ), meaning that we are registered with WINZ to complete Start-Up Business Plans for eligible applicants wanting to create their own businesses.
• WINZ will ask potentially eligible applicants to complete a “Preparing for Self Employment” form. If eligible this will give the applicant access to three funds as summarised:
• Business Training and Advice Grant up to $5,000 to help develop a Business Plan. The money is paid directly to the Business Advisor / Consultant on completion of the Business Plan. A portion of the grant may also be used to help the applicant to complete the WINZ “Preparing for Self Employment” Form.
• Self-employment start up payment up to $10,000 to help pay for essential start-up costs.
• Flexi-wage for self-employment of up to $600 a week for up to 28 weeks to provide financial support and help with costs for viable businesses.
  
• For more information on WINZ Start-Up offerings please click here.
• Into The Blue NZ Limited will cap its fees at $5,000 + GST for helping with both the completion of the “Preparing for Self Employment” application and Business Plan. There will be no charge if the application is unsuccessful.

• Identify the long game and establish a strategic plan
• Identifying the 1 or 2 critical issues to achieving your business’s required goal(s)
• Identifying points of difference to create new business strengths
• How to develop your competitive advantage
• Align business model to strategic plan
• Write Action Plan to meet strategic plan objectives which includes identifying and committing the required resources
• Take required actions as identified in the Action Plan

• Develop a business / 5-year plan as this will give you a roadmap of potential resource requirements to meet your actual and forecast growth
• Review both capacity and capital requirements on a regular basis
• Business valuations

• Implement processes to ensure that the maximum amount of cash can be collected during a given period.  These processes should include customer invoicing and procurement.
• Create clear management performance indicators and identify key business drivers
• A cash requirements plan including timings to ensure that either the required cash or facilities are in place when needed

Change Management is not just about “Transformational Change” which is a medium to long-term solution, it is also about the short-term solution of being AGILE.

Being AGILE is the ability to ‘think on your feet’ in a swiftly changing economic environment in order to be able to weather and succeed in shifting circumstances. Into the Blue NZ Limited has been all over this concept since it was recognised as an essential tool in a business’ arsenal. It is not exactly a new concept, but the fragile and fluid economic times in which we find ourselves mean that BEING AGILE is an essential quality for NZ businesses to possess if they want to come out the other side of the current situation in good shape.

Call John Raffaelli now on 021 625 871 to learn more.