Profit Coaching
Grow your profit with individualized profit coaching services
Dream of having a skilled CFO to manage and improve your profitability but don’t think you can afford one? Seeking an ongoing accountability cadence for measuring and managing profit margins and trends? Know you would benefit from financial metrics scorecards and better financial planning and analysis but don’t know where to start? Our Profit Coaching is for you.
Based on The Financial Operating System®, we quickly implement a proven 10-point system within days and weeks to get your profit growing. We charge a fixed monthly cost that can be paid out of your higher profits.
Coaching clients engage with us when:
- Their business is struggling to be profitable and they’re not clear on why or how to fix that
- They want to take currently mediocre profit margins and make them good or great
- Cash flow is a struggle even though their P&L reports profit
- They want to maintain healthy profit margins and cash flow as they grow revenue
- They need clarity – someone to upgrade accounting and financial reporting to get reports that accurately present financial performance
- They’re tired of flying blind. They want to be making better decisions but don’t have the data to do so.
- They know their cost structure is too high and need to decide which costs to cut
- They need help with understanding and managing specific items such as client profitability, pricing models, determining if they can afford to hire a new employee, ROI on marketing and sales spending, or designing sales compensation or bonus plans
- They’ve asked their bookkeeper or tax CPA for help in these areas and have not been satisfied with the results
- They want to prepare the business to be sold and need to clean up their accounting and report healthy profits for a period of time before going to market
- They appreciate regular biweekly or monthly meetings to provide a certain level of accountability for executing profit improvement plans
Specific Deliverables, Not Vague CFO Services
Focused engagements and a proven system and technology deliver specific results, quickly.
Hiring a CFO can seem expensive, especially when you’re not clear on what you’ll be getting and how long it will take the new CFO to ramp up to start producing results.
With our Profit Coaching services, we quickly implement a proven 10-point system within days and weeks, not quarters or years, within the context of our Annual Profit Coaching Program.
- You’ll receive an initial written financial assessment after the first week working together. It will highlight key metrics that are depressing or elevating profit margins and cash flow as well as key balance sheet metrics.
- We’ll design and present a monthly scorecard every month. We also encourage and support weekly scorecards. We will incorporate financial as well as operational metrics as appropriate in the scorecards.
- We’ll work with you to set improved yet achievable targets for scorecard metrics
- We’ll align metrics and targets with your individual objectives as well as reasonable industry standards.
- We’ll have semi-monthly coaching meetings with you (recommended) or monthly (if there is no need for more frequent meetings). Meetings will focus on performance metrics and initiatives and projects to improve certain metrics.
- We’ll follow a structured Annual Profit Coaching Program with specific focus areas over the course of the year tied to business management cycles while also leaving room for ad hoc projects
- If bookkeeping, accounting and reporting practices need to be upgraded, we oversee that
- We’ll push you to engage your tax CPA and implement tax savings strategies
- We do homework between meetings on specific projects, including working with your staff as needed
- We are on-call for you as questions or issues arise between meetings
Because the coaching is 100%-focused on your profit and cash flow and uses proprietary systems and technology to automate certain reports, we are very efficient with our time and are not pulled into everything else that a CFO can get involved with. (Unless of course you want more comprehensive CFO services which we can also provide.)
Data-Driven Profit Growth
Measure and manage the key metrics that drive your bottom-line profit.
Our founder Cal Wilder who leads our Profit Coaching practice has 25+ years of experience designing and managing metrics scorecards for his own businesses and for clients. When his first business was acquired by Staples, he was told his monthly Operating Review Metrics Report was the best of any business unit within Staples!
Early in the coaching engagement we determine the most important metrics that you need to be tracking and the targets you need to be managing toward based on your specific objectives as the business owner.
We create monthly and sometimes weekly scorecards. Scorecards contain a mix of leading and lagging indicators to balance short-term activity with longer-term results.
This process may involve an upgrade to your bookkeeping and accounting practices in order to produce more accurate, timely, and useful financial reports. We oversee that upgrade by whoever is doing your day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting.
The bottom line is you need to monitor and manage key metrics to drive your profits and cash flow higher.
Implement The Financial Operating System®
Our founder literally wrote the book on managing finances in small and midsize businesses
The Financial Operating System: SmartBooks Founder and CEO Cal Wilder wrote The Financial Operating System® to help empower small business owners to run healthier businesses and to become more financially fit. Cal outlines proven processed developed and validated in 20+ years of real-world experience supporting hundreds of small businesses, including his own and clients. This is the cornerstone of our Profit Coaching approach.
Why Companies Choose Profit Coaching from SmartBooks
Reporting you can trust
Clean up your financial reporting so you have confidence it accurately reports your profitability and primary drivers of profitability.
Fast implementation
We start delivering results in days, not months or quarters. You’ll get a metrics scorecard within weeks. While you can improve it over time, you’ll have a solid foundation now.
Profitability analysis
We’ll set up the SOPs needed to evaluate revenue and cost centers and profit margins and customer profitability, giving you insights into primary profit drivers.
Proven processes
Based on The Financial Operating System®, our initial 10-point Profit Coaching System, and our Annual Profit Coaching Program
Lower tax expense
Our Profit Coaches push you and your CPA to implement tax savings strategies way beyond the year-end cash basis game.
Regular accountability meetings
We’ll meet with you regularly and have the occasional hard conversation, not just email you reports.
Cash flow and ROI management
We monitor and help manage drivers of cash flow which is often different than profit reported on the P&L. And also ROI on capital invested in the business.
More Informed Decision Making
You’ll have confidence understanding the financial parameters and consequences when making decisions.
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