Insights Archives - Page 25 of 30

What is the job of a business owner?

Written by Pavlo Phitidis on September 26, 2020. Posted in Aurik Business, Creating time, Leadership, Team.

If the purpose of the entrepreneur is to create an Asset of Value, how do we get from where we are to the Asset of Value? What is it that the entrepreneur actually does? What is the “job” of the business owner?

Let’s break down the business. No matter what sector you are in, every business works utilizing the same basic functions: marketing, sales, supply, operations, human resources, money management and general management.

If you look at any one of these functions, you’ll see that it is made up of many activities that are performed on a daily, weekly and monthly business.

Take marketing. The intention is to generate leads. To that end you do hundreds of different activities, from analyzing customer data, to briefing an ad agency, to updating your company website. The sales function has to convert these leads into sustainable customers. Again, many different activities are performed every day, week and month, in order to do that.

And so it goes, for each of the core business functions mentioned above. That’s one heck of a lot of activities! The job of the entrepreneur is to organize these activities and functions into coherent business systems and then find the right people to run the systems with you managing the results.

Here’s an example of what happens when you don’t organize those activities into a manageable system. I’ve been working with a client, Kevin, who has fantastic technology to sell. It’s really better and smarter and cheaper than anything you’ll see internationally. His business should be growing in leaps and bounds, but it’s not. Why? Because Kevin can’t let go of the idea that his job is not to sell the technology, but rather to organize all the activities of each function into business systems that point him towards his ultimate destination – building an asset of value. Kevin is absolutely consumed by the daily, weekly, monthly activities. He’s over-involved in the minutia. His staff finds his nit-nitpicking infuriating and so his staff turnover is high. You would think that his obsession with his technology would be an asset in the sales arena, but in reality it’s not. He’s scornful of the customers who don’t understand how brilliant his products are, and he lets them know it. He even manages to alienate his suppliers with his interfering and correcting.

When business owners don’t create systems which allow them to take a step back from the hundreds of activities that every business performs every day, month and year, they eventually hit a ceiling. They can only do so much, no more. They get exhausted. Their entrepreneurial energy is depleted, and with it, their passion, their love for the business and their joy in what they are doing. They lose sight of the vision. They doubt themselves. They alienate staff and customers.

Only through realizing that your job as a business owner involves organizing the building the activities of your business functions (marketing, sales, HR, supply etc) into organized systems, and then delegating the management of systems to your staff with you managing the results of the systems, will you progress! This is a vital change needed in any business that is going to grow and non-negotiable if you are building an asset of value. This will allow you to spend less time working in the business, and more time working on the business. Get out of the engine room and up onto the bridge of your ship to sail it in the direction you want it to go.

If you are not consumed by the day-to-day activities of your business, you have a better perspective. You have more time. And what do you do with that time? You lead the creation of value by introducing new products or by finding new customer groups that your system of delivery can deliver products and services to.

Kevin is someone with a great idea, a brilliant product – and a not so brilliant business. Why? Because Kevin has not got his head around the fact that the job of the entrepreneur is to niche the business, build systems of delivery for the product or service, and lead the creation of value. Don’t let that happen to you!

EVENT: Build your business into an Asset of Value

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 21, 2020. Posted in Asset of Value, Aurik Business, Innovation, Leadership, Mindset.

Join business growth specialist and Aurik CEO, Pavlo Phitidis for a 60 minute interactive discussion around a framework for established business owners to build your business into your greatest wealth-generating asset.

This online session will leave you with practical insights into how you can:

Re-shape your products and services for a changed economic environment
Re-build dependable marketing, sales and operational systems
Focus and empower your teams to ensure performance
Spend more time leading rather than doing
Reignite your business to grow both revenue AND profitability
Exit your business successfully when you are ready

Date: 30 September 2020

Time: 08h00 to 09h00

Shining a light on the business blind spots

Written by Pavlo Phitidis on September 19, 2020. Posted in Exits, Leadership.

Smart and successful businessmen have faith in their vision for their companies, but they need to be aware of their limitations and see themselves and their situations in the proper light.

A failure to do this leads to the business blind spot, a place where we can’t see what is going on around us. It’s also a place where we see things not for what they are, but what we perceive them to be. It grows from a history of how things have always been done in the business and a narrow view of what the business needs going forward. On The Money Show with Bruce Whitfield this week, we discussed business blind spots, how they develop, what they cost your business and how to prevent them.

Recently, I met two business owners in their late 60s. Both started their businesses from the ground up, work hard and earn their success. But what perplexed me was that even with their wealth of experience, both were plagued by glaring blind spots preventing them from putting succession plans in place.

In fact, the global status of successful succession is bleak – 28% of businesses survive it and only 3.4% make it there.

Keeping it in the family

However, blind spots are extreme in the family context. Founders in their late 60s and early 70s don’t admit to their fallibility easily. They can’t tolerate change, but argue that they don’t want the next generation to change the way they’re running the family business because it’s too risky. The successors can’t see that the founders are fearful of risk simply because time is running out and change means risk. This cycle places both in a deep, dark circle of despair – and both generations know it, but feel helpless to change it .

We all suffer from them

Many successful businessmen overestimate their capabilities and have an infallible view of themselves. They surround themselves with a team that seldom disagrees and mostly offers opinions that support the boss’s views. They listen to reply, not to hear and they talk to an outcome but don’t back it up with a plan to act. They seem convinced that what and how they are doing things is the best course of action to grow their businesses even though the numbers don’t agree.

Luckily, there are some blind spot antidotes that we can embrace such as:

Have a big vision for the business and one you believe in. The vision then becomes more important than your ego, your being right rather than effective and it will require you to surround yourself with co-creators rather than subservient implementers. The different views on getting things done will shine lights on blind spots for the business.
Annually, do the turnaround steps to keep fresh, in the present and relevant.
Don’t surround yourself with yes-men. A few contrarian people whose views differ from yours is a good thing. Diversity in a team will bring on contrarian views for certain. Create a safe environment for people to intelligently contribute opinions. That means listen to hear when they are offered and be sure your team knows why the business exists and what its goals are.
Increase your self-awareness – understand that the way you project yourself might be viewed by your staff as bullying behaviour in your efforts to retain the status quo. A message will go out that even though you ask for an opinion, you never really engage with it.

As a business builds over time and as growth comes in, the complexity of the operation increases and your ability to change your way of working is crucial. Don’t allow your business to be sabotaged by blind spots. They can lead to a misplaced commitment to a selected course of action that can cloud your vision and stunt the growth of your business. If the destination is clear and there is a clear vision, you can get past the problem and deliver on the promise.

Aurik Business Accelerator will work with you to build, implement and manage a family business succession plan.

WATCH: Business Day TV interview with Pavlo Phitidis about Reset Rebuild Reignite

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 19, 2020. Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Mindset, Pavlo Phitidis, Trends.

Michael Avery from Business Day TV took 30 minutes to speak to author and business growth specialist, Pavlo Phitidis about his recently launched book, Reset Rebuild Reignite.

Watch on to learn why and how Pavlo wrote his second book within 9 months of the first, and why he believes any business can be built to thrive in a crisis.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/business-and-economy/2020-08-28-watch-building-your-business-to-thrive-in-a-crisis/

How to rebuild a team after retrenchments

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 18, 2020. Posted in Leadership, Team.

Covid 19 forced many companies to cut costs but cutting their payroll. For many it started by cutting salaries, and then for some, they had to cut the workforce. This was not always managed well and in many instances it has undermined the trust of the employees towards their employer.

People power a business, says Pavlo Phitidis. The building blocks of a business can be very simple. It’s similar to building a bridge – you can mechanically put each in place build the structure. He sees three critical building blocks in a business:

You need to stand for something: what does your business do, for whom, what problem do you solve for them and why do you matter?
Build the functions of the business into systems: marketing, sales, operations and administration. These systems deliver the promise you make to your customers and clients.
Unless you power 1 and 2 with people, they don’t work

Listen to the podcast of the discussion that Pavlo had with Bruce Whitfield on The Money Show on 702 & CapeTalk about this

Business leaders in the SME space in South Africa have been through the wringer for the last 5 years: Working in a regressive economy, with a government who doesn’t seem to like business or know how to engage us. And then we have been under assault with the unreliable power supply due to Eskom.

When Covid came, SMEs already had thin balance sheets, it felt like the final straw. For many who have been running their own business for 5 or more years, they have become virtually unemployable, and have no option but to make that business work. Covid pushed people into a place of concern and panic, and many behaved towards their teams in a way they may now regret. It wasn’t necessarily deliberate, it was the shock of how Covid disrupted their environment.

There were a number of variations from cutting salaries to advising staff of no pay raises, to trying to make staff look to the upside of not travelling in traffic due to working from home… in all instances, the subtext was that if you don’t toe the line of the new policy you can find another job, knowing there are very few out there.

Pavlo witnessed many instances where the labour act was not followed. Paycuts were done for some but not all, with no transparency, which breaks the most precious ingredient between the business owner and their team. That needs to be rebuilt now.

While remote working via Zoom and other online platforms enabled work to continue, in many cases it has further broken the connection of culture that evolves in a workplace through daily interactions.

Pavlo hopes that most businesses have reset themselves by now to be relevant to the changed lives of their customers.

There are number of things to do to now to rebuild the people part of the business.

Recognise that you are a leader

When you run your own business, that is what you are: a leader! No-one else is going to lead it whether you employ 3 or 300 people. So you are the one that has to rebuild that trust with your people.

Communicate

If remote working is the new normal, you have to develop policies and systems that allow for effective communication. Pavlo’s advice is NOT to turn camera’s off in meetings – you miss body language and have no idea what people are doing on the other side. It takes all of the human engagement out of the discussion. Use all the tools at your disposal to increase engagement on screen if that is how you are working now.

Start an engagement

Don’t leap into the issue. Start an engagement that will elicit some level of emotion. Pavlo does this often by asking a business owner ‘what inspired you to get into the business’ which removes it from a fix-it type of conversation, to an expressive one. So now ask: What did you do during lockdown? What caught you offguard most? And follow that genuine conversation with: So where are we now?

Set a strategy

While acknowledging that things will change and evolve as we are in uncertain times, the team needs to know there is a game plan, and understand WHY not just how it works and the role that they play in it.

All in it together

Everyone has everything to gain, and everything to lose in the business’s survival and success. Unemployment is going to become even worse in the coming months, Covid is still around, and so people are going to be very apprehensive about employing new staff. If the strategy makes sense, and is consultative with the team, and people get to contribute, which makes them co-creators, this makes them take accountability and responsibility for it.

If you are struggling with a people problem in your business, contact Aurik to get the building blocks right for growth.

Why (and how) to develop an effective marketing strategy

Written by Pavlo Phitidis on September 18, 2020. Posted in Lead generation and conversion, Positioning.

If you can’t and don’t get potential customers to know that you exist, they don’t care and you die. They don’t care because there is very little special about you. Should you not be there, they will get what you were selling from the next business selling it. This is the mindset of a successful marketer.

A Bit of History

In 1870, Ralph Waldo Emmerson said, “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”. In 1870, he was right. There were very few products so simply having one led to success so long as the product held together.

Henry Ford applied this thinking and he made a great success of it in the early 1900’s. His offer was “you can have any colour Model T Ford as long as its black”. Then in the early 1970’s Philip Kotler, referred to as the ‘Father of Marketing’ argued that products aren’t good enough to draw your customers.

Market Segmentation

Kotler proposed that you must divide your customers into groups of customers with similar needs and wants. You must communicate with your segments rather than rely on “spray and pray” marketing. This is where you communicate with anyone and everyone in the hope that you reach someone who becomes your customer. The business world loved it. It held the promise of bringing customers to your door and it beat mousetraps.

Today’s environment is different but not

In 2020, very few business owners that I meet and work with have progressed beyond a hybrid of these two positions. They have identified their segments and impose their products features on them!

What’s missing?

The ability to see and hear messages from a business has become increasingly difficult. There is more advertising, products, options, voices and choices today than ever before. There is greater access to information, more economic pressure and a massive increase in competition. The environment has changed. But the way most business owners understand and see marketing has not. This new environment means that a product-centric and market-segment approach is no longer working. Both these strategies rely on broad messaging as opposed to customised, contextual messaging.

What’s Messaging?

Messaging communicates your offer and value to a prospective client. It includes :

Format
Message,
Design,
Distribution
and a result.

Think of an email campaign as an example:

Campaign – this is the programme of communication. It includes the various formats and messaging as well as distribution. It has a beginning, an end and should be measured in terms of impact.

Format – this is the mechanism used to communicate. In our example it is an email, it could be a radio advert, an advertorial, an event etc. There are many formats right down to fridge magnets and coasters.

Messaging – In our e-mail this is the copy. The words that communicate what the offer and value of the product is. It should also include a call-to-action.

Design – this is wrapping of the format and messaging. An email might include a picture with the copy. The copy includes colour, fonts, spacing and more. Design should illicit the ideal emotive response to the message. Red means act now, blue means trust, orange means creative and energetic etc.

Distribution – this includes the method of communication. Distribution is managed off a platform. It includes radio, TV, billboards, websites, social media. It’s also that guy, standing on the side of the road pleading with you to open your window and take the flyer.

How do you get your messaging consumed above the noise?

The evidence is there – people don’t buy products. They buy solutions to their problems. Problems are experienced on a personal level, that is, an emotive “lived experience”. Messaging must resonate with your “lived experience” or you blank it out or look past it.

Beyond Segmentation towards Personas

A persona is a personality, character or identity. It changes over time and its change is led by many aspects from the environment to the body and the mind. Excellent writers have the ability to present the physical, emotional and lived experience of their characters. In reading about these characters, you immediately understand them, and think of people in your friends and family circles. You further knew exactly, based on their description, how to delight and annoy them. Personas are just that.

Persona Messaging

Understanding your customers as personas enables your messaging to emotively connect with them. It makes a person feel heard and understood and that builds familiarity and trust. What you have is a potential customer who feels safe with you. They warm towards your communication and hold the promise of high conversion.

Effective marketing builds messaging that is based on a deep and sound understanding of what problems you solve and for who. It is this understanding that lets you build consistent marketing campaigns that can be measured and improved.

HOW TO GET THE RIGHT EMPLOYEES TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS INTO AN ASSET OF VALUE

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 16, 2020. Posted in Aurik Business, Leadership, Team.

Tough economic times mean that unemployment is rife. But, as a growing business owner, you’ve noticed that it seems near impossible to find the right kind of people for your company. Unfortunately, the most skilled and best people often cling to the safety net of their current jobs. As the owner of a developing business, finding the right people, at the right time, to join your company and help it grow towards being an asset of value, is critical.

On The Money Show with Bruce Whitfield, Pavlo talked about the right way to hire the right people for your business:

IT’S NOT JUST THE ECONOMY THAT’S THE PROBLEM

Even though unemployment may be rife right now, that’s not the only concern. Inflexible labour laws mean that it’s difficult to hire and, if things go badly, fire someone if they don’t work well for your business. It’s absolutely vital that the first twenty to thirty people you hire to join your growing business are the right fit, because the wrong hire could bring your company to its knees. Moreover, the urgency behind needing good people for your company could lead you towards hiring the wrong people, by accident.

IT’S DECISION TIME

Choosing to grow your team, or not to grow your team, both bear a cost. If you opt not to hire anyone, you’re not building a business: you’re merely creating a job for yourself. If you choose to hire, you must hire well, and commit to the path of growing your business, because people are an essential element of that journey.

WHAT NOT TO DO

You may be feeling the pressure to hire, but the biggest mistake you can make is to hire someone quickly. Quick hires seldom turn out to be good hires, and a bad hire can derail your business before its even begun to operate properly. Notably too, you shouldn’t hire someone to do a job – you should hire someone who brings skills, a good attitude, and true value, to the systems of your business, while operating within them.

WHAT TO DO

Building your business into an Asset of Value begins by creating the systems that enable its growth. Building that System of Delivery begins with:

Knowing why you do what you do: A business that is being built into an asset of value, focuses on securing customers and delivering a service to them, through its systems. A true asset of value knows what business it is in, and exactly who it serves.
Knowing your customers’ problems: Your business is defined by your customers’ problems, and its services are built to solve those problems. Knowing, understanding, and responding to, those problems is critical.
Creating a system that effectively solves those problems.
Employ people to operate systems, rather than doing a job

Once your system of delivery is set up, you can look towards employing people to operate those systems. Creating effective systems, and giving your team well-defined job descriptions, enables them to operate in a manner that’s measurable and motivating. That then goes on to build a positive company culture.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

Success teaches us very little, but learning from mistakes is invaluable. Enabling your team to make mistakes, to fail and to learn, is essential. By safeguarding your business and empowering your team to take small steps first, and make small mistakes as they learn, is an imperative. Managing the risk of mistakes will ultimately make your employee, and your growing business, stronger, and better equipped to face future challenges.

Negotiating the family business deal

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 16, 2020. Posted in Aurik Business, Exits, Leadership, Team.

We received a long email from a listener who is considering going into his parent’s business. He has a career in a different industry but has worked in the family business before. His folks have an option to get external professional management into it, but they are reluctant because it’s part of the family heritage.

Many businesses are considering succession as a strategy to hold onto an asset that makes money and will grow its capital value. Getting this right begins with an understanding of what the deal and the process would be between the founders or parents and successors or kids. These engagements can become extremely emotional and very complicated. The debates often get dragged into the history of the relationship and personalities involved rather than what right is for the business.

Here are two negotiating positions worth considering from either side of the fence. The logic holds for family succession, management succession and new partner formation in existing businesses.

Founders

Founders typically hold some of the following emotional mindsets regarding their businesses.

History and story about how they started, the difficulties overcome, sacrifices made and unrealised potential.
The social fabric of their lives is stitched from the business and this history. As leaders, which all private business owners are, their status comes from the business and the industry.
That they existed and left a mark or legacy becomes a key feature for many founders even though they don’t, won’t or can’t admit it.
At the later stages of their business life, the sense of defeat or resignation resulting from fatigue after “years in the engine room” can switch to a new lease on life when they see new energy appear in the business, through a trusted family member or younger colleague.

This makes negotiating with founders tiresome. They sway from resignation to regeneration and from withdrawal to “all-in”. Messages about the intent and the relationship between them the successors can be confusing and conflicting. Navigate them slowly and with empathy. Clarity comes from engagement and time and the process needs patience.

Strategically, the founders need and want the following, even though many struggle to express it:

Certainty that their years of sacrifice and hard work will yield a pension
Confidence that, in the case of a family succession, the kids won’t reverse the gains and collapse the value of the business, since they have no runaway left to step back in and “fix it” again
The relationships they have built and the promises they have made will be honoured by the successors. This is often seen from the context of the strange, usually unprofitable deals done between them and their first customers. It’s also seen through the relationships with suppliers and staff.
The successors must, need and should struggle to earn the fruits of the business
Control over the money since it’s the source of their retirement

Successors

Successors come into this environment opportunistically or reluctantly.

Reluctant successors either have no other options or are driven by family duty and responsibility. In many cases, the business is simply not saleable, and the founders face a dire economic outcome without the intervention.

Opportunity is often motivated by a respect and admiration of what the founders have built and excitement to be part of the future journey.

If reluctant, the emotional mindset will be governed by impatience and possibly resentment.

If opportunity drives the successor, an enthusiastic mindset and positive approach to learning, engagement and the business sets it for a smoother ride into the future.

Strategically, the successors need and want the following, but may struggle to express it because they are not yet aware of what matters and what doesn’t.

If reluctant:

Impatience in getting to the ground and making the changes that they believe will have the quickest impact
A view that this is short-term and their objective is to build it and sell it
A salary and position that will compensate for the sacrifices made to support the family business
Low empathy for staff that have been in the business for a long time and may be part of the problem
Disregard for the history whilst focusing on the future alone
Getting the job done and minimising sacrifice

If opportunistic:

Recognition that you start by sweeping the floors
Active engagement with suppliers, staff, customers with a view to learn, earn and attain knowledge and through that, respect
Patience with the founders and active engagement to understand the history of the business
Immersion in the product and service to deeply and quickly understand it.

Both the above scenarios give insights into the backdrop for negotiations between the founders and successors. Understanding this will ease and de-personalise the negotiation between the parties and open the opportunity to get the relationship built right in service of the business. Either way, the following approach has yielded the most sustainable and successful outcomes irrespective of the nature of the successor – reluctant or opportunistic.

Agree to reset the vision of the business after a 3 to 6-month period of the successors entering the business. Until then, status quo must be maintained.
Agree how the successors will accelerate their understanding of the business to support their contribution to the new vision of the business.

This will provide enough time for the successors to understand the dynamics of the business and environment.

Embark on a facilitated strategy session with a view to include the experience and history of the founders with the new energy, perspective and desires of the successors. It must be facilitated since this will allow all ideas to be ventilated and the parties will feel heard.
Concretise the strategy and vision through a few measurable objectives and actions.
Agree on where to start – it should always be in the market first – and where to end in the collaborative rebuild of the business to meet that vision.
Be very clear on the basis with which control will migrate from founder to successor.

This process will not necessarily defy the fact that 72% of family succession efforts fail. But it improves the chances of success dramatically. Family businesses are clouded by assumption more so than management succession and new partner succession. Families tend to hold fixed views on each other, carry resentment because of history and, if conflict avoiding, rely on assumption in the decisions made in succession.

We work with family businesses across all sectors of the economy. With personal history in this space, we have developed and deepened our interest in how to manage the dynamic and more importantly, establish a structured process of engagement that will serve the businesses first and the family as a result. Should your succession efforts stall, reach out to us and we facilitate the engagement to ensure your business becomes an Asset of Value.

EVENT: Market your business to generate revenues

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 16, 2020. Posted in Innovation, Lead generation and conversion, Pavlo Phitidis, Positioning, Trends.

You’ve structured and finally launched your e-commerce website – so what’s next?

Marketing your business to generate revenues needs to become a key element of your strategy today.

If you want to become part of the rising tide of e-commerce success stories, you need to find ways to stand out.

Join business growth expert, Pavlo Phitidis as he chats to a panel of experts on smart marketing strategies that will set your business apart and help you attract customers in the e-commerce space.

Speakers include:

Kathryn Sharfman, chief platform officer and chief marketing officer at The Sun Exchange
Musa Kalenga, Executive at Bridge Labs, The Brave Group of Companies and African Tech Roundup
Aidan Baigrie, CEO at Expert Opinion Md

22 September 2020 from 13h00 to 14h00

This is part 3 in a 4 part series on Digitising your Business brought to you by Business Day SME Matters and Payfast.

No More Mr Covid Nice Guy!

Written by pippa@aurik.com on September 15, 2020. Posted in Leadership, Mindset.

As this reality of the long-term nature of the lockdown became apparent, there was shock. And there was also a deep sense of sympathy as every single person around the globe was affected.

As business owners, we naturally felt sympathy for those suppliers, customers and staff who were battling, and needed a bit of leeway.

Now the question is: Is it time to toughen up?

Pavlo’s view is that now is the time to move on from Mr Nice Guy to Mr Smart Guy. This is our new reality, and it’s going to be with us for a year, to two years. We need to normalise this in our approach to business, to the risks we take and to implementing actions in our business.

Sympathy can’t be driving all our actions. Now is the time to be empathetic. Listen to the podcast of his discussion on702 & CapeTalk about the difference:

We are seeing this across the global landscape. Take a look at the protests in Belarus, or the British government’s approach to breaching the Brexit deal. Around the world, the crises that are occurring see governments asking people to back off instead of asking the hard questions, blaming the apprehensions of Covid.

If we assume the new normal is going to last for two years, we need to get back to business. If a customer/supplier/employee comes to you asking for some relief, you need to consider it carefully.

What to consider when making empathetic decisions

If someone asks for a concession, you have to ask: Is it worth making that concession? It might be a staff member who needs to keep working from home, or a supplier who wants to be paid upfront. Is it worth the effort or sacrifice, or not?

Pavlo went back to his Onion Peeler method to ask what is core and critical to the survival of your business and what isn’t.Tthis will help guide you to whether it is worth it or not.

Ask 2 questions:

What is the downside risk in making that concession? What if your accommodation is not returned? And what is the extent of the concession you can make? Maybe it is one extra month of working from home, or this is the last time you agree to pay upfront.
What is the upside gain? Are you holding on to a customer whose growing business will grow yours, or is this a staff member who is committed, and important to the business in the future?

Sympathy is a kneejerk reaction, empathy requires that you educate the person as to why they need to agree to a concession.

It is not charitable, it’s a business transaction, where each party gains.

As part of the Corona Business Battle Plan, Pavlo hosted two webinars on negotiating with Landlords and SARS respectively https://www.aurik.com/corona He wrote template letters that went to pains to show empathy for the landlords and for the taxman. Both parties would have to concede something to the business owner, and the business owner needed to show that they understood their challenges, as well as how their short-term support will secure a long term gain for each.

Limit your risk

Most people in business have a fairly good sense of whether someone is being genuine and authentic or not. If you are feeling uncertain, look at the information being presented to you and ask questions. You will see if the thread of an argument holds or doesn’t hold.

Put conditions to the concessions. For example, allow the staff member to work from home but then set up daily check ins.

Persistence

When working on negotiations which Pavlo has done extensively he always pushes and pushes for more information from each party. How the business functions, how the levers of growth and value work, why this concession will have a positive effect if granted. He insists on going into lots of detail. And often the person granting the concession will be so worn down he will grant it!