A BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS FOR 2025 As we look at the New Year it’s really a good time to make a resolution or two that could really impact your life in the next 12 months. The most common new year’s resolutions are to lose weight, exercise more or spend more time with the family. What is so interesting is that we rarely hear anything about resolutions that relate to a business or professional practice. Perhaps might be because the owner of a business (or a practice) does not want to fact the most important resolution they can make for the new year. That resolution is to “WORK LESS AND MANAGE MORE”. If you are the owner of a successful business, and want to make it ever more successful, this is the most important thing you can do, but very few people are willing to accept this as a viable protocol. Some examples of this are: • The audiologist that started out as a one-person practice in 2009 and has expanded it to three offices and 6 audiologists, but the owner of the business is still focused on seeing as many patients as possible as they did in 2009 when the business started. • The owner of a manufactures rep company who started out with two lines in 2000 and now has 15 lines and 6 people working for the company throughout the United States. This individual is still on the road 3-4 days a week, seeing as many customers as possible as they did when the business was in its infancy. • The owner of a successful retail electronics store that started the business in 2012 and still works more hours in the store than anybody who works for the company. The business has grown at a very good rater since inception, and the owner feels that the only way to keep it going is to work long hours and continue to spend as much time in the store handling customers as possible. • The owner of a swim school for physically challenged children never realized how the business could grow until she spent more time managing the business than teaching swimming. These are examples of business situations where the owner/founder of the company has difficulty separating themselves from the “nuts and bolts” of the business in order to manage the enterprise to maximize growth/ While the concept of working less and managing more might be anathema to many people, it is essential if a business is going to achieve its potential. Here are some reasons why it is important for the owner of the business to stop working full time and start managing…at least part time. • Significant time should be allocated in a business for the purpose of managing and training the employees. Specifically: o Are they maximizing their time, so the most important priorities are getting the most attention. For example, are the salesman scheduling their calls to give more attention to the customers that generate the most business? Are they working to generate new customers? Are they working efficiently and effectively? o Are the employees following the selling protocols that enabled the owner to build the business initially. Essentially, employees need to be supervised to ensure that they are representing the organization most effectively and have the skills to generate as much revenue as possible for the organization. o Is the owner of the company developing a working relationship with the employees, so problems can be identified and corrected. It is very easy to focus on what YOU are doing, at the expense of the employees. The result of the approach is that the business will not get the most out of its people, and it is likely that the organization will experience turnover, which could have been avoided. • The owner of the company needs time to focus on both the performance metrics of the business, and the key financials that report the most important results of the enterprise. . The owner needs to understand who are the best (and worst) performing employees, evaluated by the metrics that are relevant to the specific industry. Further, attention must be focused on the profitability of the total organization, the individual branches and even the employees. If the owner does not generate regular financial reports (i.e.: P&L, balance sheet, aged receivables & aged payable) it is impossible to really understand how the organization is performing. • The owner of the business should spend time addressing opportunistic actions that could be taken to expand the growth of the business. Examples of this could be such situations as: o Seeking acquisition opportunities, which can result in the company growing at a much greater rate than is available via organic efforts. o Identifying new products or services for the company to increase the dollar volume from each transaction. This is particularly important for a business in the medical field where almost all the services are covered by insurance. In this type of situation, it would be beneficial to find some appealing service that is an out-of-pocket, non-reimbursable service which would appeal to the patients. • Finally, the owner needs to manage any staff employees (i.e; CFO , CMO, CIO etc.) to ensure that they are performing at the highest possible level for the benefit of the organization. These are very important functions in most organizations, and if they are going to contribute to the company growth, someone (i.e.: the owner) must be supervising their performance to ensure that they are operating within the best interest of the company. SUMMARY - Being the manager of a business is a learned skill. For most entrepreneurs, their greatest comfort level is to do what they have always been doing when they started their company. Whether it is seeing patients, selling products or services or doing tutoring, the business owners who will be the most successful, are those that can migrate to the manager level. This is not to suggest that they should not continue to do what they were doing to make the company grow initially, but the amount of time allocated to those activities should become less and less as the company grows, and the need for management skill becomes the key to success. If business owners keep reminding themselves of the mantra “work less and manage more” the likelihood of achieving success will be greatly improved. Thomas Greenbaum Founder Encore Strategic Business Consulting www.encorestrategic.com 203 858 0515

An annual hearing test can be critical to seniors health

Almost every company utilizes the skills of a consultant at some time in the life of the organization. However, there must be some reason that so many people joke(?) that a “consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time”, or a consultant is defined as “someone from out of town”. Having spent the bulk of my life as a consultant to hundreds of different types of organizations from Fortune 100 companies to the entrepreneur just starting out with an idea felt to be marketable, I feel very strongly that more organizations have had disappointing experiences with consultants than successful ones. Importantly, it does not matter if a company is hiring one of the very large consulting organizations such as McKinsey or Booz Hamilton, or is retaining a sole practioner, the guidelines are very much the same. Here are five areas to explore before you retain any consultant for your business. 1. Explore in depth the qualifications and experience of the consultants that you are considering. While this might seem obvious, it is not unusual for one person in a consulting organization to serve as the “sales agent” who probably has great skills and experience, but is not the person who will be doing the day-to-day work for your company as your primary contact. One of the ways almost all consulting companies generate large revenues is by having junior people doing most of the work on an assignment, while the senior people mostly “face the account” by attending key meetings, and theoretically supervising the work of the junior consultants. However, they charge for the junior people as if they were partners. 2 . Insist that they key people who will be working on your assignment are involved in the introductory meetings with your organization. Chemistry and presence are such an important ingredient in a client-consultant relationship, it is important that clients have the ability to interact with the people with whom they will be working on a day-to-day basis before deciding to work with the consultancy. 3. Understand the background of the consultant(s) you are considering retaining , with particular emphasis on how long they have been involved in the practice of consulting and what is the nature of the prior client assignments they have completed. This is particularly important, as a large percentage of “consultants” are people who have been laid-off from a position in a company, and while they are looking for another job, they hang out a shingle as a consultant. This investigation is particularly important, as being an effective consultant is a learned skill, that goes way beyond expertise in a specific industry or a particular function (i.e.: marketing, sales, finance etc.). Having seen many people coming from executive positions to the world of consulting during my 11 years at SCORE (Service Corps for Retiring Executives), it is a rare person who can move from the corporate world into consulting without some mentoring as to the best practices involved in being an effective consultant. 4. Insist that any consultant you are considering retaining provide a detailed written proposal before you make a hiring decision, that would include at least the following elements: • A definition of the objectives of the engagement. This is particularly important as it will identify whether they understood exactly what you wished to achieve with your consulting engagement. • An overview of the approach that the consultant will take to completing the assignment. Specifically, this should briefly outline how they plan to learn what they need to know about the company so they can provide the help that is needed. This section will give you a clear understanding of how they plan to address the assignment and what they will be doing to collect the information about your company which will enable them to give you the best possible recommendations. • An indication of the key milestones during the assignment when the consultant will meet with the client to review progress and provide initial findings. • A detailed discussion of the cost of the assignment. This should include their requirements relative to the fee payment schedule. • A flow-chart that will show the timing, from the start of the engagement to the completion • Finally, a description of the “deliverables” that will come out of the engagement and the form they will take (i.e.: written report, live presentation etc.:) 5. Obtain at least three references from the consultant as to companies similar to yours to whom you would be able to talk. While this is clearly biased, as nobody would give a reference that would not be excellent, it is always helpful to be able to talk to past clients to get their perspective about the consultant seeking to work with you. SUMMARY – Consultants can be invaluable to organizations, but only if they have been carefully vetted so you know they have the requisite experience and consulting skills to help. Not doing proper vetting can be a very expensive mistake. Thomas Greenbaum Encore Strategic Business Consulting tom@encorestrategic.com 203 858 0515

Ask any audiologist how they are feeling as we are about to enter 2025, and almost everyone will indicate they are nervous and anxious. This is because the audiology field has become more and more competitive with the heavy advertising behind the low-priced OTC devices, the increased number of patients who have managed care insurance, and the reality that inflation continues to raise the prices of hearing devices. There are some low or no cost things that audiologists can do to help generate opportunities for themselves, if they want to put in a little bit of effort. Here are six of them. 1. Don’t be shy about asking for the order. In almost every type of business, salespeople are often afraid to ask for the order, normally because they are afraid to be rejected. It is much easier when a patient takes the initiative and says they will buy the hearing aids you are demonstrating, but that is not the real world. If audiologists have a “sell” mindset, they will be amazed how often they will get the sale. 2. Always ask patients for referrals. Patient referrals can be extremely effective, if audiologists follow them up with an approach that makes sense to the person being contacted. The key here is to develop a way to approach a referral so that it reflects your unique approach to practicing audiology and continue to refine this effort over time, so it becomes second nature. The best time to ask a patient for a referral is after they have given you a compliment, or they have made a positive comment about new hearing aids you have just sold them. 3 . Ask every patient to give you a review on Google. Reviews are becoming more important as the market for audiological services gets more competitive and more complicated. Research suggests that the number of reviews that a practice has is a very important factor to a large percentage of patients when selecting a new audiologist. It would also be prudent to send the patient a reminder email with a link to google to make their job of giving you a review as easy as possible. 4. Make use of the telephone rather than email to connect with patients whenever possible. While it is much easier and quicker to write an email to patients, the impact of a call from Dr. XXX is so much greater than an email in terms of building a relationship with both new and existing patients. 5. Commit to calling all your patients at least twice a year , particularly if they have not come in for an appointment in several months. Since most people only buy hearing aids every 3-4 years or even longer, it is important that audiologists try and be top of mind with patients, as it is easy to forget the name of your audiologist if you have had no contact with them in several months. In a recent series of focus groups conducted by a major east coast audiology practice, more participants were unable to recall the name of their audiologist compared to those who were able to say the correct name. 6. Make a special effort to learn something very meaningful about your patients and use that information to build the strength of your relationship. Specifically, during discussions with your patients, take note of topics of interest to them and retain them in the patient record. Then in the course of your daily life when you run across something ( e.g.: a television program, a newspaper article, an exhibit at a library) of interest to them, a quick phone call or email alerting them to this event will send a message to the patient that they are more important to you than simply a source of revenue from hearing device sales. This is a technique that has proven to be extremely successful in many different “seller” to. “customer” relationships. In summary, while it is important to continue to implement promotional efforts such as mailers, advertising, and lunch and learn events which have worked in the past, most can involve significant costs. However, if audiologists are willing to put in a little extra effort, there are no cost activities that can become part of the business that will pay off in improved patient relationships, and ultimately incremental sales over time. Thomas Greenbaum Encore Strategic Business Consulting tom@encorestrategic.com 203 858 0515

The audiology business is experiencing a more competitive environment than ever before as we enter 2025 . Whether it is the OTC market, the increase in pressure from managed care programs, or the large number of audiology chains that now exist, it is very evident that 2025 will be a difficult time for audiologists looking to increase their practice. Business as usual will not work in 2025 the way it has in the past, and clinics will have to look at new tools to get those opportunities necessary to generate the revenue required to stay profitable. The most obvious tool that this industry has not adapted to date is the development of selling skills among audiologists. Selling is an anathema to many audiologists, as they view themselves as medical professionals, who have been educated and trained to help patients hear better. This is true, but if an independent audiologist wants to succeed in their profession, they must recognize that selling skills are most likely the key area that will separate the successful from the unsuccessful audiology practice. Here are five elements of a program to increase the effectiveness of audiologists selling skills to help them to generate more revenues in the future competitive market. FIRST, the audiology community needs to recognize that they must be salesmen to succeed. While it is very difficult for most people in the medical profession to see themselves as a “salesperson”, it is a truism that “nothing happens until a sale is made”. No longer can an audiologist just sit behind their desk and expect that patients will walk into their office with an open wallet and just buy whatever the doctor has in stock, without any questions from the patient. Today’s patients generally come to appointments with a great deal of information, largely based on the internet research they have conducted before they come for their appointment. The question then is how audiologists can learn to be successful salespeople. Selling is not a skill most people are born with, and the nice part of this is that it is a very teachable skill with the right type of mentor. SECOND , audiologists who wish to learn how to sell must be willing to commit to a rigorous program that involves a significant amount of time, and several different elements. Unlike learning a new software program for a new line of hearing aids, developing selling skills generally takes several weeks of very intense training. It is NOT simply attending a class and voila you are an effective salesman. THIRD , it is essential for the practice to identify a a trainer who is capable of teaching their audiologist(s) how to be an effective salesperson. The first step in this process is to talk to the manufacturers to determine if they have any people on staff who could conduct the training. It is unlikely that this person can be identified as they would have to have been trained to conduct the type of sales training program that is described in this piece. Therefore, it is likely that it will be necessary to look outside the audiology field to identify a sales trainer. The person/company that is identified should have credentials that include the following criteria: • The trainer must have at least 5 years selling a product or service • The trainer should have client references from at least three different organizations • The trainer should be interviewed to ensure they have a protocol that follows the guidelines outlined in this piece FOURTH , once a trainer has been identified, a work plan should be developed and shared with the audiologists that will go through the program. This is an essential part of the program, as it is important for the participants understand the nature of the training, and personal “buy-in” to what is expected. In addition to a description of the program, the plan should identify that will be expected deliverables should be at the end. The program plan should identify the metrics that will be used to evaluate the success of the effort. These should include such data as closing rate improvements, price per unit before and after the training and the absolute revenues per week generated before and after the training. FIFTH , everyone involved in the program, including management, must understand the difference between sales training and sales education as this is what makes this type of training program different from what most organizations define as sales training. Most organizations in every industry believe they are giving their people sales training when they are really providing sales education. There are a very few companies, such as Procter & Gamble & IBM that have developed a sales culture that treats sales education and sales training as different parts of the sales development programs they utilize with their salespeople. The following provides a definition of each:. Sales education is the process of presenting material to individuals that they will need if they are going to become a successful salesperson. This includes everything from product knowledge, how to best present the features and benefits of various products, how to most effectively handle objections, and how to prioritize “customers’ so the ones with the most potential get the most attention. Sales education can almost always be effectively presented in a classroom-type environment. Sales Training is a process that is best implemented in real “customer-interaction” environments. While it is possible to simulate sales training in a sales education program by using role playing, this is not nearly as effective in training people as would real sales training as described here. Sales training in the audiology industry is a process whereby a trainer observes an audiologist in actual patient sessions with the goal of identifying the positive and negative elements of the sales person’s performance. In the ideal scenario, the trainer/mentor would demonstrate the best practices by conducting the intake appointment with the patient, administering the hearing test and “selling” the patient on the best hearing solution. This would be accomplished with the “mentee” in the room observing the techniques that the trainer uses with the patient. At the conclusion of the demonstration appointment, the trainer and the trainee should spend at least 30 minutes together, discussing the various elements of the sales process they observed, with the goal of identifying the key characteristics of the appointment that made it a successful (or unsuccessful) sales experience. After one or two demonstration appointments, the mentee will then take the lead position and conduct the appointment with the trainer observing the session. At the conclusion of the appointment, the trainer and trainee should again spend the necessary time together to identify what was done well and what needs to be modified. This protocol should be repeated a few more times before the first phase of the training is complete. SIXTH , following the initial round of training, the mentor should develop a written summary for the mentee as to what areas they need to work on before the next phase of the training. Generally, it is advisable to wait several weeks before starting the next phase of the training. This phase involves more supervision of the trainee, to determine if the lessons learned from the initial session were internalized by the mentee. This process should continue at 4-6 week intervals until the trainer is convinced that the trainee has master the goals that were established. SUMMARY – Developing selling skills is a process that can be taught to almost anyone. The program identified in this document is rigorous and requires a commitment of both the trainee and the trainer. However, if audiologists are to succeed in the next several years, learning selling skills could be the difference between those who succeed and exceed their goals, and everyone else . Thomas Greenbaum Encore Strategic Business Consulting tom@encorestrategic.com 203-858-0515

What Audiologists Really Need to Know to Be Successful

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Will Corporate Culture Be A Thing in The Past? It Just Can Not Survive with Extensive Remote Work Policies When people think about esprit de corps the first thought would likely be attributed to military organizations such as the U.S. Marines, the Army Corps of Cadets or maybe even Green Berets. Many years ago people felt that IBM had achieved this with the early sales organization, and there is little question that Procter & Gamble created this feeling in both their sales organization and their brand management group. In the current business environment one is hard pressed to come up with any company that really stands out has having a loyal, stable and committed workforce with a real sense of loyalty and commitment to the organization. Many experts have attributed this to the increasing number of very independent millennials who have joined the workforce in recent years, as this group tends to be less committed to the place they work than their older counterparts, and they are more willing to shop-around for new jobs to improve their lifestyle, even it it comes with a somewhat lower compensation package. According to a CNN report on November 12 of this year, “a record number of Americans quit their jobs in September” . They quoted 4.4 million people quitting their jobs during the month. While it is easy to attribute this phenomenon as being related to the increased number of millennials in the workforce, the emergence from the Covid crisis or maybe even the large supply of jobs available which provides more opportunities for advancement. It is very difficult to argue with any of these points, but in my opinion a factor that has not been considered seriously enough is the remote work culture that has emerged our of necessity due to the Covid crisis. This remote work culture show few signs of dramatically declining, and there is definitely a sense that it will continue in some form for the immediate future. While many companies have announced their return to work in the office dates, it is evident that they feel a great risk to the workforce, as so many people have become accustomed to working from home on their own schedule in their jeans, rather than going to the office in business casual and conforming to “office hours” standards. . In my opinion the remote work culture / trend is very dangerous to business, unless it is managed very carefully, which I feel would be a split schedule with more time in the office than working remote. Remote Working – What is The Problem There are very definite benefits to remote working, such as reduced commuting time, thus theoretically resulting in more work time at home, reduced need to purchase clothing to wear the office , or the financial savings that can be generated by downsizing offices which will reduce rents. However, it has long been my opinion ( published my first article on this in 1998) that the policy toward remote working should be limited to no more than one or two days a week. I believer strongly that full time remote workforces are a recipe for medium to long term corporate disaster. While some employees say they are more productive when working remotely ( a position I strongly challenge), there are some very important reasons that support the dangers of significant commitments to remote working. They are: • The difficulty in creating a bond between the individual and the company which is a key part of building espirt de corps among the workforce. Simply being in a common workspace with others who are working to achieve the same overall goal contributes to a feeling of belonging to something with others like yourself. The relationship better the organization and the individual is reinforced every day the employees come to the office. It is virtually impossible to achieve this over a Zoom conference. • The extremely difficult environment for training and development that is inherent in a remote work situation. While it is possible to provide some supervision to subordinates via Zoom calls, there is a completely different type of relationship between two people talking through a computer screen vs being in the same room face-to-face. As a result I strongly believe the effectiveness of the supervision is dramatically less in the remote environment. • The ability to competently on-board new employees is significantly easier in an office vs a remote situation. There are many stories we have all heard about new employee being hired to work remotely, working for the company for a year or more, and then leaving the company having never met anyone in the company in person. This person very likely never created a bond with his/her employer, and as a result had no problem leaving for another situation. An individual entering a new company should experience a very fertile environment in which to work, both in terms of having resources that may be available in the office but are difficult to get ( or unavailable) on line, and the immediate availability of peers to whom this new employee can access in order to seek answers to questions or to get help solving specific work-related problems. • Despite all the influx of group on-line coordination software, it is quicker and easier to gather a few people in a conference room to jointly solve a problem or develop a plan of action, as opposed to setting up a Zoom call with a group for some time in the future. The “out of sight, out of mind” argument definitely is relevant when a person is working on a project remotely, as the access to others takes more effort than it would in an office environment. • There is a social aspect of working in an office that is extremely important to most people. This does not imply that workers spend lots of time around the water cooler, or talking with colleagues about the weekend football games in another person’s office. However, there is little question that having colleagues around you to interact, if only for a minute or two, does improve the quality of life for most people with virtually no impact on the levels of productivity. • Finally, when working in an office, an employee does not have the distractions that are part of everyday life when working out of home. The chances are that in the office there is not a full referigerator waiting to be opened, a television that can be turned on at any time, a significant other that just wants to ask a quick question, or a bicycle sitting in the garage just waiting to be ridden to work up a sweat. Where To From Here? In view of the generally positive feelings of many, if not most people about working remotely during the pandemic, for most businesses to achieve their medium and long term objectives ( increased profitability produced by a better, more effectively trained workforce) the amount of work employees are permitted to do remotely must be controlled. During the pandemic, many companies experienced great success and some even have decided that a remote environment can work very well for them. However, I am confident that in the medium to long term the prognosis will not be very positives. While the millennial group probably will object to any meaningful commitment to working in the office, it is the challenge of senior management to explain the benefits to them and the company of their making a significant commitment (at least 3 days per week) to working in the office. If this is not accomplished, I am confident that the employee turnover reported this past September will continue, and the ultimate loser will be both the employees and America’s corporations. Encore Strategic Business Consulting is an organization that exists to solve problems and provide practical solutions for large and small organizations. We help our clients in all aspects of general management, marketing, sales, marketing research web development and social media. Tom Greenbaum has been in the consulting business for almost 50 years, and has recently published his eighth book “ 150 Lessons Learned From 50 Years in the Consulting Business”. (72nd St. Books; ISBN:978-0-9858550-9-3)