Tuesday, December 08, 2009

No doubt this past year has been one of the most trying for nearly all business owners.

As an example, as recently reported by the American Drycleaner, sales for the month of September compared to the same month in 2008, dropped by 11.7% on average in the West, 8.8% in the South, 8.5% in the Midwest and 3.6% in the Northeast.

These are rather sobering figures and suggest that the business climate will remain challenging into 2010.

Especially now, it makes for good business to be part of a business owner peer-to-peer management group led by a highly experienced and dynamic consultant able to challenge and focus attention on the areas that really matter.

Individual business owners benefit tremendously from sharing successful efforts and ideas with peers to overcome the myriad of day-to-day challenges. It is a great way to achieve active and practical support with immediate, and real tangible, results, at minimum cost.

This competitive advantage of peer group membership is clearly evidenced by the performance achieved by the members of Methods for Management http://www.mfmi.com/), a peer group consultant, whose clients sales trends are 22.7% better than the trend reported for the industry and their profits have actually risen during the current economic downturn.

Peer groups provide a safe trusting environment in which to interact and most clients have been members of a peer management group for many years with some businesses having been clients for decades through multi generations of management. They have benefited from membership during economic booms and during past periods of economic uncertainties.

Under the strong guidance of MfM, members have coped considerably better with the huge market challenges of the past year. Not only is their average sales trend better than the comparable industry data, their average profit percentage has improved by 12.5% making the current challenges much more manageable.

As a result of the prior preparation for the downturn, the members are in good shape and poised to take advantage of the eventual improvement in the economy, when it comes.

Often during turbulent periods, the intuitive reaction is to reduce costs on external support and training for the staff with little time to carefully review the ROI of such actions. As MfM has demonstrated to its members, carefully managed peer group support for the owners and executives, and training of senior sales and production staff, remains highly effective and beneficial to the bottom line and helps differentiate the brand even more visibly when competitors are pulling back to cut costs.

Based on the immediate and concrete advice from the MfM sponsored support groups, and the active training groups, ROI on such investments are achieved within months. In equal measure of importance is the visible increase in the day-to-day contribution and increased loyalty from the staff when they experience strong, and compassionate, leadership from the owners during tough times, responding in kind, and helping propel the business forward.

MfM has been an active consultant, including providing peer management group facilitation to business owners and management teams, for over 55 years, and brings an invaluable wealth of knowledge to its clients.

Proud of our unrivaled longstanding record, we invite you to contact us to discuss your goals and to obtain a complimentary response to a business question or issue of importance to you.

By email: Diana Vollmer, Managing Director, DVollmer@mfmi.com

By phone: Marta Shaffer, Vice President of Client Services, (253)-851-6327

Diana Vollmer

Methods for Management LLC

San Francisco, CA

253-851-6327

253-851-6090