Whether your new hire is a fresh graduate or someone with years of experience, understanding how your company makes money is essential for their – and your - success.

It’s essential the onboarding process provides new hires with the business skills and tools they need to impact your company’s bottom-line performance quickly and efficiently. For that to happen, new hires need to understand how your company makes money.

There are seven key areas of business acumen all new hires should be exposed to:

1. What is our strategy?
2. How do we generate revenue?
3. What drives our costs of goods sold?
4. What are our gross margins and what are we targeting?
5. What impact am I making on our operating expenses, in particular my function?
6. What is our profitability?
7. How is our cash flow?

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It was one of the most intriguing After-Action Reviews (AARs) that I have facilitated in several years. As part of a leadership business simulation workshop, the five teams of five high-potential leaders were given 30 minutes to fill out a team survey and discuss and give each other feedback prior to the next round of the simulation. The client organization is a big DiSC house, so all of the high-potential leaders were supposed to provide their feedback through the lens of their DiSC personality style.

As the facilitator, it was my role to keep the dialogues going and to offer coaching when appropriate. As it turns out, I provided a lot of coaching.

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It’s a hot August night…thoughts are unfocused as there is still a lot of summer left. But... there is a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that the fall, the end of Q3, the beginning of Q4, and the new year of 2024 are accelerating around the track faster than we want to think about.

So, as the weekend approaches, what a great time for some everyday reflections through the lens of Business Acumen to keep the mind entertained and refreshed for what will be coming in a few weeks…

• LinkedIn has an overall of 675 million users from all over the world. Of those, 310 million of them are monthly active users. 165 million users come from the United States while 206 million come from Europe. 62 million come from India, and 50 million come from China. And yet every day in our Strategic Business Selling programs that train sales professionals to build a business network, only 28% of the salespeople in our programs believe there is any value in long-term social selling.
• My local supermarket is charging for bags. It’s only .10$ a bag but when you think about it, it has a double impact on the financials of the store. They are generating revenues (top line) and eliminating expenses to increase profit (bottom line) simultaneously! Hmmm... 
• Auto telephone dialers for cold calling are the worst. Companies that use these systems need to rethink their strategy. You may get a few leads here and there, but unprepared telemarketers aimlessly calling the wrong markets and segments will kill your brand. And other brands as well!
• I spent over $7 for a 30-ounce bottle of Mayonnaise. I looked up the gross margin on Google and the research said the margins were around 14%. Not sure how that is possible. It goes to show you that if one element of the supply chain (eggs) goes out of whack it can hurt an entire product line and category.

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One of the most enjoyable parts of being in the training and development world is the opportunity to stay in touch with the past participants of our many Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling programs.

I recently had an email from a past participant who asked the following questions:

I hope you are doing well. I have a few questions about a company’s business strategy of staying private instead of going public.

Based on your experience is this due to the CEO/founder keeping control of his/her business? Is it looking for the right opportunity? What would be the benefits of being private instead of public?

Thank you!

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Part 1 of our Making Yourself Indispensable blog series focused on building an understanding of Business Acumen, while part 2 featured tips on becoming a stronger leader. The last part of the series will discuss the importance of understanding the role of the commercial side (marketing, sales, service) of the business. While this blog post is essentially written for people on the commercial side (Key Account Management, Account Managers, Marketing, Sales Professionals, etc.), in today’s newly evolved business environment everyone sells. The more you can support the sales process, the more indispensable you are to your company.

Strategic Business Selling is defined as the capability of leveraging business acumen into the sales process so that you are seen by your customer as more than “just a salesperson”; you are a trusted strategic advisor, and you are offering a full value proposition.

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