Everyone is familiar with the 3-R's from school – reading, 'riting and' rithmetic. This was our first introduction to an effective performance model. As profitability increased in each R, performance was further enhanced. Effective performance models by their very design are a continuum that automatically raises performance to the next level.

Today's businesses have their own 3-R Performance Model. This model has not really changed since the early of origins of business enterprises. No matter what the latest business guru advocates, good business practices and most importantly the "bottom-line" always appear to return to these basic 3-R's. For without Relationships, References or Revenue, today's businesses will not achieve current goals nor grow.

R1 – Relationships – With the Internet providing immediate access to unlimited vendors, products and services, today's business owners must develop sustainable and loyal relationships. Current customer service research suggests that the cost to attract a new customer or client is 10 times greater than to maintain an existing customer. Relations lead to the second R.

R2 – References – References according to recent research account for 84% of all sales. This research supports what our common sense tells us about human nature. We are more likely to believe a close friend and probably a not so close friend over the slick Madison Avenue advertising efforts. Additionally, only 1 in 26 dissatisfied clients will share their dissatisfaction with the organization, but will be more than happy to share their "bad" experience with others.

References add value to the bottom line by reducing marketing dollars. You can not "pay" for referrals. References are given free much like a friendly smile or a sincere handshake. R1 and R2 make R3.

R3 – Revenue – Without this final third "R," companies would not be in business. Revenue is the ultimate desired end result. When revenue grows, both the company and employees transition beyond survival and transform into a thriving, high performance, results driven team where everyone shares a laser focus. Successful companies and individuals actively work the 3-R's every day regardless of their yearly achievements. Complacency for these individuals is not an acceptable attitude!

If your goal is to reach that next level of success, then maybe the first step is ask yourself, do you know your 3-R's? And the second step is to begin to construct a plan to help you improve your 3-R's. …

Are you thinking of becoming a professional home stager? You've done your research and met with other professionals in the field of home design and real estate. Now what? Before you jump right into the hustle of setting up your home staging business, you need to have a plan first. This will help you stay on track and focus your sights on your business goals.

A business plan will help you put down your business goals and strategies on paper. Whether you are writing a detailed formal business plan to submit to your loan officer, or whether it's just notes and reminders you've jotted down on a notebook, a business plan will help your business prosper in the long run. Below are the main parts of a business plan. You can omit some of these parts if you are not writing specifically to request funding.

1. Executive Summary.
This comes in first, but you have to write it last. After all, it's difficult for you to write the summary of something you have not even written. This should contain all the important points of your business plan, but remember to keep it brief, understandable, and straight-to-the-point for potential investors who are too busy to read the entire document.

2. Company Description.
This includes a description of the nature of your home staging business, how you plan to start your company, a profile of the company owners, the location of your company headquarters (and may be your home or a small office), and the facilities owned by your company.

3. Home Staging Services.
It's important that potential investors understand what kinds of services you are selling. Specify whether you are offering only consultation services, or if you also provide other home staging services such as designing and furniture rentals. Also, identify the competitive edge of your services as compared to other home staging services already available.

4. Market Analysis.
This section requires that you do a little bit of market research. Focus on describing your market and the current demand for home staging. Do not forget to include an assessment of your competition. This will help you decide what marketing strategies to undertake when you start selling your services.

5. Marketing Strategies.
This is an essential part of the formal business plan. This section describes how you will promote your business, the costs of your marketing strategies, and how you will determine whether these strategies were effective.

6. Financial Data.
If you are still planning on opening your home staging business, this section includes your projected profits in the short and in the long run. For formal business plans, you may need to ask the help of an accountant in writing this part. …

If you're a solo professional like I am, you know how tough it is to find any time at all to do any business planning. Doing a full business plan is a must if you're planning to seek financing or investors, but most solo professionals do not need anything that complicated.

Do not get me wrong, business planning is one of the most important things you need to do to succeed in your one man or woman show. Without planning you'll drift aimlessly from one crisis to the next and one idea to the next, never really getting anything done.

So, what's a solo pro to do? Here's what I do in my own business:

My business plan consists of one page with very little on it. It simply lists the three goals that I must achieve this year. Then, I list a statement for each goal: To achieve Goal # 1 I need to … This is followed by two to five activities or action items I need to do to make that happen.

That's it. That's the whole plan. The beauty is the simplicity. I simply can not handle more than that. I do not have a staff. I do not have "people". Everything has to be structured so that I can get it done simply and systematically.

So, let's say one of my goals is to increase sales by a certain number, like $ 25,000. I then ask myself, "What do you need to do to make that happen?" Maybe I want to develop an ebook or add a new service. How many potential or current customers will I need to reach? How much time will I need to develop the book or service? How will I market it?

From those answers, I develop my schedule. What do I need to do monthly, weekly, daily? I break it up into small pieces that take an hour or less. For example, if I decide I need to send out 100 marketing postcards in a month, I break it into 25 cards a week. Then, I put it on my schedule each week, just as I do my appointments with clients.

To keep myself on track, I place my mini plan in front of my keyboard so every morning it's the first thing I see. I also include a note to myself. It reminds me that "Nothing Else Matters." I follow it with my company slogan: Get Knowledge. Get Focus. Get Results.

Complex plans take tons of time to develop and many (if not most) end up gathering dust on a shelf. Using a simple plan improves your focus and helps you to achieve great results. …

In order for a business to be successful it is essential that it must have a management system capable of ensuring the business can achieve its goals and objectives. The ISO 9000 series of standards refer to Quality Management Systems however as businesses will tend to have one system, formalizing the system to focus solely on quality will have no real benefits to your business. Therefore, it will be necessary to move away from a system focusing wholly on quality, to a system that focuses on all the characteristics of your business.

The main reason your business is in existence is to highlight the requirements and expectations of your customers and other persons concerned (employees, suppliers, etc.) to accomplish an advantage over you competitors. In addition to this, another objective must be to gain, sustain and develop your businesses performance and resources.

As a means to achieve improvements within your business you should ensure that your business employs the key principles that are fundamental to ISO 9001: 2000, these are:

– Customer Focus;

– Involvement of People;

– Leadership;

– Process Approach;

– Factual Approach;

– System Approach;

– Continual Improvements;

– Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships.

Following the principals highlighted above ensures that your business focuses on what your customer actually requires and not what they think they require. In order for your business to move forward successfully it is essential that you run it in a methodical and well thought out manner that is highly perceptible. To achieve success from your business you must ensure that your business adopts a business management system which will ensure that continual improvement is constantly being driven by the management system. If your business is to develop and have a business management system that will allow growth and sustainability, you will have to ensure that you build a management system that is focused on your customers. To achieve this objective your business management system must contain systems and processes that are easily understood by the individuals within your business. It is also critical that these systems can be managed easily and improvements made if they are necessary without any detrimental affect on the day to day operation of your business. The processes within your management system must be capable of being measured to ensure they are performing as required. It also means that when setting these key performance indicators, intelligent thought is given to the areas that you are measuring. It is worth remembering that individuals are likely to improve in areas in which they are being measured. Therefore it is critical that any process measuring is carried out in areas that will benefit the system and your business as a whole. …

I recently read an article in my favorite business magazine on the value of employee exit interviews. It went into great detail on the benefits of gathering data from departing employees. It talked about maintaining confidentiality, asking open-ended high impact questions, proper timing of the actual interviews, etc.

I agreed with its content and recommendations but view it as only addressing the back end or "lagging portion" of the employee management process.

When I say "lagging" I mean gathering information and data on things that have already happened. For example, information on financial statements are lagging indicators. They provide information on activity in the past. Although valuable moving forward, it's too late to make changes or adjustments in the period it is reporting on.

In the case of the exit interview, the information is lagging related to these employees since they have already decided to leave the company. In most cases, the exit interview is way too late in the process to save a valuable employee. The majority of businesses today manage based on lagging indicators.

Best in class companies, however, excel in using leading indicators to drive performance. A better leading question is, "Could we have identified the employee's issues earlier in the process and kept them?"

Leading indicators are measures / metrics that warn you in advance of potential issues. A good real life example of a leading indicator would be the "low fuel" light that appears in your car when you are low on gas. This light triggers you to take action prior to running out of gas. An exit interview in this scenario would involve asking questions after you ran out of gas. Although it is valuable information, it was not helpful in preventing if from occurring in the first place.

An effective management review process includes a good mix of leading and lagging indicators. Creating leading indicators for the employee management process involves effectively evaluating employee satisfaction. There are many wonderful books on measuring employee satisfaction so we will not discuss this in this article (see recommended books section).

The point I want to make is that improving employee satisfaction (leading) will drive improvement in employee turnover (lagging) rates. If you manage the leading indicators effectively, the lagging indicators will take care of themselves. …