by Bryan Long

Created on: November 11, 2007

The Business Owners Bio
Take the Business Owners test and see where you score in the Leadership-Ability department. The Leadership Score Card is a reflection of strengths and weaknesses in four key categories. 5 is Excellent, 4 is Great, 3 is Good, 2 is Fair and 1 is Poor. The higher the score is the stronger the overall leadership is and the clearer the company picture would potentially be.

First Bio
This business owner borrowed money to start his store. Fortunately he comes from a family of business owners with strong money skills. His Money Skills are Excellent or 5.

His employee people skills are fair which means he sees them as they are, not as they could be. His Employee Skills are Fair or 2.

He has strong customer skills with great closing skills. His Customer Skills are Great or 4.

He changes his mind a lot. So his employees never know what is going to happen. His Decision Making Skills are Poor or 1.

He does not have a referral program in place and is constantly spending new advertising dollars to get new customers. His Referral Marketing Skills are Poor or 1.

This Business Owner's Leadership Scores are 5, 2, 4, 1 and 1 = 13 out of 25

Second Bio
This business owner borrowed money to start his store. Fortunately he comes from an accounting background with strong money skills. His Money Skills are Excellent or 5.

His employee people skills are fair which means he sees them as they are not as they could be. His Employee Skills are Fair or 2.

He has good customer skills and can talk to most anyone, but he is not strong on closing. Customer Skills are Good or 3.

He is slow on making decisions so his employees are not sure what is going to happen. His Decision Making Skills are Fair or 2.

He does not have a referral program in place and is constantly spending new advertising dollars to get new customers. His Referral Marketing Skills are Poor or 1.
This Business Owner's Leadership Scores are 5, 2, 3, 2, 1 = 13 out of 25

Third Bio
This business owner borrowed money to start his store. Un-fortunately he does not have the strongest of money skills and went through a bankruptcy. His Money Skills are Fair or 2.

His employee people skills are poor. He does not treat his employees very well, so he goes through them often. His Employee Skills are Poor or 1.

For some reason he has fairly good customer skills and is good at closing sales. His Customer Skills are Good or 3.

He changes his mind very little, so his employees know what is going to happen. His Decision Making Skills are Great or 4.

He does not have a referral program in place and is constantly spending new advertising dollars to get new customers. His Referral Marketing Skills are Poor or 1.

This Business Owner's Leadership Scores are 2, 1, 3, 4, 1 = 11 out of 25.

Do you see any pattern?
How about the Employee Skills and Referral Marketing Skills? Of course an employer would say they are fair to their employees, but that is subjective either way without some sort of scale to judge that perspective by, and even the scale of measurement can be skewed.

Regarding their Referral Marketing Skills; all of the business owners scored a one. My question is what business owner in their right mind would let their store be a revolving door of continual lost customers? The answer is unfortunately many!

Remember the story of the Mechanic! The mechanic was brilliant at his mechanic skill, but he lacked too many of the necessary business skills to start, run and build a financially successful auto shop.

To have a thriving business leadership skills are a must, not an option.

Bryan Long
Copyrighted 2007 All Rights Reserved The Long Financial Investment Group, LLC

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