Expanding My Role at the SBDC

I recently accepted a full-time position with the Northeast Indiana Small Business Development Center (NEISBDC), where I formerly worked part time as marketing coordinator.  The move was made for a variety of reasons, including a higher paycheck, full benefits (I have not had any health insurance nor paid time off for more than three years), and growth opportunities.

Financial analysis is a component of a business plan and
is needed in order for a company to get funding.

To transition to my full-time position, which includes business counseling as an added responsibility, I have been studying materials in a Business Advisor’s Notebook to become more thoroughly educated on business plans, market analysis, financial projections and other skills so that I have the expertise needed to assist entrepreneurs and business owners with starting or growing their business.  Last semester, I also took business courses in accounting and economics at IPFW in anticipation of this career move, and completed training in the SPIN sales process that we use as a tool in analyzing our clients’ needs.

In addition, I recently traveled to Indianapolis to attend business counselor training with some of my colleagues from around the state who also work for the Indiana Small Business Development Center network.  It was an interesting experience that helped me increase my understanding and comfort level so that I can be more confident when dealing with a variety of unique situations that we encounter while working with business clients.  It was also fun to meet professionals from the other centers who are glad to serve as mentors for someone like me who is fairly new to business counseling.

As part of our activities, we studied various test cases that were representative of actual cases that had been handled by Small Business Development Centers.  This experience helped us hone our business analysis skills to get to the bottom of the situation so we can better assess how to provide assistance.  Sometimes when a client comes to us, we uncover a certain problem that ends up being totally unrelated to the reason they made the appointment.  That’s where the SPIN skills come in handy, allowing us to assess the Situation, Problem, Implication and Need of the client and develop an action plan to take care of their needs.

Role playing was a big part of the recent training at the Indiana Small Business Development Center headquarters in Indianapolis.  The participants were divided up and partnered with someone else of their own skill level, and a third person served as an observer to critique our presentation skills.  Half the time I played the role of the client, and the rest of the time I served as the business advisor.  It was a lot more fun being the client, but the learning experience really came when I played the role of a business advisor, rehearsing how to ask the right questions so that the client and I can both get to the heart of the situation.  While I started out being really nervous in this situation, by the end of the training I was pretty confident, and I came back to Fort Wayne ready to use my newly-refined skills with the variety of clients that I serve.

One of the first projects I tackled with my new training tools was the review of a business plan.  Having just completed the related training, I was able to look at the plan with a keenly critical eye, pointing out missing sections, incomplete information and numbers in the plan that did not match up with those in their financial statements, along with information that we business advisors call “fluff.”  A lot of times clients include statements in their business plans that are just assumptions lacking the needed statistics to make them credible.  We must point these weak areas out so the client can do the needed research and make their plans substantive enough to meet the requirements of the banks or other lending institutions where they are seeking funding for their business.

I look forward to continued learning and growth opportunities as I move forward with my work at the Northeast Indiana Small Business Development Center and help entrepreneurs make their dreams come true.