What is business mentoring?

What does business mentoring cover?

Why should I have a business mentor?

What distinguishes a business mentor?

"Target your Success the SMARTER Way!"

Business Mentoring for Entrepreneurs and Business Managers

What is business mentoring?

Business mentoring is facilitative one-to-one mentoring with business managers and owners. The mentoring is focused on the success of the business and is likely to include a mixture of short and long term objectives.

It is lonely at the top, especially for an owner-manager. Issues such as your own growth and development, working relationships with your management team or specific business challenges can be highly confidential. Every entrepreneur should have a mentor - someone who's been down that road before and can share their wisdom on an ongoing basis. As an objective outsider a mentor is free to question the manager on strategic business matters, development areas and support in opening up doors to accelerated business growth and more success.

What does business mentoring cover?

Owners might employ business mentors at any stage of the business growth curve, including:

• start-up and business planning
• learning to delegate
• building a team structure
• resolving changing relationships
• introducing management and financial processes
• developing a marketing plan
• major expansion, new project
• business turnaround
• sale or purchase

Why should I have a business mentor?

Your friends and family, the Web, periodicals, and even casual acquaintances can provide you with a steady daily flow of information regarding news, industry developments, and opportunities. Industry analysts, consultants, employees, and good networking contacts can share their expert knowledge with you regarding particular situations and needs you may encounter. But only a mentor can truly share wisdom with you on an ongoing basis.

What distinguishes a business mentor?

In order to be effective, a business mentor must be able to combine a wide range of business skills with the ability to understand and fit in with the culture of a business. It is likely that a successful business mentor will have had personal experience of starting a business or working in a SME, and will be able to support the coaching with personal anecdotes.

A mentor working with small businesses will support the management, expand and stretch their horizons, and provide an independent, confidential sounding board.