Business Mentors
At International Business Mentors, we select, train and match each business mentor and business coach individually specifically to the needs of business owners, CEOs, senior executives and directors, including for family businesses.
Do You Qualify as One of Our Business Mentors?
At International Business Mentors, we set a high standard for our business mentors and business coaches as part of our mentor program. Our clients expect not only good overall business acumen and experience, but also strong strategic skills and an ability of the mentor to pass on the benefits of your relevant experience to develop and support their mentees. You must have a strong desire to want your mentees to improve themselves and their business performance.
Our business mentors and business coaches must use their business and personal wisdom in mentoring sessions to help their mentees to grow, develop and improve their performance in their businesses. To be effective, mentors must have superb interpersonal skills and act as a confidential sounding board, offer assistance and reflect back to the mentees where they might make improvements in their approaches or skills, and assist with critical areas such as:
- Strategy
- Performance
- People management
- Leadership
- Operational control
- Stake holder management
- Financial appreciation of the drivers of the business
- Shareholder value creation
- Succession planning
- Risk assessment
- Contingency planning
- Market appraisals
- Customer service and value
- Driving market share
- Assessment of investments
- Acquisitions or divestments
- Corporate governance
- Corporate culture and performance enhancement
- Reputational defence and development
- Funding and relationship management with financiers or banks
- Social media
- Systems and IT development and platform transitions
- Artificial intelligence
- New product or service development and launch
- Cost control
- Right-sizing the organisation
Our Business Mentors Must Have:
- Run their own substantial business, as an owner or as a successful CEO, VP or director, and have broad business experience
- A good education, preferably at university level with business training
- The ability to coach as well as mentor (see our business coaching page)
- Superb people skills
- A strong desire to see businesspeople improve and succeed in business
- A genuine desire to share their own:
- Skills and business acumen
- Relevant business experiences
- Successes and lessons learnt from mistakes or difficult business scenarios
How We Select Our Business Mentors
International Business Mentors selects mentors and coaches for our business mentoring services according to strict criteria from both a personal and a professional viewpoint. The selection of our business mentors (and business coaches) is specifically geared to meeting each of our client’s requirements, including whether they’re a small or large business owner.
These specific requirements of our clients help us to direct our selection process to ensure excellent matches with experience, character and personal chemistry. We carefully match each business mentor or coach with the businesspeople who are to be mentored or coached.
The primary role of our business mentors is to support, develop, stimulate and challenge business owners, CEOs, directors and senior executives, helping them to develop and improve their performance and success in business. This while giving them the benefits of the mentor’s experience and frameworks of analysis or thinking about the business from strategic and fresh perspectives.
Can You Be a Successful Business Mentor?
A good business mentor or business coach is clearly an outstanding person who works closely with their mentees to provide business mentoring services that facilitate change and improvements in their business’ performance. Our business mentors act as trusted sounding boards, facilitating mentees in business-critical areas such as strategic business planning. They bring to the table their own unique experiences in business and are willing to share their skills and know-how through our business mentoring services.
Our business mentors also have critical focus with their mentees, helping them to look at their business with a fresh set of eyes so they can identify new strategies, solutions, approaches and business frameworks, as well as reassessing priorities, brainstorming, innovating and evaluating opportunities for improvement and growth.
The business mentor’s role is to support, develop, stimulate and infuse new ideas and approaches for thinking about business issues and opportunities, challenging their mentees to develop faster and further in business performance.
To be one of our successful business mentors or coaches, you must demonstrate the following:
- Be motivated and committed to assist businesspeople (including large and small business owners) to develop and succeed
- Have run your own successful business or held senior executive positions in large corporations, enabling you to grasp all aspects of business
- Be willing to impart your skills and experiences to help your mentees succeed
- Give and receive critical, honest feedback as required
- Draw quickly on your formal education and broad business experience to leverage your mentees’ thinking to improve their business performance
- Demonstrate the highest professional and personal standards and ethics
- Be a good listener, and be analytical and strategic in developing your mentee’s skills and practical skills and approaches to their business
Business mentoring or coaching through International Business Mentors will be a small proportion of your own overall business portfolio. Your relationship with International Business Mentors will be as an independent contractor from your own company.
What Our Business Mentors Are Not
Mentors and coaches at International Business Mentors are not consultants, nor give professional advice, nor do they perform any other service other than the business mentoring (or coaching) of our clients.
This deliberately restricts the mentoring service to maintain the close working, trusted and confidential relationship which underpins strong outcomes and development of mentees and the close relationship with their business mentor.
If you are a potential business mentor and would like to discuss further, contact us.
For further information, please refer to our business mentor FAQs area.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Strong strategy evaluation
- Business operations understanding
- Business policies and procedures
- Corporate governance
- Culture, leadership and people management experience
- Empathetic yet constructively critical, as appropriate
- Experience in acquisitions and mergers
- Good at brainstorming and evaluating critical issues for action plans
- Good grasp of the financial aspects and funding of businesses
- Marketing and sales knowledge
- People and corporate politics evaluation
- Quality and continuous improvement
- Risk identification and frameworks
- Strong analytical skills for commercial decision-making and investments assessment
- Succession planning ability
- Understanding of supply chain management
- Understands technology, social media and use of IT in business
- Continues to develop your own business skill levels
- Has a broad experience over many aspects of business, including business strategy and planning
- Has had mentoring or coaching experience in the past
- Senior level experience as a CEO, vice president, board director or owner
- Still active in business
- Undergone management and leadership training and development
- University level education, business training or professional qualifications
- Worked at a senior level in an international business with suppliers and customers in overseas countries
Businesspeople contact us to find them the best possible business mentor (or business coach) to assist them with specific or general challenges.
There are a wide variety of scenarios that prompt the use of our business mentoring services. Some of the most common issues we provide assistance with in mentoring sessions include:
- Adapting to rapidly changing business conditions
- Adding shareholder value
- Addressing current issues such as sustainability
- Assessing large scale investment opportunities
- Board to CEO or VP interrelationships, communication and performance reviews
- Business growth and developing business growth strategies
- Business planning – development or review
- Cashflow forecasts review
- Competitor strategies to keep your market share and fend off the competitors
- Considering new ideas and innovation
- Contingency planning and business resumption planning
- Cost control, right sizing the business and restructuring
- Deepening relationships with shareholders and debt providers
- Defining purpose, mission and values
- Defining sustainable growth rates that can be funded by the business and supported by the market
- Delegated authorities
- Developing customer service and retention approaches
- Developing pipelines of business, conversion rates and market offerings
- Development or review of risks in the business
- Dividend policies to fund faster business growth rates and reward owners
- Enhancing management reporting to the Board of Directors and business owners
- Evaluation of capital expenditure programs (CAPEX)
- Family business dynamics and the well running of the business and the family
- Gearing the business up for next growth phase – funding, capacity, supply technology, organisation, products and services offerings, customer attraction and value propositions, sales, marketing, advertising, social media, loyalty programs, CRM, shed vision, leadership, project management to make it happen, incentives, contingency plans, etc.
- Hiring the right people for the organisation using good processes
- Improving project management to deliver cost-effective jobs on time
- Improving margins and customer profitability and net cashflow
- Improving the credit limits and collections from customers
- Investigating bonus schemes and performance
- Leadership potential identification and development
- Negotiating acquisitions and sales of businesses
- Organisational review to focus on business priorities
- Productivity enhancement
- Providing an independent and confidential sounding board
- Reducing unproductive internal politics
- Reputational defence and development
- Reversing poor profitability or poor net cashflow
- Reviewing succession planning
- Security of data and people in the business
- Setting the culture, implementing systems to enforce that culture
- Short term cashflow improvement plans
- Sorting out issues between senior leaders in the organisation
- Strategic assessment of current operating configuration and locations
- Supply chain improvements and negotiations
- Target culture and codes of conduct
- Understanding the dynamics of the cost structure and how the products or services are costed