A Typical Business Visit

Last Wednesday, we had a long and productive visit with Jeanette who raises cattle to sell the milk. This gave us the idea to give all you readers a better idea of what we do when we visit the current projects. I will describe a typical business visit.

Preparation: Before we make any visit, we take a few minutes in the office to determine what our goals are for the visit. After we have defined our goals, we ensure we have everything we need to take with us. This could include blank reports, a computer, or materials from a previous visit.

Evaluation: After greeting the person, one of the first things we do is talk about their past performance related to reports or other documents they have given us. Usually the people don't really have a good idea of how they are doing financially so we take their documented numbers and organize them to help them see how their money is being used (or made). We deliver this report during the visit.

Mentoring: When we deliver our reports, we give our interpretation of how we think their business is doing. At this time we also give them suggestions on how we think they could improve or better use their resources. We also love listening to them and learning more about their business and why they think some ideas would work and others would not. We learn just as much or more from each project as they do from us.

Improvement: After we take the time to hash things out, we usually end up with some great ideas to implement in the future. Sometimes the clients will make suggestions on how we can improve the format of our reports (like in the case of Jeanette) or we come up with new ideas for their reports or operations. We then set up a return appointment to check up on the new ideas.

Time has flown by for us here in Peru. We only have three weeks left, and we can't believe how much we have done and how much there is left. We've tried to stay busy with current projects and second time loan prospects as we continue to wait for the final decision on first time loan applicants this year.