If your business was an office, would you put all of your efforts into the receiving area and not pay attention to the other areas of your office that directly or indirectly impact your clients? For example, get designer décor and high-end furnature for your reception area but once they go to the restroom or come back to an office those areas look like an unkept mess? You know that you can’t only pay attention to one part of your office and the rest. You have to find a way for every room to be just as great as the others. Now imagine that each room in that office was a different area of your small business. You cannot pay attention more to the marketing and sales than you do actually servicing your client.
There are certain core focuses when organizing the management of your small business for success. You may not be a corporation with a team of people in areas as a department… yet. For the growth of your small business, you should give attention to the different areas of your small business routinely. To get you ready for annual planning, let’s define the top four departments: administration, technology, people resources, and marketing/sales.
Administration. For your small business, this area is definitely a catch-all for business management. It is definitely the thinking head of the business. The keeping of records and numbers of the business; key performance indicators (KPIs) that inform the direction of the business. Records for standard operating procedures (SOPs) for how to do things in the business, and protocols for when and where to do those things. The heart of operations structure and organization for production, fulfillment, and service of the offer.
Technology. Every area of your business has tech associated with it, especially if you are a virtual or online business. Digital tools not only help us to work faster and smarter, but they help us to make up for the gap in the difference in resources between larger businesses and us. As a small business, you often hire tech before you begin to hire people. What technology is best in class for creating the needed elements of your offer, managing the people that service your business and your offer, and that creates marketing relationships, as well as convert those relationships to sales.
People Resources. No other time than when YOU become a business owner do you understand the meaning of ‘human’ resources. It is hard to grow your business and nearly impossible to scale your business without people as a resource. You will need to work ON your business (the internal activities that happen behind the scenes so that your business grows) AND work IN your business (the external operations of the day-to-day servicing of your offer). Both work together –in tandem– for the health of your business. Where you do not have tech to do the job, you will need people.
Marketing & Sales. Your small business is only as great as the flow of marketing relationships that convert to sales. The very life of your business depends on the cycle of bringing new people into awareness of your business, nurturing them to trust that you can solve their problem, getting them to buy your solution(s), and gathering the social proof needed to show others that you can help them too. Rinse and repeat. Of course, it can get more complicated as you choose how you will do each step, but the goal is to keep that cycle going like clockwork.
As we enter the season for annual business planning, I want you to think of each of these areas of business and how you can improve upon them for the health and wealth of your business.