Systemizing Your Business

[Peter Bowen]

An operation that runs on systems instead of being dependent on the owner seems like the “Holy Grail” of small business.

I thought it might be useful to see the actual process of converting a business from being completely owner run to where the owner is hands off.

I'm doing this for a client who has just bought a tiny ice-cream shop. The previous owner (and then her mother) ran the entire business – the new owner doesn't even like ice-cream.

If you're interested in following the practical application I'll be writing it up on my blog but I see that I can't post the url here. Oh well, I bad luck I guess.

Cheers

Pete

 

[Cred-X]

I can't post the url here. Oh well, I bad luck I guess.

Not to worry Pete, your homepage in your profile provides a link. I can follow it from there

 

[RedEvo]

This is something I'm very interested in. We've been building a knowledge base for our business as a way of capturing business process.

d

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Interesting stuff.

One thing I've noticed about small fast food shops (I guess an ice-cream shop fits into that category) is that they rarely do any up-selling.

But, if I go into big chains (McD, BUrget King etc), they always seem to up-sell.

Why the difference?

Personally, I reckon it's just because the big companies are savvy to up-selling and the small ones either haven't thought about it or don't systemise it.

On the subject of business systems, someone once told me:

"to be outstanding, you can either be outstanding at executing an average strategy or you can be average at executing an outstanding strategy ... and it's always easier to build the excellence into the strategy"

Which I thought was great advice.

I've had success with clients where we've gone through their sales stats and found the salespeople who were the best at certain stages of the sales process.

(e.g. getting appointments, closing, up-selling to bigger packages/volumes, getting referrals).

I'd interview these top performers and learn how they did it.

Then I'd teach their strategies to the rest of the team.

Result: instant increase in sales.

Steve