The 4 legs of your business
There are four parts to every business that is fundamental to the stability and future growth of that business.
These parts are like the four legs of a table. Each leg must be strong enough to keep the table balanced and level. If any of the legs wobble, your table tilts; if a leg collapses, the table falls.
So what are the four legs of your business?
Leg 1: Destination
This leg of the table is where you determine the future of your business. Your vision, mission and culture. Whether you have employees, contractors or others supporting your business, there is a culture to each interaction. The culture you create should align with your vision for the business and the direction the business is moving toward.
Here's where you get clear on the business you are building. If you don't know where your going, have a clear plan on how you'll get there and, most importantly, what your business will look like when you are finished with it – You could discover that all you ever really had was a JOB and you’d spent your life stuck in the hamster wheel of day to day life and never reach your desired destination.
Leg 2: Delivery & Distribution of Your Product or Service
How you deliver your product or service is critical to building repeat and consistent business. Before looking at the components of delivery let's talk about why this is so important, and so much more than just bringing your product or service to your customer.
There are four main stakeholders that make up the footings of delivery:
1) The Owners: The business must serve them by providing a profit,
2) The Team: The business must serve them by providing recognition, rewards, and a paycheck,
3) The Suppliers: The business must serve them by paying their bills,
4) The Customers: The business must serve them by fulfilling their needs,
Your customers frequent your business not only because they like the product or service you offer, but because the service you deliver to them is what they want, need, and expect. Isn't that right?
How often do you return to a business when the service you get is below your expectations? Maybe one more time - because this was your favorite restaurant you're a nice person and want to give them the benefit of the doubt. But if the service they provide is sub-par on the second visit, you probably will find another business to serve you.
Each and every time you or a member of your team is interacting with a customer they must be aware and tuned into the customer's feelings about you and you're business. I call this DELIVERY Mastery. Mastering delivery includes creating precise measureable customer service standards designed specifically for your business and to the needs of your four main stakeholders.
These standards will insure that your desired outcomes will be delivered consistently each and every time. Addressing the needs of your stakeholders are four core areas to implement and execute on when working on Delivery Mastery:
I. Supply mastery. Ask yourself these questions when reviewing the level of supply mastery you have in your business.
* Can your customer get what they pay for, with on time delivery?
* Are your products and services being delivered consistently, every time?
* Do you know the volume of sales that your current system can handle?
* What would happen if you increased sales by 10, 20 even 50%? Could your current system manage?
* What does consistent delivery mean to you and your team?
II. Quality Mastery. Does your product and service always measure up to your customers' expectations?
* Are you delivering consistent quality every time?
* Analyze what areas you deliver well.
* Analyze what areas need improvement.
* Review and act on customer complaints.
III. Easy to Buy Mastery. Are you making it easy to buy your product or service? The easier it is to do business with you the more repeat customers you will have.
* Do you have ‘policies' in place that complicate the buying process?
* Have you ever heard, "but it's our policy"?
* Are you easy to find and contact?
* Is your contact information ‘buried' in your website?
* How easy is it to pay for your product or service?
* Have you ever used a mystery shopper service to evaluate your ease of buying?
IV. Service Mastery. How are you serving your customer?
* #1 area customers want to see is knowledge
* Are you training your team to smile and provide excellent service?
* Are you WOWing your customers and creating RAVING FANS?
Training your team is critical - remember every contact with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to increase your business.
What is the experience you want your customers to ‘feel'? These four areas will be the basis for creating your step by step process to provide consistency with every customer interaction.
As a business owner, you must set the standards you expect in each of these areas for your business. You must define the level of inventory you want to maintain, the cleanliness of your shop or office, the dress of your team members, the scripts used when answering the phone, etc. All of these must link together to comprise the complete consistent delivery experience your customers are expecting.
Leg 3 – TIME ( self-management in the workplace)
The strength of this leg is knowing you can work fewer hours while achieving more significant results.
I have found that this is the most challenging leg to master for most of us. So many people don't realize that TIME management is SELF-management, and before you can stop wasting time, you first need to understand why you waste it in the first place.
I love this Tony Robbins quote.
"Real-time management skills go beyond making a daily planner or writing an endless to-do list that only seems to get longer, not shorter. The first step toward learning how to improve time management is realizing that it's a mental game that anyone can master – and that you will be paid back tenfold for your investment of time and energy."
By properly managing your time, you and your team will see a significant number of benefits, such as:
Won't miss deadlines and appointments, will focus more and procrastinate less, will avoid unwanted stress, will maintain your businesses reputation, will avoid financial penalties, will be able to set a better work and life balance and enjoy higher levels of productivity. So mastering self-management allows you to invest your time and energy in producing the outcomes and results you want, and running your business gets easier and simpler.
Leg 4: Financial and Administrative
This leg of the table allows you to measure results and find areas to improve efficiency.
When you are really on top of your numbers, you are not just looking at historical amounts. You know which numbers you must be looking at regularly and use this information to keep your business on the right track.
Business financial mastery is not just about making a bottom-line profit. It's also about having a consistent, predictable cash flow to sustain your business. Only when you have your finger on the real numbers that drive your business will you be able to make genuinely informed financial decisions.
Do you know how stable are the legs of your table?
Building a solid business foundation is paramount to your future success. . Without a strong business foundation, at some point in the future growth of your business, it will start to wobble. As the weight of more team members increased productivity and demand for your product or service bears down on these four legs the cracks will appear when the foundation is weak.
