The Operations and flow within your business…

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been investigating the six pillars of business. Last week, we dissected the 5 levers of operating your cashflow.  

This week let’s dive into Operations.

Operations refers to everything that happens within your business to keep it running and earning money. This includes your systems, equipment, people, and processes needed to make the organization function.

If you want to build a business that stands the test of time, you need to have systems and processes in place that allow your business to flow, right from finding leads, flowing into the sale, delivering your product or service, and then keeping that client for life.  

You need to think about how your business becomes sustainable and systematised?

How will you serve your clients?
How will they buy from you and how do you deliver?

You need to consider your marketing, finance, terms of trade, administration, and your customer service and your team.

All elements of your business must be predictable and easy to follow. Even businesses that have been operating for many years don’t necessarily have the best operations in place.

Every time you grow, so do your operations, so you must always prepare your business to be scalable.

So, if we are going to dissect that a little further, let’s look at the different elements of operations and how they all affect each other and flow into each other.

Let’s begin with finance and knowing your numbers. You must be asking yourself these questions such as:

• What will it cost for you to increase your leads?
• Is that in accordance with your finance plans?
• How much are you prepared to invest?
• Can you afford that right now?
• Do you have the required cashflow?
• What are your strategies and allowable costs to buy customers?
• And if you are successful in buying these customers, are you in a position to invest in the resources and expand as needed to meet this growth?
• Will there be enough cash left over after you have bought these customers to service them and still leave a profit?

New customers are not the same as profit. Being busy is not the same as profit. Putting an ad on TV is not the same as profit.

The only thing that is the same as profit is…profit! 

Moving on to the sales, structure, and customer loyalty… You need to be asking these questions to make sure everything in your business is aligned. 

• Does what you are doing fit with your sales and marketing plans?
• If you start getting more leads, will your sales team be equipped to handle them?
• Every time you create a lead, how will your sales structure help your future client to move along?
• How do you help them by making your it easy for your clients to buy?
• How are you increasing loyalty?  Are you creating clients for life?
• Are you losing money on the first sale or making money?
Either answer is okay

if

it’s in accordance with your plan.  Creating loss leaders can be a great tactic if your clients have a high lifetime value. You should always be thinking about more than just securing the next sale.

You should be thinking about the one after, and the next one, and the one after that, and on and on it goes…

 If you are successful in generating more leads, and your sales team or structure are successful in converting these leads into paying customers, it is then critical that you have the systems and processes in place to delight these clients. 

At what stage will you need more resources and people?

Just securing their business is not enough; you have to follow through with exceptional service. That’s how you build sustainable profits.

Every decision you make – every decision – must be made in accordance with your long-term strategic plan.

There are obviously always going to be changing strategies in your business, but your systems and processes should be planned out and available to your whole team.

To ensure the operations of your business always run smoothly, you must:

• Ensure the foundations of your business are solid. This all starts by building a tight-knit team who are aligned with the vision of the business.
• Aim for transparency and clear communication between ALL departments. There is no use in having all of the different departments working towards different goals, this will disrupt the flow of your business.
• Assign your strongest employees to management roles.
• Make decisions based on data. Numbers never lie.
• Have a long-term plan. If you are constantly working reactively instead or proactively, this will decrease the quality of your business.  

The operations of your business and systems and processes are EVERYTHING when it comes to Businessflow.   

Having a solid foundation in your business is so important. Just like building a house, building a business relies on a solid foundation.

If you are struggling to get all the operations in your business to stay aligned, reach out, we are more than happy to help. 

Next week we delve into customer loyalty.

Power to you!  

Stefan Kazakis 

CEO, Business Benchmark Group

Looking for a business coach? Find out more about the Board of Directors 12 Business Coaching Program.