Build Your Small Business On Solid Foundations

At first, this statement may appear counterintuitive.

How do you boost your income by saying NO to customers and opportunities?

The fact is, if your Marketing and Sales Strategy is to say YES to anyone with a heartbeat and a wallet, you will suffer greater customer attrition and lower profits than a small business which is more selective with their marketing strategy.

This is a quality verses quantity argument and it's the first thing I look to rectify when I start coaching a Small Business Owner, CEO or one of their Managers.

Here's why...

When you focus on customer volume and ignore the issue of customer quality (by choosing the right type of customer), you will typically experience one or more of these issues:

• Customers unable to pay on time

• Customers turning up late to meetings, cancelling at the last minute or forgetting it was on

• Customers unwilling to follow agreed processes and deadlines

• Having to constantly chase customers for agreed information/paperwork

• Customers constantly complaining to you about what you haven't done (and not in the signed service agreement)

When you work with the wrong customer, you pay a big price. The price you pay is typically much higher on your business than it may first appear.

The wrong customers cost your team time. They soak up your business' resources and the energy they drain from your business is seldom negated by the income they produce.

Whilst this idea might be well intended and your desire to help everyone is part of your nature; ultimately the 'Say YES To Anyone' Strategy will, in the long run, slow and often halt your business growth.

The first step to improving your marketing process is to define the niches (ideally no more than 3) you work in and identify what the 'ideal customer' looks like for each of these areas.

So isn't it time to really look at your customer database and start mining the gold which is there from people who know and trust you?

W Edwards Deming tells us ninety-five percent of all failure is a result of the SYSTEM, not the people.

So why does the rhetoric not match the facts?

Why do we continue to blame the people for what's going wrong in our businesses?

Because it's easier than doing what really needs to be done (and we think it's the right reason but it's not).

AND because we forget the most important reason of all:

SYSTEMS ARE ALL ABOUT CHANGE so we have to help staff through the change management process of designing and implementing simple systems.

Most small businesses have policies and procedures and yes, they may have gotten them through the first few years when your team was small and everyone knew how to do EVERYTHING, but that's NOT why you write them.

You write simple procedures (ie get the knowledge out of everyone's heads including your own) so ANYONE can follow the procedures and keep the work and business moving forward.

Otherwise.....

• no one can be sick (which means no contact with the office – no phone or email)

• no one can have a day off or a true holiday (which means no contact – no phone or email)

• staff can't move into other roles (which means they will probably leave out of frustration)

• the business can't grow, can't cope with unexpected growth or be sold (at least not for the value it should be).

So if you want to grow and/or sell your business; AND mitigate the risk of knowledge walking out the door, you have to start documenting what you do and how you do it – otherwise the consequences may be catastrophic.