Small Businesses are tough to grow. Mainly because you need to hire people and they naturally do things differently than you. So in order to have everyone new do things the same way as the founder you need to define the process. This is a tough thing to sit down and do. Often it will require multiple meetings with the leaders of the company to work through each little thing.
You’ll want to determine the process for lead generation, sales, purchasing, fulfillment, invoicing, reception, etc. The goal is to put things down in a clear way so anyone in the company, new or experienced, can jump in and do thing the same way. If you manufacture items, you’ll need to figure out the process for production so every product is the same. The same applies to services but it’s done less often because manufacturing a product often requires specifications where as a service does not.
Defining how a product or service is made will shed insight into how much time, materials, and energy are required. This may show you that you need to charge more for the service, discontinue the offering, or innovate.
Defining how you do things will enable you you create benchmarks for how long it takes to do them. This will make your proposals more accurate and highlight employee successes or failures.
After looking at your work flows, you’ll also want to dig into the ways you present yourself. Do you have a style guide for your brand? Do all letters from your company look the same even if they are written by different people? How do you answer the phone? Is it consistent?
If done right, all of this hard work can make the difference between owning a business and having a job. After all even executive management should be able to be defined. Realistically, this is where much of the value of a company is held. It creates good will. It makes it scalable. It makes it profitable. It creates the experience. It makes you unique.
