 |
| What Are the 7 Proven Principles of Business Success? (Part 2) |
Principle 5: Build foundations for growth.
If you want to build your business to provide a lavish lifestyle, you need to build foundations, just like making any building. If you don't intend to increase your profits, you don't need foundations. If you want to seriously improve your net profit percentage (even without increasing turnover), you must have firm foundations. When they build a skyscraper, they don't build up; they dig a big hole down.
The foundations in business are two things. It is first, having documented systems. A system is the best way of doing something everyone knows and uses, identifies, and writes down. It helps consistency and efficiency, and as you grow, people are accountable to the systems, not to you, the owner. That means you save time checking on everyone. Plans only work when you have worked with your staff to become a TEAM.
Secondly, measuring everything is part of building foundations. If you haven't measured your Key Performance Indicators, how will you improve on them? Increasing Net Profit percentage of turnover comes from improving everything you currently do, remember?
I could write a book on measuring; it's so important, I can't emphasize it enough. When you've calculated all your KPI's, you're ready for…
Principle 6: Implement EFFECTIVE Sales and Marketing.
Everyone in business is already doing sales and marketing, but how effective is it? You know when you have effective sales and marketing, here's how: you won't get so many price shoppers as your marketing already has "sold" them on buying from you. Your marketing is so effective that you only have to run it a third because you can't handle the increase in customers it brings you. And you'll know your sales and marketing is effective because you put your prices up 20% and increase your conversion with the price rise!
People in business don't take responsibility for their sales and marketing, and as a result, they don't get the results they desire. Once you know the principles of success, you can add to them yourself, but you often need an expert to get you started. If you learn sales and marketing by paying a professional for a few months, it will be the best investment you ever make.
Principles 7: Manage the business.
Unfortunately, businesses aren't managed at all well. You can tell by these examples… decisions aren't based on numbers, there aren't documented systems, regular weekly team meetings aren't happening, nor is weekly one-on-one team training.
Management is all of the above; it's making decisions on numbers. e.g., you measure how many customers you serve in a week for each team member and count the number of new customers each week and then work out your team can service five customers each per week. That means if your marketing can produce five new customers and at maximum service capacity, you need to be thinking about getting a new team member very soon.
This is what management is, training your team weekly, documenting systems, measuring numbers, making decisions on numbers, setting goals, and helping your team achieve their own.
When you dedicate time to learn and then follow all 7 Principles, in the order above, anything is possible. I've had clients increase their monthly turnover by 1,000% in just five months when the business wasn't growing at all, and the owners did it with ease and grace, no stress at all!
What's your growth potential? If you're not growing at 50%-100% a year, you're possibly not growing as fast as you could! Do you realize it yet?
Photo: https://pixabay.com
