I don’t normally talk numbers, I find them a little boring if not intimidating (flashback to my school days I’m sure.) I talk a lot about marketing, leadership, strategy, small business, team building and customers. All exciting, challenging and interesting but worth not one jot on their own. On their own, they can lead right down a blind alley with nowhere to go!

There are certain things you need to know about your business, because if you don’t measure it, how the on earth do you know whether any ideas or improvements you implemented are working? Chance is a precarious position to be in and small business owners can be fairly reluctant to measure what really matters. Ask any small business owner how many sales opportunities they had last week, few would be able to give any specific answer. It’s strange, because by asking that precise question and understanding how to channel those opportunities might well increase sales. How would you like to grow sales by 10% next month?

Whilst it’s a little more work, the investment in time is worth the result! And the outcomes can be staggering. Start with something easy such as existing customers…well you know the most about them don’t you? Brainstorm what questions you need to ask, but start with these four:

1. How many existing customers repeat purchase?

2. How many existing customers asked for quotes and how may sales were made from that?

3. How many existing customers did you speak to yesterday/last week/last month/last year?

4. How many existing customers are referring other customers to you on a regular basis?

I’ve just pulled these ‘out of the hat’ but there will be some more fundamental ones. Seek the answers to the questions and then set targets for improvement. Do it right across the business, with your marketing, your people, your customer aquisition strategy, your ideas generation and anything else you feel would benefit.

It’s simple, without numbers your don’t know where you are, never mind where the hell you are going!

It’s a strange word and a perplexing one! On the one hand you need your minimum standard customer service to be consistent right across your business every time you come into contact with a customer. You need your people to consistently come into work each day. You need your marketing tactics to consistently happen throughout the year, yet, the the last thing you want is standard, boring or mediocre activity.

You don’t want repeat business or customer acquisition to remain consistent. You certainly don’t want your people to consistently deliver the same thing year in year out and you don’t want product development to stand still. As usual a difficult balancing act! There is a difference between being consistently average and consistently great!

Perhaps identifying what you want to be consistent in your business through basic standards, a minimum performance level might help. Embed that in your business, make it habitual and ordered, then let your people know where they can concentrate their efforts…..the more creative stuff that makes you great. But don’t let the minimum performance standards run the business or you’ll suck the life out of it. They should be natural, subconsious behaviour. Get that right then you can innovate to being great.

An employer pays his/her employee money in exchange for time. For that time an employee traditionally gets told what to do when to do it and within what parameters (job descriptions). There is a degree of control. It’s been a one sided affair for many decades/hundreds of years….perhaps I’m being a little unfair? But on the whole an employee is at the beck and call of us employers….why?

An employer may be giving a salary or a wage but the employee is giving up their time. It’s just as tangible, just as important as money and of equal weight, yet the relationship in many, if not most businesses, is lopsided. In the past that’s because employees had little choice. The employers factory was the only one in town and there were only a few people at the top who provided all of the employment in the surrounding area.

As this real life scenario rapidly dissolves it’s changing the ‘power’, things are becoming a lot more balanced. Employees have more choice. Employment is not provided by two or three heavy weights. Business is changing, we are selling intellect and less materials, we are managing our employees imagination not production lines and the business world around is changing very fast, small businesses themselves are changing but not as fast and the leaders of those small businesses, on the whole, are hardly changing at all.

We still see the employee as ‘ours,’ that they belong to us and that we say what goes. I’m not advocating breaking company rules or values but there is a shift. Employees really can choose where they work. They will increasingly make choices, understand where they fit and will leave quickly when they don’t fit.

Increasingly, small business owners will need to learn how to lead these changes and provide a working environment that is less centred on one person making the decisions. They must stop managing people and start leading, understanding that the employee has more choice than ever before. They can stop working and go travelling, they can stop working and do a degree, they can stop working and have a break from work and worse of all, they can stop working for you and go and work for the competition.

The balance has to be restored. As employers we must recognise that our employees can do a hundred things instead of being where they are with you right now. The relationship must not be lopsided and less based on control, order, authority and more on change, emotion, trust, influence and motivation.

Your people want the following:

1. To be part of something that matters

2. To do meaningful work

3. Be led not managed

4. Authenticity not selfishness

5. Influence not authority

6. Truth and ‘real’

You manage objects, processes, IT systems, procedures, quality, operations. Anything that involves people requires leadership skills, behaviour and attitude. Anything less results in you making your life a lot harder than it needs to be.

Why? You don’t have all the answers! It’s just as important to recruit, reward and have trouble makers on your team as well as trouble shooters. Engage with not only the reliable people who keep your business ticking over but with the people who are going to radically change it too!

However….. remember to be courageous enough to get rid of those that expend large amounts of energy maintaining the status quo!

I’ve cut and paste an interesting article by Tom Peters that’s shown below. Good point and very true. When was the last time we made our people feel valued?… (I’m talking about more than a pat on the back here and so is he!)

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED/MAKE MONEY
by  Tom Peters

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100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money by Tom Peters. Copyright 2008

by Tom Peters. Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.Click here to view 

the license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode

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100 WAYS TO SUCCEED #74:
C(I) > C(E)

This one waltzed into my life when I was speaking to GE Energy 

sales folks earlier this year. I've long said that "forming relations 

inside our own company is almost as important as the external ones." 

While it may not be at Universal, it struck me that in many cases 

"C(I)"--our Internal customers--are in fact...MORE IMPORTANT...

than C(E)--our external customers. In the GE case, systems sales, 

often to "foreigners," the salesperson (my GE informant who's a very 

successful salesperson) wants "an...UNFAIR SHARE"...of a host 

of insiders' time--engineers, logistics folks, the risk-assessment

staff, and even lawyers. Lots of GE dudes are selling lots of 

stuff--and need, yesterday, lots and lots and lots of Inside Help. 

I (salesperson) want to be at the front of the queue for the 

harried risk-assessment staffers time & attention; I want to be 

head of the queue and getting an unfair share of the engineers', 

who must customize the product, time and imagination and attention.

Hence my full set of "internal [customer] relationships” could end up 

being more important, even far more important, than my "external 

[customer] relations.” The applications of this idea range way 

beyond enormous GE systems sales. I, as a professional services 

person at the "client interface," want an unfair share--and 

posthaste--of the Graphics Department's attention when a hastily 

scheduled Presentation looms. As a junior purchasing staffer, I 

want an unfair share of the Legal Staff's time as I prepare even 

a medium-sized contract. As a White House staffer many moons ago, 

I wanted the various Gatekeepers to put my memo to the VP or P or 

Secretary of State at the front of an infinitely long cue of stuff 

from people who waaaaaay outranked me.

So, what have you done lately for your all-important "portfolio" of
internal...CUSTOMERS????? I(I) + C(I) > I(E) + C(E). My Investment in
Internal Customers must frequently outstrip my Investment in External
Customers. Think about it. Clearly. Precisely. E.g., when was the last 

time you took a C(I) to lunch or dinner? Or brought Flowers to the 

Legal Department after they'd done you even a wee favor?

Even in a small business communication can be difficult, getting to the bottom of things should be quite easy. Surely it’s just a matter of asking? Call me old fashioned but plain old simple human to human conversation has to be the best way of gauging how things are going.

Instead of getting your people to complete people satisfaction surveys, or have them fill in complicated bench mark stuff…..cut to the chase, get to the core of problem. Just ask your people two questions; what are the things around here that bug them, piss them off, make their life difficult? Then ask them what doesn’t. What things make their job easier? What things are going right? Sometimes an exceptional way of getting people to work in teams….

The important thing is to act on the things that are causing problems. Keep it simple just ask.