Strategic sales consultancy | Business Development Services – Incisive Edge | The Issues You Need To Address in Growing Your Business

1. Strategy

Strategy is about taking a step back and making some decisions about where you choose to operate and how you plan to win in those areas.

In growing your business it is so easy to get swept up in what customers demand that you never really take a step back to question whether your business is heading in the right direction.

Many entrepreneurs invest a great deal of time and energy in devising a strategy for their business when they first launch, but they never revisit their strategy once the business is operating. You are in a much stronger position to make important strategic decisions after you have been operating for a while because you then have experience in the industry and greater insight into the markets, competitors and business model alternatives.

During this phase of the business you should address the following issues:

Value:

What value are you creating? How are you creating value and for whom are you creating this value? How will you create value in the future?

Market:

Are you operating in the right markets? Which markets will you focus on growing in the future?

Competitive Advantage:

Are you winning in your markets? What can you do to have an even greater competitive advantage in your markets now and in the future?

Activity:

What are the core activities of your business? What do you choose to do and what do you choose not to do?

Goals:

What are your goals for the next 3 – 5 years? What do you need to do to deliver on those goals?

2. Structure

To effectively deliver on a strategy a business needs structure.

Structure is the right people in the right positions to do what is required to make the strategy happen. Even in the smallest, simplest businesses it is important to have some element of structure and as a business becomes larger, so structure becomes more and more important.

If you are in a small business with just one partner, structuring involves identifying your individual responsibilities and what you are going to outsource to external service providers. In a larger business it is about giving each person in a business a clear understanding of what they are required to do and how they will be held accountable for carrying out those tasks.

As a business grows a business owner can easily lose sight of what everyone in the company is doing and this can result in duplication of work, lack of accountability and work overload.

Growing your business therefore requires the leadership to review the structures and lines of responsibility to establish an effective and efficient organisation that can deliver on the strategy.

During this phase of the business you should address the following issues:

Skills:

What skills do you require in the organisation to deliver on the strategy? Do you currently have the right skills to deliver on the strategy? Where can you find the missing skills?

Roles:

How do you put people in roles that leverage their skills and enable you to deliver on your strategy? Describe each person´s roles and the responsibility that goes with that role?

Accountability:

How will people be held accountable for delivering on the requirements of their roles? What will you measure? Who will do the measuring? How often will you measure performance?

3. Skills Development

Systems invariably depend on people and for people to operate effectively within a system they often need to be trained. It is therefore essential to see skills development and training as a critical element of working on your business.

If you don´t train and develop people then all your efforts in structuring and systematising your business are likely to be in vain. You do not necessarily need to do all the training yourself but you should oversee the training and take an active interest in the skills requirements and development of all the people in your business.

The process of working on your business through strategy, structure, systems and developing skills is a continuous cycle. Therefore, once you have been through the cycle after having developed or refined your strategy, created a structure, established systems and developed and trained people with the requisite skills, you need to start again with development and refinement of strategy. The more times that you go through the cycle the more your business is likely to grow.

During this phase of the business you should address the following issues:

Performance Requirements:

At what level do you need the various people in my company to perform in order for the business to be successful?

Performance Gaps:

At what level are the people in your company currently performing? What are the gaps in their performance between what is required and what is currently happening?

Training:

In what order should you address the skills gaps for maximum success and survival of your business?

Training Methods:

How should you address each of the skills gaps? Which gaps are best addressed through formal training and which are best addressed through on the job coaching and mentoring? Who will you get to do all the required training?

4. Systems

To build a business with a real platform for growth, it is critical to identify the key activities relating to that business and to build systems that allow those key activities to be replicated effectively and often.

When most businesses start out, entrepreneurs perform most of the critical activities in the business themselves. The only way that entrepreneurs can facilitate real growth in that business is to translate what they do into a set of processes that others can execute. The critical systems within a business may vary slightly depending on the nature of the industry in which the business is operating but most businesses require systems and processes that relate to marketing and selling, product or service delivery, financial management and reporting, buying, and product development.

During this phase of the business you should address the following issues:

Key Processes:

What are the key processes that create value for your customers and/or allow your business to run effectively and efficiently?

Procedures:

Do you have established, documented procedures to deliver on your key processes easily and often? For which of your key processes do you still need to establish and document procedures?

Automation:

What could you automate to reduce the dependence on people? Are there procedures within your processes that could be more effectively executed by external organisations?

The Transition

Making the transition from spending all your time working in your businesses to consistently dedicating time to working on your business in not easy. It takes discipline and dedication to get this right but such discipline and dedication should yield handsome returns in the long-term.

Smaller business owners should aim to spend 20% of their time (the equivalent of one day a week) working on the business. Larger business owners or managers within larger enterprises can aim to spend as much as 80% of their time working on the business. Therefore the amount of time you aim to dedicate to working on the business should depend on the size of your business and how much you want it to grow. The higher your growth aspirations, the more time you should spend working on your business.

If you are currently caught in the trap of working almost entirely in your business, make the transition over time. Start off by setting aside two hours a week to work on your business. In your first two hours review your strategy, in your second two hours examine your structure, in your third two hours evaluate your systems and in your fourth two hours consider your skills development. This will establish the platform for working on your business in month one of the transition.

Then in month two dedicate three to four hours a week to working on your business and take the time to address some of the issues that were identified in the review sessions in month one. Work with other senior people in the organisation on these issues.

As you move into month three, try to dedicate a full half a day a week to working on your business and continue to increase the time you spend on these issues over time until you are working on strategy, structure, systems and skills development for a full day a week.

The effect of moving from a place of working entirely in your business to a place where you regularly dedicate time to working on your business will be amazing. You will realise a year down the line that you have a happier, more empowered, more focused workforce. You will discover that customers that you personally had nothing to do with are raving about your company´s service. You will discover that you have more time for yourself and are able to approach work in a more balanced fashion and that you are growing your business in a sustainable and profitable way.

To discover how Incisive Edge will help you grow your business email growth@incisive-edge.com or call 0843 289 7884.