Recently, one of our members shared that she was positioning her business to add associates. The question she was struggling with was how to approach this expansion and asked for suggestions on how to create an SOP of routine or repetitive activity to insure success.
When small business owners really began to grow it has been my experience that they struggled by not having put systems in place to handle the overload. All this makes it harder to really understand what needs to be done and who should be doing it. In Michael Gerber’s E Myth, he says: “Most small businesses are dependent on the expertise of whoever is on payroll at a given time. As a consequence, how tasks are
performed changes as people come and go. The danger is that customers will have unpredictable experiences with a business and might not come back.”
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a set of written instructions that document a routine or repetitive activity followed by an organization. The development and use of SOPs are an integral part of a successful quality system as it provides individuals with the information to perform a job properly and facilitates consistency in the quality and integrity of a product or service.
The franchise model is the best example of having systems in place. The way every hamburger at Burger King is wrapped, how the chicken is prepped before frying at KFC and the way a sales associate at McDonald’s asks if you want fries and a drink are all scripted into a system, making these businesses duplicate-able.
How much easier would it be in your business if the things that impact your business were done in a systematic way? One of the areas I find small business owners lacking consistency in is their invoicing. Some wait too long, then have difficulty collecting. Or they make promises to a client then don’t communicate if there is a delay.
Another area that owners violate the most are in marketing/sales. Consistency in generating prospects you can sell to is the only way to keep the business growing and working for you. Your effectiveness in marketing and sales starts with having systems that then allow you to apply the best strategies consistently.
So documenting activities that are ongoing or are done more than once should be developed as a way of doing business that builds trust with customers and referral sources. This is not difficult, think of a recipe, first the ingredients are listed, then the process for putting it all together. After you have made it a few times, you tweak it to your taste. What recipe (system) needs to be developed in your business. You can’t grow without the order systems make.
Good systems – solid repetitive systems, and activity – are utterly essential to building and sustaining a great business. At the end of the day, they should help you by minimizing costs, maximizing profits and ultimately increase the value of your business.
The CHALLENGE: What area of your business needs a more affective, consistent system?