Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship, Part 5, Build Your System

This is the final post for the Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship series. In this series, we learned how to find your passion, developed it to a marketable niche, checked our readiness to make the leap, and made sure we are right on with our marketing. So you are close to start your own business, or maybe you already have started it. (Image by exper)

Take time to review the business plan

As you get into the task-overload stage of starting a new business, it’s critical to take time to remember the big picture of your business and review the business plan, whether it is written out or not. I know this is hard, but don’t get caught up in filling the orders or doing administrative work!

The key here and going forward is to build reliable business management system, rather than to address each and every single issue at a time.

There are many kinds of business systems. At Yes to Me, we have already talked about building efficient customer service systems (that require less of your time) and ways to find the ideas to build such systems. Marketing needs systematic approach, too. Also, you need reliable accounting system and HR system that cater to your specific needs – and if you are a home-based or small business owner, you probably want to hire outside service for these. You might need professional assistance from lawyers, web designers, and tech support, too.

In this post, we are going to talk about the kind of business systems that allow your business to grow. This is where I am now that I have been through the startup phase of my business.

How can you grow your business without spending more of your time?

I am currently the only person in my business. I do the actual work to fill orders while I also work on marketing and administrative tasks. I only have 24 hours a day (no, I haven’t yet figured out how to expand my time or travel the linear timeline ^_^ ), so as long as I stay in this I’m-the-only-service-provider condition, my business growth is limited. And I also know I’d eventually get bored.

Some possible solutions to this situation are:

1. Build the organizational system to hire other trained intuitives or contract them out so that my business can get more things done using my marketing channels. (Of course, there must be an excellent quality control system for this to work.)
2. Build other income-producing system, perhaps by developing products, such as books and CDs.
3. Partner up with other complimentary businesses to build synergetic business system. For example, partner up with hands-on energy healers so we can refer clients to each other and to start new programs that bring synergetic effects.

The point here is to keep or enhance the service quality, not compromise it, by building the system. Compromising the service quality is suicidal. There is no point in building a system that eventually loses clients and kills the business. Don’t make that mistake.

At this time, I’m only thinking up these options, and I’m confident this is exactly what I need to be doing now. It’s important to think several steps ahead when it comes to business.

How can you spot the opportunities to build business system that brings growth?

This, again, goes back to the first step of finding your love and passion. Now that you are in business, doing what you love day in and day out, you know more about it and how you relate to it. You know exactly which part you really love within that passion you identified in Part 1. The part that you are also strong at.

It may be marketing – talking about your beloved service or products, how they can help people (just like you!), and networking with like minded people. It may be learning and studying the subject even further and passing that expertise to larger audience. Or it may be thinking up new approaches, new combination of services, new possibilities.

Now dream up ways to let go of other parts of your business. I know this is scary. You just started your own business, you feel good to be your own boss and to be in control, why the heck would you want to let any tiny part of it, you’d say. But that is the only way to grow your business.

Of course, you don’t have to grow your business. You can keep it small and tidy. That is your choice.

But if you do want to grow your business, building reliable system is a must.

You may also want to hire a coach or consultant. Some people are just not very good at seeing patterns – they really just see individual cases as individual cases and address them as such without even thinking there may be a better system to address them. If this sounds like you, get help from someone who can see and think in terms of system.

Has this series been helpful to you?

I know this has been a fast, info-loaded series. Starting your own business takes a lot. Did I miss something that you want to know about starting a business? If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, what is your biggest challenge now? Let me know by leaving your comment!

And if you like this series, please link to me or stumble on the post. This Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship is the flagship series of my entrepreneur side. I appreciate your support very much

How To Improve Customer Service By Spending Far Less Time

(Photo by Sleestak66)

The customers are demanding attention. You address them the best you can, but there are so many that you can’t keep up with them all.

The bigger your business grows, the more customers are asking questions and complaining about more and more issues. You want to treat your customers well, but you just can’t stretch any more . . .

Believe me, this will happen sooner or later when you become an entrepreneur and your business takes off. Even when you offer outstanding service or products, there will be inquiries and also complaints about perceived problems. What do you do?

It seems the majority of business owners choose one or both of the following two options:

1. Work longer hours
2. Get other people’s help (ie, their time), starting with your family members and then hiring others

Both approaches above are based on linear thinking.

You are addressing each problem one by one, and each problem solving takes certain amount of time, so the total time needed to solve all problems is the sum of time each individual problem solving takes. Obviously, you need more time to solve more problems this way. So you either work longer hours yourself or, realizing your human physical limitations, you get other people’s time. The quality of your personal life, your health, your relationship with family, and the bottom line of your business suffer when you approach problem solving this way. You started your business with passion and lots of wonderful dreams, yet you find yourself dreading . . .

It doesn’t have to be this way.

There is another approach that radically shortens the time needed to address customer service problems while keeping the level of your service high, even higher than before. And you can learn and use this approach right away even if you are currently an employee. In fact, I strongly recommend we all practice using this approach as it is so effective that it will change your work life.

It is to learn systematic thinking and implement effective system.

Let me explain with real-life examples, one by Christine O’Kelly at Self Made Chick and another my own experience.

In How to Achieve Ridiculous Goals, Christine explains how she, as a new Operation Manager of a start-up company, cleared 80,000 customer email backlogs in 3 weeks. She says it took more than a year for the backlog to build to this level. There weren’t enough number of customer service reps to answer these emails one by one. Just demanding them to work faster didn’t work, either. So what did she do? She says:

I created a system analyzing the most common customer service questions, creating pre-made responses for each of the main types of questions, ran the 80,000 emails through a series of keyword-based filters to identify the topic of the email, separated them each into different “buckets,” and then had the CS team run these through a rigged up process that would send out back the correct auto response to each person. In exactly 3 weeks, the backlog was cleared.

This is the power of system. It leverages time and effort. Instead of addressing one problem at a time, you create a system that can address bunch of problems all at once.

Another example . . . I used to work for a large bank (now part of JP Morgan Chase) as International Banking Coordinator. One of my main responsibilities was to take care of Japanese expatriate businessmen, who were not familiar with American banking system. It was in the 90s, and they had never used debit cards, didn’t know the difference between credit card and debit card, not to mention being unfamiliar with various security restrictions used for credit cards. My predecessor’s day was all about answering customer calls. Several months after I took the job, the angry or panicked calls were gone and I could focus on sales calls and learning about other banking services for my own growth.

How did I do it? I figured most problems can be tracked down to certain causes, and addressed them proactively in a systematic manner. As a starter, I added some info on the brochure we were using, educating them about the differences of American banking products and how they can take advantage of them. When I opened accounts for new clients, I took a few minutes explaining them, referring to the brochure, and this system of educating customers pretty much eliminated their confusion and complaints. Further, I would ask my new clients about their function as part of relationship building process, and if they were in sales or senior management, I would ask them if they travel on business to meet their customers. If they said yes, I asked them if I may remove one of the restriction on their credit card that blocks out-of-area usage. My clients loved me for being so attentive and helpful, and I became free from calls like, “ Aaaargh, I am at dinner with the president of my biggest customer and my credit card doesn’t work! What do I do!?”

To sum up, here is the basic procedure to build a good system:

1. Find pattern and categorize the problems
2. Identify the root cause(s)
3. Build system that addresses problems by the categories. Implement and verify the system.

Many people are so used to linear thinking that it will take some conscious learning to understand system. We are conditioned to just jump at the problem and “deal with” them. It takes fundamental change in thinking to sit back first to design and build the system. However, the rewards are huge. As I wrote in 5 Qualities I Find In Successful Entrepreneurs, I think this is one of the most critical skill for entrepreneurs. It is so important that I will write more about this in future posts.

Do you have your story of building your great system?

Thanks to Brad for including this post in Carnival of Sales & Management Success.