Page 28 - Australian Paint & Panel Nov-Dec 2020
P. 28

                Business Matters
                 28
PAINT&PANEL NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2020
  SETTING UP
         THE MACHINE
          BUSINESS COACH BEN FEWTRELL ADVISES YOU ON HOW
TO GET YOUR BUSINESS RUNNING LIKE A SMOOTH MACHINE.
 WHENYOUSTARTOUTASA small business owner, you are wearing all the hats,
you’re doing the marketing, systemisation, recruitment, planning, lead generation and paying the bills, essentially you are doing eve- rything. As a small business owner, you may tend to complain about employees, for example, you may think a person from sales isn’t pulling their weight if they don’t follow up on clients and make sure products get delivered. But... they’re hired for sales, they should prob-
ably be doing sales, right?
This outlook can hinder your growth
as a business. You will grow until you reach a point where it seems like you have hit a glass ceiling and you’re unable to take yourself to the next level, you will stop growing. Basically, what you have to do is be clear who in your team is respon- sible for what. Who oversees each of your operations, who can you hold accounta- ble for each area? You have got to be clear about who is responsible for what.
Now, before we even talk about peo- ple, we have to talk about structuring your business for scalability. You must structure your business so it can grow effectively. So... what we will do is, we will think of different areas of the busi- ness as different machines. If you could build a business that used machines in- stead of people, you would be very clear about each machine’s function, wouldn’t you?
Ok, let’s imagine that instead of hiring a salesperson, you bought a machine that carried out sales. This machine guaran- teed three sales per week and an average dollar sale of X. You would buy this ma- chine expecting it to perform to this lev- el. If the machine didn’t perform to that
level, you would go back to the salesper- son and complain. Wouldn’t you?
Unfortunately, you can’t get a ma- chine for every role within your busi- ness, so you have to hire people. Now... your team is one of the most vital assets of your business. You have to make sure that every member of your team is very clear about what part of the machine they are operating or what part they play within the machine.
When you look at a business, there are different positions within it. Certain po- sitions are very quantifiable, while oth- ers can be a lot more difficult to meas- ure. For example, let’s imagine that you own a bus company. Let’s imagine that a bus driver didn’t stop at a particular stop they were meant to stop
at, its very easy to see that they haven’t com-
pleted their job up to standard isn’t it? Now, in the world of business, the roles aren’t just as clear and predictable. Your job as the leader is to work out how to make the roles in your business have clarity, for both the members in your team and for yourself. So... lets talk about what we like to call the
machine view.
THE MACHINE VIEW
In a business, there are only really four core functions that need to be fulfilled. If you think about it like this, you have to carry out these four functions really well to succeed.
The first function that must perform very well is lead generation. Your business needs to be able to generate qualified leads.
This is our first machine, its KPI’s are how many leads it’s generating, yes, it’s that simple.
                       










































































   26   27   28   29   30