How Much Money Do You Waste In Your Business?
Thursday, August 5th, 2010Is money making or money spending biggest in your business?
Last week I told you about the problem I had with my administration seven years ago. Admin was determinedly growing and spending my money and I was running both operations and marketing by myself because the guy I brought in with great credentials to help with operations was less than competent and actually preferred to add to the admin load. An interesting dynamic and it was good to review it again.
The other thing is that recruitment is really a marketing exercise where you let prospects know enough about what you are and are not about, to attract the right people and repel those that are unsuitable.
1. I see so many businesses like this. You should have three main sections to your business, Operations who bring in the money and work with your clients are the most important followed by
2. Marketing with the job of attracting the right clients to your business– and I did say marketing rather than just sales.
3. Admin is just there to provide support and billing. Admin tends to generate the most paper, files and waste in a lot of business who come to me for help.
If you run a small or micro business, you need to be spending more than 50% of your time effectively marketing. Your main job is marketing so that you have customers to work with. Simplify your admin, including accounts.
One thing I had real trouble getting my self styled “Office Manager” to understand was that so long as there are not big or regular discrepancies in petty cash, it does not make sense to spend $60 worth of time chasing 25cents petty cash discrepancy! This is crazy priorities.
Put your effort where the money IS and that is customer service. Make sure your procedures are based of the high risk areas of your business and do not include 3 pages about how to balance the petty cash or something equally trivial. Make sure you know what all your staff actually do and where they put most of their time and effort – their wages are your money.
I am not advocating only going the online and virtual way I mostly work of course. It suits me and my business but it has cost me over $300,000 to set up all my online training systems. It certainly would not work for all businesses.
Your take away message here is loud and clear. Put your effort and controls where your risks are greatest. Make sure that the money making and marketing sections of your business attract the most attention and keep your admin slim and low paper.
This is what I teach you to do in my training programs, whether you choose the coached group courses or the self paced do-it-yourself options. Stop wasting money with unbalanced effort now!
Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress! If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.
The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

