The 3 Ps for Business Success

If you want your business to succeed, you absolutely must focus on three key variables: people, process, and product. The three Ps, as they’re often called, provide the highest return for your efforts because they act as the cornerstone for everything your business does.

Before the internet revolution, the three Ps — people, process, product — were all tangible objects that you could literally put your hands on.

Nowadays businesses are slowly migrating the three Ps online.

What are the 3 Ps?

People

People not only refers to your company employees and other contractors that help you to deliver your products and services, but it also refers to all of the other relationships you need to keep your business running smoothly, including:

• Customers
• Vendors
• Suppliers
• Advisers
• Partners
• Investors

There’s a reason people come first in the people, process, product trilogy — without these stakeholders, your business would struggle. It benefits you to put significant time, effort, and, yes, money, into cultivating these relationships.

Your business depends on it.

Process

Process is the actions your business takes to perform a specific function. Businesses of all sizes have a range of processes, including:

• Delivering a service
• Creating a product
• Making a sales presentation
• Responding to emergencies
• Answering the phone
• Providing information to customers
• Keeping track of supplies on hand

Having a process in place essentially answers questions like:

• How do we do X?
• When do we do Y?
• Why do we do Z?

Having processes in place will allow your business to thrive without you, it will ensure your customers receive the same quality customer service every time.

It will simplify onboarding new employees and reducing costs, as with good processes, you and your business will not depend on specific skills to delivery your product or service.

To learn more about how processes can help you grow your business, read our article below.

<< Processes: The Secret Weapon To Grow Your Business>>

Product

Your product is what your business has to offer. It could be a tangible “thing” that you can hold in your hand. Or it could be a service that is only visible by its results.

Your product — including your brand and your image — is the most visible part of your business and, as such, deserves your focus. But not to the detriment of people and process.

In fact, it’s imperative to view people, process, and product as a system in which each separate part depends on the part before it.

People reinforce the process. Process reinforces the product. Product reinforces the people. On and on this goes in a spiral that — if managed correctly — moves in an upward direction and leads to sales and success.

Why are the 3 Ps of business so important?

Without good?people in the right roles, your small business will struggle to serve customers, reducing your growth potential.

If you don’t put effective processes in place for sales, production, billing, accounting and customer relationship management (CRM), your overhead costs will increase, reducing profitability.

And if you don’t have products or services that meet the needs of your market, it won’t be long before your small business may be forced to close its doors.

Where can you start?

People — Stress Quality And Diversity

Managing the first “P” (People) begins with assembling the best team. For most businesses, that involves two critical factors:

• Quality over quantity
• Diversity over homogeneity

No amount of unskilled team members can accomplish the same work as one quality employee.

Focus on hiring the right people with the right skills for the job at hand. Don’t settle for less in the hopes that hiring more team members will make up for it in the end. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Similarly, a diverse workforce is always more productive than a homogenous one. Diversity provides a whole host of benefits, including:

• Better employee performance
• More skill
• More experience
• A larger talent pool
• Creative innovation
• Access to a broader client base
• Learning experiences
• Faster problem solving
• More informed decision making

These benefits are extremely important for your business because they keep you competitive in an increasingly global — and diverse — world.

Here are six tips for leading and managing people:

1. Recruit, hire and retain good people from diverse backgrounds who fit into your organisation.
2. Put them into the right roles.
3. Offer your people opportunities to learn new skills and advance their careers.
4. Create a positive work environment that encourages people to do their best.
5. Insist on accountability and monitor individual and team performance.
6. Provide clear feedback and don’t play the blame game.

Process — Plan For Change

All businesses start small. But, with the right management, growth happens quickly. This growth brings with it an array of new issues that your business might not be prepared to handle.

You can prevent stagnation and give your business the highest chance for success by planning for change while your business is small. Small processes are much more amenable to change.

That’s not to say that you should restrict growth. Instead, perfect your processes early on and build in strategies for growth before that time comes.

When you’re able to scale your processes up or down at a moment’s notice, you give your business more of a chance to respond to changes in the market and more of a chance to stay profitable longer.

Here are five tips for improving your processes:

1. Identify the processes that are key for the smooth functioning of your company.
2. Pay attention to your daily cash flow.
3. Know your costs for labour and materials.
4. Track product waste and employee downtime to identify bottlenecks.
5. Talk with your sales team about improving the customer relationship management (CRM) process.
6. Encourage your employees to offer suggestions for improving your processes, as they may spot inefficiencies you may be missing.

Product — Identify The Proper Market

At the early stages of your business, it’s vital to identify the proper market for your product or service. As your business continues to grow in size and scope, it’s equally vital to constantly reexamine your market to ensure that your people and processes are focused on the right goals.

As you do this, don’t forget to look ways of improving customer's satisfaction by reducing friction and increasing customers' conversion as well as identifying recurring revenue opportunities.

Here are six tips for capitalising on your products:

1. Conduct surveys and hold focus groups to identify customer trends.
2. Identify new channels to sell your products.
3. Consider licensing opportunities that could generate income from fees.
4. Monitor customer rating and review sites to see how your products are received.
5. Look for ways to offer “new and improved” products to your current customers.
6. Create cross-selling and up-selling opportunities by expanding your product line.

Two tools that will help you here are SWOT Analysis and PESTEL Analysis.

Conclusion

The People, Process, Product principle is an excellent tool for business owners, because it allows you to focus on the many moving parts of your business with a systems mindset.

Profit and revenue are important for any business to succeed – and these are bi products of consistent systems and processes.

By focusing on the People, Process, Product principle, you’ll have the three key areas to break down, and focus on to succeed.

We can help you to implement the People, Process and Product principle in your company.

Book your FREE Consultation on this link

DISCLAIMER:

This article was written based on the original articles below.

https://www.bondcollective.com/blog/people-process-product/

https://www.marcuslemonis.com/business/3ps-of-business

https://www.5percentinstitute.com/people-process-product-3-x-words-to-succeed/