Evolve YOUR Business to Scale Up

In the big city of business it's time to add some offense to that passive "Marketing" work and sync up your company to target "doing" not "did". Aligning behind an accurate forecast is the dream, right. So to get companies forward looking and organized from front to back, we focus on the central hub, Sales Processes. Creating consecutive stages, supported by tasks that represent downstream workflow, drives efficiency while spying on sales likelihood.

Define and Align

I'll agree there are unique facets to your business if you agree every business operation is pretty much the same. What does that mean? Fundamentally the component parts of a business organization are Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Operations and Accounting. Every aspect of your business falls categorically inline with these terms. Under these maxims there is understandable nuance but we must establish common ground to create progress. To take this idea a bit further Let's start to think of your company as a relay race with a series of baton transitions. Each go round on the track represents the work an individual has done to support your business.

The race starts.

Breaking our business into a team of specialists with distinct responsibilities we can imagine a scene. This may be a bit challenging at first because many companies even struggle differentiating Marketing from Sales but the components of business mentioned above represent our Big City Business relay team. Conceptualize for a moment the starter pistol popping off and the first runner (Marketer) erupting from the blocks. The sprint begins as brand new content is released into the world. To stay above the details let's save the Marketing Channel discussion for a different day. Our runner (Marketer) has created a wave the world will react to, hopefully propelling interest in your company.

As the Marketer rounds the last corner of the first leg, striding out to transition the suspect/prospect to the next runner (Salesperson), they have to prepare the baton. Holding it as still as possible, the baton is accurately passed from hand to outstretched hand. The Marketing to Sales Transition has happened as suspect has moved to a prospect. The Sales runner is already in motion as they pull the "Opportunity" baton from the Marketing department.

Striding out the Sales runner speeds through the straight away pulling away from competition. Without really glancing side to side our Sales person is executing the process to get through this leg of the race, extending a gap between the competitors on the track today. The plan for this team is to place the fasted team member in the second leg to create a race from ahead for the next departments runners to deliver the win.

The Sales runner closes the baton transition with the same practiced accuracy as the Marketing to Sales transition. Customer Service is off and running. Some teams use the production runner here but the anchor leg is always accounting. The final runner is the detail racer, the runner that knows if this race is record setting or considers the up coming races. The Anchor Accounting runner needs to gauge where the finish is and save enough for the remaining races in the tournament.

There is a lot to consider in this example. The comparative journey is the message we need to understand. Organizational thought, daily practice and detailed techniques to expertly coordinate is what Coaches/Managers need to consider. People are hired like athletes are recruited. Teams of individuals need specific character roles filled to complete the season or in the case of business, the fiscal year. Defining team member characteristics and the responsibilities is a mirror image of a job description. Aligning the teams success to a definitive finish line is the key to knowing where the gaps are in your organization.

Start at the Beginning

I like to talk about the life-cycle of a company and the leadership characters guiding organizations. One example we, in business, are familiar with is the term "Fire Fighting". Understanding that not everything has to be a fire is something evolving entrepreneurs understand and stagnant business owners refuse. That said let's get back to the Big City of Business image.

As the Mayor of of the city you are constantly dousing fires. For a while you were driving around town throwing water on fires by yourself. Sometimes the fires just burned up sheds that were less important than garages. Your are a smart leader and know if you let houses burn you will lose the city so priorities are priorities. Garden tools are not people right. Since your city has grown under your leadership you are less and less able to get to burning homes. You've hired on some people to help you extinguish little fires you can't get to and support you on larger fire you really can't handle on your own.

At first this approach is gaining ground. Your team is saving most of the homes and minimizing shed and garage losses. They've upgraded the type cups, bowls, buckets and squirt guns they use to saturate the flames to water tanks on trucks. The team has grown to specialists focused on tactics to calculate wind speed and direction. Your business has become professionals.

During all this upgrading and training to become better at minimizing fire damage, no one ever stopped to examine the causes of the fires. As you, a driven mayor, saw blazes start the only option was to put them out. This illustration is written to illuminate the evolution of a small business, evolving to a medium size company which scales to an enterprise. At some point examining the cause of the fire rather than reacting to the fact it exists has to be investigated and nullified.

Discover. Disrupt. Rethink.

Start-up businesses are clearly different than companies in business for 5 years and these organizations are a wholly different story at a 100 year perspective. With a simple Gap Analysis we start to discover where a company is today, target the preferred outcome for an organization then start the exercise of changing course a few degree's at a time. This type approach supports blind spot recognition and assigns executable accountability. Generally its easiest to take the first step to a destination that has been mapped.

Once we discover our motivations and target a destination with an arrival date the fun begins, Change Management. The first thing to understand is this is a people driven endeavor that takes a certain mentality. Maintainer type Managers are quite a bit different than change managers so we should recognize this by repositioning or bringing in guidance. Generally Maintenance management is a long term perspective strategic execution whereas Change Management is shorter term Strategy and Tactic development.

Maintenance Management - Consistent process execution under a predetermined system.

Change Management - Creates and builds buy-in to system development for Maintenance Managers to execute consistently

During the Disrupt phase everyone is uncomfortable, learning new ways to do business and learning tactical approaches to the hand-offs we highlighted through the relay race analogy earlier in this article. Fundamentally each organizational perspective is defined and a clear understanding of deliverable materializes. The main focus is taking the familiarity of the past and coupling it with frameworks designed to multiply effort. Everyone should know their role and what is tactically executed by the role preceding. As the hand-off at Marketing to Sales goes, the aim of Marketing is to deliver a lead in task 1-2 of Stage 1 of the Sales process. This momentum should carry through "Opportunity" management from Sales to Production/Operations/Customer Service or which ever "Runner" is taking the baton in your concept of business.

This disruption resonates from each fundamental unit within the company, up through the hierarchy of the business organization to top level executives. Applying design thinking to an enterprise is a paradigm shift from the "Mayor of of Big City Business" on-boarding fire fighters to coveting those who streamline workflow with a downstream focus on efficient workflow. Recognizing this is very much a redefinition of categorical work. The previous standard of measure for "Good Worker" and even company success forever changes.

By redefining business under segmentation with specific target goals our teams need to rethink the definition of success. The reason fires start becomes the discussion. Not how to build a better container to put out the fire. Preventative measures with forethought on systematization contributes to the bottom-line while Marketing channel ROI is measured with the Sales process increasing Revenue to record setting sales. Just as the P&L statement is your rudder steering business from behind, systems to support Sales fulfill positive forward progress by unifying humans on a quest to well defined success.

Marketing Channel Create Lead > Lead Create Opportunity > Opportunity Create Revenue

As this cycle perpetuates itself we consolidate more and more information on customers driving them to become clients.