If you are serious about growing your business you need to instil an ethos of excellence in every aspect of your business development.
Have a look on a regular basis and examine the strengths of your business model to evaluate how they can become even more formidable. Highlight your weaknesses and discuss the methods that you can use to either remove them completely or make them less obvious.
Engage your employees as they are closest to the customers. Listen to their feedback and ask them to come up with solutions. When your people come up with a great idea, give them feedback as to the implementation of it. If you chose to disregard it or want to move in a different direction, explain to them the reasons why.
Often in a small organisation rifts can develop between different departments. The sales and marketing side might dislike the bookkeeping and account side due to the way they deal with the customer s payment issues.
The people in distribution sometime get frustrated with the sales department for not giving them enough notice to properly handle the order!
The best way to overcome these problems is by keeping lines of communication open and having the right people in charge of dialogue between the key departments.
If your employees believe they are being listened to, you will empower them and make them feel more motivated. The more motivated they feel the more productive they will become. The more productive they are the better your business will perform.
Engage your customers and ask them how you can provide better service. Send out a questionnaire or invite them to a meeting to discuss how you can create closer ties. If they feel that they have had a say in how your business services them, they are less likely to move just because of price.
Would a commitment from your customers allow you to offer a better service or keener price? If they gave you more time to deliver their goods would that make a difference? Could you get them to place a larger order by offering them a better price and then they can draw of their requirements as and when they need it? If your customers know the reasons why you sometimes have difficulties meeting their requirements they might come up with the right solution.
Get together with your suppliers and look at improving every aspect of their service to you. Examine how they deal with your business from initial contact, handling your order, keeping you updated as to its progress until final delivery.
How could you make it easier for them to supply you? Would a monthly, quarterly or annual commitment make it easier for them to always be in stock of your regular requirements? Could the payment process be streamlined so that they are always aware of date of delivery of funds? Are they packaging your order in the way that works best for both of you? How do they deal with damaged stock and can you decrease the amount of returns?
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