Walk a Different Mile – Seeing Other Perspectives As a Small Business Owner

A wise old saying suggests that you try walking a mile in another’s shoes to improve your own perspective.

This advice can be especially pertinent to a small business owner. By trying to see things from another important perspective, you can identify areas of your business that might need improving.
Try these shoes on for size:

An Employee. What should an employee know about the business? The products and services? The warranties and service agreements? Handling customer service issues? By placing yourself in the position of an employee, you can identify common situations and see how you, as a business owner, can provide better direction. Talk to your employees, and see where what you think differs from what they think, and then work to close the gap. Bringing all employees to the same starting point is the first step toward providing better service.
A Customer. What does the average customer know about your business? Its history? Its direction? Its policies? What brings them back or makes them look to other options? What makes them choose your business over a competitor? What else would they like to see? Use a survey or customer poll to get a better feel for the real answers to these questions. Look at what you think the customers believe and compare it to what they tell you in comment cards, seeking to eliminate any gaps. If the customer doesn’t see the business as you wish them to, you may have to do some better marketing or look at changing some policies and procedures.
A Prospective Customer. What makes a connection to your ideal new customer? Is it a service or pricing difference? Is it your location or your product selection? Maybe it is the attitude of service. By identifying how you’d like to appear to a prospective new client, you can see where your business might need tightening-up. Similarly, if you imagine what an exiting or disgruntled customer might be thinking, you can see where you might take measures to improve the experiences that encourage repeat business.

As a small business owner, you don’t want to live in an ivory tower. While it is important to have a high-level view of what your business is doing and where it is going, the truth of where you actually are is often held in the minute details that surround you every day. By taking a different perspective to see these details more clearly, you will create an ongoing opportunity within your business to learn, to improve, and to grow.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. I’ve read many books and spoken to quite a few experts and from all this research I can tell you the following is true for every business.

There are 5 main parts (thanks go to Eben Pagan for his analysis of the business model I’m about to use):

1. You

2. Your Market

3. Your Marketing

4. Your People

5. Your Processes

This can be broken down further.

1. You – This is your personal self development. I can see 5 more areas where if you’re ignoring one, or focusing too much on the others, you’ll be missing out on productivity.

– Education
– Relationships
– Reflection
– Health
– Business

Make time for all these areas, and you’ll be fine.

2. Your market – This is an assessment of the people who are potential clients/customers. Is there a market? Who are they? Are they hungry? For what? What are they’re problems and needs? How do they like to be contacted?

All good questions, get to know your market and you’ll get more respect and more business.

3. Your Marketing

There are a further 3 ways to make more money from your market right now:

– Get more clients
– Sell more to your clients
– Get your clients to come back (continuity)

4. Your people – There are so many smart people out there, but the major distinction to be made is looking for smart people who are committed to helping you achieve your goals. You’re looking for stars right off the bat. It’s no use getting someone for the job that’s not good at it already. Get someone better than you so they can train you!

Tips for team members:

– Become a mentor/coach
– not a manager
– Give them tasks and leave them alone!
– Get daily/weekly/monthly reports to stay on track
– Combine staff in complementary teams
– People who work well together

5. Your processes – Get a piece of paper right now, and write down all the tasks that get done on a daily basis. These are your processes. (you might want to add some after reading this list!). There is money to be saved, and efficiency to be gained by working this list down to it’s essentials and making efficient systems out of it.

– Get rid of the waste
– Streamline tasks into a production line
– Group similar tasks
– Use a production line mentality

These are just some ideas off the top of my head but they’ll be different for each industry.

The most important advice I can give for any business struggling during economic hardship is this:

Make a list of the 3 most important things that need to be done.

Do the first one.

When that’s done, do the second one,

And when that’s done, do the third.

When you’re done, make a new list!