The system is the secret. Do you have the right systems in place to help your business grow in the weeks and months ahead?
We all like order. Order is the basis of having and executing a great system. When franchise candidates, franchisees, and prospective clients first interact with you and your brand, they can sense how orderly you are by how you act. When they sense that your franchise is orderly and organized, their sense of risk disappears, and they feel they can trust you.
This allows you to utilize your system of selling to help the prospective client find exactly what they are looking for and help them have an incredible experience with your brand.
When you refine operations to improve how the systems in your franchise work, you are working on your business, not just in it. These are the sixteen absolutely critical areas of systems you should have in your business:
1) Goals / Mission / Vision Systems (how you set your goals, mission, and vision for your business and how you will reward yourself for their accomplishment)
• Do you and every member of your team know your minimum, target, and optimal goals for each department of your business?
2 and 3) Inbound and Outbound Marketing Systems
• How is your story helping attract new prospects into your business? How is your story convincing existing clients that they made the best decision by choosing to buy from you?
• Do you have a marketing flow chart that shows what should happen to each individual entering your sales process and what will happen next?
• Do you have a systematic way in which you are capturing and following up with leads?
4 and 5) Your Pre-Sales and Marketing Systems
• What are you doing to prepare prospects to buy from you before they even go through your sales processes?
• Do you have a marketing calendar for next year in place and are you following it?
6) Your Sales & Persuasion Systems
• Are you training and rehearsing the information that will help you sell more now ?
• Do you have systems in place to help you review performance and replace those who aren’t selling?
7) Organizational and Internal Business Process Systems
• When a new client buys something from you, do you have an organized system that shows how the paper and the product flow through your business?
8) Follow-Up Systems
• Do you have a systematic process for following up if your prospects don’t become buyers after each step of your sales process?
9) Leadership Development Systems
• Do you have systems in place to help you develop leaders around you in your business?
10) Hiring, Staffing, and Training Systems
• Do you have a mandatory meeting that every employee must attend on a weekly basis?
• What are you doing to ensure that these meetings are effective and help increase performance?
11) Financial Systems (Sales and Operations)
• Do you have systems in place to monitor what is selling on a weekly or monthly basis?
• Are you using this information to make sure your operations are informed and effective?
12) Customer Service Systems
• Do you have a written plan for any and all customer service situations that come up that your team members can refer to in case they aren’t able to get a hold of you right away?
13) Crisis Management Systems
14) Productivity Systems (Personal and Team)
• Do you measure what you are doing on a daily and weekly basis to ensure that you are being as effective as you could with your time?
15) Creativity and Business Reinvention Systems
• What are you doing to anticipate, prepare, and deal with the changes that are happening in your business as the result of technology and competitors?
16) Systems for Balancing Your Work and Family
• Are you planning and actually taking breaks that help you rejuvenate yourself ?
I’ve written a book entitled The System is the Secret that goes into great depth about how to develop each of these systems in your business. If your business systems have room for improvement, this resource will be very helpful to you.