Are you the best at what you do?

Do you know that your services are the best available? - Do you know what your competition is doing?

Far too often I am called in to discuss how a business can beat the opposition and be better at what they do in a range of other areas, (management and staff development.) Over time I have come to notice that many aspects of the business finding better ideas to ‘beat the competition’, could have been developed from within, or by working on the ideal of constant and never ending improvement.

Unfortunately many smaller businesses have little idea of where to start in this process and can often be caught saying, “We are working so hard, we simply can not get the time to do anything else!” If on the other hand they set aside an hour per week to plan these things they could discover how to build a better business.

Being No:1
How would you go about being the No:1 organisation, doing what you do? Consider the changes you may have to put in place, are they as difficult as you think they are? Would they be so costly? Would they upset the staff that much? And above all where would you start?

So many questions require time and some effort on your behalf. Often utilising the efforts of a professional such as an accountant, or business development advisor will give you some ideas to work with.

Often businesses find that a fresh view point can give them great options to work with and flexibility to go the next step.

Even a humble milk bar can do this. They could start by asking, do we provide the best service for what we have? Are we offering a range of products that our customers want, How well do we present our wares? Is the business running at a profit? How well do we make the customers feel? How do we add value to the customers and the level of service we have.

Measure what you do.
How would you measure what you do to ensure you are the best, (not just in your head either) and can keep your business that way? For some it can be snooping around other businesses like yours and comparing, asking customers and clients or simply making sure you are at the cutting edge in your industry by having the best - Displays - Products - Staff - Technology - Ideas etc etc.

In time any business that gets itself in to difficulty, is obviously going to be lacking in one or two things…. $$ or customers. By measuring what you do to some degreee can assist you to overcome these difficulties if you know what area is providing you the most difficulty. For example, if I have plenty of customers and lack $$ then I may not be charging enough for the products and or service I provide. On the other hand, plenty of $$ and not many customers may mean the profit margin is too high. Only you will know the balance that you want to have here.

Many of the businesses I have looked at over the past few years have had no way of knowing how many customers they had on any given day, in any given week. Nor were they able to give any reasonable feedback on $$ earnt at the same time last year. In time a growing business can develop a few simple strategies to ensure they can be No:1 and measurement of the basics is one of them.

If for example your business does well on a few days per week and on the other days it performs miserably, ask your self what is the cause? Is it that people do not need your services on those days, is your target market elsewhere (eg kids at school therefore not able to shop) are you open enough for when your target market wants to shop?

There will always be plenty of ways to maximise the potential of your business and get better results. In time you should be able to grow and develop your business and give your customers a worthwhile service that is profitable for all concerned, but only when you put an effective measurement plan into practice.

In the end it’s up to you do you want to be the best, or part of the rest?

Stumble it!