Running a Business

Six Areas to Assess
by Henry McCabe
A blog for businesses with 20 or fewer employees or for people planning on starting one.

In order to plan for future growth, you need to assess where you are now in order to identify what you must change to bring about growth. Assess your situation by answering a few questions about six areas of your business: Goals, Management, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance. My last post covered Goals, Management and Marketing. This covers the last thee.

Get Your Businesses Growing With SCORE Templates and Tools

4. Sales. Have I considered using other distribution channels besides the one I now use? Do I know what other distribution channels are available to me?  Is my advertising  program generating a sufficient number of qualified prospects? Have I defined what makes a prospect a qualified one?  Are I and my customer facing employees converting the right number of prospects to sales- not too few or too many? Do we have and use a planned selling process? Have I set sales goals for myself and my sales team? Do we meet our targets? If not, do I know why? Are you simply hoping prospects will place orders instead of leading them to do it? If the answer to the first eight questions is no and to the last is yes, then one way to foster growth is to design a selling system, and train everybody, especially yourself, to use it.

5. Finance. Do I have a way of keeping accurate financial records? Do I study my financial statements and reports each month looking for things that are out of line? Do I my monitor accounts receivable and payable every month?  Do I have a financial projection or budget or set of goals for each year? Am I meeting my goals? Has my cash position been improving year to year? Do I have a system for monitoring costs and expenses? Am I maintaining a relationship with a banker in preparation for the day I need a loan? Is the management of your investment and future financial well being on autopilot because you are not paying attention to the coming and going of your money? If the answer to the first eight questions is no and to the last is yes, then one way to foster growth is to put into place a financial planning, reporting and analysis system and then to use it.

6. Operations. Have I documented the various processes that occur in my business from order entry to final delivery? Have I taught my employees how things are to be done? Have I established goals for critical processes? Are my products and services of suitable quality and are they delivered on time most of the time? Have I defined my quality and delivery goals?  Do I have a way of measuring progress against goals? Do my employees know what the goals are and do I and they receive feedback on actual results? Will the business continue to operate in the manner I expect if for some reason I am absent for a period of time? Are your day to day operations run in a haphazard manner totally dependent upon your emotional reaction to the circumstances of the moment? If the answer to the first eight questions is no and to the last is yes, then one way to foster growth is to put into place an organized and documented management system and then to follow it.

Planning. The only thing we know for sure about any plan we make is that actual events will turn out to be different. We must not let the attempt to create a perfect plan get in the way of completing one at all. An imperfect plan is better than none at all.

Definition Quiz. What report shows the monetary results of last months operations?

Answer to last quiz: Marketing