Your operations strategy is how you make things happen; this is where the rubber meets the road! How will you deliver on everything that’s been promised and communicated in your sales, marketing and branding strategies?
Psst…if you want a deep dive on all 9 strategies that will propel your business to massive growth, book your spot to my FREE masterclass now!
Systems Aren’t “Sexy”, but the Results They Get Your Business Are!
For this critical piece of the puzzle, the most important thing to consider is, how systemized your business is. Systems and processes that are REPEATABLE where people can be interchanged are absolutely key to grow and scale.
William Edwards Deming reinvigorated Japanese manufacturing as an expert in systems designs. According to him, 94% of all errors are all systems-based (or lack of a system) and only 6% of errors are human-based.
Most business owners would assume human error accounts for much more than 6% but fundamentally when you have a poor system in place or none at all, you’re setting your business up for failure.
Systems are not sexy or exciting for most people, but they’re incredibly important and they give your team the stability and structure needed to get sexy results!
They allow your customers to trust that you’ll be able to deliver on what you promise. If they get a similar experience every time they come to you, they’ll know they can count on you for a certain level of service and quality.
Ask yourself, “Am I a product or service-based business?”
If you sell products, you have to consider your supply chain management, for example.
If you offer services, you need to ensure your capacity and talent will allow you to deliver the highest quality service possible to your customers or clients.
As I mentioned before, systems provide a stable environment for your team and the ability to do what you said you would in the sales, marketing and branding strategies. Your operations strategy outlines how your brand is experienced by your customers and clients
You need to take your clients on a journey, from the start of interactions with your business right through to delivering what you promised, you need to do everything to exceed their expectations. Even a tiny bit will make a huge difference.
Want to learn exactly how you can implement foolproof systems in your business?
Make Your Customers and Prospects Talk
Operations are so critical because how you make things happen will determine whether people talk about your business or not. For example, one of the key strategies for marketing is referrals. While you have a system set up for referrals, the foundation for attracting customers is doing a really great job from an operations point of view.
The Predictable WOW Factor
With your operations strategy, you want to delight and surprise your target audience.
Build systems, processes and structures that make that WOW factor predictable. Make sure it’s built into how you run your business and at every step of the way, exceed your customers’ expectations.
Establish the “rules of the game”. These allow you to set the expectations of what has to happen when and what’s non-negotiable. Make sure your team is aligned about what will or won’t happen at various points in time.
Aim for Never-Ending Improvement
Work toward constant and never-ending improvement. This means gaining efficiency, improving your processes and how people interact with your business. Doing so will require revised implementation, in which project management might become part of the process. If you’re going to implement a change to the business, project management will show you who will be responsible for it, when you want things to be implemented and what the result will/should be. It will also help you make sure that everyone’s aligned with any changes to any systems and operations.
Any change you make needs to make things better – your team, your customers’ lives, the world. When making changes in your systems and operations, avoid adding more work or making things more difficult for any one team, if there are teams that are thriving within the company.
Build an Operations Strategy that Gets You “Sexy” Results! A strategy that creates predictable wow factor time and time again.
