Four Major Tips to Running a Business
Owning and running a business obviously isn’t a walk in the park. Not all your business ideas – no matter how sure you are of them – will do well in the marketplace. You need to regularly keep your processes in check to keep your business afloat and successful, especially when there are competitors with more experience and resources than you.
Whether you manage a big or small business, you should always have plans A – Z for when things go awry. Many entrepreneurs have failed in keeping up with demands despite having the resources and experience so here are four major tips to help you keep your business running:
- Keep your service and/or product quality in check
Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, emphasized how a company’s commitment to quality has to come from the top. Unless you set quality as a non-negotiable goal, your employees will end up sacrificing it to meet monthly quotas or targets. Commit to meeting your monthly quality goals, track mistakes and correct them, invest in trainings and introduce new techniques to continuously work on keeping your quality high.
- Educate yourself and your staff
Investing in education and employee training will not only improve your service or product quality, it can also improve employee performance and increase employee satisfaction.For small businesses, even simple lunch-and-learns can reap positive results. You can also organize boot camps to address any weakness in your employee’s workplace skills. Lateral leadership programs, on the other hand, is a great way to get innovative ideas from your staff and increase employee engagement. Regardless of what type of training program you choose, it can benefit you, your workers, and your sales.
- Hire the right people
Your employees make the first impression to your customers – they set the tone to how your customers see you and your company. Bad employees can affect your sales and cost the company unwanted expenses because of negligence or simply, lack of care. While this may be common sense to most business owners, hiring the right people can be overlooked due to time constraints or lack of better judgement. Make sure to test every applicant on their skill, interview them to understand their personality and have them undergo all the necessary tests, like drug tests. For small businesses, you can cut down on costs by using online test sites or interview questions as well as use home drug testing kits which give instant lab results.
- Listen to your customers
You’ll be amazed at how easily some experienced entrepreneurs disregard what their customers have to say and prioritize what they have in mind. If your customer is unsatisfied with your service or how your product turned out, take the initiative to correct the issue. Don’t wait for a simple dissatisfaction to turn into a full-blown complaint.
Treat your business as if it is your home, never fail to make it feel cared for and make sure that the ones who are handling it are capable.