Committing to your business and putting in the time is not only admirable, it is one of the keys to success. You truly do get out what you put in. The question is, “is your organization getting to full benefit of your time?” One area that often gets less than the optimal commitment is in training. In smaller companies, and in particular the service industry, training is an  often neglected commodity. Let’s say you are a plumber and have opened your own plumbing company. Sure you have trained your journeyman plumbers to do the basic tasks, but you reserve the more challenging work for yourself out of fear the “new guys” might fowl it up. You also handle all of the scheduling for the daily work load; taking all of the sales calls after they are first taken by your reception staff. You are proud of yourself because you have used the latest wireless technology to get these sales calls to you, and you have wireless capacity for remote scheduling. Your wife mentions to you that you have worked past 10:00 PM just about every night this month. Since she does the books, she also mentions that overtime is way up and cutting into the profit. It seems that as your company’s good reputation spreads, the amount of more complicated work that your competitors are weak in, is now coming your way. Since you do this work, you travel all over the county to get it done. You take at least one journeyman on each of these jobs, resulting in the overtime. What should you do? You would like to train other members of your team to do this work, but you just don’t have the time.

This is a classic case of growing pains, and can happen to businesses big and small, old and new. Early preemptive training of the journeyman plumbers as well as training the reception staff to handle dispatching would have stopped this problem before it even happened.

Often the Boss doesn’t want to give up this much control. His or her name is on the line and he or she doesn’t want someone else to screw things up. Every owner and senior manager of every company should train thier staff so that they can be away from the office for a month and operations would continue smoothly in their absence. But succession in a team and in a company is another subject on its own.

In many instances, the owner is the top producer. This being said, owners are managers. The definition of management is quite simply getting things accomplished through the effort of others. As much as possible, owners should spend their time coaching, mentoring and managing team members. In larger companies, owners spend time managing senior managers. In smaller companies, the owner may interface daily with the entire team.

Anytime your company’s profitability is suffering, a financial review is called for. Revenue and expenses should be compared to previous periods and to peer groups. Any areas where there are gaps should be investigated thoroughly. Every owner/manager of a company should invest time in regular analysis of the company or department, to look for any low hanging fruit; those things that can produce the most immediate and meaningful improvement to the operation. Once this analysis is satisfactorily completed, a plan and forecast should be developed and monitored.

This just scratches the surface, but business owners and managers should make sure the company is leveraging their time in the most efficient and productive way possible. Remember, the speed of the leader determines the speed of the pack. Use your time wisely and you staff will as well.

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This brings up the main reason for using a consultant. Forgive me for being trite but it is the “forest for the trees” syndrome. Managers and owners are most often very competent people, and usually great at solving problems and coaching their staff. If not, they would not be in the position they are in. But if you cannot see the problem, you cannot solve it.

Consistent problems in organizations do not happen overnight. The ones that do are usually solved by management quickly. The more nagging chronic problems occur so slowly that they are not so easily noticed until they begin to do damage. It is best if you can find these issues before the real damage is done, and a consultant will most often be able to identify these issues.

I was consulting for a car dealership that had an issue in the used car department. This dealership was not turning used inventory fast enough to get the return on capital they desired. The marketing was top shelf and the staff very competent. The root cause of the problem was that it was taking 12 days on average to get a used vehicle from trade in or purchase, to on the lot and posted on the internet, thus creating a period of frozen capital. While the vehicles were in the process of getting ready, the capital was no longer at work. Reducing the time to get the vehicles on the lot would thaw the capital so it could be used to buy more inventories and thus accelerate the velocity of the capital, as well as the production and profitability of the used car department.

Often the first reaction to a problem is to add more staff. More people are rarely the solution. Adding staff increases expense and frustrates management as they try to accomplish an increase in net return on sales. Our recommendation as a solution to this problem was to formalize a process, break some paradigms by reassigning responsibilities and make better use of existing technology, thereby reducing the time to get a car on the lot and posted on the internet to three days. Since industry statistics suggest that over 70% of used vehicle sales are of inventory less than 15 days old, the benefits of a three day turn around in reconditioning are huge.

How was I able to see this solution? It is almost with embarrassment that I tell you that I simply saw this process somewhere else. Tony Robbins, the famed and hugely successful motivational speaker says this, and I paraphrase with my apologies to Tony: “If you want to be good at something, find someone who is among the best at it and copy them.” Consultants become good through experience and observation. I know that in my business career I have made a lot of mistakes. I often tell people that assuming I have learned from all my mistakes, I have made so many that I could be the smartest man in the world. When you hire a consultant, you are employing experience and a new point of view. How often have you said, “I wish I had that to do over again”? A consultant may stop you from making a mistake he or she has either already made or has seen someone else make.

I would suggest you ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you keeping as much of your revenue as you would like or expect?

2. Are you at or above your peers in sales or revenue levels?

3. Is your market share above industry standards or your expectations?

4. Is there interdepartmental finger pointing in your organization?

5. Do you pull monthly financials and can you use them to measure departmental productivity?

6. Are you generally happy with the way things are going in your company?

If you answered yes to any of the first four questions, or if you answered no to questions five or six, you could probably benefit from consulting.

Performance Business Consulting is available for complimentary initial consultative interviews. Make your request on our web site at www.performancebusinessconsulting.com. I am humbled that you have taken time to read this article. Thank you.

Lee Denny
Performance Business Consulting
“We make your business perform”