We sometimes hear from small business owners who wish to replicate their successful business and expand to one or more new locations. They often say that they “…need someone to come and package up (their) business from head to toe so we can expand.” That’s what they say — but is that what they need?

Most companies that expand successfully do so with a combination of:

• Researching and documenting “best practices“;
• Process documentation, in the form of well-written policies and procedures;
• Customized employee training; and
• Implementing a quality management system (QMS)

so they get consistent results across all operations.

After a few e-mails back and forth between the small business owner and Bizmanualz, the gravity of the situation — their “replication strategy” — becomes apparent. The process of documenting best practices, implementing policies and procedures, training employees, and implementing a quality management system is no small undertaking — any one of them alone would be daunting, let alone all four. While the owner’s first inclination may be to have someone to come in and do it, seldom are they in a position to budget for it.

Nor would it be advisable, in most cases. For most of our customers, existing staff — labor — is the largest cost, by far. When you dig down for what the owner really wants, it’s to enable the current staff to achieve the desired growth without spending more money than they’re already spending on employees and related expenses. Given our customer’s practical concerns, our approach has evolved into guiding and enabling growth, not sending in a “hired gun” to do it for them. We guide growth through training and workshops, and we enable growth with our products and services.

Saving Time with Pre-Written Policies and Procedures

Our pre-written materials save you time by giving you a starting point and a framework. But, in the case of the business owner seeking growth, he’s asking, “Which procedures do I need to customize, why are they important, and once I’ve customized them, how do I know they’re working?” These and other questions are answered in our two-day roll-out training.

In our Implementation training, we help you find the answers you need and help select the right procedures to sustain growth. That way, your staff can build the best-practice procedures you need.

But wait! There’s more! With the training, you get a year’s worth of phone consultations. Once you’ve taken the Implementation training, pick up the phone and ask us anything you want. Contact us, or download a one-page flier about the roll-out training.

The training will show your team how to build — and sustain — a system of best practices for growth. We’ll help you select, modify, and apply our procedure templates to improve your current operations, making it cheaper for you to provide your service to your customers. Not only do you make your operations more effective and more efficient — saving you money and increasing your profits. In this tough economy, you’re better able to answer price challenges from competitors.

Supporting your Growth and Expansion with Software

Our customers have taught us that when their businesses expand geographically, they often face challenges in coordinating, controlling, and distributing their policies, procedures, and best practices among their locations. That’s why Bizmanualz is currently testing a new software platform that will help you handle these challenges. Once this platform is available, you’ll be able to rent access to our software platform and upload your procedures so that when you’re ready to expand, all your locations can access controlled releases of policies and procedures, as well as other key documents.

Furthermore, you’ll pay only for what you need! Billed monthly, our web-based software will be particularly cost-effective for our small-to-medium-sized customers. You’ll get the convenience, control, reporting, and smooth operations that you want, with none of the hassles of maintaining the software in-house. It will come pre-loaded with your Bizmanualz policies and procedures. All you’ll need is an Internet browser.

If you want to help us test our upcoming web-based policies and procedures management software release, please comment below or contact us via the Web. Our job is to help you grow efficiently and with as little risk as possible. Share your growth challenges with us, and we’ll reply with ideas and products to help you.

Does your B2B company struggle with how to approach the often overwhelming world of social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)? On one hand, you know you should be doing it. (”Everyone is doing it.”) But on the other, you’re not sure your professional clients will get it and/or participate in it.

We’ve been promoting our presence on social media sites quite a bit. We understand that some of our clients or potential clients (i.e., CEOs of small-to-medium-sized companies) may not buy into it yet, and that’s OK. But we’re about looking forward, not back. If we only looked at what has worked in the past, social media wouldn’t make much sense.

Looking forward, it’s not difficult to see the impact social media will make and already is making-especially in the business world. To put it into perspective: what if someone told you 12 years ago that a company website didn’t make sense? Well, this is just the next step.

We’ve become an interactive society. People don’t just want to read about your product. They want to try it, see pictures, make suggestions on how it could be better, forward it to their friends, Tweet about it, and subscribe to your feeds to make sure they like what you’re selling. Saying that your customer isn’t part of what is becoming the societal norm is like saying children don’t like candy. Well, maybe a minority don’t, but if you’re selling candy, which ones are you targeting? (By the way, here’s a ridiculous list of C-level Twitter users.)

It’s not enough to simply dip your toe into the proverbial social media water. If you have taken the plunge, promote it to show you’re in touch with current modes of communication-especially if you’re a B2B company. We feature icons to our social media pages on the bottom of our homepage, along the sidebars inside the website and blog, and on our social media web page.

What networks is your company on? How do you promote it?

Times are tough, the economy is struggling, and your customers just aren’t buying.  So what do you do?

Let’s take a hard look at your sales and marketing processes to find the top ten ways you can close more sales:

1. Increase Your Customer’s Life-Time Value (LTV).
   How profitable your customers are over time defines your LTV and is a key component of your strategic growth.  Companies spend ten times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.  Your current customers already know you, which means they are more likely to purchase from you again, spend more money with you, and therefore are likely to be more profitable.  If you don’t know your LTV, then how do you know how much money to spend and on which customer segment?
2. Improve Your Demand Forecasting.
   Every customer buys on a cycle. So this means you should track cycle times and variance to increase the accuracy of your forecasting and the loyalty of your customers.  If you don’t know when your customers need to reorder, then you may just lose them when the time comes for them to reorder.
3. Increase Your Sales Cycle Efficiency.
   There is an old sales adage that time kills deals.  The speed at which each prospect converts into a customer and the number of prospects required for conversion determines your sales cycle efficiency.  So ask yourself - are you taking the right steps to measure and reduce lost sales?
4. Improve Your Follow-up.
   Only about two percent (2%) of sales occur on the first contact.  Eighty percent (80%) of your sales will require five to eight contacts or touches of some type before you close the sale.  In other words, if you are contacting the prospect less than five times or more than eight times, then you could have a problem with follow-up in your sales process.
5. Increase Your Company’s Awareness.
   To keep the sales pipeline full of good quality leads you must continuously increase the awareness of your company and the solutions that it provides. Public relations is more efficient at building awareness than advertising, yet many companies spend wildly on advertising and trade shows while neglecting to fund public relations efforts. Increase your name recognition, not your budget.  Use more cost effective public relations.
6. Improve Your Lead Quality.
   Do you have methods in place to measure the conversion potential of each lead?  Lead qualification activities should pre-qualify every lead to ensure you take the right follow-up actions for the marketing offer. Strong leads produce strong sales.
7. Develop Your Lead Generation Process.
   Lead generation is a process, not an event.  So you need to ensure that you have a regular stream of article publishing (blog) activities occurring.  In today’s web 2.0 connected world, you should be using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to increase your exposure and connect to your community.
8. Reduce Your Sales Discounting.
   Discounts represent deficiencies in your sales & marketing processes, which means you should be careful how often you discount. Instead, look for the root cause of your sales or marketing deficiency and you will reduce the need to discount. Customers believe opportunity costs outweigh operating costs. If you show your customers your value (more marketing), they won’t focus so much on price.
9. Train Your Sales and Marketing Personnel.
   Provide your sales and marketing people with more regular formal training.  Arming them with better product knowledge, as well as presentation, negotiation and selling skills, will improve their effectiveness and boost both employee morale and your bottom line - a win-win for everybody.
10. Understand the Problem You are Solving.
    Know what problem you are solving (as the customer sees it) to create an accurate value proposition.  Don’t pretend to understand the customer… ask them.  Obtain the voice of the customer through interviews, focus groups, and real two-way communication.  Ask probing questions to ensure that you have an accurate definition of your product.  Remember, a product encompasses everything that customers experience, including all the people the customer comes in contact with to make up the experience itself.