If you’ve ever run a business, you’ll know that each day has its own. You could be signing mega contracts on one day and putting out fires that threaten your business’ existence the next day. It can be hard, near impossible, to predict the turn of events.
But you can better manage expectations and mitigate risks ensuring the business’ key pillars are steady enough to withstand storms; and ready to seize opportunities.
You can equate it with your personal health. When your physical, emotional, financial, and mental health is good, you’d be ready to take on any day and progress towards your goals.
For your business, you consider the following six pillars to be the health checkpoints:
1.Product
You’re in business because of your product/service. Customers developed an interest in it because it solves their problems. Is this still the case?
Things change, and so do people’s tastes and preferences. Your product must evolve along with them. Understanding at which stage of the product lifecycle you’re at will give you pointers to work on this.
A good service or product that solves real-world problems is 50% of your business’ value proposition to the market.
2. Processes
A good product with no robust processes to support its delivery will fail in the market.
How quickly can you deliver your product or service to the customer from the time of ordering? And at what cost?
Constantly checking and optimizing your production and delivery processes will put your business in good stead.
3. Brand
Perceptions are everything. How’s your business viewed relative to your competitors? Have you been deliberate about your messaging and fulfilling the promise you gave to your customers?
A great product supported by efficient processes but with a weak brand will be limited in the market.
4. Delivery
Are your last-mile operations in accordance with the business’ standards? Are they set up with the same conviction as you did with your product, processes, and brand?
If that’s not the case, your service/ product will likely fail in the market.
5. Business Development
More technically oriented businesses and service people may understand this point more.
There are exceptional lawyers, medical doctors, or tech gurus with the best products, ways of doing business and who carry a good name but operate below capacity. Their pitfall is usually a lack of a good grasp of marketing, accounting, and sales promotion that elevate business performance.
Customers don’t always consume the best but what’s put in front of them with an image of being the best.
6. People
Fortunately, many businesses are cognizant of how important people are but have yet to figure out the equation to build a progressive work culture with an all-around efficient team.
From the cleaner to the top executive, your people must have one attitude and be well-positioned to execute activities and objectives that help achieve your business goals.
People are your business’ greatest resource and any investment in their development should reflect this.
What are you going to do next?
The first five business health checkpoints we’ve discussed are operational and constitute about 50% of your business’ overall health. The people issue determines another solid 50%.
Understanding where you’re as a business will help inform what you should be prioritising. Just executing random activities and commands that don’t tie in with set goals will never cut it.
You can sign up to get a free assessment for your business by contacting our team using this link or the details provided below: