One of the best business books for 2011 was “Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You” by author John Warrillow. It consists of a number of real-life examples and business tips written in the form of a novel, so it is very easy to read.
Warrillow lists eight key factors that attract potential buyers to your business, like customer satisfaction and growth potential.
A factor that is the main topic of our article is called “Switzerland Structure”. We all know that Switzerland is the symbol of neutrality and independence. What does it mean in the terms of business, and how can you apply this to your company?
The main point is to reduce your reliance on anyone, from suppliers, employees, and customers to even you, as an only managing element (if you are a solo business owner). The ultimate goal of this business advice is to establish neutrality of operation and lower the risk of instability.
You will need to find more than one manufacturer that will be your supplier. Don’t rely too much on one or two external suppliers because you will soon become too dependent. The same applies to customers. Try to have at least 5-6 big clients, so you can allocate your income if some of them get into trouble.
Last, but not least, always be ready to lose your employee and to have an adequate substitute for him. If you are too reliant on one employee, they have an advantage and can dictate the terms.
Unless you are in a position to make your business run without you, your startup won’t be reaching its full potential and growth.
To create an independent business operation that won’t be fully dependable on you, there are several steps that you must take. We will list some of them along with business tips for their achievement.
Business tip #1: Automating your business
You need to split your business operations into segments that can be automated. By creating automation rules, the majority of work can be transferred from manual to automatic, which doesn’t require too much intervention from your side.
The sales process is a good example of possible automatization. Almost all companies have a mailing list that is regularly updated and maintained. When reaching out to the client, you need to be ready to do several follow-ups before getting the feedback. Meanwhile, you have a lot of work extracting new emails from various sources and sending business proposals to them. It is estimated this work can take up to several hours per week.
There are great software solutions for automatizing email outreach that will help you reduce the time needed for pulling out contacts and sending emails. One of the best is Zapier which connects with the APIs offered by the lead databases, email validation services, and email delivery tools to automate the process of extracting contacts from third-party databases, validating them, and sending out emails at predefined intervals. This also applies to newsletters.
Business tip #2: Document every step of your business
Every good practice inside your company needs to be well documented. Many small business owners think this is a waste of time but they don’t think ahead. When you need to hire additional employees or replace ones that left the company, the new staff will need some time to get familiar with your business procedures.
That period of time can be shortened by documenting roles and creating templates new employees need to follow. If you don’t document your business, no matter how quality employees you hire, they will need more time to start being productive at an acceptable level. And keep in mind that small business struggle to find high-quality staff because of competition, so they need to use any advantage they can.
And one of the biggest is easier documenting of work processes because small businesses are not as complicated as big ones, and their operations can be described in more detail.
You can use software solutions for this task as well. Buy a knowledge base software that can be populated over time from customer support queries.
The next step is to create a support page for your clients, vendors, and other interested parties where all the frequently asked questions will be answered. That page can be used by new employees to understand workflows, your business processes, and other requirements of their work position.
Business tip #3: Move your company virtual
By making your business independent, you don’t need to cut all your ties with it. You can delegate the majority of tasks, but it is still a good idea to monitor certain important tasks and motivate your team when necessary.
To do so, a good idea is to set up a virtual office that allows you to log in without having to physically be in the office with your team. Just as you don’t need to be physically present, the same applies to your team, as well.
There are a lot of CRM (online collaboration tools), and some are even free to use. You can use them to track the progress of tasks and communicate with your team. You can access those data from everywhere and leave your comments regarding potential doubts your employees have.
Invest in good video conferencing applications to conduct daily or weekly meetings. Although work from home principle proved useful, you will still want to build team spirit, and ensuring team members see and hear each other will help you achieve that.
Some other features your virtual office need to have are tools for time tracking, real-time messaging, and text and graphic visualization tools. It is important to share all the documents within the cloud and make a backup of everything.
Make your business run without you: conclusion
Of course, letting your business out of your hands isn’t possible in the early stages of the company’s lifetime. There are a lot of things you need to set up before being able to go independent. The early stages of business are very challenging, and you will want to be as involved as you can.
Only later, when your business is established, when you have a market, and a reliable team, you can use these business tips and let your business run without you. Remember, that independence is very appealing feature to investors and buyers!