This mini-series has featured episodes to help you be organized for success. To complete the series, I’d like to discuss how to leverage laziness. All of us are lazy at times. We can’t always go, go, go and constantly work. The way we use inactivity or laziness will differentiate us. In this episode learn how to wear the employee hat AND the manager hat.
Here is a very important concept for building a business. Understand the difference between these two totally different things: (1) Working IN your business (2) Working ON your business.
To work IN your business, you must first and foremost be an employee. Whether you are a W-2 employee or an independent contractor, think of it as a job. All the previous organizational episodes have been geared to that mentality.
Now let’s discuss the other side of this concept: working ON your business. There is only a certain level of success which can be achieved by working IN the business. Then time must be set aside to work ON the business. The time comes in a single member organization to wear both the employee and the manager hats. Take time to think about the organization itself, how to delegate things, how to create new procedures, thinking outside the box about changing the structure of your business. There are some pitfalls of being the only worker in an organization. By working IN your business on and on, day after day, you’ll get burned out.
You may be saying, “I’m making sixteen sales a month and can’t seem to make any more than that. I have customers for whom I need to care. I have other things going on in my life. I’m making decent money, but how do I get past this?”
Continue making those sixteen sales every month and working the same hours. If you’re burned out and feel you can only give ten hours a day [or whatever number], do that. But then take thirty minutes or one more hour and work ON your business. Do this at the beginning of your day when you’re still fresh. Prospecting, closing deals, and paperwork become so mundane that you could probably do those in your sleep at this point. Now take some time every morning to think –
*Is there something that I could delegate?
*What daily tasks could I pay someone $10 or $12 an hour to do?
*How can I put procedure in place? What is step one, step two, etc?
*Think on creating the work load you can delegate.
That is called working ON your business! There are going to be pitfalls during this transition…
Your mind will be filled with all kinds of bad scenarios when you hire the first person. You’ll be terrified he/she is going to make a mistake. Let me save you a lot of time and heartache by assuring you the first new hire WILL make a mistake – every possible mistake you could imagine and other mistakes you didn’t even think of! That IS going to happen when you hire your first person. Just embrace it and enjoy the exciting transition. Making mistakes is awesome; it means we are learning, growing, and expanding.
Don’t delegate a core task to new hires. For a sales professional who is successfully selling, the new hire should not be the person who closes deals. If he/she sucks, then you just ruined your whole business! No, no, no – have the new hire do the paperwork when you close the deal. Or have him/her do the follow-up phone call. After establishing procedures and taking the new hire with you a few times, have that person eventually do installation. Another possibility would be hiring someone to go prospecting for you. Unless you plan to pay somebody as much as you are making, don’t expect your new hire to do everything as good as you would! You probably want to hire someone younger and less experienced. Pay a new hire $25,000 to $35,000 a year while you train him/her. Then increase the compensation as his/her value to the organization grows.
Think about making a procedure for delegation. Know where it’s written down or where the screen shot video is. Then you’re prepared to plug the next new hire right in by saying, “Watch these four videos.” Or “Read these procedures and let me know if you have any questions.”
You’ll feel the new employee is stealing your attention from more important tasks. This is a bold-faced lie which every leader faces when hiring begins. The feeling is, “Why am I spending two hours with this person to help him/her learn how to do something I knew how to do six months ago?” You don’t ever want to have to do that job again. So, you must delegate it to be free of it! Then create a procedure through that delegation process. When your new hire inevitably moves on and leaves the organization, the next delegation will be even easier.
Lack of communication with your employees is absolutely an irrevocable death sign for your organization. Without communication your business cannot grow; it will die. The business will rise no higher than the leader. The organization will make no more than those sixteen sales you were getting before hiring. Maybe there’ll only be fifteen sales, instead, now that you’re also dealing with new hires. You’re wasting time with the new hires if not really communicating with them.
In summary, leverage your laziness by converting thirty minutes to an hour to work ON your business. That’s the key to growing your organization to the next level. Keep working IN your business just as zealously. Decide how to delegate the things you’ve created which are successful. Wear the employee hat AND the manager hat. You can be organized for success!
Read the previous article here: Template Emails and Short Phone Calls – Organized for Success
Template Emails and Short Phone Calls – Organized for Success
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My Advice to a 20-Year-Old Starting Out in Merchant Services