Running a successful enterprise is not a matter of chance. Sure, luck can help give you a boost, while an unlucky turn of events might slightly slow you down but there’s a pretty good reason why some businesses make it and others don’t. It all comes down to the reliability and sustainability of an enterprise. It’s also about creating a business that can thrive in the long run by making systemic changes that will make it more efficient. With all of this in mind, here are the top eight tips to help unlock the full potential of your enterprise.
1. Hire the right people
The first thing you need to understand is that you can’t do it all on your own. This is why it’s such a high priority that you actually make a great team. This consists of two things. First, you need to hire the right people. Second, you need to recognize employee types that you don’t want anywhere near your enterprise. Just because someone has an impressive CV, this doesn’t mean that they’re a great cultural fit for your organization. Also, even if someone delivers decent personal results, this doesn’t mean that they don’t have a negative effect on the rest of your team. Emotional vampires and backstabbers are not necessarily underachievers.
2. Delegate tasks
Another thing you need to know is how to delegate tasks in a fair and efficient way. You see, some tasks are simpler than others. Other tasks might be boring, repetitive or even numbing, which is why some of your employees prefer to avoid them. Then again, some tasks provide unique learning experiences, which is why they’re so popular with your staff. Some of your employees are better at certain tasks, so putting them in charge of those might result in a better outcome. At the very least, it would get things done quicker, which is why it’s a better use of your resources. Learning how to properly delegate tasks will take a strategy, as well as an in-depth understanding of your business.
3. Outsource
Tasks like HR, customer support and IT support are essential for the prosperity of your business but they take a specialist’s approach and they don’t have to be handled in-house. Focusing on core tasks and outsourcing everything else is the most efficient way to improve the productivity of your business. First of all, the specialist agencies that you decide to outsource to are bound to do a better job than your new, in-house team. Second, by outsourcing, you’re simplifying the infrastructure of your business, which means that you can focus on those tasks that actually generate profit.
4. Invest in education
By educating your employees, you’re actually investing in the overall productivity of your team. In other words, spending money in order to send people on specialist courses is actually standing to either make or save money in the future. Think about it, paying in order to train an employee as a specialist means that you don’t have to bring in an outside specialist. This would be a pretty expensive hiring process and a great end result is never guaranteed. To make the long story short, this is an investment and like any other investment, it has an ROI that you can count on.
5. Groom for leadership
Preparing some of your employees in order to become leaders with the help of a mentoring system or specialized executive coaching is definitely the right way to go. First of all, it future-proofs your enterprise by ensuring that all of its future leaders (or at least most of them) come from the ranks. Second, it provides you with an opportunity to reward some of your employees for their loyalty to the company, as well as their outstanding service. In other words, it also serves as a great motivator. As such, it boosts your company’s hiring appeal.
6. Have 1-on-1 conversations with your employees
In order to learn what it is that your employees really want from your business, you need to learn how to talk to them. The easiest way to start is through a 1-on-1 approach. Some people dream of advancing in your company. Others want to learn new skills in order to make a more impressive CV and gain some work experience. Sure, while the latter sound like a waste of your time, the truth is that the majority of people aren’t there forever. How much effort they make while they’re with you is what matters the most. If you manage to figure out what they want, you’ll get a chance to create a win-win scenario.
7. Learn how to say no
The next thing you should keep in mind is that learning how to say no to a client might just be one of the most important things in the business world. Accepting a job that you can’t complete will make you overwork your team, lower the quality of your overall work, miss a deadline and ruin your reputation. Sure, saying no to a client never feels good and a lot of people believe that it will earn them some bad karma. They believe that saying no to this one client will be a memory that will haunt them if their workload dries up later on. The truth is that this is never the case and you need to learn how to be more confident in your enterprise.
8. Manage your cash flow better
Spending cash on unnecessary purchases, tying up your capital by buying one year’s worth of supplies when you can get by with three months’ worth are common beginner’s mistakes. You see, cash and money are not always the same type of resources. Account receivables are real money and real income but you can’t use them to compensate your supplier, pay salaries to your employees or pay the lease for your office. Sure, you can sell some of these invoices but this is not necessarily a great idea, seeing as how you stand to lose a bit of your profit in the process. So, being frugal with your cash reserves is the way to go.
In the end, the majority of these tips are there to ensure that your business provides consistent results over the course of months and years. The main thing about unlocking the full potential of your business is consistency. This way, your successes will never depend on luck and it will be much easier for you to project your future growth.