What You Don’t Know About Marketing And Sales Systems Could Hurt You

One day I came across the importance of having systems set up in your business after reading Michael Gerber’s book The E-Myth, Revisited.  I must have read it about 5 times and still refer to it from time to time.

One of the main factors about setting up systems in your business is so that it can be replicated.  This is important because if your business relies on you as the owner or on certain talented individuals at the center of it, then it will be difficult or impossible to replicate.

Having your business rely on others to run it would kill the company should they leave.  Solid businesses that run on with systems in place deliver excellent products consistently over a long period of time.  This is how ordinary businesses get to produce extraordinary results.

When you have a business system that is replicable, people will want to pay you large sums of money for the consistent and reliable service it provides.  This can come in different forms but the most common are:

• Customers would want to do business with you because of the consistent results you deliver.

• Licensees would want to pay you for the rights to license your products.

• Franchisees would want to buy into your franchise system.

• An investor or competitor would want to purchase your business.

As noted in The E-Myth, there are four main types of business systems you need to create regardless of what type of business you’re in.  You will need to have in place scalable and replicable systems in these four areas of your business:

• Sales system – Lead nurturing, follow-up and conversion.

• Marketing system – Generate a consistent flow of leads into your business.

• Administration system – Accounts, reception, human resources, etc.  Support of all the other business functions.

• Fulfillment system – The actual thing you do in exchange for your customer’s money.

These four functions will be relevant to you despite your type of business.

Many small businesses get bogged down with fulfillment and administration but neglect their marketing and sales systems.  Since there isn’t anyone pressuring them with deadlines to do more marketing, urgent issues generally fall into fulfillment and administration functions.  This is why many businesses struggle even though they might be offering excellent products and services.

The problem is that customers don’t get to find out how good your products are until they buy from you.  And if your marketing and sales systems aren’t in place, people will never buy and find out how good your business is.

Some businesses rely on reputation and word of mouth.  As mentioned in a prior chapter, while these are great, it takes a very long time to build up enough business purely on reputation.  So smart businesses go to great lengths to build up their marketing and sales systems.

What exactly is a business system?

The Proven Way To Put Systems In Place

A business system has documented procedures and processes that allow your business to run without you.  These tend to be in the form of checklists or video and audio training.  These represent your operations manual and its purpose is to capture the collective “know how” of the business.

When it comes to systems, McDonald’s is the poster child.  McDonald’s is a worldwide, complex, multi-billion dollar business that is run by ordinary people that produce extraordinary results.

So how do they get to produce such extraordinary results?  They have amazing business systems.  McDonald’s operations manual covers every minute detail of the business from big things like hiring and customer interaction to knowing exactly how much sauce to squeeze onto a Big Mac bun and how much pickles should be on it.

Just imagine what would happen if you tried to sell your business and find out after putting in so many years of hard work, that your business isn’t worth much.  The reason as mentioned earlier is that you ARE the business and without systems there is no real business. 

Here are the benefits to implementing systems in your business.

• It builds a valuable asset.  Your business gains the opportunity to have great cash flow to fund your lifestyle.  And if one day you decide to sell it, you position yourself to sell it for the biggest payday of your life.

• Leverage and scalability.  You now have the ability to expand.  You can replicate your business in other parts of the world, franchise it or license the rights to your business system.

Lower labor costs.  You and your staff don’t need to waste time and effort re-inventing the wheel each time, and this improves your efficiency and reduces your labor costs.