If there’s one thing that continues to raise its ugly head, it’s poor management!

Regardless of whether you have a team of hundreds, 20, or its just you, management of everything is critical to business growth. Put simply, it’s the forced review process to ensure the business and its team (you) are on track. What needs to be done, what was, what wasn’t and why?

Management, isn’t leadership, they are two totally different things. That we’ll talk about another time. Management is the fundamental process of ensuring what you planned to do, actually happened and if not why and what to do about it. It covers key pillars of any business. Marketing, sales, staff, training, support, clients, product and ongoing development, profit and cashflow. If the objective is business growth, management of all those areas, and more, needs to be done monthly.

It doesn’t need to be a particularly complex or structured process, it simply starts with questions like, “what happened here last month, what result did we get”?

Here’s an example. If the objective is 10 sales, new clients per month, it starts with a strategy, that will result in that objective. This would be decided upon through historical data in most cases, but sometimes nothing more than an educated guess, a starting point. If at the end of month, the sales result was six, why? What happened to the activity, the marketing, the numbers? Was everything done that was planned? If not why. Was it a skill issue, or a will issue (the work just wasn’t done)! Here’s a few others:

• Training, skills levels. Review the team, (you) monthly, to ensure th skills levels are where they’re needed.
• Marketing: are you getting the results you want or need. Social media, website, networking, direct/or lecturing can direct mail.
• Sales: what’s the activity and results from the team?
• Product: what are the results you’re getting (or not getting) from every aspect of product/service sales. Where’s the profit, what’s the best way to generate sales?
• Cashflow and profit. Review the profit on every product and then look at cashflow every month. Are we on track?

Start a management checklist, and include everything that has some effect on the business sales and profitability. Then each month, review what was done and what wasn’t. What were the results based on planned, whether on track, or not, and if not why not? Then, what’s the plan to get back on track?

Every business, regardless of what size, structure or what you do, can grow (even a little) if you actually question (manage) what’s going on. Do that monthly, and businesses grow.

No one is born with a complete set of management and business skill set, they develop over time, through training and trial and error, but there are some ways to get there a little quicker and a lot easier, with far better results.

For a chat on what’s possible, email hello@mybusinessnow.com.au or checkout the website at www.mybusinessnow.com.au