After two week’s Easter leave, including a week in sunny Wales, I was straight back into it, being on the superb ‘salesENRICHED’ training course by Arrivista. Many of the business professionals on the course were business owners too, learning tools and techniques from Simon Williams. These techniques will massively improve sales processes and activities.
Some of the delegates were in the early stage of business, and already thinking about business expansion and taking on staff. Talking to some of them during a coffee break, I mentioned how important it was to write up instructions as procedures. These could then be followed by new staff when they join the business. They could also help staff who don’t regularly perform a particular task, as an ‘aide memoir’.
‘Writing it up’ is a mantra I have used in growing my business. Being the font of all knowledge may suit some people’s egos, but I would prefer to write it up, and not be phoned whilst on holiday!
A trait of some IT professionals is that they don’t always write down clear instructions for their colleagues or customers. This is problematic, as your existing and new staff might not be IT experts.
My recommendation is to write up things in as simple a procedure as you can – especially IT related tasks. For example, how to shut down and restart a server, how to edit, check, test, and publish your website, or how to add a new item to a blog. Another example is creating a quote – hopefully using existing proposal templates, product data and a quote template. Just this process alone will save new staff hunting around for files, and wasting time or using old prices. This is a key process and should be as lean as possible.
Be lean and beat your competitors by writing up your key procedures.