If you’ve been feeling like your business is a little bit chaotic or scattered, it’s time to get some consistency. A significant factor in the success of any business is having consistent processes; not only will this increase productivity, it also improves your relationships with clients or customers and gives you a clear path to growing your business. The regular processes in your business need to be streamlined in order to be efficient and productive.
Here’s how to get there:
1. Figure out what you’re already doing well.
Being more consistent isn’t about finding a whole new way of running your business; it’s about capitalizing on what you’re already doing. You already have a product or service that you offer to every person who comes into contact with your business. Figuring out HOW you deliver that product or service is the first step to consistency. If you’ve been trying different ways of doing this, pick the one that has worked the best for you and your customer and go from there.
For example: Let’s say you have a business that involves 1-on-1 consulting sessions. Some of your former clients have sent you an e-mail, and you’ve gone back and forth with your separate calendars, trying to figure out a time that works to meet. Maybe during that process you’ve even wound up giving away quite a bit of free advice, to the point where some clients have walked away without booking a session. Another time, you tried using a shared calendar app, and booking that appointment was a smooth process that led to a successful consulting appointment. Tha shared calendar app needs to be your process from now on, with every client.
2. Stop making exceptions.
If you want to grow your business, you can’t offer a unique product or service to every customer. You need to reduce the variables between customers so that you can streamline your systems and create consistency. If you have been creating a custom package for every customer, instead try offering some options like add-on packages or a limited number of custom choices. This way you can give your customers a product that feels personalized, but you don’t have to start from scratch every time.
For example: Let’s say you have a business selling t-shirts. When you first started, maybe you would design anything on a shirt that a customer wanted. Now that your business has grown to a certain level, it makes more sense to choose your 10 most popular designs and only offer those, on a limited number of t-shirt colors. You will be able to sell more shirts because you can produce them more efficiently, but having those choices still makes your customers feel like they are getting a unique product when they come to your shop.
3. Refine and perfect your systems over time.
Just because you’re working on consistency doesn’t mean you have to lock yourself into a situation that never changes. As you go through this process of repeating your systems with consistency, you are naturally going to find ways to refine those processes and make them more streamlined. Take note of this, and be willing to adapt your processes over time. This will only add to your overall efficiency.
For example: If you run a business that involves packing and shipping a physical product, your method of shipping may change over time. You may have started with a regular home printer and the USPS website, but over time you may discover that you could outsource your shipping to a third party and free up more of your time to do other tasks. There’s no need to stick to a system that no longer works for you – this is an opportunity to build new consistency into your business.
4. Document your systems as you get comfortable.
If you’re stuck in your business, it’s often that you’re wasting time trying to remember all the things you need to do, or reinventing the wheel every time you do them. Documenting the processes can help you take those tasks off your mental load now, and also assign them to someone else later. Doing this will help you eventually hand off those tasks to someone else, such as an employee or an independent contractor. This is what makes it possible for you to scale, because you have processes that can expand to serve a bigger audience and you can hire employees to do them over time.
For example: A task management app like Trello or Asana can be a good place to document the steps in your processes, but you can also just use a Word or Google doc to accomplish the same thing. The idea is just to get your process down in writing, so that you can eventually hand that To Do List over to someone else, and stop giving it prime real estate in your own head.
5. Get help from an outside source.
It’s often hard to identify your consistent business processes internally – you have gotten so comfortable with doing all the work of your business that you don’t even realize what you’re doing most of the time. Figuring out systems is one of my stronger gifts, and I still struggle with it within my own business. It’s hard to DIY this process, but it’s also hard to hire someone to do it entirely for you. The best solution is to hire someone to work WITH you to identify and create these processes within your business. They can ask questions to get you started, and then also watch what you do as you complete your business tasks. Working together, the two of you can figure out your existing processes as well as ways to streamline them for more consistency.
If you’re wondering whether consistent processes would improve YOUR business, it might be time to get some clarity. I have a free GEARS Assessment, which will walk you through the process of evaluating your business in five key areas in order to determine which areas would benefit from some improved consistency.
