With This Strategy You Win Every Time
Recently, I was in conversation with a person that owns a small business in the community where I live. He is a new acquaintance of mine, and we are still in the “finding out about each other” phase. So when he discovered the business that I am in, he asked me this question – “What is the single most important strategy to ensure the long-term success of my business?”
My answer was this – “I don’t believe that there is one overriding strategy that will ensure success, but I do believe that there are two key strategies that if ignored or not rolled out properly, will probably sabotage your business.”
The first key principle is to Keep It Simple. Make it easy for people to do business with you. That encompasses every process in the business no matter how small, even down to people phoning in and getting the responses that they expected when they first thought of phoning. So the whole value chain has to be as simple or uncomplicated as possible.
The pay-off to that is 1) fewer mistakes can be made because we have implemented “Processes for Dummies”, and 2) the eradication of anything that can cause frustration that leads to customer anger and dissatisfaction.
The second key principle is to make sure that in every position and role in your business, you have the right person. We often run courses on how to recruit The Right Person, for the Right Job, at the Right Time, for the Right Reason and for the Right Money. And we emphasise that a CV is not in any way an indication of the persons suitability for the job. A CV is designed to be a “selling document”. Its intention is to sell the candidate by giving you all the reasons why you should employ them. As an employer, your job when interviewing a candidate, is to look for all the reasons to NOT employ them! And to do that you have to use some unconventional interviewing techniques. For example, I remember visiting with the managing director of a motor car dealership. We were standing on the mezzanine floor looking down onto the sales floor, when a well-dressed person walked into the showroom and presented himself to the receptionist. The managing director told me that this was a person coming to the dealership to be interviewed for a position. He asked me to excuse him for a few moments and left me standing there. A minute later he appeared through the same door that the job seeker had entered through and presented himself to the receptionist. She dealt with him as if he was a visitor and he then sat down next to the job seeker. After looking through an old magazine, he engaged the job seeker in conversation. After a short while, a person came to fetch the managing director, and not long afterward the person that the job seeker had come to see, made his appearance. After introducing himself to the job seeker, he proceeded to escort him to the door. Confused, the job seeker stated that he had not been interviewed yet. His contact smiled and told him, “You have been interviewed. The guy that was sitting next to you just now is the MD of the business. He was interviewing you”.
You see, the clever thing here is that the job seeker, being unaware of the identity of the person sitting next to him, did not have his “mask” on. He was just being himself, and when people come for an interview they wear masks – they’re selling themselves to you in an effort to be employed. Your job at the interview stage is to get behind that mask, to the real person. The person that you are going to think of in six months to a year, fondly, because they have added value to your business.
My new acquaintance looked at me with a look akin to horror. “Now I know where I’m going wrong in my employment strategy. I need to work hard at getting the real person in front of me and not the fake one they have brought with them.”
As I started to remove the meat from the fire I said, “In any business big or small, your recruitment strategy should be as important as your financial, marketing, sales, operations and supply chain strategies. Not one of those is more important than the other. All of them, if you get any of them wrong, are going to cost you money.
by Mark Deavall
October, 2024
If you would like to talk to me, please call me on +2782 465 5481 or email me on markd@markdeavall.com
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