The 7 Secret Benefits of using Systems Manuals to Create Order, Maximize Profits and Live the Life of Your Dreams!
Get Your Business Out Of Your Head, and Get Your Head Back In Your Life
The 27 secret benefits of using systems manuals to create order, maximize profits and live the life of your dreams!
…but for today, The 7 Secret Benefits…
1. Systems Manuals empower you to hire Attitude over Ability. It takes a while to learn that what you think is a great employee may not necessarily be so.
Every once in a while we’ll get an applicant that has years of experience in our industry and they look like a homerun.
Our hiring system, however, has numerous ways to reveal what matters most: nice people who love life and other people.
Those are the people that create business success and do amazing things. As I mentioned before, I can teach plants and plant care because I have innovated the training system manuals for years.
The project you don’t want as a business owner is trying to fix a bad attitude, no matter how good they are at what they do.
2. Systems Manuals make training predictable and measurable. Also related to the above-mentioned benefit, a systematic approach to learning the ins and outs of any job function makes training easier and straightforward.
Most service and quality problems in business can be traced back to a sloppy, haphazard approach to training – the aforementioned “follow John for a week program.”
Conversely, when you experience mannered professional people who serve you with excellence, you’re witnessing the result of a systemized training program.
On this, I speak with experience: hiring the best candidate, but not investing the time and effort into their training – only to have it come back again and again and create problems. Ouch!
3. Systems Manuals create confident, self-assured employees.
When you’re not good at what you do, it’s no fun and you easily get discouraged and give up.
But, make me look like a superstar and teach me to serve people in meaningful ways and you have my loyalty for years.
The Starbucks Barista systems manuals and training program takes raw recruits (with great attitudes who love people) and teaches them to create drinks people love and pay big bucks for. Many Barista’s (formerly untrained in any skill) blossom with the new found confidence and become store managers and career employees.
4. Systems Manuals increase capacity.
Your business can serve more people faster when it works systematically. Your systems manuals can innovate most job functions so that the task just takes less time to do.
Innovation eliminates wasted steps. Sometimes it’s a tool or piece of equipment that increases capacity and other times it is a complete reengineering of a work process – or both.
From using a Sub-Irrigation system (an innovation) for our individual plants so they look better and less water – to scripting all the steps of an account visit from parking to getting water (process) we have nearly doubled our capacity from once-a-week plant care visits to once every two weeks. Can you say “Huge?”
5. Systems Manuals give people control.
Similar to predictability, control is the ability to recreate a customer experience over and over again.
Yes, your systems give you and your employees control over the business operation, but even more importantly, systems give your customers control over their experience!
If I’m the customer and I can replicate my experience with your business anytime I want, I have control. Hence, the popularity of chain restaurants. People are most picky about their food and a franchise prototype restaurant like Bonefish Grill assures me that when I’m hankering for Bang-Bang Shrimp all I have to do is call and order it, or go in, sit down, and viola…control.
6. Systems Manuals create a steady stream of new prospects.
Prospecting is a do-or-die marketing system.
Your marketing systems manuals document how to prospect: attracting the attention and interest of people who have the ability to do business with you.
Prospecting is also called lead-generation.
If you don’t have a systematic and reliable method for generating leads, your business is vulnerable to say the least.
A lead-generation system can be automated to work like a water faucet and create a steady stream of qualified prospects eager to learn more about your business. The faucet can be turned on full or turned down to a trickle depending on your ability to follow up and fulfill orders.
7. Systems Manuals give the business owner autonomy and freedom. This is the reward for all your hard work – and as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a sweet reward and worth the effort. Autonomy, (the freedom from external control or influence) and independence is completely doable for a business with a systems strategy. The ability to create a business that works without you there is the ultimate vocational pursuit. If you’ll commit to the systems development process and keep these other benefits before you, you can enjoy this ultimate reward and lifestyle. This is a business that is apart from you, not a part of you.
