Why you SHOULD Fire Yourself
So you can transform your Business from a JOB into an ASSET that works and builds value for you.
If you find yourself in a position where your customers always insist on speaking with you directly instead of your employees, then you might want to consider shifting your structure so you can improve the value of your business.
Here’s why: a business that can thrive without the owner at the center of all its operations is more valuable because processes can run smoothly with or without you. If you’re too stuck in the weeds, you’ll have a difficult time improving or evolving – and your employees won’t have the opportunity to grow and become advocates for your brand.
To maximize the value of your business, you should set a goal to quietly slip into the background and let your staff take center stage. Here are five ways to make customers less inclined to call
1. Document, Document, Document..
It is not a coincidence that in Finance, any firm that is regulated is required to fully document their processes, reporting relationships and procedures. It’s all about the Regulator not only being comfortable with the business activity, but more importantly, with the business not relying upon the owner to survive.
You should do likewise and document and train your staff to execute on as many processes and procedures as possible. Step back as much as you can and still be able to measure how your team is performing by the standards and expectations documented for them.
2. Let the First Be Last.. and the Last First...
If you display the bio of key staff members on your website, re-order the list so that it is alphabetical, or better yet, customer facing staff on top rather than hierarchical. When a customer has an issue or question, it will go a long way if they can see the customer service contact staff and numbers first, rather than a polished photo of yourself.
3.Hire a COO or President
Giving someone the title of president or COO conveys the message that they have real authority to solve customer problems. Hiring a president is not enough though, you also have to empower him to make decisions, stay out of his way and not undermine him.
At a previous place I worked, the Owner never understood this concept. He would hire someone as a Managing Director, give him the big title and then undermine every decision he made by allowing staff to go behind the Managing Director’s back to speak with himself directly. No officer stayed longer than a couple of years as by six months any authority they had was already gone
4. Turn on the Auto Respond to your Emails
Set up an automatic response to anyone sending you an email explaining that you are unavailable and unable to answer their questions immediately. Instead, give them the contact links or numbers so they can reach the right people directly and quickly. In this way, you train customers who used to just call you to now raise their issues or questions with the person best suited to answer them quickly, and you move up the chain of escalation. That way you are only dealing with the issues a Business Owner should be focusing on..
5. Stay Away from the Office - Take a Holiday
As your business becomes more independent and your staff take on more and more of the daily responsibilities, begin to spend time away from the office and/ or even take a holiday. At first, keep your absences short but gauge how well the business operated. If there were any issues, identify where and how it occurred and remedy with training or process improvement.
Just like teaching a child to ride a bike, step back more and more and allow the training wheels to come off and eventually you will have a business that can cruise independently of you. This will allow you to spend you time on the high level strategy of driving up the growth and value of your company as well as freeing your time to spend with family and other priorities.
For a hard-charging A-type entrepreneur, the steps above can be complicated and feel counterintuitive. They may even have a short-term negative impact on your company’s sales, but once you have your employees trained so they can handle customers going directly to them, you’ll be able to scale up further and ultimately maximize the value of your business
True Freedom comes from Owning a Business that is Valuable, Scalable, and "Sellable".
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