Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Micromanaging Your Process Service Business - or not

“Hold on, just a little bit tighter now…”

While those might be great lyrics for a song, they’re not the best way to run your process service business, or most any other business. Sure there are things you have to hold on to tightly, things like control of your finances, adherence to your mission statement, working “on” your business and so on. But there are also areas where you have to learn to let go. Primarily those areas are focused in the area of working “in” your business.

Last posting I spoke of the advantages of outsourcing. Whether you outsource to a 1099 contract employee or you bite the bullet and hire (another form of outsourcing – as you are not doing the work) a W-2 employee there are distinct advantages, the primary one being the freeing up of your time to focus on other than the day-to-day functions. Without the day-to-day stuff holding your hostage you can set up additional prospect meetings, work on customer retention and service or add balance in your life with a short or long vacation, or just an evening off.

So now you’ve taken the big entrepreneurial step and found help for you and your business. You provided the training they would need to do the work you have delegated to them. Awesome! How are you doing with that? Are you letting them do their job, or are you holding on, just a little bit tighter, afraid to let go?

When I finally realized I’d have to suck it up and just delegate the work, I had to overcome that psychological barrier that I think many small business owners deal with as their companies expand – micromanaging helps no one. The reality of it was that other people that I had gathered around me could actually do the job just as good as I could. In some instances, they could even do it better than me; heck, that’s why they were hired. And whenever someone other than me made a mistake, the mistakes were so few and far between, that it was manageable from a customer service perspective. It took a bit of doing, but eventually I overcame me fear of letting go and let others do the work. To be completely honest, this probably saved the company because it allowed me to rest, breathe, and think while others handled the nuts and bolts of day-to-day field operations.

So delegate / outsource where you can and then let go and watch your business grow.

What are your feelings toward delegation? Please share if you are so inclined. As always, I appreciate any feedback.

If you enjoy these tips, you'll find more like them in my book "The Business End of Process Service, Running a Process Service Company from the Ground Up". You might also like my other book "CounterSpy, The Industrial Counter-Surveillance Manual", both available on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Business-End-Process-Service-ebook/dp/B008E8RBHK/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407774550&sr=1-8&keywords=bob+hill and http://www.amazon.com/CounterSpy-Bob-Hill-ebook/dp/B00BTJYU1Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407774644&sr=1-3&keywords=counterspy/  

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