Unlike most coaches/advisers, we concentrate on getting the Operations of a business working right, before we even think about starting to layer on the strategy.

One area that causes business owners a massive headache is who should be doing what?

My answer is so simple; there’s only 3 Key Roles that you’ll ever need in your business:

1). Sales

2). Delivery (Operations)

3). Finance

And to make this work, you need someone accountable for each one of those roles.

They aren’t expected to do everything themselves, but they do need to wake up in the morning knowing what’s going on and what they’re doing that day.

You can have one person accountable for two roles, but you CANNOT have two people do the same role because it will never get done.

Take Apple as an example; Jobs was the front man, but it was actually his co-founder Wozniak that was behind the success of Apple.

This week I want you to think about these Key Roles in YOUR business:

Sales

Who is it that sells your promise? Who is absolutely focussed on that overall figure? Achieving that target?  Who feels comfortable, or who do you trust delivering the number? 

Delivery

Who now is accountable for delivering the promise you sold on? Once you have your customer you now have to work hard at keeping them, and everything spins off from this.

You need someone in your back office with an eye for detail and focus on quality. This is typically the detail that you – the Entrepreneur – hates doing!  You only need ten processes in your business that covers 90% of what you do (a blog for another time!).

Finance

Now you have the person dragging in customers, getting all excited. And you have people making sure the promise is delivered. In the middle of all this you need the Finance role to keep it all going. Who is that person in your business? You need someone strong to drive the financial strategy in the business.

There’re two types of financial numbers: those a la Government, and those that help you drive your business.  How quickly does the pound you spend come back into your business? How much is yours?

It’s our experience that you’re either getting too bogged down in the detail yourself and won’t – or can’t – let go.  Or you’ve let go too early and it’s all a bit of a mess.

This is a great exercise to get back to basics and work out who is selling your promise, delivering your promise, and keeping it all going in the meantime.

BW,

Martin Norbury

The Scalability Coach | Britain’s Top 10 Adviser 2018 | Author of #1 bestseller I don’t work Fridays  | Ex-CEO of a PLC