photo by Phil Dowsing

Customer service is critical to long term success…everyone says so, which is why you have great customer service – right?

Think about it though…what company doesn’t think they don’t have good customer service? Go into any establishment and there’s at least one sign in every business promoting customer service, even if it is only a sign the says “Customer Service”. I am sure the owners of the businesses send out at memos, hold a meeting, or maybe even dedicated an entire section in their employee manual to “Customer Service”.  If you ask anyone if customer service is a priority – they’re going to tell you that it is.

Clearly Customer Service is important…but what is it really?

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photo by Ernst Vikne

Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

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photo by Simon Peckham

I had a great discussion the other day at one of my Peer Group Advisory Boards – we were talking about rolling out a new marketing initiative and that it would be a real challenge.

At that point, one of the members used a phrase that summarizes one of the primary secrets of business success:

“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”

On the surface that sounds like a pretty obvious thought…almost a ‘duh’ moment.  But if you think about it a bit longer, it uncovers a lot of the issues that business owners face all the time.

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  photo by AGirlWithTea

What does it take to make a business grow predictably?  Signing up a big client?  Rolling out a hot new product?  Actually those are outcomes…what I’m talking about are the ingredients it takes within a business that if mixed properly and cooked just so will create growth. 

These critical ingredients are embodied in you as the business owner and within your team, whether you have 1 employee or 100 employees.  If you’re missing one or more of these ingredients – then you’re likely not growing consistently and you’ll be at risk in the long run.  The important thing is to have the right mix of these ingredients and to make sure you’re using all of them consistently.

So what are the ingredients you need for growth?  Let’s take a look:

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  photo by icatus

When you’re talking about overall business effectiveness, the first thing you have to figure out is where the bottleneck is within your business (side note – it’s really challenging to find a good picture to represent a bottleneck).

Of course the bottleneck is the constriction / constraint in terms of your growth potential.  As an example, a lot of businesses have the issue of getting enough leads generated or getting interest in buying.  They have plenty of capacity in all other aspects of the business, so in this case, the bottleneck of the business is marketing.

Of course using that example, it wouldn’t make any sense to invest time, money or resources into anything but better marketing…at least until you uncover the next bottleneck. 

I thought it would be worthwhile to dig up a post I did a while back that has a pretty good model to talk through this idea – I call it the 8 Pillars Model and it’s a good way to think through your business.   What Pillars are holding you back?

Can you identify the primary bottleneck in your business success right now?  When’s the last time you tried to identify where things were getting hung up?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach