Starting a company can be a daunting task and sometimes you can end up with more questions than answers, but sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes having the right questions means you are on the right track to finding the right solutions. I mentor young businesses through a couple of organizations here in Charlotte, and I always make sure they have a plan in place to handle specific operational items. I encourage them to start by considering the following:
How are you going to find and nurture new customers?
How are you going to onboard your customers?
How are you going to handle customer inquiries?
How are you going to keep in touch with your customers?
How are you going to get paid?
Recognizing how you attract customers - whether through word of mouth, social media, referrals, or otherwise out in the world - is an important aspect of a new business. Tracking where customers originate and how they found you is a great way to figure out where to focus your sales and marketing efforts.
How are you going to repeat your work to gain new customers the same way?
Do you have a social media presence and plan?
Are you thanking referral partners and recognizing them?
If you’re out in the marketplace, have you expanded your presence to find more customers?
In any of these instances, you should create standard processes to make this work more efficient and easier.
Once you find these customers, how are you going to onboard them?
Do you need a contract or other type of user agreement?
What do you want them to know about your service or product?
How do you learn important information about them so you can keep in touch and try to earn repeat business?
If you create a standard process to onboard customers, you can feel comfortable outsourcing this to another employee.
Once these customers have been onboarded, how are you going to respond to inquiries?
Is your contact information readily available?
Do you have standard hours?
What is your turnaround time for inquiries?
Do you have standard email templates and/or etiquette for handling inquiries?
What phone number will they call and who will answer?
Getting customers is the best way to fund your business, but losing them due to communication issues is not the way to handle them.
Now that your customers know how to reach you, do you know how to reach them?
How will you inform them of upcoming sales?
Will they know about future product launches?
What if you’ve made changes to your product, how will you let them know about the benefits?
Getting customer information is crucial when onboarding them so that you can keep in touch with them.
Finally, new customers means getting paid.
How will you handle the invoicing process?
Are you equipped to accept multiple forms of payment?
Do you know the benefits and drawbacks of each form?
How will you handle late payments and/or no payment?
You can’t keep your doors open if you don’t receive timely payment. It’s crucial to create a standard payment process with payment terms to ensure you have revenue to continue to fund your operations.
Do you need help creating standard operations to make your business run more efficiently? Are you expanding from a lean startup to a larger staff and want help getting daily tasks off of your plate? Reach out to Beck Insights to learn how you can focus on the most important tasks.
