Systemize Your Business Activities

By Brian Tracy

Your business will be successful, generating steady, predictable sales and cash flow, to the exact degree to which you develop systems that put as much of your business on autopilot as possible. A system is a step-by-step process, from beginning to end, that you use to ensure consistency and dependable performance in every area.

Lead Generation
You need a proven sales system of marketing, advertising, and promotion that generates a steady stream of qualified leads, whether phoning your place of business, responding on the Internet, or personally coming into your store to buy your product or service. Without this continuous and predictable stream of leads, your sales and revenues will dry up and your cash flow will slow to a trickle, threatening the survival of your business.

Lead Conversion
You need a proven system to convert interested prospects into buying customers. This system begins with a sales script that every customer service representative and salesperson uses from the first contact with the prospect through to the completed sale. The use of a pre-planned script can triple your sales almost overnight.

Production Of Product Or Service
You need a proven system, from beginning to end, for producing the product or service that you have sold to the customer. This proven system will ensure consistency of quality, ease of operation, efficiency of activity, and continually lower costs of production and delivery as the system improves.

Service Systems
You need written policies and procedures for follow-up service to each of your customers, including established ways to handle customer needs and complaints, to generate additional sales, to keep in regular customer contact, to elicit referrals and recommendations from satisfied customers to new customers, and to alert your customers of new products and services that they may be interested in buying.

Accounting Systems
You need smoothly functioning accounting systems that track every penny of revenue and expense coming into or moving out of the business. Fortunately, there are computer programs for small and large businesses that you can use to keep track of all financial flows in your business so you will always know your proper financial status.

Hiring, Training, And Personnel Systems
You need written systems that clearly describe each job and how it is to be done. In addition, you need systems for training, development, and personnel relations. Each person who works for you must know exactly what he or she is expected to do and to what standard of quality. Your employees must understand the terms and conditions of their jobs, what is deemed unsatisfactory performance, and what grounds for termination are. They must know exactly what they are entitled to in terms of insurance, sick pay, vacation days, and other key elements of the work experience.

Action Exercise
What could you do, starting today, to become one of the very best companies in your industry?

Brian Tracy is the best selling author of more than 42 books, published in 4 countries and translated into dozens of languages. Brian is a world renowned speaker and seminar leader, addressing more than 250,000 people each year throughout the U.S., Canada and in 40 other countries.

About the Author
Brian is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, and President of Brian Tracy University, a private on-line University for Sales and Entrepreneurship. He can be reached at www.briantracy.com, www.briantracyu.com or 858.481.2977.