This week we wanted to talk about the importance of building a solid team around you, as this is another key aspect of a creating a successful business.

 

When building a business and a strong team, it is essential to consider all the angles and to give everyone a voice. When the talk is over, it is also key that everyone agrees to, and signs up to, the strategy, hence why it is essential that everyone gets a voice at the start, before you press the button… It’s hard enough to launch a business in new markets without internal resistance. In our experience, the people who are ‘resistant’ to change, will be the people that can hold you back. Of course, there is no point making change simply for change’s sake. We have all seen a new MD or CEO walk into a business and make sweeping changes shortly after arrival. This is high risk… effective leaders set direction and motivate their teams to get on board. If you walk in, with pre-conceived ideas, or simply try to repeat what you have done elsewhere, then this can easily fail. Often there are many ‘common’ factors in any business, the classic being the 80/20 rule, but you can’t just ‘assume’ this to be the case.

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Involve everyone

Before we offer any advice, we like to talk to everyone involved in the business, and at every level, to fully understand whether they enjoy working for the business. What do they think it does well and what do they think could be improved? We also like to do the same with their customers. It never ceases to amaze us just how remote some business leaders can get from their staff and customers. Sometimes they forget that customers are the ones who  often can be relied upon to provide the most open and direct feedback. Only when we really understand the business do we start to formulate a plan. 

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During the planning, we always look to involve the various teams, especially when they are remote workers. It is tough enough working out on the road, let alone when you might be stuck out on your own in a territory and with a different language. We have always found the most effective businesses demonstrate their appreciation of the team on a constant and consistent basis. They keep their staff involved, updated and fully supported

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Well crafted loyalty programmes are essential to keep customers happy, but so are programmes for your own staff and not just the sales team. You can’t make a product without engineers. You can’t launch it without marketing and thinking about how and where to sell it. You can’t support it without great logistics, and you can’t oil the wheels of the operation without finance. A feeling of ‘Team’ is created when everyone has some skin in the game and is rewarded when the business does well. To us, this drives the right behaviours, creates a positive working culture, and it is reflected in the loyalty of staff. 

 

All three of us take great pride in the fact that we enjoyed excellent staff retention and loyalty at all three of the companies we helped build and so if you want to know more about how to build a great team and more importantly how to keep them, just reach out to us hello@re-sauce.net