by Nigel Botterill
Your highest priority as a business owner is marketing, there’s no arguing with that. But there’s a good chance that you’re going to disagree with what we believe should be the very next thing on your list…
Priority number one: Marketing.
If you’re serious about building a super-successful business (and if you’re not, you’re in the wrong place!) then we all know that marketing is the first thing on your list, the thing that most Entrepreneur’s Circle members think of first thing in the morning and spend 90 minutes working on as soon as they start work.
But. What’s priority number two?
Well, running a business isn’t much like doing a Maths A-Level; there’s no right and wrong answer (that’s one of the unique qualities that makes being a business owner so exciting – isn’t it!?). Running a business is more Art than Science – you’ve got a whole world of possibilities, and even though the whole class had the exact same brief, when the time comes to hand in your homework, your big project looks really different to everyone else’s.
Enough about you though, and your sexy and exciting life as a seat-of-the-pants entrepreneur. Let’s return to our carefully constructed narrative, where we’ll build the suspense a little, before revealing what we believe might (is probably almost certainly) the second most important priority for any truly ambitious business owner.
(Cue dramatic music)…
So. What could it be?
In our book, it’s not customer service, it’s not time management, it’s not even knowing your numbers.
Those are all essential – you’ve got to get a handle on them if you’re going to have a shot at super success – but there’s something else, something even more vital, perhaps not in the short term, but something that’s going to either hold you back for ever, or power you forward.
That one thing is… (drumroll please!)… STAFF.
Finding great people to work in your business should be your second highest priority after marketing. Outsourcing is great, and many of you will be outsourcing your bookkeeping, your tech development, your design and more, and all of those people will be saving you time and money, but you can’t save your way to super success. Finding the right people and harnessing their energy and ideas will propel your business forward faster. If it doesn’t, they’re the wrong people, or they’re in the wrong role. A single top-quality employee can be worth a fortune to you and your business.
They need to be in the right role, with the right degree of responsibility and autonomy, but think about it logically – if your business has got what it takes to achieve super success at some point, then it stands to reason that it’s going to get there a whole lot faster if there are more of you driving it there.
They might be worth a fortune to you, they might not, but it’s not going to cost you a fortune to find out. Too many small business owners think about a £20k or £30k salary as a cost that they can’t afford, when the reality is that a decent employee will either start to add value pretty quickly, or they’ll leave. Your only cash investment is their salary for the time that they’re with you
Sure, you’ll spend time training them when you could be doing other productive stuff, but your actual investment is likely to be a few thousand pounds, not their whole year’s salary.
Superstar or Supers***
There’s a whole world of difference between superstar employees and, er, really crap employees.
The bad news is that your chances of finding an instant superstar are slim. We’re not talking needle in a haystack but they’re pretty close. You’re going to have to sieve through some crap before you find your golden nuggets, and bad employees are bad news. They’re expensive mistakes and the best thing that you can do is to get rid of them the very same second you know they’re not going to work out.
Once you’ve come to that realization, you’ve got two choices – long-term pain or short-term pain. I’d recommend short-term every time. Be brutal.
If you’ve found someone who’s going to work out long term, then there’s still work to be done before they’re superstar material. They might have the raw materials, but you’ll still need to nurture and mentor them to make the most out of their potential.
They’ll need to work with you, and it pays to be straight with them sooner rather than later. Paint the picture of where they could be in a few years’ time, and what they’ll need to be doing to get there. Share with them exactly where your business is right now – they won’t be able to add much value if they don’t know the full picture.
Finding your diamond in the rough
1 – For most people, ‘applying’ for a job means nothing more than clicking the ‘apply for job’ or ‘send CV’ button on one of the big jobs sites. They can apply for a dozen jobs in half an hour, without giving any thought to the company, the role, or their suitability for it. If you call people up who’ve applied in this way, and say “thanks for your application, I’m calling about the role” they’ll invariably ask something along the lines of “Who are you calling from? What did you do again? I’ve applied for a quite a few jobs”.
2 – Precisely because most people give their job application zero thought, the bar is set at limbo height, so it’s not very difficult for anyone with half a brain to do something (anything!) that immediately pole vaults them to the front of the recruiter’s thoughts.
So, if you’re looking for a future superstar, then you need to design your recruitment process so that it’s different to everybody else’s. Create a process that immediately starts sorting people who’ve given it some thought and are serious about their application.
Tastes just like chicken
Recruiting is just marketing by a different name. You’ve still got to cover the basics:
Who’s your market? What’s your message? What’s the best media to find them?
You need to sell your job, making the benefits to your prospective employee clear. Think about it not as writing a role profile, but as an advert for a job. It needs a headline and it needs a call to action. You want the right people to read it, know that it’s right for them, and get in touch.
Recruiting is marketing – plain and simple – and at some point, if you’re serious about growing your business and achieving super success, you’re going to have recruit sooner rather than later!
