Top Five Entrepreneur Challenges
FIVE TOP ENTREPRENEUR CHALLENGES
We hire type A, assertive sales people who are motivated by money. Challenges and issues do occur and you must determine your actions prior to issues surfacing. It would be natural to side with the employee who produces more or has tenure vs. a new or unproductive employee. However, this type of action would destroy morale and backfire.
Challenge One: Understanding Your Role – Best Use Of Your Time
One of the greatest challenges for an owner of a staffing and recruiting firm is delegate vs. be their business. Many owners and managers feel they have their business on their back.
You function in many different roles on a daily basis. Review the various areas of responsibilities and evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in these areas. This will determine if you need to improve on your skills or hire someone else for certain roles.
It is important to evaluate your skills and responsibilities to ensure you are aware of best use of your time. What is the 20% of your efforts that provides you with 80% of your results? There are instances where you will need to stop doing tasks you enjoy, that are not best use of your time.
Challenge Two: Consistently Attaining Goals And Profits
As an owner it is critically important that you focus on profits vs. sales especially in the temp or contract business. Goals will only be attained if they are mutually agreed upon between you and your sales team. If you set goals for them, and they do not believe they will achieve them – goals will not be attained.
If you have ever erased goals and not added them to future months, you have sent a LOUD message that you will not hold people accountable for their goals. You have also allowed your employees to give up their income goals for the year. Goals not attained should be added to future months.
Focus on the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) of your employees, if goals are attained. Your employees will not produce more because you want a record month, quarter or year. They will only produce more if they understand how it will benefit them.
Challenge Three: Manage By Numbers – They Don’t Lie!
Individual numbers, stats and ratios are the best indicator of performance. In order to accurately predict sales and profits, minimum standards must be set. Once you know individual ratios, you can manage by the results each person needs daily to consistently hit or surpass goals set. This takes the emotion out of your decisions and prevents your decisions from backfiring.
Challenge Four: Mandating Systems
It’s just not common sense to keep reinventing the wheel. Once you have identified a system that works, you just keep repeating the process. If every person in your office is working from the same play book you will all close more deals, because details will not fall through the cracks causing deals to blow up.
Challenge Five: Consistently Upgrade Your Team
The most important decision you will make is deciding who is on your team.
• Evaluate your current team members
• Determine if you have the team you need to achieve your company goals
• Put marginal employees on probation with a detailed plan of action
• Determine if anyone has quit and stayed
• Upgrade your team
• Create a hiring process
Take time to review the five challenges and solutions. Pick the one that you will implement first. It is a proven fact that where you place your focus is where you will enjoy results.