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Sep
1

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5 Steps to Hiring an Outstanding Team

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Hiring Process, Saving Money Leave a Comment

 

The Right Hire

I often get the question, “How do I find the right people to hire?”.  It is something that every owner  struggles to handle and is a never-ending process.  When you have a vision of what your company looks like, you also see that the employees are on board with the vision and are willing to help bring you there.

What works and where am I going wrong?

The quick answer is that you didn’t follow the right steps to get the people you need on your payroll.  Breaking down your problem into piles and finding where to focus will give you what you need.

The right employee has equal parts of each section listed in the chart above.  If you do not support each part and communicate well to each part of each person on you payroll, you will have a losing team.  Remember, one bad hire can make the rest of your team stumble.  Hiring the right person can jump start the team.

1. Find the right person

Recruiting impressive people is the toughest part of being an owner.  You really should be a part of every hire or you are going to end up with a team that isn’t seeing the vision you have for your business.  There are as many ways to find the right employee as there are ways to find the wrong one.  Whatever works to get people to interview will find you the right employee.  The trick is to keep looking.

2. Find the right person with the right attitude

Attitude is the factor that is not taught in school.  I have seen many highly educated people lose out on jobs because they can’t stop waving their degrees around the room.  If you can’t get past the certificate tacked to the wall, then you can’t work for me.  The business world doesn’t give a damn what your GPA was or what your degree is in.  If you can’t deal with the tasks, the people, and the stress and still smile all the way through it, you are not worth hiring.  Hire for attitude.  It will make your business grow.  People spend money with people they like.

3. Find the right person with the right initiative

OK, so this one has more to do with YOU than them.  How is your level of trust?  If you can’t trust the people who are representing your business; who are the face of your business, then who do you trust?  Giving your staff enough leeway to be creative and find ways to increase profitability then you are going to lose customers.  Creating an atmosphere where people can trust that you are listening and willing to try what they bring to you is critical to finding and keeping the right employees.

4. Find the right training for the right person

I am constantly bewildered by companies that cut their training budget in order to save money.  That is like closing your shop for an extra day a week to save on payroll.  It’s stupid and a reason to sell your business and go work for someone else.  How do you expect to have a staff that works on the same vision for your business if you aren’t training all of them on what that vision looks like.  The key is to find the right training for each person.  I will add an article on training the right way later.  Some people need to see the vision in action, others can listen and learn.  The best way is to engage your employees in many different ways to solidify the training.  Show them, tell them, ask them to train you on what you want and see what works best.

5.  Look in the mirror!  Would you hire you?

I get in more trouble with this one than any other aspect of consulting.  If you wouldn’t hire yourself to be in your business, find out what part of steps, 1 through 4, you are lacking and fix it!  Great employees follow great leaders.  Great leaders do the right things.

Slow down and be patient.  Hiring wrong can do more damage to your business than not having enough people to help customers.  Make sure you are ready when you find the right person.

May
26

By

What’s It Worth?

Category: Being the Boss, Customer Service, Making Money, Saving Money, Training Leave a Comment

Percent And Dollar Symbols Image ID: 10052171 - stock illustration uploaded on 03 August 2011

I had a great question from a friend who is also a franchise consultant.  He asked how we know when something is worth adding to the services or products sold.  Up until he asked the question, I had mentally worked the ROI and figured out if adding another product or service was a profitable move or not.  As a consultant, I need to have data to show whether something is worth the cost.  That is where we need to work some math into the equation.

Often, the question comes in a bigger form such as when I get referenced as some to answer whether or not to buy a business, not specifically whether or not to add a product to an existing business.  Working backwards from the cost of time & effort back to the actual cost of the business is a fun way to gauge if a person is serious about being an owner.  Owning a restaurant is the number one business type that I am asked about.  I get the “I love the food, so it will be fun to work there” kind of answer.  I let them know that pizza, for example, can provide a good return on your investment, but cleaning the dumpster area behind the restaurant every week gets old fast.  Or, that working with hourly employees who see the job as a means to a paycheck and nothing else can be a challenge.  Hourly employees can work hourly at most any restaurant.

The best part of determining the real cost of buying restaurant is when you tell them that you a tied to the business 7 days a week.  If the manager quits or you are short staffed, you fill in.  There is no other way to make it work.  You can’t over staff or you lose profits and you can’t run the restaurant with too few employees because they are not going to put up with working harder.  Remember, they want a paycheck, not to make you proud of them for their dedication.  There’s a look in a person’s eyes when they realize the “sunshine and rainbows” story the sales guy told them isn’t reality.

Now, let’s talk about adding a product.

The data of the situation is what really matters.  If a product is good it needs to have three things working in its favor.

  1. It needs to have a built-in customer base.

  2. It needs to fit in with what you are already known for selling.

  3. It needs to sell fast and not take up too much space in the process.

These three points all come back around and need to have a positive answer to all three.  Only meeting one or two of these points means you will lose money.

I have watched a lot (and I mean far too many) independent and franchise owners add a product to their sales floor in the pursuit of adding dollars to their bottom line when they end up losing money by not having a customer base to buy it. Or, customers want the product, but they don’t know you sell it.  Or, they can find you and the product, but you lose because it takes up space from products that are you are know for and sits there longer than needed to turn a profit.  You need to be known for having the product, have customers ready to buy it, and sell it fast without losing ground on the products that you know sell well.

I am not a risk taker.  I will add a product when it meets the needs and passes my simple test.  Before then, you are risking losing more than money.  You lose your brand image when customers can’t tell what you are selling any more and they find another retailer to meet their needs.

The math comes down to the cost of the item plus the cost of the square footage needed to display the item times the time needed to make the sale.

Worth = (product cost + dollar cost to display in space square footage) * time needed to sell

If the product costs $100 and needs 1 square foot to display at a cost of $32 a square foot that equals $132 (in nice round numbers).  The time needed to sell it is the kicker.  For every month it takes for you to sell it, you need to add another $32.  Leasing space is a drain on profits even for online businesses.  Somewhere in the world there is warehouse of products that need space to sit before selling.  If it sells faster than one month, cut the square footage cost by dividing it by the number of days in the month.

I like simple math.  I am sure I am going to get comments about how the costs are a product of other factors.  You are right.  Employee costs, utilities, maintenance fees, and more all add to the cost structure.  If you want a spreadsheet to add all those things in, we can work it into the equation.  For a simple cost basis, we are limiting it to the basics needed to know if this product can replace space on a shelf or do we keep what we have there.

You can use this same “worthiness structure” for anything in your business.  I often use it when I talk to micromanaging owners who can’t seem to get out of their stores.  For them, the worth of their time inside the store versus finding a manager to replace them and getting out to find new customers looks like this:

Worth of bringing in one new customer = (average sale * the number of additional purchases over a year)

New manager payroll costs + training costs + time needed to get them up to speed / (the number of new customers brought in * worth of a new customer)

I could spend a lot of time doing math or I can take the pulse of the business and move on it.  Use the quick math and enjoy the increase in profits.  It’s worth your time!

Bob Griffin
Founder and CEO
Bgriffin@businessbulldog.com

LinkedIn Profile

Oct
25

By

Micro-Manage This!

Category: Being the Boss, Creating the Culture, Customer Service, Saving Money 1 Comment

Mirco-Managing costs time and money. Pick your red flags to know your business health

I was speaking with the manager of a restaurant recently when I asked a simple question. Any reader of this site knows how much I love a good simple question.  It aims the conversation directly where I need it to go in a way that I can follow up on after they give a “knee-jerk” response.

Very simply I asked, “Why do you think a business owner would ask the staff to do small, time-consuming things before they leave for the night when it doesn’t add customers or save money?”

The interviewee said “He’s a MICRO-MANAGER!”  I smiled and told her she was wrong.

Micromanaging is one of those terms that people like to use when they have a boss that goes over-board on ensuring his business is run a specific way and in turn gets in the way of getting the job done. 

Sometimes when an owner wants something random done, it isn’t for reasons of control…although it could be.  I wouldn’t put it past a bad person to be a bad owner.  Power in business is something that should be wielded to keep market-share, not hurt your own team.  Micro-managers are a tough lot.  It is an element of TRUST that they lack, so they fire off at the mouth and end up with a small, very low profit business.  On the other hand, managing the random things keeps the important things in check.  How can that be, Bob???  The answer lies in the nature of being an owner.

Most employees think that a business owner is a lazy SOB who hired someone else because he wants to free up his time for a good game of golf.  The truth is far from that perspective.  An owner has paperwork, costs, management, marketing, and his personal life all wrapped up into the business many people resent him for having.  It is a 24 hour a day job that does not get a real break where he can toss the workload over to someone else to handle.  So, with less time than he would like to have, he needs to find out how healthy the business is without living in the store.  (These are the paragraphs that I get the most mail about. Someone wants to add something to the list or tell me a horror story about being an owner.)  These are not micro-managers.  This the nature of the job of being an owner.

If you are a real business owner and not a micro-manager, you want to know how your business is being run without having to spend 100% of your time inside the four walls of the business.  If you want to stay in business, you can’t be there.  You have to get out and get customers in.  So, how do you run a good business without having to check on everything every day?  You have small, time consuming tasks that you can check on to know whether the business is being run to your standards.

I used to check handles on every piece of equipment.  If the handles weren’t clean, the restaurant wasn’t clean.  If you don’t clean the one part of the equipment that everyone touches, you don’t know what clean is.  If that one little check is wrong, I want more answers because there is more that they are neglecting.  I will do a top to bottom check of all the daily duties, run an audit, and ask the staff questions about what they think their job is at the store.

Why go for something small and not just check the big things?  Because things can “look” right and still be very wrong.  I have seen faked deposit slips, fraudulent inventory counts, and people on the payroll who didn’t exist.  If your business is bigger than one location, you need a red flag to let you know when you need to dig deeper.  It keeps the paranoia in check and lets you in a few seconds know if you need to jump in and stop everything from falling apart.

So, what can you have your team do to ensure they are managing your business the way you want?

Bob Griffin – CEO
Questions@BusinessBulldog.com
Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

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May
21

By

Top 10 Myths of Franchising

Category: Being the Boss, Customer Service, Making Money, Saving Money, Training Leave a Comment

Every workday I am struck by the number of people who fight against the system (franchise) they bought.  It’s like balling up all the money you worked so hard to earn and rolling it down the street.  If you did roll it down the street, you’d at least be able to know you weren’t on the hook for thousands more because of all the contracts you sign when you buy a franchise.  On second thought, forget rolling your money down the street.  Tie it to fireworks and blow it up.  It’s more spectacular and your crummy neighbors won’t be bothering you for more money.

The ability to lose common sense when it comes to making money is amazingly fast.  From the time you sign the Franchise Agreement to the time when you want to change things breaks the sound barrier.  Why buy something you want to tear apart and not use correctly?  It’s like buying a car and then taking it apart to make a skateboard.  Just following the system that made you want to buy in the first place.

Here are is my top 10 myths of franchising that I have seen in my years as a consultant.  If the guy selling you a franchise mentions more than one of these, even in passing, he is probably an OK guy to buy from.  The best franchises try to discourage you a little from buying.

Top 10 Myths about Franchising

  1. I can buy a franchise and let it make me money.
  2. Hiring a manager will take care of most of the work.
  3. I manage people in my day job.  I can handle a few hourly/contract workers.
  4. I have a Masters/ PHD/ Doctorate in Accounting, Marketing, Management, etc. This will be easy.
  5. I can teach the franchisor a thing or two with all my knowledge and skills.
  6. I can buy a poorly run store and turn it around for a profit.
  7. I can jump in and sell out fast.
  8. I can buy a franchise for my wife, son, daughter, etc to give them a career.
  9. No one can teach me anything I don’t already know about business.
  10. I like the product so I will be the best marketing person for my franchise.


Do any of these myths sound familiar?  We all want to see the best in the things we do.  It is human nature.  It is also human nature not to want to fail, but we seem to set that fear aside in the “knuckle-headed view” that you can buy a franchise, open the doors, and make huge amounts of money without doing any heavy lifting.  You have to work at whatever business you buy.

Hard work, building on success, building a business for yourself first, and many more lessons are hard learned when you get in business the right way.  Why start out on the wrong path?

I ask the classes that I guest lecture what kind of businesses they want to buy.  Not one, so far, has said they want to buy into an existing franchise.  Some of them have mentioned wanting to start a franchise but none want to buy a business with a track record and a reputation.  Absolutely none of them have mentioned the work that goes into being a business owner. 

Ask anyone how much money they think they will earn in the first year in business and they will gush with profit margins that would make Bill Gates blush.  The misunderstanding about the cost of doing business – more than money – is where most people fail to be honest in business.

Take my list my happy franchise friends!  Pass it around to anyone interested and especially those who are blind with new business bliss.  Don’t follow the myths. 

Bob Griffin – CEO
BGriffin@BusinessBulldog.com
Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

Jan
16

By

Sign Gnomes Are a Nuisance

Category: Creating the Culture, Making Money, Marketing, Saving Money Leave a Comment

Sign Gnomes Are A Nuisance

 **To my marketing friends – I like to make you think and push you to find better, newer ways to advertise. If this article bothers you, GOOD!  If that is all it did, you need a new job.  Start thinking creatively and find new and ORIGINAL ways to communicate with the customers.  Isn’t that why you got into marketing in the first place?? Operations can’t function without marketing but, it can’t function with bland marketing either.

I was looking through old pictures and ran across this one from last year of political ads that were jammed on the side of the road.  What a waste of time and money.  It looks horrible and it is trash.  I have never been a proponent of using these signs.  They are a weak way to grab attention at best and at worst, they are a blurry mess that drivers ignore.

First of all, if there is one of these signs, there seems to be several more that creep in over time.  It’s like a virus.  I drive down the road and there is one or two.  By the morning, there are several more and none of them make me want to stop and buy anything. Is there some kind of sign gnome that no one told me about that grows ugly signs in the middle of the night on the side of the road?  We should start hunting these damnable gnomes. Or at the very least set traps and relocate them to Las Vegas.  They’d love sign-growing gnomes there.

It may be my age (early 40′s) but I can’t read most of the signs because the typeface is too small to read. They jam too many messages into that small space and I can’t read it as I meander down the road at a whopping 45 miles per hour.  Who are they selling to?  It must be the speed readers with good eyes.  They are BIG spenders from what I hear.  For average people it looks like a blurry mess at any speed over idle.  Since there are stacks of them lining the roads, I mostly ignore them.  If you’ve seen one sign, you’ve seen them all.

Has anyone thought about the fact that the signs are below the driver’s door?  Unless Wonder Woman traded her invisible jet for an invisible car she ain’t reading the sign.  For you, it is below the car’s window and can’t be read even when stopped.  If it is across the road, you aren’t even looking at it.  Believe it or not, the government figured this one out before marketing people.  Their signs are at eye level for most people or at least high enough that drivers can read them.  I don’t remember a Stop sign being inches from the ground.  Not sure that would work for traffic.  Put the signs up on higher stands and you are starting to get somewhere with your message.

Business owners, think about how you are talking to your customers when you spend marketing dollars.  I don’t have real numbers but I suspect there are more marketing people than lawyers…Yick!  Some want your money and are going to show you statistics that indicate they have the world’s best way to get customers.  Use your common sense and think like your customers.  Will customers be intrigued, interested, and stop in because of your marketing?  If not, don’t do it.  We talk a lot about simple ways to grow your business on Business Bulldog.  Speak volumes the right way and do something better than your competition.  As an example of the wrong way to do things, I have no idea who any of the people advertising in the picture claim to be.  They wanted me to vote for them.  I didn’t remember any of them when I did vote.  Blurry, bland marketing doesn’t work.

Just a thought, if those filthy gnomes grab me because I outed them, tell my family I love them.

Bob
BGriffin@BusinessBulldog.com


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