Like a quote from your favourite film, a good process can stay with you forever.
The secret to successfully starting and growing a new business is all in those 'Hollywood' processes. We're talking about the ones that just make things work like magic. You need them like you need leads. And air. But if the word alone conjures up feelings of dread and you find yourself thinking, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” it’s time to embrace your inner process fanatic.
“Hasta la vista, process!”
Creating solid, usable processes hasn’t always come easily to the Straightahead UK team.
“The thought of process documents used to make my ears bleed and send me dashing the other way,” says Straightahead CEO, Vicki Culverhouse. “It took me the first year of ‘running’ Straightahead to realise their importance.”
Without processes in place to manage all the key tasks involved in running the business, needless repetition soon became the name of the game.
Vicki sighs at the memory. “I don’t think I’d ever repeated myself so much in my entire life. New staff meant lots of explaining, lots of repeating the same thing three, four, five maybe ten times. If we’d had the process documents we have in place now, I would have saved myself an inordinate amount of time and frustration and probably had a more successful business, faster.”
“I love the smell of process in the morning”
Our process documents are neither complicated nor difficult to follow; they are simple, practical tools. We write down how to complete common tasks once, and then make sure everyone knows where to find those documents.
We have step-by-step processes for lots of things, including:
- how to log into clients’ CRMs
- the new client journey
- interviewing process and questions
- best practice for answering the mainline
- even holiday and leave requests
It might sound extreme to non-process converts, but this has helped our business run in a smoother and more manageable way.
“Gone are the days of explaining myself till I’m blue in the face (and feeling irritated),” says Vicki. “Taking the place of the old frustration is a collection of processes that are easy to follow, easy to learn and easy to locate.”
“Houston, we have a process”
The key is to keep them simple and make sure everyone can understand them. Be mindful that as your business grows, processes may change or need adapting to keep up to date with how your business really works. You will probably need new process documents for things like new roles that you create.
But working out how it all fits together is simple; the process document captures your everyday actions and provides a consistent, failsafe plan that EVERYONE knows and follows. The result is a business that runs smoothly with the whole team reading from the same page. You’ll even find more interesting things to talk about instead of repeating the same information. Like your latest film binge, perhaps.
"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship… with us and our processes"
Our processes rock our world. They give us our movie star magic that translates into more quality time to spend generating even higher quality B2B leads.
If you want our processes to become your processes by working with us on your next B2B lead generation campaign, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.