Published: June 15th, 2016; by Nick Hughes
To grow a successful business you must manage it holistically. You must focus on the complete business and not just its individual parts. The Balanced Business Wheel™ shows us that a business is made up of eight connected components that must all work together in harmony.
With client delivery, and other day-to-day issues of growing a business, business owners often end up focusing their attention on only a few of these components, resulting in an unbalanced business and a lot of anxiety and frustration.
These are the eight components of the Balanced Business Wheel™:
Product
Without a product or service there is no business. The product comes first and the business will follow. Consider startup companies. They must create, refine and price a product before they can start building the rest of the business. You must constantly be refining your product to meet the need.
Marketing
It is not true that you only have “to open the doors and they will come!” If the world doesn’t know about you and your products there is no market so there is no business!
Sales
If people are to buy your product or service a need must be identified. Sales is about having repeatable processes and systems that make it as easy as possible for your ideal prospects AND clients to buy from you.
Team
You cannot build a business without the help of people. The secret ingredient is finding and keeping the right people for the right positions and at the right time.
Operations
This is the messiest part of a business. This is all those processes and systems and rules and regulations that enable your business to function. Your business is a complex piece of machinery and needs to work flawlessly.
Financial
You are in business to make money! You want a profitable business that funds growth AND pays you a personal income commensurate with your responsibilities and the risks you are taking. To achieve this you need to consistently track and manage your financials and take corrective action immediately when you are off course.
Customer Service
Poor customer service is the death knell for companies. It is so insidious because unless you have accurate and timely information about the quality of the service and the satisfaction of the customers, you could find the reputation of your business is being seriously harmed. A very simple but powerful tool to collect information on customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score.
Plan & Manage
A business is complex and as it grows it becomes more complex. It is up to you, the business owner, to plan and manage all eight components to ensure they are working together towards a common goal. It is also up to you to be continually learning so you can handle the increased complexity of your business. This component is at the core of it all.
How can you use the Balanced Business Wheel™? You can:
- Review your plans to ensure you have addressed all eight business components.
- Use the Balanced Business Wheel as a template to plan the structure of your team.
- Assess each of the eight components for their effectiveness in supporting the success of the company.
- Make the Balanced Business Wheel a critical component of your company culture by ensuring your team is aware of the importance of each component and of the importance of them all working in harmony.
