Structure is Not a Straightjacket

So you went out on your own because you just felt stifled in that big organization.  Now you are having some success, you’ve hired some people, and you’re busy all the time.  Problem is the sales resulting from all that “busy” aren’t what they should be.  Your people are starting to get frustrated and short-tempered. They ask questions all the time that they should know the answer to.  Some days you feel like all you do is repeat yourself.  This is not what you had in mind when you started your own business.

The problem is your business doesn’t have as much structure as it needs to be productive.  I know you are afraid of turning into the over-bearing rule-bound place you fled, but that’s not likely to happen.  You only need enough structure to create predictability. Too much predictability is boring, but the right amount allows a sense of security to develop, lowers stress levels, and brings all kinds of positive results. 

Job descriptions are a good example.  Legal requirements aside, a job description tells employees what they are supposed to do, what standards are being used to judge their performance.  Without a job description employees can get the feeling that what is expected of them changes every day.  Often what is expected of them seems to depend on the boss’s mood so they have to ask what they should be doing, every day.

Maybe you just need to standardize your sales process.  If the way prospects are approached depends on the personal preference of each sales person, managing the sales force will be like herding cats.  Everybody will experiment, and re-invent the wheel, every day with every prospect.  There is no way to judge what works and what doesn’t.  Establishing a sales process, with specific actions in a sequence, helps everybody be as efficient and as successful as possible.  And helps you run the business you had in mind.