Delivering Service May Limit Growth

by Joan Friedlander

I'm like many of my clients. I've reached a point where I no longer want to rely on my services alone for my revenue. It's not that I don't enjoy my work, I do. However, I'm seeing that, increasingly, the varying acts of delivering service, engaging in marketing activities, developing ideas and programs, creating systems and responding to e-mail is exhausting. Each one of those activity areas requires a different mixture of skills and calls upon a different kind of energy.

One day you're the manager. Another you're the marketing person and on another, the deliverer of services. And this is if you're organized and focused enough to wear only one hat a day. That, I'm discovering, is just the first step - an important step, but only a first step.

In past articles I've referred to Michael Gerber's model (author of The E-Myth Revisited) for organizing the different aspects of running a professional service business to see what may be at work here. I return to it now as it continues to serve as an excellent model for evaluation.

- The delivery of service is the work of the technician. Most self-employed professionals start out as technicians. They deliver service and they're good at what they do. All is great, except that in order to deliver service you need to do a few other things, too. You need to develop systems for delivery and spend time creating the market for the business so you have clients to serve.

- The manager is responsible for overseeing operations and establishing reporting functions and systems. The technician has to split off from delivering service once in a while to create the systems, develop reporting and tracking tools and evaluate performance.

- The visionary, or entrepreneur, has his or her eye on the future of the business, and is responsible for business development. The entrepreneur may also be engaged in marketing (creating relationships out in the community so that the technician has work to do) and needs time to dream about what else might be possible.

From the get-go, if you are a self-employed professional or consultant you have to wear all three hats to run a sustainable, profitable business. It can be fun and rewarding, and eventually a dead-end. To continue to make money you've got to stay engaged in the day-to-day. No work, no income.

Unfortunately, once you're in the loop where you're constantly rotating all three hats you may be hard-pressed to find the time to extract yourself long enough to do things differently. In addition, it's extraordinarily difficult to imagine your business without you, the star service-performer. After all, you do it your way and no one else could, right? Talk about a load of hooey (pressure, guilt, ego trip, etc.) keeping you stuck right where you are!

What are the questions?

I don't yet have "the" answers. However, I do have some idea about a few of the questions you need to ask if you also realize that (one, two, five or ten years from now) you need to create a different business structure in order to grow your business and create a different lifestyle than the one you have today.

1. Determine which of the roles most suits you; technician, manager or entrepreneur. Now that you've had the experience of wearing all 3 hats, which one do you think you're most suited for and enjoy the most? Which role is best for you in your business?

2. Decide who you need to add to your team so you can focus more on the role that serves you best.

- Maybe you do love delivering the service. In that case you might want to add a manager or entrepreneur to your team to create the systems and oversee growth. They can bring in more technician-types so the business can grow beyond your personal capacity to deliver service and you can take much deserved vacations and even move on at some point if you wish.

- If you love the role of visionary and entrepreneur, step out of the delivery end of your business (horrors, I know) and build a business where your service is delivered by others.

- If you love being the manager, create an advisory board of thinkers and build a business served by others, technicians.

3. Review your client base and they way you deliver services.

- Where are you making plenty of money for the time you're spending and where are you making less than you'd like? How can you expand the higher ROI services and products and minimize or delegate the rest?

- What elements of customer service can you automate?

- Which clients or services are counterproductive to your goals?

There are many more questions, and within the questions I pose many things to consider. My purpose here is to open up the inquiry and to encourage further exploration should you relate to the dilemma of the sole proprietor who has reached maximum capacity. I leave you with one last question. As the Star Performer are you willing relinquish absolute control?

 

by Joan Friedlander, © 2006. All rights reserved.