Do you ever feel like certain areas of your business are stuck in a pattern? Picture your business as a pipeline, when everything flows forward, it’s smooth and efficient, however when certain areas of your business, such as time management, prospecting, or client servicing get backed up, the whole system slows down. These are what I call “Business Bottlenecks”, which are the clogs that waste time, drain energy and hold you back from real growth.
As Peter Drucker, the legendary management consultant and author of the book The Effective Executive, once said, “In most organizations, the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle.” His point was that most obstacles in any business start with leadership decisions (or the lack thereof). And bottlenecks don’t go away on their own. They only get resolved when there is a clear process for spotting and removing them.
So how do you unclog your business bottlenecks? Let’s break it down into a stepwise approach.
Step #1 Find Your Business Bottleneck
You can easily spot Business Bottlenecks by looking at where you’re not getting the results you would like, despite your efforts. If you’re consistently hitting a wall in a certain area, you’ve found a bottleneck.
In addition, you can use metrics, if possible, such as conversion rates, response times, number of referrals or anything else that shows you the hard truth about performance.
Take Steve K., a veteran advisor with over twenty years of experience. Who after creating a very successful business realized that his clients depended on him not only for investment advice, but service issues, even though he has a team of five!
Step #2 Analyze the Cause
You will never resolve the challenge if you don’t understand why you have the challenge in the first place. That’s why it is so important to analyze the cause of it. The best way to do so is to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this a skill issue?
- Is this a process issue?
- Is this a mindset issue?
Be specific. The clearer you are about the cause, the more effective your solution will be.
In Steve’s case it was a combination of several issues, but it all stemmed from his mindset, “It’s easier just to take care of what the client wants than to delegate it to the team and hope that it gets done”. In other words, he had the wrong mindset.
Step #3 Find the Solution/s
The most important thing to remember when designing a solution/s is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Rather, find someone that has the strategies and/or solutions that work for your specific challenge.
I had seen this before, a veteran advisor creates a successful business and he and his team went way above more than what was required all the time. I taught him and his entire team the “Defensive Client Servicing System,” which is the topic of The Advisor Solutions Podcast EP #141. In that episode I explain tools, systems and techniques that he needed for himself and his team.
Step #4 Implement and Track Results
This step might seem obvious since nothing will change until you apply the solutions and track results. It’s in these moments that you might find some growing pains.
Steve and his team quickly learned the tools, but it took a while to consistently implement them. That’s why each team member kept track of their daily activities so we could see what was being delegated by Steve (the Sr. Advisor) to the rest of team and what the team was accomplishing.
Step #5 Maintain and Review
Remember, a cleared bottleneck can clog up again if you don’t maintain it. That’s why you need to continually review your systems to ensure they’re still effective.
That’s exactly what we do in our Team Coaching Sessions! We review the “Defensive Client Servicing System” to discuss results.
Why Unclogging Your Business Bottlenecks Works
When you integrate these five steps, you unclog your Business Bottleneck. The reason why it works so well is because it’s a stepwise approach to overcoming any challenge that you have in your business.
In Steve’s case, it was the most important challenge to overcome because he didn’t want to continue to grow the business (even though he has a large sale pipeline) at the expense of him having more clients to service. However, now he knows that he has cleared his Business Bottleneck and has a client servicing system that is working for him, his clients and his team.
