photo credit: Damian Morys Fotos

If you think of your business as a car, you probably want it to be something like a Lamborghini. These are beautiful, high performance machines that attract a lot of attention. What you see on the outside is a thing of beauty.

With business, the outside is the intersection between customers and the business. For the most part, its the only thing customers ever see. This includes sales, customer service, marketing, and of course the product or service.

Its important to have a good face for customers to see and interact with. However, if all you ever focus on in your business is this interaction, you will be neglecting some very important elements.

For all the beauty of a Lamborghini, what makes it truly special is not on the outside. Design elements are easy. What is important is what is on the inside.

photo credit: telephoto46

The engine of the Lamborghini makes it pretty special. Imagine a Lamborghini with a lawnmower engine. It just wouldn’t be the same.

However, many small business owners try to run an outstanding organization on a rickety, slapped together engine. You make customers your number one priority and make promises to them and yourself to be the best. But if you always focus on being the best at the intersection of customer and business, you will never be able to be your actual best. In order to do that, you have to commit to building systems on which your business can run smoothly and achieve the results that you desire.

Don’t try to run a Lamborghini business on a lawnmower engine. Focus a good portion of your time on the insides of your business. This means building systems for everything.

As you built your business up, you probably went about this backward. You made promises to customers, then figured out how to make them happen. You may still do it. If you ever have problem maintaining a new change to your business, it is because you haven’t built the platform for it first. By throwing one new thing on top of another over the years, you have created a junkyard engine that is giving you just barely enough juice to stay in business.

If you want success, real and measurable results, you need to swap out the slapped together systems of your business for a new, powerful, success engine.

Here are some things effected by the engine inside your business.

• Efficiency
• Profitability
• Employee Satisfaction
• Time Management
• Product/Service Development and Implementation

This list could go on. The fact is, good systems have a positive impact on every part of your business. So, instead of trying to put more shine on your business, why not add some muscle under the hood?

Building systems takes time and hard work. You need to look at every single part of your business. My wife’s uncle has a business restoring old Ford Mustangs. When he rebuilds a car, he takes it all apart. Down to every last screw. As he does, he catalogs the process and identifies the purpose of each part.

If you do this with your business, you will be able to identify parts that are defective, other parts that aren’t performing like they are supposed to, and probably more than a handful of parts that you don’t even need. Go over everything carefully. Fix and improve each aspect of your business. Build simple systems for every job, every interaction, and for every piece of paperwork.

As you do this, always keep the customer in mind. You are fine tuning, or rather overhauling, so you can have an engine with which to really serve them better. Future promises should come from what you know you can accomplish. Future goals should be reached for not with hope, but with knowledge. You need to know your business intimately and be able to quickly identify any parts that aren’t working properly. In the end, you are a highly specialized mechanic, able to fix just one car, your business. Get good at it. Build and then maintain a real engine for success within your business.

Want to know more? Have specific questions? Ask below in the comments section.