Last week, we talked about the first four concepts in my new book, Fix Your Business; 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Reduce Chaos in Your Business. Last week, we looked at Preparation, Purpose, People, and Profit. This week, we’ll go deeper into SmallBizLady’s 12 Ps of Running a Successful Business looking at processes, productivity, performance, and product. This article will give you a few ideas so that you can start to think through how you will start fixing what’s going wrong in your business. I want to help you enjoy running your business again. Take this opportunity to Pre-order a copy of the book, Fix Your Business today, if you order a copy before the book is released in March, you’ll get a free gift. The book will allow to figure out where to get started to turn things around in your business.

#5 Processes: Build Systems and Document Processes. If you are still walking around with all the important information about how your business runs in your head, you are doing your business and yourself a disservice. You’ll never be able to bring on staff or create a business that you can run without you if you don’t document how the secret sauce is made. There are all kinds of processes in a business, payment processing, marketing and lead generation, customer service, email protocol, packaging and shipping, invoicing, etc.

#6 Productivity: Using The Right Tools There are lots of tools out there, you need to decide the best ones that can save you time and/or help you make more money. What can you automate? Should you go cashless? Do you need a social media scheduler, sales automation, CRM, calendar scheduler, invoicing? Pick top things that you have to touch every week in your business and look for a tech solution.

#7 Performance: Measuring Your Results. If you measure something you can improve it. Start with why do your customers buy from you? What is your rate of repeat business? What is your monthly burn rate? What is driving your web traffic? How is your website converting sales? How are your doing on your weekly/monthly sales goals? Ongoing marketing initiatives? Open rates on your emails? What is your shopping cart abandonment rate? And what is your company’s profitability over last year? Get the point? There are a lot of things you can start to look at in your operations. You must pay attention to all aspects of how your business operates in order to make adjustments and grow.

#8 Product: Claim Your Niche. It’s really important that you have a strip of land that you own in the marketplace. What are you known for? What do you want to be known for? Who is your niche customer? Has it shifted at all? What is you next product, online course or book, or service innovation? Talk to your customers. Make sure you know what they are struggling with and then look to the trends in your industry to figure out where you need to direct your business next.

I hope these questions have helped you see areas in need of improvement in your business. But you are not alone to figure things out. If you want help to build a new plan for your business, join my Fix Your Business Facebook Group. The content is especially designed with you in mind.  Stay tuned next week for Part III of How to Fix Your Business series.