Having a motivated team behind your business can be the catalyst for growth. You want to ensure that your team are working as hard as you are to build your business. We will outline a few small tips to motivate your team to help you transform your business!
Roger: Welcome to Local SEO Today. I’m Roger Murphy.
John: And I’m John Vuong.
Roger: Welcome to this episode, we want to talk to business owners with regards to building a team, maintaining your team, John. I guess really growing because really it’s about growing your business and you can’t do it on your own so build that team.
John: So, in order to scale you can’t do everything yourself, you can’t put a hat on and do all these different functions, right?
Roger: In the early days you can. You have to but as you’re growing.
John: Yes, you need to really focus on your strengths and all the different team players strengths, right? So, when you’re really starting to grow or if you already have a team in place, how do you make sure that everyone’s motivated and stay focused on their task and wanna continue working there and give their best effort, right? So, these are some of the tips that I would use and this is what I’ve been incorporating myself as a company so incentivizing the team so there should be two types of targets so it should be a company target so the top line revenue for the entire company angle as well as some sort of personal or team target, right? So it gives them a motivation to actually hit that target, right? So, it all depends on the roles that they play, right? So, for instance if they’re in the sales role, commission makes a big incentive for a lot of these people, right? So, monetary but then there’s other factors such as, you know, if you’re in customer service for instance and people are calling you all the time. Well, how many of them are satisfied and you’re able to upsell them or you’re able to get them to write a review, right? So, there’s things that you can actually try to push some of these people to focus on and this also applies for a lot of service based companies, right? So, for instance, a dentist. You’ll have an office and there’s a receptionist, right? Or hygienists, right? So, they’re facing the customer and what can you do to really motivate those people to get them to continue working hard and stay loyal to your company, right? So, make sure they know what is the end goal for the company so have, you know, I always think of it as tasks, goals, KPIs on a daily basis weekly, monthly so make sure that you have that team feel but also individualize target as well. Personalized.
Roger: So, sort of a tip you could use today and some businesses do this today. They’ll tell the team, it’s not necessarily the sales team but it could be just anyone that deals with customers, we’re looking and then depending on the businesses and it changes with every business but let’s say it’s a dental office. “We’re looking to include ten more families this month. We want to bring on ten more families.” Therefore when we’re out reaching to our current customer base maybe what you do is incentivize your team to say if we bring in…If you get two referrals this week or ten by the end of the month or pick whatever something, whatever it works out to that leads to potentially a new you, know, family or set of patients coming to the office. It’ll go towards something and it makes money maybe it’s a…
John: Office party or some, you know, X amount of hours for everyone so there has to be some sort of personalized target, right? For either a team or a company target but really understand that and you know, get everyone’s buy-in, right? Work together.
Roger: Get the chart, put it on the wall in the back office so people can see where we are, here’s where we started, here’s where we’re at, here’s how many days are left in the month and it really even if you’re not a salesperson you do enjoy the competition to say, “Hey, I think we can do this and if we do it here’s what we’re gonna get from it.”
John: Exactly, so individualize it with some sort of bonus or whatnot as well, as a company target, a team target with drinks or an outing or whatnot and then hold everyone accountable as well so the key is someone that’s not pulling their weight. Well, talk to them, figure out why, figure out what’s the main reason, right? Because if everyone’s working together at the end goal and one person is holding you back, what’s the real reason going on, right? Like maybe it’s a personal thing or a family thing because if everyone has the same sort of motivation and one person is lacking, really figure out what the why is, what’s going on, right?
Roger: Exactly. If you involve your staff as a team and let them know and feel that they’re part of the team, have a meeting and sit down and have everyone maybe, John, come together, come in with ideas of efficiencies, how we could improve systems maybe even improve revenue so to speak. Everyone’s got good ideas so if they bring it forward or you as the business owner set up an environment where it’s encouraged to bring ideas forward. Not a complaint department but here’s how we could do things better and then you thank them for the efficiency, thank them for the you know, for the idea. If it actually gets implemented everyone gets a coffee card, everyone gets lunch somewhere.
John: Exactly, so that’s very important in terms of like a flat kind of company where communication and sharing, collaborating amongst each other is wanted, it’s actually a need, right? For a company to grow because in order for you to understand everyone’s role you have to understand, you know, get to know everyone, right? Get to know exactly what their pain points are, what their strengths are, you know, what everyone’s going through in a daily basis and really figure out like people are gonna go through rough patches and as a team we can all work together to pick them up, right? Because one individual might have a rough day or they couldn’t sleep because the kids were sick over the weekend or whatnot, right? So understand that, right? And people can pull their weight and help them out, right? This is the whole point of having a team, right?
Roger: And at the end of the day you’ve got a team if you show respect to them make sure they feel like they’re part of the team and part of the family. They don’t stay at a job strictly for money. They stay at it for satisfaction, for feeling, you know, they’ve accomplished something and if you can, you know, set up an environment that does that that goes a long way to building as the best practices or strategies how to build your team, how to keep your team because let’s face it people can go work many different places there’s lots of, you know, talented people can find jobs in many different places.
John: And the social aspect and people like working with people that they actually like and sure about, right? So, if you actually can open yourself up as a business owner to let people in and let people know like what is really going on and be honest, be transparent. Don’t hide and put like, you know, when you’re in front of them act different than if you’re in front of customers like be yourself, right? And people would like that if they don’t then you’ll find someone that should like it and you’ll find a better fit for that role, right? And another thing is, I know I talked about like incentivizing and KPI’s so make sure you have mini rewards. It could be like weekly rewards or monthly but also an annualized reward so people can see what is going on in terms of like a corporate goal if you’re able to hit that target what everyone’s gonna be going on say, you know, Christmas lunch or you know, a get-together at the end of the year or a monetary bonus or they’ll get a gift or a trip or whatever it may be, right? So, everyone’s in on it together, right?
Roger: Don’t feel as a business owner that this is too expensive, I can’t afford to do it, it doesn’t need to cost a fortune, John, right? I mean coffee cards, I mean just even the littlest thing to give something a recognition for, “Hey, that was a great idea you brought forward at the last meeting,” or “That was a super, you know, involvement you have with the client or how you dealt with a certain situation.” Just acknowledge, really acknowledge and reward them and give them targets that they can grow towards.
John: And always try to get the most out of all your employees, right? So, understand their strengths and weaknesses and understand where they want to get to. That’s really the goal sessions, right? So, once you figure out like what their annual five-year, 10-year goal is, figure that out and try to work together to get to that point.
Roger: Yes, and if they don’t have a goal help them set a goal.
John: Exactly.
Roger: Do you want to own a house? Does one of your staff want to own a house one day, do they want to have their own condo? Really uncover that and then all of a sudden they’re working towards a goal and they’re helping you work towards your business goal, everyone’s really being taken.
John: And a satisfied employee is a lot easier to retain than to hire someone new and train them that might not be a good fit, right? So, really take care of your people, take care of your team and they will take care of your clients.
Roger: Yeah, communicate to them, let them give you, encourage them to bring ideas forward, don’t let those silos grow up where sales doesn’t talk to marketing or so-and-so doesn’t talk and dispatch to whatever. Keep them all together working and pulling in the same direction.
John: Exactly.
Roger: So, great best practices, John.
John: Yeah, perfect. Well, thanks a lot Roger.
Roger: John, thank you and we’ll see you again at Local SEO Today.
