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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Photo by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash With all the uncertainty many businesses are facing in today’s post-pandemic world, organizations are looking at ways to improve their bottom lines, especially if they can do it themselves. One great way to do that is to streamline business processes; however, many of these same organizations don’t know what tools to use for going about this, outside of hiring a consultant. If that’s you, then check this out the following list of 10 DIY steps for streamlining how your team accomplishes work. 1. Choose the Process Improvement (PI) Project Decide where you want to start. Tackling a smaller project at first is a good idea, particularly if your staff doesn’t have the bandwidth or PI experience. Otherwise, you can choose a more challenging project. 2. Define & Document Project Scope Determine the plan for improving the process and the timeframe you want to accomplish it in. Define it in as much detail as possible to prevent scope creep. 3. Map the Process Bring together your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to document the workflow based on the “Current State” of the process. It’s important to have someone facilitate this activity who is experienced in process mapping; otherwise, the basis of your whole project could be built on a faulty foundation. 4. Estimate Process & Cycle Times Estimate time frames and costs associated with the steps in the process. This is done to highlight areas where inefficiencies exist and unnecessary resources are being utilized. 5. Review the Process Map Do this to ensure accuracy and completeness of the map, making sure that the process matches reality. The end goal is to get buy-in from your SMEs. 6. Improve the Process Look at each section of the map to identify problems. The team needs to brainstorm and determine the most efficient way to perform the process that results in the most ideal outcomes for the customer. It’s also good to look at whether another person or team can more efficiently perform certain steps. 7. Develop Metrics, Controls & Tools Determine areas you want to measure and create metrics around those areas. Develop tools and documentation to support the process, and develop a plan to control/prevent process deviations. 8. Test & Revise the Process “Try Storm” the process. Take a mock run through to see if it functions as intended. If it doesn’t, make adjustments so the work will flow as intended. 9. Prep for Process Roll-Out Do these three things to ensure a successful roll-out and better process adoption:
10. Drive an Organizational Continuous Improvement Mindset Create an expectation in the organization that you’ll continue to improve processes on a regular basis. It’s definitely not a one-time event, and driving CI starts at the top! For those of you who would like to download an infographic of these same steps, click here. # # # How many of you, after reading this list, are thinking that there’s no way you can undertake this on your own, without outside help? Perhaps there are some of you who might be a bit mind-blown like Aston Kutcher in this video, when you think about trying to do this on your own. Then consider this--as a process improvement expert, that’s right up my alley! I’d love to hear all about your challenges and help you brainstorm solutions. If that sounds good, click the button below to schedule a chat!
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Freepik It goes without saying how important it is to have effective sales and marketing processes. However, many organizations struggle with how to improve them. Ultimately, it involves a combination of strategies, techniques, and continuous optimization efforts. Here are 15 steps you can take to enhance your sales and marketing processes: 1. Define Your Target Audience Identify your ideal customers and create detailed buyer personas. It’s essential to understand their needs, pain points, and preferences. 2. Set Clear Goals and Objectives Define Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals for your sales and marketing efforts. Doing so helps align your teams and measure progress. 3. Implement a CRM System Use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to effectively organize and manage customer data, track interactions, and drive leads and opportunities. 4. Content Marketing Develop high-quality, relevant content that educates, informs, and engages your target audience. Doing so can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more. 5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Optimize your website and content for search engines to improve organic search visibility and attract more relevant traffic. 6. Social Media Marketing Utilize social media platforms to connect with your audience, share valuable content, and build brand awareness. 7. Email Marketing Create personalized and segmented email campaigns to nurture leads, provide valuable information, and promote your products or services. 8. Sales Funnel Optimization Map out your sales funnel and identify areas where potential customers might drop out. Optimize each stage of the funnel to increase conversion rates. 9. Lead Generation Use inbound and outbound strategies to generate leads, such as content marketing, social media, paid advertising, and networking. 10. Sales Training and Enablement Provide ongoing training and resources to your sales team to improve their skills, product knowledge, and ability to effectively communicate with potential customers. 11. Marketing Automation Implement marketing automation tools to streamline repetitive tasks, nurture leads, and deliver personalized content at scale. 12. Data Analysis and Measurement Regularly analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts. Use data to make informed decisions and optimize strategies. 13. Collaboration Between Sales and Marketing Foster effective communication and collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. Alignment between these two departments is crucial for a seamless customer journey. 14. Customer Feedback and Refinement Collect and analyze customer feedback to understand their needs and preferences. It’s essential to continuously refine your processes based on this feedback. 15. Stay Updated with Industry Trends Keep up-to-date with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in sales and marketing to stay ahead of the competition. Remember, improving sales and marketing processes is an ongoing effort. Organizations that regularly assess your strategies, test new approaches, and adapt to changes in the market will be well on their way to more sustainable growth and success! # # # An excellent way to improve your sales and marketing processes is to use a CRM that integrates the two, one that seamlessly performs most of the abovementioned approaches. One Inbox is such a system. It replaces 15+ apps like Mailchimp, Calendly, Click Funnels, Kajabi, and Wix. And it does it all at a fraction of the cost of these apps and comparable CRMs. To learn more, click the button below to schedule a demo! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by creativeart on Freepik Don't you love those conversations with friends that help create connections between nebulous thoughts that swirl around in your brain and succinctly summarize their meaning? Well, I had one of those conversations a while back. This friend of mine said one thing that has stuck with me. She put words to my life's mission into one sentence: Kathy, you're all about helping people become the best versions of themselves. Wow, she hit the nail on the head. I really couldn't say it better myself! As a certified life coach, I love to help people step into all the good life has in store. I'm also involved in prison ministry. As a worship leader, I can lead the inmate band at our monthly worship services. The men we work with appreciate what we do for them. Knowing I make a difference in people's lives makes my heart sing! So, why am I sharing this with you? Well, it translates well into my passion for work. I'm all about helping businesses become the best that they can be! The primary way I do that is through business transformation. Streamlining operations or undertaking projects to improve your business can result in a healthier bottom line. And that leads to the tagline for my business: I help organizations become profitable beyond their imagination! I do this through the following approaches:
The one service offering I'm most excited about is project management. I use my project management skills to run all kinds of initiatives: process improvement, IT, product development, and customer experience, to name a few. And I've experienced some great results! Scrum Project:
Voice of the Customer:
Sales Process:
For all these reasons listed above, I'm passionate about what I do—helping businesses become the best that they can be! So, that's enough about me. I'd love to find out more about what you do! Are you facing any challenges in your business? I'd love to hop on a Zoom or phone call to brainstorm some solutions with you—for free! If that sounds good, click the button below to schedule a time for us to talk. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik With constantly changing economic conditions, business leaders often encounter the daunting task of improving their organization's profitability. Some may not know where to start. A great way to do that is to optimize their organizations. Check out the following five steps an organization can focus on to optimize their organizations -- because who doesn't want to elevate their profitability? 1. Craft a Culture Employees Can Embrace According to McKinsey, companies with cultures ranking in the top quartile of the Organizational Health Index post a 60% higher return to shareholders and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile. There's no easy formula for creating a great culture; doing this subject justice in a 500-word blog could prove quite challenging. The foundation starts with valuing each individual, giving them a voice in everyday matters, and creating an environment where employees love to come to work. Then, build from there. 2. Work Closely With Employees to Develop Goals They'll Support When business leaders establish top-level goals and all levels of the organization establish their goals in support of them, that's an excellent place to start. However, the employees have to buy into their plans. Executives must cast a vision of where the organization is heading and the employee's role in getting there. If employees don't connect to the big picture, productivity can suffer, and the organization's profitability could follow suit. 3. Make Effective Use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Successful organizations use KPIs to measure progress toward their goals. Even if you're currently using KPIs, you want them to tie directly to your most critical operations so you can stay on top of the progress toward your goals. You'll be alerted when measures are trending downward by monitoring your KPIs so that you can intervene more quickly with solutions. 4. Improve Your Processes Organizations with streamlined business processes experience reduced costs, increased revenue, and improved profitability. Take Merchants Insurance Group. After streamlining their Portfolio Management area operations, they improved on-time project delivery to 80% and achieved a 758% revenue growth in the first two months. For your operations, focus first on improving your processes, which are the most significant cost drivers and have the most time-consuming tasks. By doing so, you're likely to experience more significant gains on a shorter timetable. 5. Automate Your Processes When organizations automate their business processes, it's a powerful tool for reducing costs, improving productivity, and increasing profitability. It's common for productivity to increase by over 300% with workflow automation over previous processes. A great plan is to automate recently improved processes. Doing so can achieve even more significant cost reductions and productivity increases than process improvement alone. Speaking of automating processes, Michael Cantu's and my best-selling book on Amazon, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation, discusses the power of automating processes. Not only that, we dive deeper into how to transform cultures and encourage employee buy-in of organizational initiatives. So it isn't just for digital transformation fans! If you're interested in learning more, click the button below. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Freepik With the start of a new year, most organizations' leadership are looking for ways to decrease costs and increase revenue. One way to go about that is to eliminate waste in their operations.
Employees ultimately want to do the same thing. They don't want to deal with inefficiencies that waste their time. What to do? Streamline your workflows with Lean tools. For those of you unfamiliar with Lean, here’s a simple definition: The use of Lean eliminates waste in manufacturing and office processes. It also creates more value for customers while using fewer resources. Doing so lowers costs. But those aren't the only benefits. Streamlined processes also reduce employee frustration. Through Lean activities, employees help develop the solution. Since they are involved firsthand, this often brings a greater sense of engagement and job satisfaction. Reduced costs and more engaged employees ultimately contribute to greater profitability. And what company doesn't want that? You don't need to take my word for it. Here's an example of a successful Lean implementation in which my colleague was involved. Before they started the project, this Kansas City manufacturer recorded $18M in annual sales and employed 100 employees. Two years after their Lean implementation, they experienced these results:
Companies that embrace Lean principles aren’t the only ones to reap the benefits—customers do as well. When companies go Lean, customers experience higher satisfaction and increased product quality. A fundamental tenet of Lean is ensuring that only value-added activities occur regularly for which a customer would be willing to pay. You may think: "these benefits are all good, but I don't work on a factory floor. Here’s some good news: any organization or discipline can benefit from using Lean. Check out this video to see how Lean can help Sales and Marketing! Are you interested in learning more? Here are some tips on starting a Lean-thinking attitude in your organization. If you'd like to explore what Lean or other process improvement approaches can do for your organization, I'm offering a free ½ hour Discovery Call. I'd love to discuss any questions about Lean or any challenges you are experiencing! By: Kathy Kent Toney, President of Kent Business Solutions  Ah, the sweet taste of victory! For Chiefs Kingdom, wins are always great, but an AFC Championship win leading to a back-to-back Super Bowl, that's even sweeter! We’re so blessed to have the Chiefs, a truly world-class organization, right here in Kansas City. And how fortunate we are to have Head Coach, Andy Reid! Speaking of Andy, did you know he’s a process wizard? He’s an expert when it comes to following a consistent process that leads to success. In his own words, he said: “We focus on the process, we focus on what we can control.” Let’s dive into a few real-life examples, inspired by Andy, that can help you in your organization: 1. Hold Regular Creative Brainstorming Sessions At least once a week, he and his coaches brainstorm far-out-there play ideas and whiteboards them. Eric Bieniemy, the current Offensive Coordinator, puts it this way: "[There’s] no such thing as a bad idea, just as long as no one gets their feelings hurt. Some are better than others." And Andy is pretty hard to top when it comes to ideas.” Lots of times, he’ll find things that happened decades ago. For those of you who are familiar with the Shift the Rose Bowl Parade Right play in the Super Bowl LIV…that’s a great example. It dates way back to the 1948 Rose Bowl! Chad Henne, the back-up quarterback, once said: “Who sits here and finds these?” That’s Andy for you! Lessons Learned: Involve your staff, the creative minds in your organization, to brainstorm ideas. Be sure to think outside of the box. Hold regular meetings around this…put these sessions on your calendars. Also, don’t overlook resurrecting historical practices or ideas that have worked and modernize them. Then flesh out these ideas to prepare for the next step. 2. Hold Regular Meetings to Review Creative Ideas Every Tuesday, Andy Reid jots these ideas down on 5x7 cards that he passes out to his quarterbacks for review. Then, the group picks out a favorite or two, and the more outrageous, the better! Next, he tries them out at the next game. The Chiefs players love to look for his reaction when he uses that play...it’s usually a wink and smile to the onlookers. 😊 Lessons Learned: Again, schedule a recurring meeting on your calendar for reviewing creative ideas. Then, review them with key leaders. Have them tailor down your list for implementation in your organization. 3. Do the Necessary Prep to Be Game-Ready, Every Time Andy’s dedication to his work is legendary. He’s well known across the league for the amount of prep he puts into getting his team ready for every game. Here’s an example of that: Brad Childress tells the story of when he worked with Andy years ago. Every Friday evening, without fail, Andy would group text both him and then Offensive Coordinator Matt Nagy two options of the 15 opening plays for the next Sunday’s game. He could always expect the text, and it usually came during dinnertime! Then, they would meet the next day at 7:00 AM to go over the options. Lessons Learned: Set up a regular cadence of important activities, basically a process, that can lead to game-changing results. Be sure to involve key leaders to review game plans and adjust if needed, based on their feedback. These examples from Andy are just the tip of the iceberg…I’m sure he has many other systems that he consistently follows. In the end, his diligence to focusing on process is legendary for building winning teams. Just like Andy Reid’s persistence in following a weekly process, organizations that excel in today’s challenging business environment do the same. Streamlined, robust business processes that are consistently followed produce:
If your organization is interested in sprucing up its business processes, so you can more consistently win in all you do, I’d love to have a chat! Click here to get a time scheduled. ‘til next time, Kathy |
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