“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” – Peter Drucker
It’s a tough world and each day the competition is getting more severe and resources seem stretched beyond their capacity. However, it is those who can survive and remain successful in these circumstances that will be around for long. Does your company have the traits of a successful business? It is extremely important for companies to assess their own capabilities and shortcomings regularly such that they are able to remain at the top of their game and continue to be known as a successful business. The ability to survive and emerge victorious in trying circumstances is what smart companies are made of. Such companies would ensure that their employees are partners in their growth and be with them from the stage of the conceiving of ideas till the implementation and completion. A successful business is one that would not direct its employees but rather actively solicit ideas from all levels of employees, implement the ones that make the most business sense and reward those employees that suggested those ideas.
Another of the traits of a successful business is that the employees feel like they are part of the company – decision makers to some extent and would be able to control their own actions and growth. They feel responsible for the performance of the company and hence all their actions are directed towards making the company successful. A successful business is one that would be led by inspirational leadership – people that other employees will look up to and emulate. Employees are no longer treated as ‘parts’ of the mechanism that are there to make the company and top leaders successful. Instead a successful business would allow the employee to sharpen their skills, interact directly with customers and hone their business capabilities in an endeavour to attract and retain the best talent available. A smart and successful business would be ‘led’ by its people.
A great company culture – the united face of the company that is made up of the skills, talents, values, beliefs and guiding principles. A successful business would have a culture that it is proud of – one that attracts customers, employees and other ‘partners’. Such a ‘driven’ culture will ensure that all those that make contact with the company will work towards ensuring that the company has a successful business and remains top of its class.
A successful business is one that has determination and ambition. The push is towards the greater good – for all its partners and not one that is centred at personal gain. A successful business would be one that over-delivers and keeps every promise it makes, ensures that all its partners benefit from their association with the company and relentlessly works towards the relationships.
Every successful business begins with meeting the needs and expectations of its customers. The business would make every effort to understand the target customer base and then reach out with personalized messages and products. The leaders and employees of a successful business would know that in order to delight their customers, they should first put themselves in the shoes of the customer, use their own good and unpleasant experiences and ensure that their customers experience only the good and the occasions to be dissatisfied are reduced to the minimum. This is what defines great customer service. Successful business integrates high quality service into their company’s strategies and policies.
A successful business promotes positivity and a healthy attitude. Each person is empowered to make decisions and encouraged to take ownership of their actions. Ownership leads to a sense of responsibility to make changes to their behaviour, upgrade their skills and take other positive actions. A successful business will know how to recruit and retain the people with the right attitudes, ensure that people that are ineffective don’t remain within the company and will provide the required support, tools and equipment to ensure that the ‘right’ people can do their job with the utmost quality and produce high output.
To make a successful business, a company must have a business plan that is detailed, well-articulated and clearly written down. It won’t be of any to have a many paged document without it having any relevance or efficacy. A well-laid out plan will positively drive the entire organization not just in the daily operations but also to achieve long term goals for the company and its partners. A successful business is one that is determined, focused and disciplined to follow the policies and business strategy laid out. It will be flexible and have room to adjust to the volatile market conditions and yet maintain its core culture.
A successful business is not risk averse. In fact the people in such a business understand that without taking calculated risks it would be tough to change and without change no company, business or person can hope to survive. The risks are taken post clearly understanding and knowing the kind of outcomes that can take happen and the goals that they can achieve based on these risks. Such businesses respond actively, swiftly and positively to market flux and changes in business conditions that an unprepared company would not be able to withstand.
A very critical part of any successful business is being able to sustain a good cash flow and other forms of financial expertise. They would have a proper system in place to manage the finances and be disciplined enough to follow the system and plan. They would know where to spend their money, how to insure its growth and what measures they would need to adopt in case of a shortfall or financial crisis.
Another key trait of a successful business is that all their processes and operating procedures are highly streamlined. Such organization ensures that there is increased clarity of vision, expectations and goals and each person understands their responsibility in making the company more efficient, productive, successful and aligned to the fast pace of the market and customer expectations and demands. The other aspect of business that each person would pay attention to is the use of information technology. Even if some of the systems may be complex, a successful business would hire someone with the required know-how and would encourage each person in the organization to at least understand the basics of the available technology. Technology helps a business keep pace with change and the ever in flux business scenario. Technology helps a company reduce costs, work faster and more efficiently and therefore each person has the responsibility of keeping abreast with the tools that the company invests in and needs in order to be successful.
Great marketing and promotions are amongst the highlights of a successful company. The sales and marketing teams would first gain a thorough understanding of the target audience and then proceed to ‘market and sell’. In gaining a ‘feel’ of the prospective customers before preparing a plan, the people responsible are able to provide personalized and customized options that would be more easily liked and adapted by the target audience. This in turn would lead to more sales increasing the profits and growth of the company.
A successful company will ensure that its people are constantly trained and their skills are regularly upgraded. The people would be rewarded for their efforts for the company and for the efforts they put into their own professional development. Each aspect of a company when working together collaboratively will make a successful business that will sustain.