Training for success

Speak to any successful entrepreneur and you’ll realise very quickly that they all strive for continuous improvement, both professionally and as an individual. Now, when most people think about continuous improvement, they commonly refer to the Japanese business philosophy of ‘Kaizen’.

Some popular companies that use the Kaizen approach include Ford, Toyota and Nestle. Although the Kaizen approach is applied predominantly to manufacturing businesses, it can also be utilised within many other industry sectors.

We recognise that when you start out with your Digital Agency, you may not be thinking about continuous improvement, efficiency savings or personal development. The priority for most business owners initially is to break-even and to start generating revenue.

"..building a successful business requires you to have a solid foundation and a plan of action in order to meet your short, medium and long term objectives.."
However, building a successful business requires you to have a solid foundation and a plan of action in order to meet your short, medium and long term objectives. The life of a modern day business owner can be challenging at times as you look to balance so many different priorities all at once. This is why it is so important to focus on your professional development so you can refine the skills you need to succeed.

Here at iOB Business, we understand the role that live training plays in the development of your Digital Agency as well as you as an individual. As a result, each Partner embarks upon two days of live training with us to prepare the launch of their business.

Drawing from our years of experience in the technology, marketing, sales and operational world, we can help digital entrepreneurs shortcut their route to market. For example, when you are first starting out, regardless of the business you are operating, you need to know your product or service inside out. It is crucial that you understand the features, benefits and reasons why someone would choose to become your client or customer.

At this point, it is also important that you understand the technical limitations of what you plan to sell. This is an important truth that you need to address because it will allow you to uncover objections that you may face when you are face to face with a potential client. If you understand the limitations of your product or service, you can then start to think about how you can mitigate against these objections early on in your sales process.

Training ordinarily allows you to get some hands on time with your service offerings. This can give you the confidence to develop solutions that will actually make your clients lives easier, thus ensuring you maximise your conversion rates.

When you are training in a live environment, it gives you the ability to learn and practice new skills. For example, with our training programme for new Partners, we spend a lot of time focusing on the sales, marketing and operational side of running your Digital Agency. The lifeblood of any business is converting clients so our training programme focuses on how to identify customers, what methods to use to connect with prospects and crucially how to present your solutions in the right way.

One question we always hear from people that have never operated their own business before is, “how do we run our business on a day to day basis?” It is something we cover in our training programme because we want to establish the right systems, mindset and skills in our Partners for long term growth of their Digital Agency.

While there are many ways to run a business, no matter what type of business it is, however, it’s important to remain consistent. One of the most effective ways to operate any business is through the use of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. This allows you to track interactions, follow up with prospects and effectively manage your sales pipeline. There are lots of great CRM systems available online and we will discuss the value of investing in a CRM system in a future blog post.

The transition from employee to business owner can be made easier by acquiring the right skills and guidance before you go to market with your product or service. This is what a well thought out and delivered training programme should look to achieve. Ultimately, if you can implement the right working practices from the outset of your new business you will find that you can scale faster as you grow your business from a solid foundation.

To find out more about our training programme, please contact a member of our team today.

Until next time, take care.