Business Development Basics

Business Development Basics

This installment of my business basics series is based on the concept of “The Business Development Process” from The E-Myth Revisited .

My newsletter readers will remember that for the past couple editions I have talked about my realization that even in a one man corporation there needs to be three distinct roles represented in order to have a successful company: the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician.

Those three roles are also reflected in the activities of the business and so today we’re going to take a quick look at the three essential activity groups in a company.

Innovation

Innovation is the realm of the entrepreneur, although every job role in the company should have an element of innovation to it.

Innovation is doing new things [not just thinking about new things!]. Every process in your business should be open to innovation at any time. Along with core business concepts like product development, everything from the way you answer your email, to managing your accounting can be lit with the torch of innovation.

Quantification

This is my latest favorite. Quantification is the realm of your business manager. It is simply having a system to track changes and the results that they produce.

For an online business, imagine you had a sales page that you were constantly tweaking, but if you didn’t set up a system to track the conversion rate and correlate it to the changes you made…well you’d be just guessing.

Don’t just guess…about anything. Set benchmarks, make changes, track the results and then evaluate. If things got better then you have a new benchmark, if not roll back to the original before the changes and start again.

That’s how real businesses work, and we’re fortunate, on the web it is very easy to track just about everything. The funny thing is that so few people do it.

I have a friend who has made a mint on the web and when I asked him the key to success in an online business, his answer was, “Test everything. Measure, so you can constantly be improving and really knowing what works and what doesn’t”

Guessing is bad for business. Knowing is good.

Orchestration

This is the domain of the technician. Getting things done well and in an ever increasing attainment of the goals of the business.

Orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of your business.

“Would you like fries with that?” is an example of orchestration. No right minded 15 year old in the world would want to say that to the 39 people an hour who don’t order fries with their meal at the burger joint, but the business system knows that when customers are asked this simple question, they buy more. So in terms of the fast food joint’s business, this is good orchestration.

It is things that must be done in a certain way because your company has done its testing and knows that they get better results. There are lot’s of SEO techniques that could fall into the category of orchestration for Internet businesses.

The business development process is a constant communication between these three categories of activities. Even if you are a one man or woman show it is useful to at least outline some guidelines for each area so you can refer to and refine them each time you go through a process in your business.

Jon Symons
Digesting the E-Myth so you don’t have to.

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.