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Posted On 08 May 2020
Marama Carmichael

When you run a small business, you can get pretty caught up in its day-to-day functioning. You’re so involved in solving the problem you’re having right this minute that maybe you’re not spending that much time thinking about the future.

Think about it. Do you have a five or ten-year plan for your business? If you do, that’s great.

There are business owners who have things mapped out as much as possible. They’ve considered all the different aspects of their business—marketing, sales, accounting, administration, product design etc. And they’ve got all these aspects working in tandem.

This is, ideally the way a business should work—as one big ecosystem the different parts of which are aware of what the others are doing.

But there are times when the ideal falls apart. So here are a few tips you can keep in mind.

1. Are Your Departments Working in Tandem?

Are your departments informed about what the other departments are doing? For example, does your sales department know about your new marketing campaign which is in the works? Are they tailoring their sales approach according to the new message that you’re planning to send out?

Remember that these are not the only two departments that need to work together. For example, if you’re coming out with a new product, your sales department will need to know all about it in advance because the sales strategy they’re using right now might not work for the new product.

So the point is to provide as much information to the different departments of your company as possible.

2. How Do You Keep Everyone Informed?

Keeping everyone in your company informed can be done in various ways.

  • You can have weekly meetings with everyone in your company (assuming that you run a small business and everyone can fit into one space). Many times, business owners try to avoid these types of meetings because they seem like a waste of time. They seem to go on for much longer than needed and everyone is in a rush to get back to their “real” work.
  • However, when there are changes going on in your company, you’ll need everyone to stay informed. If you find that the meeting is going overtime and people are rambling, ask each department to prepare a short presentation of what’s going on with them and stick to that. This way, you save time and everyone stays informed.
  • If a meeting format doesn’t work for you, you can try distributing memos on a regular basis or sending out group emails. The only disadvantage of doing this is that you can never be sure that people are actually reading those memos or emails. But if you can keep them short and succinct, explaining everything that needs to be explained in a few words, you have a greater chance of keeping everyone informed.

3. Keep Your Outgoing Message Consistent

When you increase communication within your company, the message that’s going out to your customer will also stay consistent.

You won’t have your blogger writing one thing on your blog and your social media person posting something else on Instagram. Plus, your sales personnel will also be informed about what approach is best to take, depending on the branding message that you want to send out.

The advantage of organising things in this way is a long term one. If you just let things happen, then you risk developing a brand which is not in keeping with your inner vision.

Instead, it’s a good idea to think consciously of what message you want to send out about your product and your company and make sure that everyone stays on the same page with regard to this message.

Contact us for more great tips to develop a healthy business ecosystem.

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