Images_Digital_Edition_July_2019

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 42 images JULY 2019 Try to get 1% better every day Marshall Atkinson is a leading production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting. Marshall focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. He is a frequent trade show speaker, article and blog author, and co-founded Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with entrepreneur Tom Rauen. atkinsontshirt.com ‘drip campaigns’ for marketing and client retention. Cutting loose the customer that sends you no-profit work that clogs up your schedule. It is the accumulation of these tiny wins that pushes you to the success you are seeking. Processes last As I mentioned before, I’m a fan of setting goals. I truly believe we need to understand where we want to go. However, what happens when you achieve that goal? Let’s say you do hit the £1m mark in sales. Does everything just stop? Nope, because a new goal is going to be set. This time, it will be £2.5m or another figure. But what is going to get you there faster is the habit of continually refining and improving. That 1% compounding every day. Remember the definition of processes? “A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” In all facets of your business, every time you improve something, you are taking a step to compounding your results. That 1% is about your shop learning to change and improve. Consequences of not improving processes So, what happens if you just stay put? No action. Nothing is broken, right? Why mess with it? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you don’t live in a bubble. The world is evolving all the time. How is your shop evolving? Or, better yet, how is your competition evolving? Is someone poised to eat your lunch? There are plenty of horror stories from other industries that tell the tale of not adapting. Don’t let that be you. Define your processes This isn’t hard. It’s just work. Start with any core task in your shop. Take a snapshot of how the work is being performed now. Document: • Who is doing the work • What is the work • When is it due • Where in the shop is the work performed • What other departments influence their work • How is success defined You don’t need anything fancy. A notepad and a pencil will do. Maybe even record the process with photos or video from your phone. Want to get more professional about it? Use this free tool, www.draw.io , to chart your processes. The important part here is that there are friction points, bottlenecks and landmines in your processes that require some adjustment. Can you remove a step? Is there a way to automate it? How can technology handle something to help? Your goal is to improve something so that it is improved forever. What if you don’t have a process? That’s okay too. Describe how you do it now. Don’t be afraid. For example, plenty of shops don’t have a well- defined process for creating art, checking in inventory, quoting or even scheduling jobs. It’s not the end of the world. To start your improvement after you have charted your current method, think about ‘how’ it should work. What’s the best way that someone else might be doing it? Would that work for you? What’s preventing you from adopting that in your shop? Time? Money? Experience? Tools? Don’t fret. You need to simply map it out and start. Remember, we want a 1% improvement daily. Not 100% improvement. 1%. Think smaller. Rather than redesigning the entire receiving department process, what if today you nailed down how box labels are printed and applied to cartons? Tomorrow, it’s how packing slips are sorted. Process habits Remember, continuous improvement never ends. It is the habit of always working towards improving every facet of your shop that I’m advocating here. As anyone who has ever tried to lose weight before the summer swimsuit season can attest, just because you set a goal doesn’t mean you will achieve it. It is the daily accumulation of everything that you put into it that helps you get there. Eat a salad or an entire pepperoni pizza? Be a couch potato or go to the gym? Keep things a secret or post your weight score online or on the fridge? Do it alone or share the experience with a group? Which of these choices can influence the outcome? You know the answers already. It is the same in your shop with what you want to achieve. You can’t hit your sales goals if you aren’t constantly refining your strategy and tactics to acquire new customers. For those three yeses, maybe you had to get seven noes. Which means for 30 yeses, you might need 70 noes. But what if you aren’t getting the opportunity to obtain a yes or a no? Maybe you are waiting for your customers to walk through the door? With zero traffic that isn’t going to work. If you aren’t getting the results you want, you need to rethink your processes. That might mean you need to build new habits. A habit is a behaviour that is performed on a regular basis. “I drink two cups of coffee every morning” is a habit. Just like “I phone four potential customers every day by lunch” or “I post two pictures to Instagram daily.” Maybe you don’t like the habits that your shop seems to have. That’s okay. You can define what they should be. You decide the type of shop you envision. The habits that you instil will work to become the type of shop that you are dreaming about. That’s your focus. Prove it to yourself every day with those 1% victories.