It’s been said that businesses are either growing or
shrinking; there is no such thing as status quo or
neutral. If you are working at growing your horse
business, you are always interested in ways to
leverage your time. The concept of
leveraging your time means understanding your time
is precious and delivering your products and services
is
your main business objective.
Training horses, selling horses, and riding lessons may
be some of the ways you deliver your products and
services. The limited work hours available in each
day dictate the amount of sales you alone can
generate. There is a maximum created by the length
of each workday. The way to leverage time and
increase sales and, ultimately, profits is to have
others assist you in what you do.
Your hired assistants are good at what they do and
are patterned in your style, but they are not
you. In an ideal world, we would be able to
clone ourselves and generate sales and profits to
grow the business. In our imperfect world, the
assistants that help leverage your time aren’t exact
replicas of you.
Professionals who have great confidence and faith in
their employees sometimes forget that their
customers haven’t had enough experience and
exposure to their associates’ skills. When
customers think they have hired you to train
their horse and find out that your employee has been
doing all of the training, they can become
disappointed and may even feel misled. When
students expect hands on help from you at a riding
lesson and discover that your trained and skilled
assistant will be giving the lesson, they may feel
cheated out of “The Real McCoy”
The way to avoid having the client feel let down
about dealing with your associates is to maintain a
campaign of team awareness. On a regular
basis, reinforce the concept that your business is a
team, led by you. The team works together in
delivering the same type of horses and services that
represent the personal brand that you have created.
Use expressions like:
- We work as a team in this business to deliver the
best possible service.
- Sometimes Judy will be training your horse. I’ll
be closely watching your horse’s success, but to get
faster results for my clients, Judy fills in for me when
I can’t be here. Is that OK?
- I’ve found I get better results for my clients by
having a well-trained team to back me up. Our
styles may be slightly different, but the foundation
philosophy and core program is the same I have
successfully delivered for years.
The idea is to let your clients know in advance that
even though you, the owner, may not be hands-on
all of the time, they can be comfortable and
confident that they are getting the “Real
McCoy” for their money from your associates.
This week, be thinking about how you can
leverage your
time to leverage your profits.
