You have to be able to build a team to scale anything. You can only make a certain amount of money with one person and you can only make so much money with a team of two or three. If you want to go beyond that, you need a team. Here are the 8 steps to consider.
Know Why You Need a Team
If you have a business that only requires yourself or if it’s just you and your spouse, you have an in-house team and you can disregard everything I’m saying, but for the rest of the world that needs to build the team, let me teach you how to do it. From playing sports my whole life, I know the value of a team.
I had job in sale where I needed to do three things that I don’t like to do. The first one is I need to make a lot of calls. Number two is I needed my proposals to look really professional, andnumber three is I need to expand the geographical area, so I hired somebody to do calls for me and gave them a percentage of sales that we make.
For number two, I hired someone to do all my proposals and create these neat little folders with the company logo on it was just fantastic, and number three is I hired a driver. Anything over an hour way, I had a retired Navy gentleman take there. I could take a nap and I could review my notes, be fresh for my sales call and then do the paperwork on my way back and give it back to my secretary when I made the sale and rinse and repeat. I was the number seven salesmen in the country for this company doing this formula. Eighty percent of the job, I had a team of three people, and I did the one thing that I do really well, which was sell.
I knew then that I needed a team. So if you’re building a business now, you need to look at the team. Yes, I could have done every one of those things. I could have made the calls, I could have done the proposals, I could have driven four hours. I didn’t think it was a good use of my time. I wanted to scale myself and stay fresh for every sale, which is what moved the need.le Make the most sales.
Know Who You Need on Your Team
Who’s going to answer the calls? Who’s going to do the fulfillment? You have to put together a lineup. It’s no different than putting together a softball roster. Who’s playing catcher, second, third, etc.
Know What You Like in Your Teammates
There’s intangibles. I like people that are high energy. I like people that can take a kickin’. In other words, if you screw up and I confront you, I don’t want you to get all sad and quit. I want you to be able to take a little bit of criticism. I like a person who just is grateful to be on the team and be a part of our organization. Do they want to work? Did they have energy? I like smart people, because they can perform mulitple tasks and work in muliple positions. They have the capacity to do more and solve problems.
Know How You’re Going to Recruit
I use traditional online ads, I use referrals, I reach out within my network. I use partnering. I look out for existing small business owners that I could just take them and their company over. I did that twice here in the last two months.
You gotta get them to the interview and hopefully you have the ability to communicate in such a way that they come on board.
Set Clear Responsibilities and Expectations and Measure
Some may be measured just to see when they come in every day to work and if they’re on time. That’s ok for a base level job, and you’re going to have people to do that, but then there’s going to be other positions that require a higher expectation. I always say, if you can’t measure it, you really can’t hold them accountable. You need to lay out these responsibilities. You should be able to look in a new person in the face of teammate and say, Listen, this is why we hired you. This is your responsibility, this is what we expect from you. This would be a higher level of achievement in others and we’d love for you to be able to get to this level and if you do, we’ll give you this.
I always like to challenge them a little bit.
Play Moneyball
Sometimes you have mix and match. Maybe I have an older person who is smart and has the appropriate knowledge, but has a lower level of energy, so I can put them with somebody younger. Within two months, they can bring the younger person up to speed, but the younger person has tremendous energy.
Let’s say one person doesn’t have all three things I need that I’m interviewing for. I can’t get everything I need in this one position, so I may have to combine two people to get it. It’s the idea of money ball. I need this many RBIs in a season. It may not come from one person, so again, you might need to mix and match.
Create Force-mulitpliers
What does that mean? Find two people that when put together, create the productivity of three.
Have a Salary Cap
I lost a teammate one time. I was paying him about $100k and he was offered $160k somewhere else, so it was the easiest decision I ever made. It sort of came out of his mouth and I congratulated him almost before he finished the sentence. I wasn’t going to match it. Why? If I matched him, I’m going to have to match it with four other people by end of the week, because everybody talks. And then my salary cap would have gone up $240k. It’s possible I might have made it back on this one person in the future, but I wouldn’t have made it back on the other three, and the other three would have known about it.
So there has to be a salary cap.
