All of us in business dream of getting to the next level. It is a bit like a video game. We often think that one day something magical will happen and suddenly our number of customers will double and we will need a swanky office downtown with beautiful secretaries. But, in real life, how does it really work?
Growth is never on schedule.
Business is never predictable, especially the BPO business. You might get one or two huge clients overnight that could change everything. Suddenly your call center will go from 20 seats to 60 seats. You won’t have any idea of where those seats are going to go unless you have a way to get flexible office space. You could also lose a few big clients all of a sudden and be demoted back to level 1. Although we can never predict when we will be promoted to the next level, we can build a more solid foundation so we’ll be ready when the promotion comes.
It happened all at once for me.
I remember back in 2002 a psychic friend from meditation was all excited and she said I would have amazing luck with my business and that it would just get better and better. At that point, book sales started to go up, and we started selling a few thousand dollars per month in listings. The very next year in March, we started selling $30,000 a month in advertising and courses. Boy was I excited. I was so happy that I worked 70 hours a week until I burned out and got really tired. At that point, I hired more people to help me clean house and sell products.
Keeping mentally prepared
Some people don’t think big. According to yogic philosophy, everything starts with a thought. The universe started with a thought, airplanes started with a thought, and even lifting your finger starts with a thought. If you think small, or don’t dream about the bigger picture, it may never happen. You need to be mentally accustomed to the idea that you will grow big — it is just that the timing is unpredictable. Think about that car you’ll be driving. Think about how your office and dozens of employees will look. Think of how hard you’ll work and how tired you’ll be until you hire Prashant the trusty right hand man to be your VP. Keep that thought!
But, you also need to be tactically prepared.
If you get that new client who wants 100 seats, you need to know where you are going to put those seats. You need to have some idea of what type of contract you will have with him and how you will select agents. You need to have a lot of the variables worked out in your head. Additionally, day to day good technique and best practices need to be very polished in your business. That way you will know how to train your agents and attain perfect work every time as second nature. If you are in the call center business, you need to be an expert at metrics. If you are in programming, you need to keep an eye on your programmers and see if they finish tasks on time and see if their commenting is clear enough that a new programmer who has never seen the code will understand exactly what is going on. If you do e-marketing outsourcing, you need to be a master of all of the social networks so you can select, train and monitor your workers.
Marketing
Going to the next level can happen in a moment, however the building up of your skill set happens gradually over time. It is good to always be trying to be at the top of your game. Knowing how to run a successful BPO is different from knowing how to market one. There are dozens of marketing techniques from networking to Linked In, online advertising and more to gaining new clients. If your interaction skills and management skills are top notch, you can attract and keep great clients. However, if your skills are lacking in any facet and you lose clients as fast as you get them, you’ll never make it to the next level. Knowing how to find the right people to help you in marketing and management is also critical. If you are always bogged down all the time with work, you won’t have time to go to the next level. So, think about all of this and then plan for how you will make it to level 2.