Introduction: Enjoy the first two of four excerpts (after this introduction) from the eBook Entrepreneurship is Full of B.S.™ No, Not That B.S. - Behavioral Science.
The author took his 30+ years of business experience and developed a powerful, proprietary behavior mapping tool called The Navigator. Navigator Assessments give an "inside look" into staff, teams, executive candidates, and entrepreneurial suitability. Navigator Assessments eliminate the guess work and unknowns about people and their behaviors. It allows individuals and companies to measure one of the most important factors for success - human capital and how to create the balance needed for success. In other words, having the right people on your bus.
Here are four examples of the Navigator Assessments based on Behavioral Science:
Entrepreneur Navigator™. For individuals seeking to own their own business, this assessment will measure their Navigator results with thousands and thousands of successful entrepreneurs.
Sales Navigator™. This assessment enables recruiters to recruit "eagles" and not "clunkers." It also enables sales professionals to measure their own personal behavioral traits against thousands of high performing sales.
Franchise Navigator™. We have created benchmarks for almost 150 different franchise brands that enable them to recruit "the right people with the right stuff to execute their franchised business model."
Business Navigator™. Is used by multi-unit franchise operators and non-franchised businesses to recruit, select and train high-performing employees and general managers.
You can download the eBook in its' entirety at any time.
To enjoy Part 2 - How Behavioral Science Affects The First Four Cylinders click here.
Part 1 - The B.S. in Business Ownership
Introduction – What is the B.S in Business Ownership? Behavioral Science
Smart business owners and entrepreneurs know that one of the keys to lasting success in business comes from the employees, advisors and the third party vendors providing services to the building process of his or her business. Selecting the right employees, advisors, and vendors who fit their business and having “the right people on their bus.” If you own a company or have worked with one for a while, you get that. You understand there has to be a good fit of skills, talents, personalities and culture. This is a proven fact that has been studied, analyzed and measured over time.
But what is the science behind that? It’s behavioral science, the science that analyzes and explains why people do what they do, their natural tendencies, their comfort zone, their hot buttons, their motivators, why some people are leaders, some people are achievers, why some people are successful and others not so successful.
Behavioral science is not new, in fact, companies have been using behavior science profiling instruments for years to make sure they recruit the right employees for their company. You probably have taken one of these surveys…Disc, Myers-Briggs and Caliper, just to name a few. Behavioral science has been attempted in employee recruitment for years.
So if you buy into the idea that there has to be a fit between the entrepreneur and employee for optimization in business then certainly you understand that it follows that your business has to be guided by people who fit your business. You can’t have the detail-oriented introverted number cruncher in charge of the relationship building sales and marketing efforts. Before we talk about the fit, let's review what business is all about, the Eight Cylinders.
The Eight Cylinders of Business
Each of the cylinders is equally as important as the other working together harmoniously with the others. When one cylinder fails it can stop the entire engine from running.
Warning lights then illuminate an automobile’s dashboard prompting the driver to take corrective action to avoid costly mistakes or ultimately face engine failure. Driving a business is very different – and not nearly so simple.
In business, there is no dashboard or any other type of warning signals to warn of potential problems that could lead to poor performance or even business failure.
How then can a businessperson know when potential problems exist – problems that must be corrected if the company is to succeed?
Organizing and running a business can be divided into eight disciplines or cylinders.
Each cylinder needs to be addressed early on and continuously. For the entrepreneur, each cylinder must be in sync with all of the other cylinders. Most companies start with a product or service. Initial sales lead to operations or how we make and deliver the product or service to the customer. Other cylinders spring to life as contracts for services are developed and invoices are printed, funds collected and accounted for. Initial sales create the desire for more sales. Marketing is developed to replicate success, branding created to create differentiation form competitors. A desire for a sustained business grows mandates additional manpower to be hired because the entrepreneur can’t do it all.
Any successful business has to create a “rules-based” business model. In owning a business, you create all the systems and procedures. You develop your business much like a franchise in that all the systems and procedures are documented to standardization and facilitate replication. When a system works, keep doing it.
Successful entrepreneurs develop and refine the process and procedures to make a business run like a fine tuned engine. Your goal as an entrepreneur and key stakeholder of the business is to build a professionally managed company using competent professionals and department heads who embrace the rules and systems you have developed so your managers can run their individual departments accordingly. Otherwise, you will only build a business where you sit in an office and your employees line up to get your input on every detail of your business and you make every decision. There’s nothing successful about that business model.
This enables the entrepreneur to manage their business more effectively and which simultaneously benefits both the consumer and business at the same time! With a rule-based business, you begin building equity into a business that replicates the early success, refines the product or service and systems to support growth.
Key Takeaway: Remember, successful entrepreneurs are not successful because the do so many things right. They become successful because they “don’t do enough things wrong.” This ebook identifies those areas of business that can strike at any time if not addressed early on and maintained.
In the second excerpt, we will look at how behavioral science affects the first four cylinders.
OUR OFFER TO YOU: Download a copy of Entrepreneurship is Full of B.S, and we will email you a link so you can “test-drive” one Entrepreneur Navigator Assessment for free!
Watch this short video to learn more.
Part 2 - How Behavioral Science Affects The First Four Cylinders
In our first installment, Part 1 - The B.S. in Business Ownership, we talked about how important B.S. – Behavioral Science, is to the success and harmony of your long term business efforts. You simply cannot afford to ignore how critically important this is to that edge every business needs.
Now, let’s look at how behavioral science affects the first four cylinders of running a successful business.
1) Operations
This cylinder addresses what takes place within the “four walls” of the business. This includes operational, procedural and/or technical manuals that are the “Bible” for operating the business. In a franchise business, that Bible is created by the franchisor. For independent businesses, the entrepreneur creates the systems and procedures. Having a rule-based business provides the entrepreneur with an option to franchise his or her business down the road.
Training programs teach the processes for operational consistency so customers have the same experience at every interaction with a business. Entrepreneurs typically have a less structured approach. “Look what I do and just do what I did.”
During the past 20 plus years of research into behavioral characteristics, we have found that different behavioral profiles learn differently. Some profiles are Auditory, which means they learn by what they hear, so training programs that have voice recordings are the most beneficial for this profile. Other profiles can be Visual, meaning they learn best by what they see to audio/visual training aids are best for this profile. Some are Kinesthetic, learners which means they learn by what they feel. That is a combination of the brain and the heart working in tandem with each other, which have been proven by scientists.
2) Marketing and Advertising
The Marketing and Advertising cylinder is what accelerates the growth of your business. Sure, business owners grow when satisfied customers return again and again. Marketing and advertising is critical in acquiring new customers or luring customers away from the competition.
We have created an entire process that identifies the: words, colors, tonality and direction for consumer-level marketing strategies. Understanding your core customers and communicating with them is crucial to the success of your business efforts. Marketing is the process of understanding your customer. Successful entrepreneurs do continual research and to better understand the customer and how their needs and buying patterns change.
Marketing is changing as fast as technology changes so entrepreneurs that want to stay relevant need to be on the cutting edge of engaging customers through traditional advertising and social media. This factor is all about behavioral sciences and why people buy what they do and make the decisions they do.
3) Legal
Legal involves intellectual property (trademarks, service marks, copyrights, and patents), as well as other issues including, anti-trust (if you are involved in the supply chain and movement of products), and various other aspects of the relationship with your distribution system
participants. As a business owner, unless you are an attorney, you will rely on outside counsel for legal support. The Legal cylinder requires attention to detail and making sure all the i’s are dotted the t’s are crossed.
Having spent years providing expert testimony and legal support to both, franchisees and business owners, I can tell you that most, if not all, legal disputes are grounded in a lack of understanding the other party’s behavior. Most legal issues should never have become legal issues in the first place.
4) Sales/Customer Service
Generally, nothing happens until someone sells something to someone else. This is true in any business. This cylinder is all about selling your particular product or service to the end user – the consumer.
Your sales process, including suggestive sales and any other techniques you utilize i.e., customer service programs - must be well-documented and formatted so early sales success can be transformed to ongoing sales success.
Furthermore, and most important, if the business model requires sales and marketing the business owners need to ensure they are asking the right people to perform those activities.
Some Navigator clients, prior to becoming a client and understanding behavioral sciences, asked sales adverse people to perform sales procedures. Talk about not knowing the people that should be talking about and representing your business!
Key Takeaway:
If your business is not “firing on all cylinders” somewhere, somehow and sometimes it will come back to haunt you. It isn’t “if it happens” it’s “when it happens.”
Prepare yourself and your business and think just like an Architect; “If you don’t pour a good foundation the walls and ceiling will not stand.” Start looking at your business as an Eight Cylinder engine and you will never have to look back!
In our next installment, we will look at how behavioral science affect Cylinders 5-8 and summarize how this can impact your business for the better or worse.
You can download the eBook in its' entirety at any time and when you do, you’ll receive and email with a link to test drive the Business Navigator for free!
Watch this short video to learn more.