From the Business Desk is back. From the Business Desk is a semi-regular series that looks at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business. This feature revolves around managing the many important parties your business works with on a daily basis.
Due to the specialized nature of a fibre arts small business, you most likely are interfacing with a large number of external parties in your day to day business operations. From suppliers and vendors to accountants and banks to individual customers, the web of interactions you weave is a significant challenge to manage for any business owner.
 |
| Complex web of your network. Image courtesy of Wikipedia |
Managing these types of interactions with all of these various individuals is key to a business’s well being, as often times a business is judged by the market not by it’s actual results, but by how it operates and delivers results against its’ expectations. You see this a lot of times with Fortune 500 companies where although they could show spectacularly profitable results, if these do not meet the expectations of the organization, things like it’s image, reputation, clientele, or stock price can suffer.
There are many in-depth training classes you can take from high-paid consultants on how you can accomplish this; what I’m going to do is share some high-level tips for how we at Tinking Turtle keep track of things here to best manage the expectations of all of the interrelated individuals we commonly interact with.
Constant External Communication. Communication is absolutely tops in managing any sort of relationship that you have, be it with a vendor for ordering supplies, or a customer expecting a deliverable on a particular project. Often times, when you know things are not going according to plan and you cannot meet a deadline, the earlier you can communicate this, the better. That way things don’t come as a shock to those impacted, and if you can both communicate the issue and what you are doing to resolve it, you can ensure your relationships are positively maintained. Studies show that customer loyalty can actually be increased if your business takes ownership and provides an exceptional level of service in the event of a customer service issue.
Internal Communication. If your business has more than one employee, it is vital that all of the staff are on the same page and have access to information regarding the various stakeholders that they interact with. Nothing is more off-putting than to have an external vendor be told “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about” in relation to an issue. This could be something as simple as having a weekly staff meeting, or a common room whiteboard with a high level FYI list of things to be aware of for all of the associates to have access to. There are also technology solutions to allow these relationships to be documented, having a CRM application is one avenue that Tinking Turtle uses, as to us, everyone we interact with from vendors to contractors to customers is tracked in our system.
Understanding Expectations. The last item I want to stress here is the importance of actually understanding the expectations of everyone you interact with. A classic example of this can be found in the Project Management Tire Swing analogy, which has been around for quite some time and is demonstrated in many introduction to Stakeholder Engagement classes.
 |
| The importance of understanding expectations. |
By making assumptions about what is really necessary in a relationship, the chance for misscommunication is high, which then leads to situations where one party’s expectations are vastly different than the other. A good way to think about this in any interaction is to ensure that both you and the other party have clearly understood conditions of satisfaction that need to be met as part of this relationship. In ensuring that you have established these up front, it is much easier to then set expectations, and then identify areas that can be changed as the nature of the relationship changes.
These are only a few of the ways that small businesses can work to ensure that the relationships with the many individuals and organizations with which they interact remain strong. It is the strength of these relationship, and how engaged you are keeping all parties involve that can really be a stragic benefit to the long-term success of any fiber arts business.
