5 Essential SOPs Every Business Needs

Sops or standard operating procedures are crucial to the success of any business no matter if you're an ice cream truck or a Fortune 500 company you need Sops to succeed but which ones do you start off with so in this video we're going to be covering five essential Sops that your business needs and how and why using them and turn your company into a well-oiled machine but before we get started I just wanted to say please do stick around towards the end of the video because I am going to be giving not only a bonus sop because we don't do things by halves here on this channel but also a way on how you can download for free an sop template so that you can start using it and applying it inside your business today so make sure you stick around but now let's get on with the rest of the video so Sops are essentially your business's rulebook they outline step-by-step processes for various tasks that have to be carried out inside your business and having this well documented means that these processes are repeatable consistent and you can actually try to minimize errors and also boost productivity we've done studies you know sixty percent of the time it works every time having well-documented Sops not only enhances team efficiency but it actually also streamlines training for new employees so if you've been following me for a while you know that I love talking about systems because it's actually the Bedrock the foundation of any successful company like I said earlier it doesn't matter if you're an ice cream truck or a van or even a Fortune 500 company systems need to be inside your business the gas sure big multi-conglomerate National companies or International companies they may have a lot more systems than a small business but you need to have systems nonetheless what comes after that are policies and policies are a set of things that you say inside your business can do or you can't do and they fit as part of your systems as well which I talk about in a different video don't go to it yet but I'll link it up here somewhere and in the description below that you can go and see the difference between all of these but I want to summarize this very quickly because you might be saying to me okay we get this systems processes processes by the way are a collection of things of what you need to do inside your business so if you need to repeat things more than once you need to have a set of processes to do that now you might be asking me Tama what is all that got to do with Sops well Sops are the detailed instructions for the processes they are the how to what your processes are the what and this is what you want to actually have inside your business where you get get to that detailed level where you're saying this is how you do step one step two step three step four do it this way here's a video here's a checklist here's a quality control measure so there's absolutely no doubt of how it should be done and to what quality and what the end result should be and that's what these Sops are now let's have a look apps five essential Sops that your business is gonna need but first and probably the most obvious Universal sop is your client onboarding and off-boarding sop now no matter what business you're in you're going to have clients whether you call them clients whether you call them customers investors buyers you're going to have a group of people that you are providing a product or a service to and it is essential to make sure that when you convert these potential leads into buyers or clients or customers First Impressions count and you want to make sure that you do this the right way so that they become loyal customers and they give you a good reputation in terms of reviews Word of Mouth terms of them coming back and asking for more and making sure that when they leave you you have the perfect service and the perfect goodbye so that they really want to come back again if you wing it you might get it wrong you might miss out certain details certain steps certain things that you wanted to talk about your service that they don't even get to know about because you forgot to mention it and they end up thinking huh that service is not that fantastic but what if you actually said we do this and this and this give them an amazing experience making them say that place is awesome I do not want to go anywhere else again I don't care how much they charge me in the future that is my place and I'm gonna go there think of it a bit like a Lego set for example if you receive a box with missing pieces of your Lego set you're not gonna have a great experience ah here it is instructions to fit in half everybody like you know one breathe if you are missing certain aspects of your service or your product or your delivery or their experience that's going to always have a negative impact so having this sop where you outline every single step by step and you keep improving it over and over again because you begin to get reviews of people when you're off-boarding them because part of your off-boarding sop should have some kind of feedback process where you're actually getting that feedback and improving and going back and having that continuous loop of improving your sop so that really is an important sop client onboarding and off-boarding next we have employee onboarding and off-boarding process now before you say to me Tamara I do not have a team I do not have any employees even if you are a solopreneur you still will run your business to a degree where you are probably going to have to deal with some kind of subcontractors or accountant or having an assistant and these people as well it is crucial to make sure that you onboard them and off-board them in the right and correct manner because this is where it becomes important so that people do exactly what you want them to do because the number of times I've heard people say I hired this person or I brought them on board and they sounded amazing on paper and then they came in and they did absolutely terribly and then I say to them where were your processes did you have Sops they say no what did you say I told them to do this task and they didn't do it the way I wanted did you tell them how you wanted to do it of course not employee Sops onboarding off-boarding important making sure that they come they join they understand the mission they understand the vision they understand why you're doing the business in the first place they understand what it is that you're going to do and where do you store your Sops and where do you have your strategy and where do you put your documents and how to actually report in sick making sure that they understand where to do their job and how to find the information on how to do their job and who they need to report to and how do they need to report and to what extent all of this is going to be important and having this outlined right at the beginning where you bring on people and you say this is what my company is about this is what we stand for these are our ethics these are our morals these are our values this is our strategy this is our vision this is where you fit in these are all of the people that you're going to need to speak to and this is how we have fun ever visited a business and you had an absolutely amazing experience best time in your life and you just were buzzing and you go and recommend that business to your friend and they have the absolute worst time in their life it's probably because they didn't have a customer service sop and that's why there was such a disparity in the consistency of the service that was provided having a customer service sop from the get-go tells your team members and yourself how you're going to deal with clients throughout their entire customer experience right before they buy towards the onboarding to when there are particular problems and how to deal with those problems and giving your team members an sop with step-by-step guidelines of what happens when things particularly go wrong is going to be really crucial also empowering them with the policies that you have so your Sops will include the step-by-step guidelines but also it makes them enforce these policies that you have put down remember your policies are this wall that you've built around your business where you've said what we as a business can and what we can't do so you want to empower your team members to be able to actually do things for your clients and take decision Visions based on what they're hearing about the experience without them having to go and ask their line manager or ask you and and make the customers absolutely frustrated in the process if you know that these things are potentially going to happen and you've got procedures and processes for them then the team members won't Panic if they're trained well they know exactly what to do and that even if something goes wrong the customer experience is still amazing and people will forget it however if your customer experience is terrible no matter how good your product or service is you will get people that have a bad experience and they will not be quiet about it and your business will suffer for it you ever heard the expression the customer is always right yeah yeah well Here I Am the customer that's not our policy so make sure that you have a customer service sop it's really really important and the companies that have them like apple they are the ones where people talk about their customer service as an amazing customer experience because they have it all the way through from onboarding and training to their team members and they Empower their team members to say you can do this you can issue a refund and they give them that empowerment of being able to make decisions and give your customers and clients an amazing experience by the way if you are finding value in this video please take a moment to hit that like button it really does make a difference to the channel and it also helps other business owners like yourself see these videos and get the same value thank you the next sop is really a starter sop because as your business is going to grow it's going to need to be split up into many Sops but for now as your business is starting the very minimum you should have is a marketing and sales sop in terms of how are you going to generate leads for your business and how are you going to convert those leads into sales and make that sale and outlining the step-by-step process does a couple of things the first thing it does is it really helps you improve that process and track and make sure that the process is repeatable of what worked and then you can go back and change the things that didn't work and keep on improving it but also as you begin to grow and you begin to hire sales people or marketing people you will have a process of what's actually worked in the past and a set of steps that they can go in and try and then try and improve on hopefully as you bring them in but initially they don't have to experiment with things that haven't actually worked in the past and they can start from the get-go and do exactly the same things that you would have done to make their sale and to generate those leads so if you happen to go away on holiday or if something happens hopefully best of health to you but if you fall sick or ill or somebody in the family does that or you have to go away in an emergency you've got people in there who can pick up straight away and keep making those sales and bringing in that revenue for your business which will keep the doors open whilst you're not there but also as the business grows and scales the same consistency of how you're going to make that sale to your clients is also remember we were talking previously about customer service sop and how you actually onboard clients sop actually how do you market and sell to them also needs to be consistent and that's all part of the customer experience if you will for example if you don't want to do pushy sales and you hire someone who then does pushy sales that gives an inconsistency into the customer experience so having a marketing and sales sop right at the beginning and then later on it gets split up into many many Sops it's going to be really important and must be there right from the start in your business the next sop is really directly tied to your role and function as the CEO of your own business and that is making sure that you have enough cash in the bank after all business is about making money and you need a financial management sop and that's really trying to understand how money moves into your business and moves out of your business so how do you do invoicing how do you collect payments what are your collection terms what happens if people don't pay what are your budgets where are you going to spend your money how are you going to pay people how are you going to pay certain expenses what kind of bookkeeping who's going to keep tabs of the bookkeeping who's going to file your account anything related to money coming in staying in and going out of your business you need to be on top of and there needs to be an sop to keep you on top of that because all too well when we don't have an sop for that we tend to forget about looking at our finances and because we're entrepreneurs and because we're probably most of us are Visionaries we have the shiny object syndrome and we go after our own passion and after our own joy and just enjoy business as it is and forget about the finances and forget about that you started your business to get that Financial Freedom in the first place we lost ourselves lost our duty in the pursuit of great we failed to do good like so if you want to have that Financial Freedom I know this is a tough one I know this is a boring one but it's one that you really really really really really need to have inside your business we over deliver here so I am going to talk about a couple more Sops one of them is the project management sop making sure that you keep people on task and what project management system are you going to use if at all if it's just a spreadsheet you need to identify what tasks need to be done who's going to do the task and how are they going to be done and when are they going to be done by now if you had seen one of my videos where I talk about my YouTube workflow there is one in particular where I do look at click up as one of our project management tools so that we can actually start using our workflow for editing and doing the videos it's an example but I'm going to link it up here just in case so that you can begin to see how we start looking at project management within a CEO entrepreneur as a use case for yourself now another sop that you're really really really really going to need is an sop for creating Sops because you want to have a template for understanding how you're going to have Sops and that all of your Sops are going to be the same and later on as you your business grows and you bring in more people into your business you are not going to be the one sitting down writing out your Sops other team members are in their different roles in their different departments and you want to make sure that the Sops are all consistent across the board how are you going to write your Sops how are you going to do quality control where are they going to be stored is there going to be a filing system how is it going to be done and having an sop to really make Sops is going to be really important for your business so as promised here are instructions on how you can download your free sample sop template there's going to be a link in the description below and also in the pin comment now what's important is once you download it what I suggest you do is have a look through it it will give you a guideline and an outline of how you will lay out your sop and it will sort of start you off but what you will need to do is you will need to tweak it a little bit so that it could actually be applicable in your business but once you do you'll be able to start using it in your business today and hopefully it will be very very valuable for you I hope you enjoyed the video I hope you found it valuable I'll see you next time

Channel: CEO Entrepreneur

Views: 55,405

Keywords: tamer shahin, scaling my business, SOP, SOPs, Systems, Processes, Client Onboarding SOP, Employee Onboarding SOP, Financial Management SOP, Customer Service SOP, Project Management SOP, Systems and Processes, Sales and Marketing SOP, Small Business, small business, business systems, standard operating procedure template, standard operating procedure example, standard operating procedure (sop), standard operating procedures definition & explanation, employee onboarding process

Id: lwS4CxlgQnU

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023