Employees must have proven characteristics to contribute to your ISP’s success.
When it’s time to bring on a new team member, of course, you’ll look at whether they can do the tasks required for the job. You’ll also check out their work history to ensure they have a good track record and have not jumped from ISP to ISP too often. But, today’s employers require more. They must think lean and outside the box because the nature of the industry demands individuals who are willing to “own” their responsibilities and want to contribute to your ISP’s profitability, no matter what their job.
Soft skills such as effective communication, agility and creative problem-solving are essential in fast-paced workplaces. Plus, your employees must be able to adhere to proven business principles and support your ISP’s success.
The Only 3 Ways to Grow
It’s not necessary for a great candidate to know these principles, but they must be open to learning them. “The Only 3 Ways to Grow” is a business principle that positions an ISP for amazing growth.
The principle was introduced by Jay Abraham and takes the complexity out of business growth and success by simplifying it into three steps:
- Increase the number of clients — get more prospects to be paying customers
- Increase their average transaction
- Increase the length of time they remain your customer
In the ISP world, it’s:
- Get more subscribers
- Get subscribers to buy more services
- Get subscribers to stay with your WISP longer
Each staff member contributes to one or more of these steps through a commitment to providing the best possible service, no matter what their role. If your field techs focus on a complete, efficient install or repair each time, you’ll have happier subscribers who are willing to stay with you longer because of your great service.
Think LEAN to Reduce Waste and Increase Efficiency
Three Ways to Grow is only one part of the equation — integrating LEAN methodology into your operations accelerates efficiency, reduces wasted time and advocates that business processes instill continual improvement. The strategy was first implemented in the Toyota Manufacturing plant and has since been embraced by businesses of all kinds.
If you’re not familiar with the LEAN Six Sigma concept, learn about it and how to integrate Lean into your WISP with this article: Review Lean Wisdom: 7 Steps to Reduce Waste and Costs
The biggest value to think LEAN is it removes barriers to growth by giving you back the time you need to work on innovation and expansion of the business. If you hire professionals who think about how to improve your business as part of their jobs, you’ll have more time to spend on success strategies. Choose vendors who consider how they can contribute to your success with LEAN principles.
If you’d like more information on hiring staff, check out our next post on “killer” interview questions and how they uncover hidden skills — and potential problems.
(Special thanks to Raw Pixel of Unsplash.com for providing the photo for this article.)
