i have been following the highly successful career of Arnon Dror now for over 10 years, watching the Portland, Oregon native work for some huge companies making positive changes everywhere that he goes. As a fellow Portalnd, Oregon native there is something pretty special about watching one of your own succeed, and that is exactly what Dror has done in his positions with large companies like Xerox. Drop studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has completed both an MBA and an MA. For me, this gives him enough experience to be able to offer advice to others on making a business successful, and I caught up with him recently where he gave me some business advice, focussing on the basics.
If you are launching a company, here are the simple aspects you should always remember.
Customers
Without the customers you have no sales, and without sales you will have no business, so it makes a great deal of sense for you to do all that you can in order to keep your customers as happy as they can possibly be. So many businesses and business owners lose sight of why they are in business in the first place and they can get bogged down in all kinds of minutiae, thus forgetting about the most important people, the customers.
Staffing
There are three golden rules when it comes to employees in the business. The first is to hire well and make sure that your recruitment process is of a high quality, the second is to ensure that all staff receive the very best training, and that they receive the same training, and finally that you look after your staff when they are working for you, thus keeping them happy and hard working. These are not complex rules to abide by, but you’d be surprised how many businesses fail to get the staffing or the treatment of their staff right.
Long Term
Whilst it is important for you to focus on your bottom line, and this is of course what keeps you in business, in the first few years you shouldn’t be too worried about this. The reason being is that you should be thinking long term for your business, and not just thinking about the next week, month, or even year. A long term strategy is what successful businesses had in the beginning, and yours should be no different.
Innovate
Even from the outset your company should always have an eye on innovation and how it can look to the future to make the business better. The old saying is very true that if you don’t innovate, you die, and we have seen with the likes of Blockbuster and Toys R’US recently, that even the most successful businesses can fall foul of this if they fail to keep up with what is trending, and innovate accordingly.
