Small businesses play a vital role in the global economy, representing 90% of all businesses in the world. In terms of contribution to the global economy, small businesses generated 70% of the world’s GDP. It’s also safe to say that most of the big business brands consumers are familiar with started off as small businesses. Most small businesses are single owner operations, with the sole proprietor responsible for all operational and marketing facets of the business. ‘Larger’ small businesses may have leadership units that directly manage frontline teams. The commonality among small businesses are the many ‘hats’ owners and managers have to wear when working in a small business. Those organizations that do have teams have the added burdens of hiring and training staff, a very expensive and time consuming endeavor. Ensuring new hires and supervisors have the skills and habits they need is critical for small businesses with limited resources.

Maximizing Customer Opportunities

Many small businesses depend on customer service to generate revenue as the business model and each customer interaction must be looked upon as a valuable opportunity. Those interactions can easily dictate and influence purchasing decisions, as well as affect outside marketing and brand reputation. Some basic customer service skills can include voice tonality and control, initiating conversations, active listening and appropriate body language. More advanced skills for customer service are formulating precise questions, detailed product or service knowledge, reading customer intentions and building bigger transactions. ETS offers a self paced or instructor led customer service course for both in person representatives and agents that deliver customer service over the phone. Newly hired customer service representatives as well as seasoned veterans can benefit from CST-In Person Engagement or CST-Contact Center Representative.

Loss Prevention Awareness

An ongoing challenge for small businesses is the potential for losses and the problem has only increased over the last few years in the post-covid business environment. Retail type operations with a bricks and mortar presence must contend with fewer resources and outside support when dealing with business losses. Even small businesses that do not have a customer service facet can suffer the negative impacts of losses. Loss has 2 classifications:

External loss, those caused by individuals outside the company ie: shoplifting

Internal loss, those created by workers through inaccuracy, mishandling of assets or other errors or negligence

Reducing and controlling either type of loss can be achieved by improving certain skill sets and organizational habits directly related to business losses. Building awareness, organizing resources and educating teams on policy and procedure can directly impact external losses. Understanding proper asset procedures, improving organizational habits and providing resources are ways to control and eliminate internally generated losses. ETS provides a Loss Prevention Training course that addresses these ongoing challenges to small business.

Leading Teams to Higher Performance

Bigger small businesses are more efficiently run with larger frontline or internal teams to keep day to day operational running smoothly. Managers and supervisors beyond the owner are necessary to keep teams accountable and on track with performance and output. Managing people in smaller organizations requires a good degree of personal relationship building skills as well as top notch communication and organizational skills. Small business leadership are key players in future planning and strategizing as well as execution of necessary work to achieve objectives and maintain performance. EST’s Entry Level Supervisor Training is ideal for those that are new to managerial and supervisory roles as well as staff already in leadership roles that do not have formal management skill training. EL-ST is an in depth course and is available only in instructor led formats for better understanding of the material presented.

The Bottom Line

Small businesses are the engine of the global economy and represent a large portion of the overall economic ecosystem. The challenge for small businesses is little or no room for costly errors when navigating day to day operations. Training and hiring customer facing teams can be a costly and lengthy process for smaller sized businesses but prioritizing new hire training and onboarding as well as existing staff development can reduce or eliminate costly turnover as well as bring efficiency and higher performance from teams in the short and long term. Maximizing each customer opportunity is essential in the current economic landscape and having highly skilled customer facing teams and leadership will have positive impacts on business overhead and profitability. Better experiences among customers will yield reputational and brand benefits while improving efficiency and organization could reduce costs associated with day to day operations. For more details on the suite of training offered by Express Training Systems, please click here.