Processes Versus Procedures - An Essential Ingredient Of Business Success

As a business consultant, coach and trainer, I have noticed a disturbing phenomenon regarding business training systems that I would like to share here with you.

Despite the fact that many companies provide excellent training systems, I've often noticed that many of their "trainees" (i.e. employees, members, distributors, etc.) delay, neglect, and sometimes even fail to start using the system, despite all the training they have been given. This commonly happens in businesses where people have the opportunity to be their own bosses (such as network marketing and other self-starter opportunities). Even though they have been given adequate training information and materials (and they know what needs to be done to achieve success), they still fail to take immediate action towards their success.

Are they just lazy, or unmotivated?

No.

So, why don't people take action and get started straight away?

I'd like to illustrate what's missing and why this happens, using a simple example:

Have you ever tried doing business online? If so, you may be familiar with the concept of buying Private Label Right (PLR) products with resell rights. Basically, these are products that give you (the purchaser) the right to modify the content, set up a website with e-commerce facilities (e.g. Paypal) and then resell the original or modified product as your own and keep 100% of the profits.

Often, the Internet Marketers selling these products promise potential buyers (i.e. you) a quick return on investment (sometimes in as little as 15 minutes) if you follow a simple "3-step" method that goes something like this:

Step 1) Purchase the product, then download the "reseller" pack, which contains a copy of the original product and a ready-made website just like the one that "sold" you on the product.

Step 2) Modify the product (i.e. replace the affiliate links with your own) or leave it as is, then upload the product file to your server.

Step 3) Add your name and a Paypal Button to the main sales page, then upload both the "Sales Page" and the "Thank You" page to your server.

That's it! Your website is now ready to accept buying customers and you're on your way to recouping your investment and making a profit!

Simple, huh?

So ... you buy the product (let's say it's an e-book) and download the "reseller pack to your hard drive.

Now it's time to put up a reseller website and recover your original investment.

So, you open up the main sales page in your favorite HTML editor, replace the "Insert Your Name Here" tag with your own name and log into Paypal to create a "buy now" button.

But ... hang on!

Paypal requires you to enter a "success" URL (i.e. the destination URL of the page where your visitors will be redirected to after the successful completion of their purchase, so they can download their purchase) before you can create the "buy now" button that will be inserted into your main sales page.

You haven't got a destination URL for your "Thank You" page yet! Rather than risk getting this crucial part of your sales automation process wrong, you decide to add the "Thank You" page (i.e. the product download page) to your server first, so you can be sure of getting the destination URL correct before creating your Paypal "buy now" button.

So, you leave the Paypal website for the time being, go back to your HTML editor and open up the "Thank You" page that was supplied with your "Reseller Pack".

But ... hang on!

Before you can add the "Thank You" download page to your server, you need to add the download link to the actual product file that your visitor will want to access after successfully completing their purchase.

But ... hang on!

You haven't modified the product file yet. You don't want to resell an ebook with someone else's affiliate links embedded in it, so before uploading the file to your server, first you need to modify the source files, then resave it as a pdf.

So, you minimize the window where you were working on the "Thank You" page and fire up your Word Processing application, so you can open the source file and replace the affiliate links in the e-book with your own.

But ... hang on!

Before you can add your affiliate links to the pages, you realize you actually need to sign up as an affiliate of some of the products being promoted in the e-book.

So, you minimize the window containing the product source file, open up a new browser window and log into the affiliate network website that manages the product you want to become an affiliate of.

(Have 15 minutes gone by yet?)

After searching through the affiliate network website (e.g. Commission Junction, or Clickbank), you find the product and apply to become an affiliate. A window opens up saying that the advertiser approves all applications manually and that you will be notified if your affiliate status has been approved.

Now you have to wait a couple of days before you can replace the affiliate link in the ebook with your own.

Which means that you can't upload the final version of the product file with all of your affiliate links embedded in them until you've been approved by all the advertisers whose products you want to promote.

While you're figuring out what to do next (i.e. upload the original file with someone else's affiliate links in it and risk losing commissions, or wait a few days before uploading the new product files), you realize that the graphic image of the ebook cover supplied with the website in your "Reseller Pack" is advertising someone else's website on the cover. You don't want to risk losing your visitors to someone else's website, so you decide to recreate an ebook cover for the product, promoting your own website address.

So, you log out of the affiliate network site and open up your ebook cover design application (e.g. Photoshop).

After recreating new graphic images for the product, you realize that you haven't set up an autoresponder list yet for adding website visitors and purchasers to your subscriber list. You need to do this before you upload the "Sales Page" and "Thank You" pages to your server.

So, you log into your autoresponder site, create a new list and design a new sign-up form.

But ... hang on!

Before you can create your new subscriber sign-up form and get the code to paste into your web pages, you need to specify a redirect URL where visitors will be sent to after subscribing to your list (you also need one for redirecting subscribers after they confirm their decision to join your list).

But ... you can't send people to your download page or back to your sales page, because you haven't completed and uploaded these to your server yet.

So ... now you have about a dozen windows open in your computer monitor with nothing completed yet.

But ... wasn't this supposed to be easy (15 minutes)? After all, all you had to do was follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1) After completing your purchase, simply download the "reseller" pack, containing a copy of the product and a ready-made website just like the one that you bought the product from.
Step 2) Modify the product (i.e. replace the affiliate links with your own) or leave it as is, then upload the product file to your server.
Step 3) Add your signature and a Paypal Button to the main sales page, then upload both the "Sales Page" and the "Thank You" page to your server.

What happened after "Step 1"? It's now two hours later and you're still fiddling around with Steps 2 and 3.

Here is the problem ...

You know what to do (just upload the modified product and the web pages to your server and start selling), but you are missing something here ...

The thing that is missing is made up of 2 vital components:

1) The correct "sequence" of events that need to occur in a particular order (so as to produce a result quickly and efficiently)
2) A set of documented (i.e. written) instructions you can easily follow describing in detail how to do each of the above steps in sequence.

A sequence of events with detailed written instructions is called a "procedure".

The simple "3-step" method advertised on the product's website is simply an overview of the "processes" involved.

The reason why so many people fail to take action towards their own success despite being motivated, knowing "what to do" and having been given excellent training, is that, more often than not, they have not been given the correct sequence of events with detailed "step-by-step" instructions for completing each step.

In other words, people may be aware of the processes involved, but they have not been given the procedures that will ensure they are able to accomplish the task and duplicate the intended results of your training or business system.

This sounds really simple once you understand the difference between a "process" and the "procedures" that make up these processes.

The problem that most businesses face, especially small businesses, is that creating, flowcharting and documenting procedures requires a significant investment of time and energy. You must first be willing to invest a great deal of thought and planning to understand the sequence of processes that make up your system, then repeat these same processes over and over again, while documenting each of the steps involved to make sure that you can recreate your desired outcome over and over again without lowering your standards of quality, cost and efficiency.

Once you have your procedures documented, the next step is to then figure out a way to build those procedures into your system, so that the people running your system have no choice but to follow those procedures. This will be the subject of a future article.

If you want to build a business based on systems where the end goal is to enable others to consistently achieve a specific outcome, you must provide the people who will be running your system with a documented set of specific procedures they must follow, and not just give them an understanding of the processes that make up the system, then expect them to figure out the sequence of events that underpin those processes.

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