How to Manage the Service Business

Establish and honor your work day schedule

Business management is an amazing job requiring you to wear multiple hats at the same time. Managing a service business is no different. Whether your company is producing a product, reselling a product or delivering a service, managing it takes a lot of energy, determination and concentration. Managing a business will fill your days like no other job you undertake. To be a successful manager, follow these guidelines initially, since you will be adding your own which apply specifically to whatever business you manage.

Instructions

1. Lead by example. Admit you do not know everything. Be willing to learn and adjust to that new view of things. Seek out a mentor. Find someone with experience who is willing to work with you in an advisory capacity. Attend seminars and other learning opportunities.

2. 

   You must have great partners to suceed

   Recruit others who respond to your leadership and share your enthusiasm and vision. Gradually delegate responsibilities to your recruits. Choose carefully and delegate sparingly at first. Start with small tasks and see how your recruits handle them before giving them bigger responsibilities.

3. Become a decision maker, if you are not already. Study decision-making skills. Decision skills can be learned. Seek out and read decision making training on the web and in your local community. Learn and apply this skill daily while managing your business.

4. 

   Target your efforts to your particular niche

   Learn marketing. Ensure the survival of your service business with effective, solid marketing practices. Familiarize yourself thoroughly with your targeted market. Promote your business to that market through word of mouth advertising, limited media advertising, and satisfied customers. Use promotional marketing to help get your name out there.

5. Price competitively. Do not think you must give the lowest price to get the job. Tout the value of your service. Let the customer know why you charge what you charge. Remember your pricing reflects directly on your own value that you assign to your service.

6. 

   Strategic thinking is future thinking

   Learn to forecast for company growth. Study strategic thinking, and learn to think in terms of years, not days or weeks. Write out a one-year, two-year and five-year plan for where you plan to take your company. Study your market to find niche opportunities. Call on them and court them as new customers. Expand your business through those niche markets within your broader market.

7. Plan debt-free growth. Grow only by what the business income permits. Do not go into huge, crippling debt just to expand. Consider the consequences if that huge investment fails to pay off. Think: if the business is not making enough to expand, what makes you think more poor-paying business will be better?

Tips & Warnings

• Be conservative with earnings projections but add a percentage to spending predictions.

• No one can flawlessly plan for what they do not know will happen.

References

• Small Business: Administration: Small Business Planner
• 'Bureau of Labor Statistics: Administrative Services Managers
• Novell: Business Service Manager

Resources

• Free Management Library: Product and Service Management