Introduction

BestPracticesGuide.com is a developing resource that includes researched and refined best practices in all aspects of business. Mike Mann company leaders adhere to these best practices and a 5-layer process as they develop their businesses. You are welcome to share your best practices with us by pasting them into our suggestion tool.

We have described company divisions below. Each of these divisions are headed by a vice president, or other appropriate leader until that role can be filled by a VP. Each division has its own set of best practices. This resource is organized by these divisions with a corresponding Best Practices Checklist for each division.

Company Divisions

Client Service Operations
Works only with paid clients under contract, delivering the very best quality services, exclusively within company’s service suite, as described online and in its business plan.

Research & Development (R&D)
Manages all technologies and trials internally for the company, not servicing clients. Creates apps, tech, new ideas, and A/B tests.

Finance
Covers business planning, projections, reports, fundraising, cash flow, A/R and A/P, etc. Helps manage VP of HR accordingly.

Human Resources (HR)
Manages all staff recruitment, payments, retention, documentation, training, growth and benefits. Helps manage certain aspects of daily operations under the leadership of the VP of Finance.

Online Leadgen
Develops and dynamically manages all social, webdev, SEO, PPC, PR/marketing, resellers, content, webinars, newsletters, and blogs for the company, not customers.

Conversion
In charge of the lead and closing down the sales cycle once it comes in the door, via online processes or appointment setting calls, i.e., they are in charge of every inbound leads that hits the phones, forms, or emails, and anyone forwards them.

Upselling, Cross-selling, Retention & Referrals (UCRR)
Upselling (providing more of the company’s core service), Cross-selling (outsourcing services in service suite within our family or an outside trustworthy source who shares the revenue), Retention (keeping a client is cheaper and this is a check and balance to service department effectiveness), and Referrals (get them to refer more new business leads to forward to conversion department).

Vertical and Geographic Leadgen and Conversion
These are real sales leaders or teams either employed or contracted out that generate their own leads on the phone and in person and close their own deals, not online leads unless they generated them via alternative methods outside our VP of Online Leadgen purview.

All Divisions
Each division and web site should hire General Managers to manage a variety of well-tuned teams in Philippines or India for any required services that fit in your business model; with each task placed in Basecamp to share, evolve and complete with other stakeholders and teams accordingly.

Company Management Roles

The President will control the company on a team with the CEO and the boards of directors and advisors; and delegate as much as possible to the leaders of each department. They will hire General Managers for explicit goals when necessary who will have their own accountable teams of generalists, specialists, and leaders in a potentially less structured environment to solve immediate goals and operate “skunk works” for apps and marketing ideas.

These roles delegate all other roles and tasks down the org chart hierarchy, but are the final accountable parties for the overall plan and each action item. If any section of the org chart is left empty all those roles are naturally still the responsibility of management directly above, otherwise they are properly delegated and accounted for within the completed structure.

Each team will have its own Key Performance Indicators/Analytics (KPIs), budgets, P&L, and best practices to evolve through and report on, as well as many items that are shared between departments. They should have a master chart that includes every analytic they need to track, broken down by department, and report every week on changes in each tracked item.