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The five people crucial for the prosperity of any business

Believe it or not, a business needs people to survive.

Knowing you and your pea-brain-induced tendency to jump to conclusions before knowing the entire story, are probably shaking your monitor profusely right now and trying to direct all the hate and anger you can possibly muster through your computer screen and into my cerebellum – obviously you know a business needs people to survive!

The question is: do you know what kind of people the business needs? I’ll give you a minute to think that one over.

Still thinking? Have another few minutes.

Okay, that’s enough. What you were thinking of was probably wrong anyway. A business needs the following types of people to function, survive and prosper:

1. Employees – the people who work for the business

2. Customers – the people who buy from the business

3. Suppliers – the people who sell to the business

4. Affiliates – the people who help the functioning of the business

5. Financial Institutions – the people who lend to the business

Think about it, without any customers it doesn’t really matter how great your management team is or how much money you have raised from the banks. If you have a million customers but no qualified employees to serve to them then you might as well join the welfare line. If you have the greatest management team in the world, enough customers to fill all of India, more affiliates than Amazon, enough suppliers to end world hunger ten times over but no bank will lend money to you – then you’re still exactly where you started – nowhere.

Welcome to the world of business. It’s not pretty. You either have to satisfy all of the aforementioned people or you might as well be serving hamburgers to pimple-infested teenagers who whine at you when you give them the wrong order because you are too busy planning your suicide.

In the world of Mr. Moneybags (that would be me), if you’re not first then you might as well be last.

It is these five people that ultimately determine the fate of your business and if you don’t have them working in your favor then your business is dead. Remove any one of those five people from the equation that makes up your business and it ceases to exist as you know it.

If you have absolutely no intention of starting your own business and visit this site strictly for the investment knowledge – this information is extremely important for you as well. When you are valuating your stocks, you will no doubt have to determine how the company you are researching satisfies the needs of these five people which make up such a vital part of its functioning.

This particular article will focus on one and arguably the most important of these five members of a business, and that would be its employees. It’s painfully obvious how and why customers are important to your business (customers bring money!), why suppliers are necessary (where else are you going to get your supplies?), affiliates (why do all the work yourself when you can find like-minded businesses such as your own to join you?) and financial institutions (who provide much needed capital and much unneeded interest rates).

There’s just one member of these five extremley necessary members of a business that tends to go unnoticed, mismanaged or misappropriated and that would be the employees. That is precisely why this article will go over just why these marvels are so important to the functioning of your business and how you can use them to become the next super-corporation hellbent on world domination and massive riches – welcome to America!

Meet the Employees

A company is made up of the people who work for it and without these people the company can never work.

If that last sentence was a surprise to you, then I sincerely hope that you are not currently running a business, nor are even thinking of starting one. What most business owners fail to realize is the importance of their employees. They believe that if their product is good or if the service that they provide is a necessary one, that people will give them money despite any other factors.

Nothing is further from the truth.

I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed business owners hire buck-toothed, cockroach-gobbling peasants to work for them with no other qualifications other than being willing to be paid minimum wage with a handful of peanuts as a holiday bonus.

The truth of the matter is, your employee is your most valuable asset. Your customers deal with your employees. Your partners deal with your employees. Your suppliers deal with your employees and even you deal with your employees. That’s a lot of people.

Be it through picking up the phone, taking money at the cash register or even passing each other by in the hallways – your employees will always encounter other members of your business so they damn well better be prepared for those situations.

Whenever you went on a field trip in school, your teachers would tell you to be on your best behavior because you are representing your school. It’s the exact same story here, if your employee is running around your place of business pinching people’s asses and throwing bologna sandwiches at passerby’s, it reflects poorly on you and your business.

The employee will just be fired and he/she will always be able to find another job. You and your business, on the other hand, will be bombarded with negative media attention, exclaiming how it was one of YOUR employees who YOU selected and YOU trained that caused all the ruckus.

Your employees are just another extension of your business and you damn well better make them fit your business’ image.

An Everyday Example

Technical support. Did you ever call your telecommunications (internet, television, cell phone) provider and after being transferred six million times from person to person with a consistently deteriorating IQ level and finally end up speaking to someone who can’t tell the difference between a blueberry and a Blackberry?

I can name approximately two billion people who have experienced a similar situation and I can assure you that after every negative experience these people didn’t say “Wow, I really didn’t like that unhelpful technical support guy!” but instead said “Wow, Phone Company W really sucks!”

You can say anything you want about improper management or whatever else but if you were initially connected to a helpful customer service representative, you wouldn’t have been transferred a six million times and, dare I say, you would have enjoyed your experience. (The mighty entrepreneurial blog Quick Sprout mentions the importance of Customer Support in this article among other wise tidbits of knowledge – take note cable companies!)

I remember the few times that I received amazing help from customer support representatives when I called in and I can tell you – I was suddenly thinking, “Wow, maybe Phone Company G isn’t so bad after all.”

What is the difference between the drooling baboons who redirect you six million times versus the helpful stallions who prevent you from committing mass murder out of sheer frustration?

The former hate their jobs whereas the latter are either content with or simply love their jobs. And it shows.

If you hate your job and you find yourself envisioning your boss’ head on a stick for most of the workday, do you really think you are going to be able to treat customers, suppliers, affiliates and advisers in the best, business-advancing manner possible? I doubt it.

The hand must fit the glove

A square peg cannot fit into a round hole

The corny phrase must fit the proper context

The main reason a person hates his/her job is because the two don’t match.

You’re never going to be able to make a social beast sit in a cubicle all day and file tax returns nor will you be able to make someone who spends most of his days locked up in his room playing World of Warcraft go out and make you millions of dollars worth of sales.

If your employee doesn’t fit with the job she is given, she will hate it and it will show in her work performance. On the other hand, if your employee fits the job she is given perfectly, she will love it and people won’t feel like jumping off a bridge after dealing with her.

You have to take the time to get to know your employees and get them a job that fits them; otherwise the both of you will end up fighting over scraps of meat on the street.

Of course, not everyone can take the time to get to know their employees to that extent, that’s why sometimes you have to force the square peg to fit the round hole (it seems that I have taken a liking to corny phrases).

You can study a person for their entire life and sometimes you won’t be able to deduce what the hell this guy is supposed to be doing with his life – that’s why so many people settle for doing jobs they hate because the pay is good.

Of course, not everyone has the money to bribe their employees to love their jobs, but I have some very good news for you cheap bastards: people work hard because they feel like their work as appreciated.

The main reason someone giggles uncontrollably and goes on a confetti-throwing spree across town after they receive a raise is not because they can now afford more crap that they don’t really need, but it is because they feel appreciated.

You can throw as much money as you want at someone, but if you are treating them to the equivalent of a slave during the days of the reign of the Roman Empire then their happiness, excitement and work productivity will only last so long.

You have to make your employees feel like they are important. They have to feel like they are in control. There is a very small amount of things you want to do when you are feeling helpless minus thrashing around on the floor and gasping for air while gobbling up a box of chocolates.

Studies have shown that seniors that have plants or animals to take care of live many years longer than those that have nothing or no one depending on them – you have to give people a reason to live.

If you constantly give your employees menial tasks to repeat over and over again with virtually no responsibility, control or feeling of importance, they’re not going to care what happens to your business if they accidentally sprinkle some rat poison into the product you are selling.

On the other hand, if they genuinely feel that they are a vital gear in the machine known as your business, then they will not want this machine to die. They will do whatever is in their power to keep the gears turning and make the business grow – because if the business is thriving, then they are thriving.

The wonders of working on commission

This is exactly why I despise hourly wages – you work your hours and you get the hell out of there, that’s it. You don’t care about your productivity, how much money you’ve made for the business or even how much work you’ve done; all you care about is how many hours you’ve put in and what your hourly wage is.

That’s the beauty of having your employees work on commission – they are in control. The more they work, the more money they make. And if my calculations are correct, everyone wants more money – so people will gladly work harder to make more money.

By the way, by working harder I do not mean working more hours; simply instead of spending half the time picking your nose and the other half lazily fulfilling whatever is written out in your contract, you will spend the entire time working productively.

And in the end, you will feel successful – because you are in control. It was as a result of your actions that you earned your money and not as a result of how many hours some fat mustache-twisting, cane twirling twit assigned you.

In essence, your employees are running their own little companies inside of your larger company. They are mini-entrepreneurs and you have to make them feel that way.

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