Small Business SOP’s Explained

Small business owners have to wear many hats during the business’s infancy stage. It can take years until they reach the point of being successful enough and financially stable enough to hire help and reduce their ever-increasing workload.

It’s a scary turning point for a lot of entrepreneurs; giving up full control and trusting another person to accomplish the tasks needed with the same level of excellence and care that they would put into it. Yikes. However, it’s a necessary step that every entrepreneur has had to face at some point along their path of expansion. One can only spread themselves so thin, at some point, doing EVERYTHING can actually be a disservice to the business.

So how can a business owner confidently take that giant step up to their business’s next level of growth?? With clear and concise operating procedures or Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

SOPs are the step-by-step “how-to” guides for performing particular tasks in the order they are performed in. These guides ensure the business’s standards, policies, and regulations are understood and followed. SOPs should be highly detailed and easy to follow. They help organize all your business processes, magnify areas of inefficiency, and aid in onboarding new staff. 

An easy way to understand SOPs is to think of them as a COOKBOOK. 

For example, maybe you have 6 chapters

• APPETIZERS (marketing) 

• SALADS (financials) 

• LUNCH (customer service) 

• DINNER (sales) 

• DESSERT (operations) 

• DRINKS (human resources) 

Within each of those chapters, you have “RECIPES” (procedures) for each item/task in that chapter.

Having those easy-to-follow “recipes” will vastly reduce the time it takes to onboard new employees. The SOPs handle most of the training and reduce repeat questions and errors. 

How do you write SOPs??? Check out a past blog post HERE to get started! Or connect with me and I can do it for you!

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