Depending on your business model eventually you will need staff and suppliers if your business is going to grow and be successful. Lets look at staffing first.

Choosing Your Staff!

Happy-staff

We can learn a lot from other businesses. Making the work place fun and keeping it fresh and alive will always help maintain staff morale. Here is a video I saw a while ago that investigates a workers motivation and how to get the most from your staff.

On top of this you can also outsource staff either locally or overseas depending on your business model. In my IT company we outsource many functions and use skype and Google collaborative products to work with our contractors.

Today there are lots of online tools that help you manage staff and tasks. We use an online tools like Kounta for our POS and this all links with our online Xero accounting program and a Tyro eftpos system. These all integrate together making a lot of the work automated.

Remember that staff are your greatest assets and have lives away from your business so set up rosters etc to accomodate this and they will stay with you.

Suppliers

These people can be your second line of defence and can make you or break you so always deal with them in a business like manner.

The problem I found working in my store is I became very familiar with my product so after a while it did not seem as dynamic as when I started. This can be a trap for new business owners. Always try and get customer feedback to see how your product fairs. You may be surprised.

There is also a big difference between dealing with big suppliers like Coke and small suppliers like packaging companies. Coke works through reps so trying to work with them can end up being a nightmare so always try and deal direct with the company where possible.

The smaller suppliers are a lot more flexible and you mostly deal with the owners.

So thats just a few tips on my experience with staff and suppliers.

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