---
title: 9 Ways a General Manager Will Benefit Your Small Business | The People Plan
description: 9 Ways a General Manager Will Benefit Your Small Business by Diana Southall | Sep 13, 2016 | action plans, Delegation, planning | 0 comments Over the years
---

[Blog](https://www.atlasalign.com/blog)

# [9 Ways a General Manager Will Benefit Your Small Business | The People Plan](https://www.atlasalign.com/blog/9-ways-general-manager-benefit-small-business)

 Written by [Diana Southall](https://www.atlasalign.com/blog/author/diana-southall) | Sep 13, 2016, 4:00:00 AM

Over the years, you built your small business on step at a time. Your hired more staff to sell and service your clients, then you added an office manager and/or an accounting manager. With each hire you expected to get “freed up” to act like an owner, not an employee.

 *Yet you are “crazy busy” every day*– getting sales, monitoring if work is done, leading improvement projects, fighting fires, and otherwise tending to the daily work in your business.

***What could be the cause?*** If you have 10 or more people on staff, you are likely missing a “level” of management.

You have level 1- individual workers, and you (level 4)- expecting to lead well-designed and highly functional systems run by others.  
You might even have level 2- a “supervisor” who monitors daily work of direct reports (perhaps informally and tactically), and is concerned with the next week or month.

 *But if you want to plan 1-5 years out and make changes that will improve your people, process and profits, you have to get out of the “daily supervision” game.*

> **You need a deputy.**

 **Here is a list of 9 ways your deputy (general manager) can positively impact your organization:**

1. *Watch the store*– develop and implement dashboards with key business results, review regularly and alert you to any “exceptions” so you know things are on track and there are no surprises
2. *Process improvement* – identify trends in your hassles, bottlenecks and other issues, research to find route cause and suggest solutions, then implement the solution
3. *Build your team*– Identify new roles or more people before your delivery suffers. Recruit, screen, onboard and train new staff that are Ideal Candidates, build a virtual bench of pre-qualified candidates before a position opens up
4. *Coach the team*– schedule, assign and coordinate work, monitor performance and attitude, give feedback, train and develop people for the best job fit and opportunities, engage the team to retain A players.
5. *Client experience building*– handle escalation of client issues, routine relationship building, periodic follow up to uncover unreported issues and identify opportunities
6. *Get stuff done*– Take your brilliant ideas for sales, marketing, process improvement, customer service and work with you to implement them
7. *Get Strategic* – Provide another viewpoint and involvement input in annual goal setting, then cascade goals down to every person, communicate and implement via individual dashboards and team coaching conversations.
8. “*Hold down the fort*” so you can have dinner with your family and take several two-week vacations (almost worry free)
9. *Open up your schedule*– so you can focus on thinking and planning, provide leadership and direction, building strategic relationships, and monitoring from a dashboard (instead of an avalanche of data)

> ***Basically a deputy lets you guide the process while they drive the business.***

Most owners wait far too long to get a deputy- a general / operations manager. The concerns are the usual- effort (how can I find and train a good one) and cost (how will I pay for him or her?).

Take a quick count- how many of these are happening now in your business?

*What impact would these activities bring to your business if they were in place?*

- Would it tighten up your sales process to win more business and increase revenue?
- Would it increase customer satisfaction leading to more sales and referrals?
- Would it provide the systems for reducing your costs based on higher efficiency?

If you increase quantity and value of each sale 5%, and reduce costs 5% this can double your profit.

Can a deputy do this for you?

[View full post](https://www.atlasalign.com/blog/9-ways-general-manager-benefit-small-business)

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