This may sound overly simplistic but, for purposes of this article, I dont care what products or services a company sells, business boils down to just three activities sales, administration, and fulfillment.

Sales gets the business. Fulfillment produces the product / service. Administration provides the infrastructure that allows the other two activities to function. They are equally important, co-dependant activities so the relationship between them should be synergistic with clear, open communications. In a perfect world the three functions should meet often to discuss future schedules, desired changes in offerings, changes in procedures, and methods of constantly improving.

In large companies large departments perform the three activities. In micro-companies, a handful of people (often just one person) may fulfill all functions. In either case, the division of labor is determined by dividing assets (time / investment / focus) among the needs of the company, its people, and its clients.

I like to describe these activities of a company as being like a childs teeter-totter. Think of sales on one side, fulfillment on the other, and administration as the balance-point or fulcrum. If the goal is to keep the company utilizing assets to the maximum, administration continually moves the balance-point of investment to the side that has the greatest need at the moment. If the sales side is very effective, fulfillment has to be increased or the business will not be able to produce the quantity the sales side created. If there is greater production capacity than orders, more emphasis must be placed on activities that get the product sold or the revenue stream (and those who produce that stream) will suffer.

It would be easy to keep the teeter-totter balanced if we were in a constant marketplace where supply and demand were constant but the marketplace is forever changing so administration must be constantly looking forward, analyzing sales cycles, production cycles, threats of competition, the velocity of changing tastes and fashions, opportunities, and technological changes to adjust that balance point.

Every so often kids unbalance their teeter-totter and someone gets hurt. Dont let that happen to your business. Keep it all in balance.

Larry Galler

Larry Galler has been an owner of three small businesses selling to local, regional, and national markets. Since 1993 he has been coaching and consulting high performance executives, professionals, and owners of small businesses to extraordinary acheivement. He speaks frequently to business groups and has written a weekly newspaper column since 2001. If you want to increase the velocity of your business success, contact Larry for a free coaching session - larry@larrygaller.com .