What is an SOP and how do they help your adventure business?
Let’s discuss what an SOP is and how they can help your adventure business. When we talk about SOP’s (which we do often) with small business owners, they often cringe. We all know that too much-written documentation can feel burdensome and inflexible especially at the small business level.
However, implementing a few key procedures can provide the guidance your team needs from you without you having to be there or answer a lot of questions. SOP’s are more than just creating documentation – they are used to help you download your best practices and delegate them to team members.
Basically, SOP’s give you time back to work on growing your business.
What is an SOP?
By definition, a standard operating procedure (SOP) is a step-by-step process required to complete specific, repetitive tasks. SOP’s are used in all industries to ensure tasks are completed the same way each time. Providing your team members with a tried and tested workflow, helps them work more efficiently while creating a high-quality, predictable outcome.
A good SOP’s should include the following elements;
- Task Description
- Tools & Resource List
- Identify the team member responsible for the task as well as the SOP itself
- When the task needs to be done and how long it should take
- The steps involved from start to finish
When should you use an SOP?
SOP’s are best used on routine and repetitive tasks such as:
- Marketing tasks such as the weekly content creation cycle, regular scheduling of social media, and the monthly newsletter.
- Sales function tasks like putting together a custom itinerary or planning a group adventure.
- Customer service tasks including replying to emails, answering FAQs, and pre-adventure prep for clients.
- Operations tasks when preparing for a trip, on-trip check-in procedures, post-trip reporting, and documenting incidents/accidents in the field.
- HR function tasks such as recruiting new office admin or seasonal guides, new staff training, end of season staff offboarding, etc.
- Accounting tasks like invoicing, collecting payment, and daily bookkeeping.
How can SOPS help your adventure business?
SOPs are the first step to enabling you to start working on your business and not just in your business.
Make processes more efficient
By standardizing how a task gets done, you are doing two important things; making it easier for your team to do their work and seeing where improvements can be made to streamline the task. You will be able to identify where you can add technology and simple automation to further enhance your team efficiency.
Maintain quality standards
There is no point in hiring people if you are going to do everything yourself. By setting up SOPs, you are making sure everyone gives your customers the same high-quality service every single time. If you want your business to deliver the best quality consistently to every customer, there must be a framework in place that ensures that all team members provide the same level of service, even in your absence.
Standardize your training
As your business gets busier, it won’t be possible to train every new employee. SOPs along with an already trained team member will be able to ensure this is done well. A new team member will have a dedicated point of reference for their tasks. They can read, review or watch those SOP’s as many times as they need to. This eliminates the need for you or a team member to micromanage them. Meaning you can take a vacation!
What three SOPS should I have in place?
SOP 1 – Broadcast Marketing
This SOP will be describing the process of sending email broadcasts out from your email marketing system. This is something a lot of our clients don’t have in place and give enough emphasis to. It is normally one of the first things we set up for them when we come in to improve things on their back-end.
We recommend you create an SOP discussing how you will send out one email a month at a minimum and the steps involved in that. Ideally, it is best to aim for one a week but in the beginning, you should start slow and build it up. This is a critical SOP in our opinion because email marketing is so effective. You are talking directly to your audience whereas on social media you are just trying to catch people’s attention who are passing by.
SOP 2 – Team Onboarding
This will be for anybody who comes into your business. Whether they are an employee, freelancer or seasonal worker they need to come into your business and do things the way your business operates. You shouldn’t be adapting to how they do things they need to work with you and work with the systems you have currently operating.
The things that should be included in this SOP will be sharing your passwords in a SECURE way with them, giving them access to things they need in order to perform their duties and them signing agreements etc.
SOP 3 – Payment Management
This SOP will look slightly different from the previous two with what is needed. It should have a list of all the payment processors that you use for your clients and internally if needed. We recommend linking useful resources with how things work for that particular platform so people can familiarize themselves if it’s a new software for them.
It should then include the payment setup you have in place for your clients and the processes you follow. How will they manage missed payments? How will they collect payments from clients? These type of questions are what needs to be answered in this SOP.
Useful Resource
As always our aim is to make things easier and set you up for a successful business. We have loaded Katie’s Facebook live session discussing the benefits of SOP’s and her explaining in-depth everything that should be included in them. So please feel free to watch below!
In Conclusion
SOP’s of today are not the 3-inch binders on a dusty shelf of yesteryear. They are living, real-time updated docs, videos, and checklists created to empower your team to streamline workflows. SOP’s in combination with your project management software should be the hub of your business’s sustainable operations – with or without you!
It’s important to remember you can layout SOP’s in different ways that suit your business. As long as they include the core information and steps needed to be taken in order to perform that task that is all that matters. It should be a ‘how-to’ document so anyone can come in and do the task at hand.
We hope this helped and if you need help creating a game plan for tackling your SOP’s, let’s collaborate!
Join the Conversation
We would love for you to join our Business of Adventure Facebook group. This is a collaborative space for business owners or freelancers in the adventure travel and tourism space. The focus here is to share best practices and tips about online presence and digital marketing (front end) and online systems (backend) so you can establish a rock-solid foundation for your adventure business. If this is something you could benefit from, please join!