When you’re an effective CEO, you’re no longer focused on internal operations of your business.

You’re probably a lot more focused on forming external partnerships– helping others in your industry, building relationships, building partnerships, doing deals, and becoming a kind of ‘influencer’ in your field.

Effective CEOs are focused more externally than internally. You may be a CEO, but if most of your time is spent internally, or on operations, you’re probably functioning more like a COO, or a Chief Operating Officer.

Now, anyone who starts a business will have to start out this way. It’s a necessary phase of the entrepreneurial process– to be in the weeds of operations as a CEO in the beginning stages. But as you grow, this will inevitably become unsustainable.

So, how do you make the transition from being an operational CEO to an externally focused CEO? How do you make it out of operations? 

 

The Importance of the SOP

Well, the answer is simple: Standard Operating Procedures or SOP’s. In the early stages when you find yourself wearing all hats, you have to make sure you are replaceable in everything you do, and you do that by standardizing processes and documenting them as SOP’s.

In the first phase of a solar business, you will be the one knocking doors. But pretty soon, you’ll enter a second phase: you’ll be training other people to knock doors.

Now, you’re not only leveraging your time for your money, but you’re leveraging other people’s time for the growth of your business.

This is when you move from being a ‘solo-preneur’ to being an entrepreneur, when you’ve gone from helping yourself to actually helping a group of people. The only way to accomplish this transition in an organized fashion is with Standard Operating Procedures. 

 

An SOP should include every little piece of information about completing a certain task as if you were explaining it to a child.

For example, a Sales Rep’s SOP should include the most basic instructions: What time should a sales rep wake up? How many doors should a sales rep knock in a day? How many leads should a sales rep call? How many deals in a month do you expect a sales rep to close? How does a new rep get onboarded and trained? What does a sales pitch sound like? How should a sales rep manage a project once they’ve closed a deal? Every detail imaginable, every question, should be answered in an SOP before it is asked. 

 

Then, you’ll move to another stage in the growth of your business: you’ve onboarded a few sales reps, and now, you’ll want to replace yourself as a manager.

Now you’ll need to train someone on how you were managing these sales reps – how you recruited them, trained them, and handled the day-to-day operations of the sales team.

This should all be included in another SOP for sales management. Once you’ve onboarded a sales manager, you’ll repeat the same process for each major department, and pretty soon, you’ll be a true executive with several mid-level managers reporting to you on the operations of your business. 

Standard operating procedures create consistency, efficiency, and organization for your business.

They answer questions before they are asked. They create smooth streams of communication and establish a chain of command.

The more diligent you are about creating and maintaining these documents from day one of starting your solar company, the more quickly you will be able to make that coveted transition from operational multiple-hat-wearing ‘CEO’ to strategic CEO who has the time and freedom to form external partnerships and strategize growth for their business, empowered to do so by a killer team of managers and fellow executives.
Zain Jan