Consulting Business Operations Manual

Ideal for consulting business owners who want to keep a clean, organized, and easy-to-navigate single source of knowledge for their business and team.

✨ Your Operations Manual is a one-stop-shop of operational knowledge base for your business. It includes your business systems, processes, SOPs, workflows, checklists, best practices... It tells your employees: "This is how we do things here".

Think of it as your "business playbook".

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TL;DR

✔️ Inspired by The E-myth: Read "The E-myth" but struggling to create an operations manual for your consulting business? All your systems are in your head but you don't know how to extract and/or neatly organize them in a single place? With this pre-built template, you don't have to try to set up a manual from scratch.

✔️ Suitable for any size of consulting business: Whether you’re a solo consultant on the verge of growth, or a large firm looking to streamline operations, this pre-built template will provide invaluable support.

✔️ Business-Specific & Ready-Made: 60+ sections fully pre-packed with standard and best practices in operating a successful consulting business.

✔️ Fully Customizable: Tailor any part of the Manual to fit your business needs.

✔️ Function Over Fluff: While aesthetics are important, this Manual prioritizes functionality. No sacrificing usability on Notion for the sake of pretty (but irrelevant) pictures or designs.

✔️ Evergreen: An evergreen, living resource that you can update and expand as your business grows.

✔️ Easy-to-use & Aesthetically Designed: Easy to use, and eye-pleasing by default with no cramped look.

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Who needs this?

Perfect for consultancy business owners who want to get completely organized and streamlined by centralizing their business's knowledge hub, implement structured systems in their business, save time on admin work, and ensure seamless daily operations.

• Are your business's SOPs, checklists, workflows, etc. scattered around Word documents, Google Sheets, and Google Drive folders? Are you and your team getting lost when trying to find documents or information in them?

 

• Are you holding back from promoting your business or generating more leads because you are afraid that you may not be able to serve them well when you don't have your systems built/documented in your business?

 

• Are you tired of doing administrative tasks in your business but is training new hires just taking too much time and effort so you keep ending up doing the work on your own?

 

• Do you wish to free yourself from your business but does it just seem impossible?

 

• Do you wish to scale your business but does it seem not doable because you don't know how to replicate what you build in one location to another?

 

• Do you find yourself repeatedly explaining your business processes to new or existing employees?

 

• Are there inconsistencies in the way your different employees perform tasks?

If you answer 'yes' to any of the above questions, then this Consulting Business Operations Manual is an essential tool that can transform the way your business operates, making it more efficient, scalable, and profitable.

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Why do you need to build systems in your business?

1. Systems make it easier to delegate to other people. Written systems make it clear what is the way in which you want things to be done.

2. Having written systems reduces training and onboarding time of new hires, removes guesswork in day-to-day operations for your team, and allows your team to find the information they need faster. 

3. Systems create consistency. When we don't have systems to work with, we (and our team) tend to do things differently from time to time which gets us inconsistent results and an inconsistent experience for your clients.

4. Having solid systems in your business allows you to scale, franchise, or sell your business with ease. (You get top dollar when selling your business because systems-run businesses are always worth more. This is because systems-run businesses function without key person dependency.)

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What's inside?

Section 1: Introduction

This section briefly introduces the purpose of the manual, what information is included, how it is used, and what you and your employees can expect from using it.

Section 2: Business History & Overview

Knowing the history of the business can provide your employees with a sense of ownership and pride which is likely to result in their commitment to the business’s success. You can include your business's history and any other relevant information here to give an overview of your business before your employees and new hires dive into the rest of the manual.

Section 3: Culture & Values

At the heart of successful businesses is a clear set of values and a strong company culture. Values give people guiding principles to make their own choices when things are NOT explicitly described in the systems. You'll see recommended values in this section and can adopt or customize them to suit your business’s culture.

Section 4: Organizational Chart

Successful businesses are organized around roles and positions, not personalities or dependency on individual employees' individual strengths and knowledge. You'll find a template and sample organizational chart setup in this section and can customize it to reflect the hierarchical structure of your business. 

Section 5: Job Descriptions 

Having clear job descriptions is essential for everyone to understand the roles and responsibilities that come with their title. If everyone knows what they are accountable for, it leads to a more organized workflow. You'll have a template and fully built job descriptions in this section and can adopt or customize them to suit your business.

Section 6: Business Systems & Processes ⭐

The heart and backbone of your operations lie in this section. Think of it as your ultimate hub for your SOPs where every essential process, workflow, system, and instruction is documented. It's here that you lay down the blueprint for how things run in your business.

Once you've poured your expertise and knowledge into this section, you can confidently step back knowing that your team has a robust go-to resource. New hires? They'll be trained seamlessly. Existing team members? They'll have clear guidance to follow. This is your playbook for clarity, consistency, and efficiency.

Without a comprehensive and well-organized section like this, businesses risk the chaos of inconsistency, with everyone marching to the beat of their own drum. But by dedicating time and effort here, you ensure a harmonious, unified approach to serving your customers and growing your business.

You’ll find 50+ fully built SOPs in this section based on standard and best practices in consulting business operations, which you can adopt or customize to suit your business.

This section is also split into 3 subsections: Client Relations, Employee Relations, and Administrative Processes.

Section 7: Checklists, Forms, Templates & More

This section is where your employees can locate the business’s checklists, forms, email templates, and other job aids. You'll see examples and templates in this section that you can adopt or customize to your business needs.

Section 8: Client Resources Library

This section serves as a central repository where you can store and organize various resources that you/r consultants frequently share with your clients. Whether it's informative articles, Youtube videos, industry reports, podcast episodes, book recommendations, or else, you keep all your resources easily accessible here.

Section 9: Company Library & Growth Center

This section is where you keep your company resources library, video trainings (remember those recordings we create on Loom for our team? :)), tutorials, and other resources for your team for their professional and personal development. You'll find some examples to guide you here.

Section 10: Owner-Only Section

In this section, you'll find the systems and processes that shouldn’t necessarily be accessible to your employees. These are the information that only you should know, and data you will track, as an Owner/General Manager of your company.

Section 11: Glossary

Any key terminology and acronyms that are commonly used in your business can be added to this section. By maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date Glossary section, you will ensure that everyone in your team is on the same page and able to communicate effectively. 

Section 12: Directory

Having a comprehensive list of important contacts is essential for your business to run smoothly, especially if/when the management is unavailable. This helps your employees handle any situation that may come up and ensures that the business keeps running without any hiccups.

Section 13: Emergency Procedures

If your firm has a physical office, you can use this section to store your emergency procedures for quick access through the homepage of your manual. You'll find a comprehensive list of emergency procedures in this section.

Section 14: Company Brag Book/Wall of Love

This is a place where you can showcase the positive feedback your clients send you in the form of testimonials, Google reviews, messages, emails… You can also display here the milestones you/r team has achieved. Feel free to add videos, text, images, screenshots of comments from social media, etc. here.

As this Manual will be accessible to your new hires, and work as a regular reference for your seasoned team members, what better way to immerse oneself in your company's culture than to dive into a page that echoes your collective successes?

Section 15: New Hire Onboarding Quiz

When you hire a new team member and ask them to read this Manual, you can test their knowledge with a short quiz to make sure that they have read it carefully and captured the important details. You'll have an example quiz in this section that you can modify the questions as you’d like.

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Need a custom-made Operations Manual?

If you'd like a custom Operations Manual developed for your business by a seasoned Business Operations Management Consultant, please refer to our Custom Operations Manual Development service offering.