When managing a small business, there will always be a time when things get a little tough.
If you’re cutting it close to spending money you don’t have every month, you’ll probably benefit from reading the following tips.
Take Inventory of Your Debt
Compile a list of all your credit, loans, debts to suppliers etc. Tracking your financials is crucial in business, it ensures you’ll not run into any nasty surprises.
Having large amounts of debt can affect your business to the point of no return. If you’re borrowing capital, you’ll need to have a plan to pay it off otherwise the interest will rack up and eat into your profits.
High-Interest debt has to be first on your priority list to be paid. In addition to paying them off first, do whatever you can to reduce the high-interest rates. Contact the creditor and try to negotiate a lower interest rate.
Additionally, you could try and find another creditor who’s willing you give you a balance transfer.
Consolidating your debt is another alternative that can be provided by most banks depending on your circumstances. Be cautious with this approach as there are many consolidation creditors that provide awful deals.
Reduce Your Outgoings
There are a multitude of ways to reduce your outgoings, it could be as simple as cutting back on some unnecessary tools or sharing some of those tools with a trusted partner who can split the bill.
Unnecessary spending can be a business killer but watching the pennies can cost you pounds in profits. Find any expense you can cut or reduce and do it, starting with the largest.
Perhaps you can cut down your losses on certain investments that aren’t panning out? You may also consider downsizing.
Do you have spare seats in your office? Why not try renting them out to freelancers?
Force Yourself To Criticise Your Own Plan
Criticising your own business plan is a great idea, as it can highlight areas that require more work or further refinement. It could highlight areas of your plan that actually aren’t possible or perhaps your initial projections were too ambitious or not ambitious enough.
Taking a step back and making sure the plan is logical, it’s quite easy to let your excitement and emotion flaw your plan.
Branding
Rebranding isn’t just a case of slapping on a new logo and calling it a day. That's a surefire way of wasting your time and money. Great rebranding will result in new customers, inspired employees and if you’re not as passionate about your business as you once were, this could reignite that spark you once had.
A good brand understands their target audience and reflects this in their branding. You can’t be everything to everyone, right? Knowing who you’re trying to reach is a great way of developing a brand identity that your customers can relate. It will help you deliver the right message time and time again.
This will help to improve brand loyalty and sales. Pearlfisher completed a great rebrand of the brand Reeves a few years ago. You can read more about it on their website.
Sell, Sell, Sell
If your profits aren’t what you’d like, taking a different approach to the sales process might help you get there. Increasing your revenue is easier said than done but here are 10 tips to help:
- Encourage Repeat Customers.
- Traditional Tactics Still Work - Traditional tactics like door to door sales. There are companies that can help with this like Acwyre or Tawkr.
- Provide value with coupons and discounts.
- Consider outsourcing your marketing.
- Come across as an authority figure.
- Add complementary services to existing products.
- Sell further afield.
- Extend your opening hours, this could be optimised by tracking and analysing sales in order to find busy periods.
- Bundle products.
- Spend time turning your loyal customers into brand advocates.
Sack Underperformers
Suppliers, staff and customers have the potential to underperform and become a huge drain on your business. After a couple of warnings, there might not be any other choice other than to find a replacement, it’s just business after all.
Follow the 80/20 Rule
The Pareto Principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. In business, you can look at the 80/20 rule with marketing or sales. Does 80% of your income come from a few key products? Does 80% of your online traffic come from one marketing strategy in particular? Do 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your revenue?
As soon as you can pinpoint the exact cause of 80% of the results, you can increase the amount of time and resources spent on whatever gives you the best results.
If you apply some of these rules to your business, you’re bound to see positive changes with your business in the coming months. It might be a bit of a challenge but getting out of the red is no easy task.
This commercial content is compiled via expert opinion. Clicking in certain hyperlinks within this article will redirect you to a 3rd party.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article