The beginning of the new year is an ideal time to consider where you can make critical changes within your business to take it to the next level.
Knowing where to begin can be an overwhelming process. But before you put it into the too-hard basket, it’s important to remember that not all changes need to be grandiose or expensive to make a difference.
In fact, it’s often the little tweaks which you can implement quickly that have the biggest impact on your business success and, better still, won’t blow your budget to action them.
Here are Numble’s 5 simple
steps to increase your chance of business success
1. Identify opportunities to outsource
Take some time out and consider the work you do on a day-to-day basis, with a view to identify what can be outsourced.
Outsourcing is an excellent way to delegate important tasks such as; marketing, accounting, bookkeeping/BAS services and HR. Assigning time-consuming responsibilities to qualified experts, allows you to remain confident that your business will perform at an optimal level and remain legally compliant.
Freeing up your time in this way lets you focus on other critical areas of your business. You’ll have more time and space to identify potential opportunities that can generate more success.
2. Review your financials regularly
Reviewing, assessing and modifying your business financials, budgets, forecasting, and cash flow should be done on a regular basis. When you understand your numbers and review them regularly, you’re in an excellent position to action changes efficiently and effectively. You’ll be prepared to react quickly when opportunity arises and challenges present themselves.
Establishing realistic KPIs will keep you on the right track and place your business in good stead for a solid growth trajectory, while mitigating and reducing risk.
3. Seek inspiration and keep up with the trends
If you’re a few years into your business, it’s possible you may have fallen into a set and forget routine. This is a sure-fire approach to stunt your growth or worse still, become a failed business statistic.
Take time to think critically about the way you sell your product or service. Is it in line with current trends? Have you maximised your target market engagement? What opportunities can be leveraged? What pitfalls are up ahead?
An excellent way to get inspired is by looking at your competition. Observe how they are targeting their audience, how their products or services are meeting current demands and what they are doing to create and maintain customer loyalty. Alternately, what are they not doing well? Can you exploit any weaknesses, offer better client options or service?
Take these observations and develop ways to build upon your findings. Make your business stand out from the crowd. You can get inspiration from other non-related industries. Look for the best in breed and ask yourself, are there any ideas, products or processes that I can use in my business to streamline or improve my offerings. Look at allied businesses and ask yourself how you might create partnerships to strengthen both companies position in the market.
If you are just getting started, don’t limit yourself. Think big and broad as there is no one single way to generate growth. Continually look for tweaks and adjustments that will help scale and improve your business.
4. Include your employees and stakeholders
It’s only natural that the people you work closely with can have insightful ideas on how to improve your business. They often see underlying issues you may have overlooked. These observations are valuable as they’re not clouded by emotional attachments that you may have. As an example, your employees may have ideas on how to simplify and streamline their workload, thus increasing their productivity.
Talk to other business owners about how they find inspiration, overcome challenges and keep focused. Frank and honest conversations with other business owners can provide inspiration and ideas to help you build your dream business.
Even as a solo entrepreneur, you have valuable access to your service providers and business contacts who hold a wealth of valuable knowledge between them. Talk to your bank, accountant, legal advisor, bookkeeper, or software supplier. They can all offer information and unique perspectives. Leverage all your contacts for insights into your industry, marketing strategies, cost efficiencies and target markets.
5. Listen to customer feedback
Listen and learn from your customers. Ask for feedback. Monitor and evaluate all the feedback you receive and learn from both the good and bad. Take heart from the good feedback, and do more of the positive stuff but also take careful note of what’s not working. Are there any common themes in the feedback you receive? Are there problems that you aren’t aware of, or roadblocks in your purchasing process? It’s much easier to solve an issue when you know what the real problem is. Negative feedback is as important as positive feedback. It highlights what needs to be improved and can provide clear opportunities for your business to progress.
Social media and quick online surveys are the easiest way to gauge customer sentiment and where grievances may lie. Once you know what the issues are, you can tackle them head on and make way for immediate development.
As your business grows, keep in direct touch with your customers; hold focus groups, call them personally, regularly measure your customers happiness rate. Use tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) to evaluate your customer satisfaction rates.
Learn as much as you can about what your customers want and need, right down to the smallest detail. Meetings, conferences and tradeshows are also a great way to stay on top of emerging ideas and opportunities – especially in markets you may not have tapped into yet.
Above all else, be willing to follow through and make necessary changes. By being adaptable, flexible, and open to change, you can adopt a growth mindset that will carry your business forward and create viable success well into the future.
If you’d like to start a conversation with us and know more about creating a successful business book a free consultation with Numble or call our office on 1300 852 575.
