The success of your business depends upon how well you manage it. From a start-up all the way to a billion dollar corporation, managing your business well will help to insure its success. Since most businesses are small businesses, here are some ways to help a small business owner.
Answer the Phone: When a customer or prospective customer calls, someone should be available to answer the phone. Struggling business owners tend to have calls go to voicemail where they lose thousands of dollars of potential sales each year by not taking the first step to speak to an interested potential customer or a repeat customer.
Follow-through: Smart business owners quickly follow-up with their customers when they need a service or product. Whether it is a price quote or to gather more information for what is needed, this is crucial. A customer should not have to throw themselves at you.
Don’t do it all yourself: See the first point. You need to delegate tasks, especially those that can be time-consuming and are easily outsourced. A perfect example is payroll and administrative tasks. The cost of outsourcing payroll is fairly insignificant, but can free up valuable time. Other examples are answering the telephone, cleaning and maintenance, and running simple errands, such as ordering supplies and going to the post office.
Focus and time-management: You pay nothing for this, but yet it can cost you your business. You must focus on the important aspects of your business, with many of them not being urgent. Stop wasting time on non-valuable activities and spend your time doing what matters.
Marketing: Sometimes marketing can be very expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. It can actually be free or cost very little. Usually businesses stop marketing when they are busy, and then cut back on marketing when they are slow. These are both mistakes, as marketing should be done throughout the year, and be budgeted for.
These are just a few of the many ways to manage your business the way it should be managed. Manage it the right way and you will be rewarded.