What if I tell you that only 10% of new enterprises will become successful in the long run? This is a bitter reality that starting a small business is much easier than to actually support it in the coming years.
As the owner of a small business, I also did not fall out of many times. Despite the fact that it was depressing, these failures taught me invaluable lessons about creating a business.
At the same time, from the creation of effective marketing strategies to effective operations management, I will share my experience and explain the best lessons that I have learned from these mistakes. So, let's start with an explanation of how your business can flourish with the help of intellectual financial management.
Reduce unnecessary expenses
For a long time I thought that the expansion of my business and the increase in sales were the only ways to be more profitable. And for this reason, I rarely monitored my constantly growing business spans, especially the invoices that affected my cash flow and ultimately reduced my first small enterprise.
Nevertheless, this failure taught me that a decrease in business costs directly leads to better profit. So, I remembered this lesson and from the very first day I focused on business expenses, especially on overhead expenses.
Now there are several ways to reduce business. For example, high -speed Internet and the phone were the main requirements of my business, and I chose both through the spectrum. But instead of using these services separately, I retained a significant amount, having connected them through Xfinity Internet DealsField
Thus, I enjoy the flaming Internet necessary for my business tools and reliable telephone services to remain in constant contact with suppliers and suppliers.
In general, this was only one example of how I reduced unnecessary expenses. And I would advise you to show a creative approach to such expenses and think non -standard to reduce or completely eliminate them.
Create a comprehensive business plan
I believe that the creation of a detailed plan is the cornerstone of a successful business. However, since I was concerned about the finances management, it did not even occur to me to create it.
In addition to the presentation of your short-term and long-term goals, a thorough business plan should include the following factors:
- What are your financial forecasts for the next year?
- How would you scale your business?
- What are your KPI (key performance indicators)?
- How would you aim at your customers?
- What will be your sales strategy?
Here I would suggest that you consider a business plan as a roadmap. With such a large amount that is faced, owners of small business can easily lose their goals. And it is here that a comprehensive business plan enters.
Now there are no restrictions on how you should write a business plan. Even if you can find several templates on the Internet, just make sure that they are described in detail, clearly indicate your goals and identify effective steps for the success of your small business.
Analyze your marketing strategies
This is the fact that most small enterprises have no resources to Outsourcing their marketingThe field in the end, they themselves sell their small enterprises and ultimately spend hundreds of dollars on ineffective methods.
In addition, although I will not recommend you to ignore marketing efforts, make sure that they are reasonable. For example, instead of traditional marketing methods, such as the placement of advertisements or print advertisements in a local newspaper, use social networks.
Determine and select the platforms of social networks that your potential customers use. And create effective marketing campaigns that resonate with the identity of your brand. Thus, you must be able to aim at a larger number of customers, and this, too, without violating the bank.
Having said this, keep in mind that aiming for every platform of social networks can be expensive. And not to mention the fact that the optimization and monitoring of these ads can be a restless task for small resources business.
Be smart in your time and resources
Speaking from experience, there is never a boring moment in managing a small enterprise. With such a large number on a plate, small business owners rarely find free time. In addition, you can enjoy such a bustle at the beginning.
But believe me, this can harm you and your team in the long run, as it was with me.
Small business owners should Learn to delegate tasks And it projects smartly. Yes, they may not have sufficient resources for unhindered management of each business operation. But they can always get help from free business tools.
For example, I use tools such as Asana, Hubspot, Zapier and much more. I can easily delegate tasks and set deadlines, and monitor the completion of the project using ASANA. In addition, Hubspot helps me with marketing, and, like this, other tools provide smooth business operations without burdening my team.
Always set priority to your customers
It goes without saying that customers should be the main priority of each business. But they become even more important for small businesses, since Loss of customers It can significantly affect their profit.
For this reason, small enterprises should always arrange priorities against their customers over everything else. Now there are several ways to make your customers feel valuable. But I believe that they are allocated to them after the sale and maintenance among all other factors.
As a small business, I will not advise you to open the full -fledged customer support and hire several service representatives. Instead, create a bot chat and expand them in accounts on the social networks of your business.
You can train the bots chat and feed their main requests. In addition, most chat bots can also redirect complex requests. Thus, providing reliable and constantly accessible support to your customers can help them feel your valuable small enterprise.
So, to start, I would say again that starting a new enterprise is much easier than keeping it afloat in the long run. Nevertheless, I believe that these five lessons that I learned a difficult path after faced with multiple failures, probably helping your business flourish.
In addition, I have one last advice to help your small business.
If you ever decide invest in business softwareAlways go for cloud solutions. This is because instead of spending time and resources on creating your own tools, cloud solutions are more scalable and customizable. In addition, they are based on the “Pay for Hodik”, and you do not need to worry about maintaining or updating them.
