Written by: James Ponds
Running a business is inherently a competitive endeavor. In the arena of commerce, there will always be a select few winners and many, many losers. Small businesses in particular have an immense amount of pressure placed upon them, because many small businesses don’t even last a full year before they have to file for bankruptcy. These tips will help you build a business that’s here to stay.
Develop Your Sales Strategy
The most important part of any business is your profit margin. In other words, your bottom line is the bottom line. There are a few ways to ensure the highest possible profits, one of which is to increase your net revenue. The best way to do that is to increase your sales figures. That means that developing the best possible sales strategy is a must, and there are few notable options. It’s also worth noting that these options aren’t always mutually exclusive, and you can easily pair door to door sales with e commerce. The most important part of your sales strategy, however, will be data. Creating an informed strategy using market data will increase its efficacy several times over.
Conduct Market Research
In order to get the market data you’ll need to develop a competent, targeted sales strategy, you’ll need to conduct market research, or more accurately, you will need to hire a PR firm to conduct that research for you. Market research often takes the form of consumer surveys. Despite the age of the technique, surveys remain one of the best ways to get that kind of overview of your audience. However, social media provides some additional market research tools, and the use of AI and social media together, a technique known as sentiment analysis, can get you even more valuable data.
Reduce Your Overhead
The other major way you can optimize your profit margin is to reduce the amount of money you spend on the operational costs of your business. After all, declaring bankruptcy entails not being able to cover these expenses in the first place. While you have to spend money to make money, you can always find ways to spend less and make more. One great example of reducing your overhead is restructuring your supply chain.
Restructure Your Supply Chain
The supply chain for a given business is like the lifeblood of that company. While a supply chain is a necessity, it’s possible to trim the fat here and there, if you know what to look for. Typically, you can compare and contrast your options in order to find lower prices, or you can even skip distributors and wholesalers entirely in order to save money by buying your products directly from manufacturers. However, it’s of the utmost importance to find ways to save without sacrificing the quality of the products and the reliability of the delivery process.
Go Paperless
One of the most important things you can do to succeed in modern business is to embrace technological solutions to age old problems. In the spirit of adopting modern tech, one great way to reduce your expenses is to eliminate printing from your business model. Many cost cutting measures entail reducing where you can’t remove, but printing is no longer a necessity thanks to digital alternatives. Printing entails many costs, starting with printers themselves before incurring minor, repeat costs on a regular basis in the form of paper and ink. The best part about the paperless business model is that the average person prefers digital receipts and updates, for example, to their printed counterparts, so you can spend almost nothing and improve your service simultaneously.
Owning and operating a business is a lot of hard work, and the stakes have never been higher. However, a business owner that’s willing to do some homework can simplify the management process and optimize their profit margins, total revenue, and cash flow. These tips can help you overcome the trials and tribulations of small business finances in order to avoid bankruptcy and to achieve success.