Small business: It’s not the size what matters
Are you an entrepreneur!, unemployed striving to survive all by yourself or a seasoned veteran aiming to get the mojo back. This one is for you.
Diving in the entre-ocean is not an easy choice. It takes time and patience to plow in the trenches, building your eureka moment pebble by pebble, pushing to the notches inch by inch.
The main challenge when starting a small business is not primarily about its size, what matters is the depression in revenues. It was never about what you make, rather about what you keep.
Here is a cheat sheet for you:
• Explore your diamond mine instead of looking out
Have you ever gone through your customer database again? People who have purchased once, might not disappoint the second time. It is very important to keep track of your past and active customers along with striving to attract a couple of new.
Aim to reactivate your past customers. Drop in an e-mail or a message reminding them, that you still exist, or any modifications in your products and services or simply convey the message that, you want them back.
Give your deactivate costumers a reason to buy from you again.
• Compute profits with the clock
Rely on Net profit per hour and not on the Total profits. Net Profit per hour is calculated by diving the net profit by viable working hours.
While computing takes into account all the relevant hours invested by employees in totality to deliver such goods and services. You can safely omit any holidays or training period.
When you strive to make every hour productive, it enhances the profitability overall, when the bigger picture is sought for.
Variate with prices, increase the product range, work on employee productivity or cutting overheads. The crux is hourly figures makes it easier to manage.
• Don’t slip under the rug
No matter how busy you get, you can never turn your back to a few essential decisions. During such workload, don’t you let your decision making power get tinted with a stupid decision.
Do not take things for granted, if someone needs to be fired, do it right away. The more you procrastinate it will spoil the work environment and will give others a privilege to do away with the work disciple. Such procrastination has a direct correlation with the profitability.
• Flaunt the referral policy
Happy and satisfied customers are a key to expand the customer base. Tell your customers how serious you are towards delivering an excellent experience to the customers, and you appreciate referrals.
Put it on your website, or on the invoices, the fact that we grow through referrals. Ask your active customers to leave honest feedback about their experiences, be it good or bad.
Apply a policy, where you call up your customers after 30 days to inquire about their experience and the fact whom did they refer it to.
Many will surely drop in their review.
• Save a drop from the ocean for your last man’s salary
Save at least 1% of what comes to your door, and keep it separate in an emergency account. For every bank deposit set aside 1% without fail. Get your Performa financial statements every month to track down the inflows and outflows.
Don’t panic you still have 99% share to deal with the entre-gamble. Leave that 1% for some cash crunch needs to pay for taxes on payrolls.
Keeping aside all odds, just have fun. Diving in this ocean was your choice, so make it work. It will be done. You will survive; a rare island is waiting for you, out there. Go get it.
