As a small business, it can be tough to gain success and even more so to achieve a substantial amount. With a small business, you’re competing with already established competitors that will have more staff and more financial backing. However, you can still achieve success as long as you have the right skills and perseverance. Here’s some advice on how to gain more success in a small business.
Focus On Pleasing Your Customers
What many big businesses tend to ignore as their company grows is their attention to customers. The customers are crucial to a business, and without them, then there would be no success. As a small business, it’s even more important to please your customers as you are likely to be still establishing a relationship. There are a number of ways to keep your customers happy, and you should always be finding new ways to do so. A few examples are:
Listen To Their Concerns – When customers complain, most of the time it’s valid. Granted, some people will do it purely for enjoyment, but for most, it can be a real issue that is affecting their experience with your business. So in order to help them, you need to listen. Showing that your listening at least is a step forward in the right direction.
Manage Expectations – Expectations for customers will only ever rise as we advance as a society and that’s expected with what we pay for. Managing the expectations of your customers should be executed successfully or to the best of your ability every time. It’s also going beyond expectations that will encourage word of mouth to increase.
Have Multiple Ways Of Communicating – No customer likes to be stuck on the receiving end of a robotic phone call, they want to talk to an actual human being and not an automated one. It’s good to have multiple ways that a customer can reach out to you. That might be the traditional ways like post and phone but also having an email and social media handles will cover all types of customers and their preferences.
Boost The Happiness Of Your Employees
The employees are the cogs that turn the business, and an unhappy employee will cause problems. In order for more success, work productivity should be high. When employees are unhappy or feeling undervalued, they will immediately drop the ball when it comes to their work. There are plenty of ways to encourage a happier mood throughout the company. Some of these include:
Flexible Working – A balanced work-life is something a lot more business are trying to encourage, and as a small business, you may be limited to the amount you can offer. However, offering flexible working is going to help towards building loyal employees who won’t want to leave because of the consideration you give to their own lives. With the power of technology nowadays, remote working is easier than ever and can be done from home or on the go. This means that you are adapting the company around your staff and that will pay off in the future.
A Good Working Atmosphere – Having the right atmosphere and layout in the workplace can make a huge difference to the way your employees feel because after all, they do spend the majority of their day in there. Try to consider both open spaces and private spaces as everyone works differently. Incorporate some nature into the office to help clean the atmosphere and let in any natural light that shines through. This is a good mood booster and also makes the space feel more inviting.
Rewards And Incentives – Offering incentives and rewards is a great way of appreciating their contributions to the company and praising them for their hard work. It doesn’t have to be a financial reward, it could be a gift basket or bonus leave, which will go down very well.
Have Regular Catch Up Meetings – Even in a small business, staff can sometimes feel like they don’t have enough communication with their managers about their work and how they’re doing on a regular basis. That’s why regular catch up meetings are important to implement into the weekly calendar. It’s a great way of tracking progress, addressing any concerns and doing it all within a relaxed environment.
Pay Interest In Career Progression – Many of those who come into the business, might not stick around for years but for those who show a keen interest in career progression should be paid attention to. Whether you can offer that progression currently is another thing, but it’s always good to get a feel for what they’re looking for so that you can hopefully provide them with a timescale of when that might be possible or whether it is now. Paying attention to the career interests of your staff is going to help reduce the amount of turnover you get, which saves you a lot of time and money.
Be Wise With Staffing
This follows quite nicely onto staffing in general. As a small business, you don’t want to be taking too many unnecessary risks, and in order to generate more success, you should be wise with your staff and any future recruitment that you may do. If there comes a time where you are thinking of hiring a new employee then question whether that experience or skillset is something that doesn’t already exist in a current employee. Maybe they’d be interested in a promotion or a job change. You don’t want to rush into hiring someone when there might already be someone within the company who can do what you’re after already or is at least capable. If not, then ask yourself whether you need someone full-time or whether it can be contracted or part-time. Hiring someone full-time is a costly expense, so make sure you’ve thought through all the scenarios before going ahead.
Invest In SEO
Developing a strong online presence is essential for a lot of businesses, and unless your business doesn’t warrant the online world, you should be looking to invest in areas such as SEO and digital development. With companies like Boost One SEO, they can help ensure that your company’s website and online profile is always at the top of the rankings when it comes to Google search engines. As a small business, this is vitally important, and with the digital world being what it is, the competition to stay on top will only get more difficult.
Building your online presence should include creating a website in which you can control your own content and bring in your current customers and any new potential ones. Take advantage of social media as this has become a goldmine for a lot of businesses both big and small in reaching a global market. Take a look at all the social media platforms available to you and go with the one that will benefit you the most. It might take a bit of research and trailing before you find the one that works the best for your business.
Find Ways To Cut Business Costs
As a small business, every expenditure and expense goes towards reducing your profit. You want to keep business costs low as you grow so that you can utilize your funds in the best way possible to gain more success. It’s useful to sit down with your accountant or financial team to go through all of the previous year’s expenditures and find ways of cutting down on business costs. All businesses will have a variety of spending habits that might not be warranted as being important. These are expenditures that could probably be cut and if they are, then do it.
As the business grows, it would be beneficial to have annual or quarterly meetings to monitor spending so that there’s always cuts to business costs to some degree.
Have A Detailed Business Plan
And one of the key contributions of success to have a detailed business plan. With a small business, it can be hard to stay on track or focus on what you are trying to achieve, so having a business plan in place is useful. It can be a guide to refer back to when you feel that you’ve lost your way or the business is stuck in the same place. You should set targets and goals both in the short term and long term so that you’re constantly working towards something. Again, like the business costs, the plan should be reviewed on an annual basis or whenever you feel it needs it.
Adapting to change is important for any business, and when it comes to small businesses, it’s imperative to keep up with the industry that you’re in. Make sure you get involved with what’s happening through networking and other events that might help raise your profile. Hopefully, some of these tips will help you gain more success for your small business. With grit and sheer determination, success will certainly come your way in time.
