As a start-up, dealing with the day to day grind of running your business is often overwhelming. You have hundreds of things on your to do list, new clients to please, and problems to fix, but everyone who starts a new business understands the obvious – you need to make it profitable. Savings, investor capital and loans won’t run the business forever so it’s vital that you have a workable plan and timetable in place. Here are some key points to help cut costs, increase profits and improve your bottom lines.
Blog Contents:
show
Focus On Sales And Follow-Ups
As a new business you should dedicate the majority of your time to sales and marketing. Once you’ve cleared exactly what products and services you will offer, the most important thing you can do to increase income is implementing an effective marketing plan. This will involve creation of a customer list and making sales presentations to potential customers.
It’s essential that you get feedback about every aspect of your sales process from your customers – including your products and services, pricing, and your general customer service. Ensure that you follow up on every sale – whether it be a call, email or survey request after a customer has made a purchase. Use the feedback and information to make vital adjustments to key elements of your business.
Be More Visible And Better Connected
Make sure you take your business and reputation online, utilise your website, social media, and a blog to really connect with clients and form strategic alliances. Set your business apart from the competition by gaining relevant accreditations, licenses and certifications. Share advertising with complementary businesses – take advantage of affiliate marketing tools to drive new customers to your site. Investigate effective ways to leverage referral selling. Remember, don’t be afraid to get rid of partnerships that may be dragging you down.
Boost Your Cash Flow
Have you considered offering pre-paid retainers or ongoing payment plans to your clients? These can be one of the best ways to achieve a more stable cash flow. Instead of offering one-off consulting contracts, you could offer discounts in order to potentially lock clients into longer term agreements. This will establish more lucrative working relationships, with the promise of additional work in the future.
Don’t Isolate Your Business
Whether it’s media, enterprise, education or any other sector, you must aim to target several niches for your start-up business to be successful. It’s important to cater to multiple niches and provide features for a variety of sectors. Don’t feel pressured to target everyone – but make sure not to lose out on markets that may be interested in you.
Streamline Your Operating Procedures
Consider cross-selling as a means of generating more sales and reducing expenses. Look at providing services or products that complement your current offerings. You could consider using special discounts or short-term deals to incentivise new customers to try your products and increase profits further. Relationship-based models and packages are a good way to encourage customers to keep coming back to you.
Ask yourself if there are any routine administrative functions and tasks you could outsource or eliminate all together. Could hiring part-time staff to do some of the tasks instead of full time workers save any more money for you?
Stop Unprofitable Lines
Don’t be afraid to to ditch any product or service that’s falling way below demand and not meeting expectations. Focusing on the offerings that your customers have clearly shown to have a demand for, is the most cost-effective strategy to boost your sales and marketing efforts.
Tailor Your Products And Services
You’ll be aware that everyone likes to receive something that feels as though it’s been completely customised for their interests and needs. Many of the most profitable start-up businesses started by offering personalisation for their customers, take the Pandora Charm Bracelet for example. People like to feel as though a service or product is entirely their own. If you provide some of that personal feel and customisation with your business – you’ll find yourself in a much stronger position to becoming far more profitable and successful.