Is your business starting to expand? Make sure you have the capacity to take on more clients as well as a sustainable way of finding them. Read these tips for managing the transition from a small business to a bigger one.
Managing Finance
There are hundreds of ways you could be wasting money, or not managing it as effectively as you could. It’s vital that you collate data on your business’s expenditure so you can evaluate each area of outgoings individually, asking yourself each time, ‘Is this helping the business grow?’ Any expenditure should be for increasing your client base or improving the quality of your service or product, or its delivery. Once you’ve got the data in front of you, you’ll find it easier to identify any unnecessary spending.
What areas can you see that you are spending too much on? Where are you making savings? If you are paying more in one area of your business, look at ways of lowering the costs or cutting out the expense. It can be easy to accept fixed expenses, but you should always try to negotiate a better deal. Your growth should be sustainable, so if your expenses aren’t balanced out by your intake then you’ve got a problem.
Improve Customer Service
How big a part of your business is customer service? Do you have a reception desk and a waiting area, or do your staff talk to customers and clients over the phone? Make sure your business’s employees are interacting with customers efficiently and professionally. For example, a smile can go a long way. It even improves relations over the phone if your staff are introducing your business with a smile.
How are your staff dealing with difficult customers and clients? Your staff need to come across as empathetic to their concerns and ready to do whatever they need to in order to improve customer satisfaction. Do your staff need further training? It might be useful to offer them incentives, or raise office morale in another way, but make it clear that the standard of customer service can always improve.
Be Present Online
Doing business online is essential for almost every organization in this day and age. Even if most of your intake comes from a physical shop, being visible online will improve foot traffic, and there’s absolutely no excuse for not getting it right. If your business doesn’t appear when relevant phrases are typed into a search engine then you’re missing out on a large portion of customers and clients. Companies like CurrantWeb can design your website for you, and they can even manage your visibility by producing SEO content – that’s Search Engine Optimization.
Your company website needs to be appealing and user-friendly, and if you want to trade online then your website needs to be equipped to do so. A professional website designer will take into account your existing customer and client base as well as your needs, and will make a website for you that does what you need it to.
