Small Business Articles

The foundational building blocks of every business are Processes (procedures/policy), People (employees), Customers and Resources (ideas/capital). Leaders, who strengthen and understand each of these blocks, build their business. Those who weaken or neglect these building blocks, find themselves with declines in both their top and bottom lines.

Believe it or not, organizations can sometimes forget that creating and delivering top quality products and providing excellent services is their main objective. Organizations keep ineffective processes in effect because it is comfortable, safe and familiar. Leaders must regularly set aside time to define and redefine their processes, track defects and poor service, and make improvements to solidify these (5) major building blocks.

Owner Mindset

You’ve got to make the mental shift from running your businesses as a self-employed job/good employee to building a business you can one day sell, scale or own passively to fund your retirement.

This means consistently reminding yourself that you are just a temporary producer, and that your business must eventually replace you from its day to day operations.

Be Clear in Your Mission

There’s a reason you started a business and left your job (or didn’t try to find a new one). Why are you doing this? Keep in mind that your personal mission and your company’s mission can be different, as long as they’re aligned and can co-exist. You did the mission statement in the business plan and it’s on the bookshelf collecting dust.

Network and Get a Mentor

Get a business advisor or coach. It doesn’t have to be someone professional, just someone who can share experiences to bounce ideas off of and tell you when you are losing teams, money and the mindset.

Get your Business off the Road to Nowhere

When the money gets tight and the momentum fades, you are left with day to day work of the business, this is when you learn how to make your business run. It can become grinding because sales are slow and you are learning how the business actually operates, to acquire customers, market products, understand how changing processes and products affect your financials, and every idea you have does not automatically work as you envision it to increase profits.

At some point while running a business, your likely to experience that burned out or uninspired feeling. Work-life balance is important; there is a truth, in working hard and playing hard to unwind. Reading a daily devotion and taking a daily 30 minute walk can assist in relaxing the mind, etc.

Customer

Customer acquisition is expensive in order to acquire new customers, companies must effectively target, market to and convince customers to try their product or service.

Many business owners do not take time to figure out who is their target customer. What are their target customers’ likes, dislikes, needs and wants? Which types of media do they consume? What is the cheapest way to reach them? How much is the target customer willing to pay for their products or services? Where and how should we sell our products?

Remember, it is cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire new ones.

Master the Art of Engagement

Being engaging is important in every part of your business, whether its communicating through email marketing, social media, blogs, videos and other commercial formats

Grab social Media Attention

Social media marketing plan should include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the company website to communicate with your customer. Use the same theme, pictures (banner pages) and similar products.

Understand importance of Business Logos

It is the first thing potential customers will notice about your brand, make sure it is presentable, professional and polished. Make sure the Logo connects with your customer needs and wants.

Create an experience for your Brand

Create fun and informative environment to solve your customer problems

The Right Clients are more Important than the Most clients

Most business strategy is get the cash in the door by any means necessary to get most clients in the door. Problem is you achieve all of this at the expense of quality, profit and sanity. The right clients will allow your company to do better work, build a better reputation, generate more profits and retain better employees.

Focus on Your Goal, Objectives, Theme but most of all Profitability

Don’t try to be all things to all customers. Specialize in solving your ‘target audience’ problems and have fun doing it. Even the largest companies do their best when they focus on keeping the ‘main thing the main thing’.

Operations

Processes

Are the actions and applications that executives and teams put in place to achieve desired results.

Leaders need to take a step back to review their processes-individually or in a cross-functional groupings— to eliminate inefficiencies and optimize performance, annually or as the market changes.

Systems

Systems are the reliable processes and procedures that empower your business to consistently produce an excellent result for your client and profitability for you.

Documenting automated processes can increase your company’s efficiency and reduce costly mistakes; the checklists your employees follow to ensure that all orders are shipped correctly; the orientation process for all new clients when you begin working together; and the standardized contracts you use with all your new hires and vendors.

Controls/Standards

Controls are the processes, procedures and safeguards that protect your company form uninformed or inappropriate decisions or actions by any team member. They also are your business’s way of making sure that key work is getting done on time and the right way.

There are (4) main types of business controls:

1. Checklists/Visual Business Process Controls
2. Scorecards/ Business Performance Measurements Metrics by Function (KPI)
3. Embedded Internal Quality Controls— product/process quality checks
4. Policy and Procedures— written/measured

Scalable SolutionsSystems(using excel and quickbooks), Processes and Procedures that worked for a $1million dollar a year business, are not sufficient for $10 million dollar business or a $25 million dollar business.

Scaling your business requires building it in such a way that your business model and systems can be rolled out and replicated on a much bigger playing field, based on increased product ordered/processed sales volume.

Example, choosing a database solution or a 3rd party fulfillment should be based on actual growth rates, not potential or forecasted projected sales.

Financials

Cash flow and Financial Statements are your ‘life line’.

• Learn how you are making and losing money. Understand profit and loss statements and what processes and procedures link to improving the ‘profits’ of your business.

ResourcesThe company’s financial wherewithal additionally, the measurement tools necessary to manage and track finances and assets. Do you have the knowledge, competencies and skills necessary to use those tools to increase your profits?

Small and mid-size businesses must master the ability to manage their working capital and cash flow. Every company has access to profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow statements. Management is either using accounting software or someone is preparing the reports for management.

How well does senior management understand the company’s financials and it correlation to their strategy? Do these managers understand which parts of the company need investment, where cuts can be made on why?

Managers must take the time to learn the relationships and interdependencies between their tools and the reports they use to maximize their resources.

Teamwork makes DreamWorks

You can’t do it by yourself. It is critical to ensure that your business doesn’t rely on the presence of any one individual.

Even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, needed a great team to help them execute, deliver and do everything behind the scenes to deliver their vision to customers.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find. Hire people who are smarter than you, then step back and let them do their jobs. Remember championships are won by teams, not athletes. Employees are hired either to increase revenue or to decrease expenses in order to improve profits, no other reason.

People

People are not your greatest asset; the right people are. The wrong people are your greatest catastrophe. Mediocre people are your greatest drain on resources.

Leaders must strive to create learning organizations where the organization is always pushing to improve. A organization where employees feel valued and are contributing according to their abilities.

Many small business owners are very good at what they do – from HVAC and automotive repairs to graphic design, IT or accounting services. They honed these skills while working for others – and at some point decided “I can do this on my own, make more money and have more time”.And yes, they can. But it takes more than technical know-how to build and sustain a successful business.

As a business owner, you need to wear a lot of hats. If you truly want to build a better business – one that works for you, here are some skills you need to develop.

Time Mastery

It’s no surprise that the biggest complaint of business owners is a lack of time. While organizing can certainly help, the best way to get back time comes from improvements in planning.

Planning and goal setting helps you prioritize and stay on track – a key to time management. Without it, everything looks important and little gets accomplished. Planning starts with a clear vision for your business. Next, incorporate your goals – what do you want to accomplish? Then, identify what you need to do to reach those goals. Whether you call them strategies, tactics or tasks, these are the actions you must take to accomplish your goals. Finally, schedule time to work on the tasks you identified.

Remember, planning is a cycle and ongoing process. Monitor your results and make adjustments as needed. Make planning and goal-setting a priority. Be the visionary and strategist your company needs.

People Mastery

You can’t do it all yourself. Whether you hire employees, sub-contract work or outsource projects and routine tasks, your small business needs others to grow and prosper. Most owners recognize the importance of getting quality people to support them and their business. But too often, they ignore the need to develop and manage them – especially when outsourcing or subcontracting work. Clear expectations, shared goals, ongoing feedback and open communication lead to high-performance teams – and a willingness to delegate to others! Be the manager and leader your company needs.

Financial Mastery

You don’t need to be a numbers guru to be successful. Whether you love them or hate them, the numbers are your friend – and a great tool for making sound business decisions and prioritizing where you put your resources. While your accountant and bookkeeper can help with planning and day-to-do record keeping, YOU own your financial performance.

Take the time the learn and understand the key financial drivers that impact profitability, cash flow, and your personal income. While key drivers may vary by business, some common ones include sales, margins, profit, accounts receivables/payables, labor, inventory management and operating efficiency.

Look at your financial reports monthly. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. A good accountant will gladly explain — it’s how we learn. If something doesn’t look or feel right, it probably isn’t. Don’t ignore the red flags. Ask questions or ask for help. Work with your accountant and be the chief financial officer your company needs.

Revenue Mastery

When you worked for someone else, keeping sales flowing was often someone else’s job. But as the owner, getting customers and repeat business is now up to you. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or get others to do it for you, generating sales is the lifeblood of your business. Have methods in place to consistently generate new sales (not just leads) and get current customers to spend more and purchase again and again. There are a lot of ways to grow and sustain revenue. You don’t need hundreds, but you do need three things:

First, a few proven methods to generate new leads. Second, a reliable sales system to convert those leads to paying customers. Finally, a dependable method to stay connected with current customers to generate repeat business. The key to success in marketing and sales is consistency. Avoid the stopping and starting or when time allows approach.Be the chief marketing and sales officer your company needs.

Systems Mastery

A business is a combination of people and systems that evolve over time as the business grows. When you are doing all the work, the quality and service are probably to your standards – even if they are inefficient. But as you bring in others to save time and money, those same standards may decline – unless you have written systems and procedures in place to guide them.

Systems aren’t complicated, but they are the key to efficiency, effectiveness, and repeatability in all areas of your business. They make hiring, training, and outsourcing easier. They make your business more efficient which translates into more profit. And most of all, they ensure you consistently deliver what you promise to customers, employees, suppliers, and others who depend on YOU.

Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses. There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:

60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.

The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.

Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.

Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social Media

Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the desired results.

Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.

Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.

Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.

Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.

Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.

Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.

Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.

Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.

Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.

Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions.

The shortage of commercial drivers is no longer a news. In 2015, there was a report of over 30 000 empty seats which needed to be filled in the United States and the problem has kept escalating since then. It so surprising that there is a shortage of commercial drivers when commercial driving schools, as well as trucking companies, have been pumping out newly trained drivers. Statistics have shown a good number of certified commercial drivers who are unemployed but they aren’t lining up to fill the empty seats in trucking companies. As a trucking company, the following tips can enable you to survive the shortage of commercial drivers.

Tip 1 – Creating Opportunity for Growth in your Company

Working for a company and remaining in the same position for several years can be discouraging. One of the ways to reduce the turnover of drivers and attract new ones is by providing growth opportunities. Based on the performance of the driver, they can be promoted to other roles such as team captains and supervisors. However, the criteria for promoting the drivers should be made known to every driver on the field in other to prevent those who went promoted from getting frustrated and upset. Also, a company where there are growth opportunities are quite attractive to the younger generation of drivers. Better equipped trucks, automatic transmissions, and improved sleeping cabins are few of the other ways to attract young drivers who seek more comfort and convenience.

Tip 2 – Offering Better Compensations and Performance-Based Incentives.

Offering better compensations to drivers is not an added expense but a means of reducing cost. It reduces your cost of recruiting and training because you get to attract more experienced drivers while reducing the turnover of your existing drivers. Also, drivers who do their job well, arrive on time, drive safely, and are efficient and productive should be given bonuses. This keeps them motivated.

Tip 3 – Making the Job Easy

There are new technologies such as the route optimization software which helps in planning accurate and well-optimized routes. This ensures that drivers never get stuck on the road. It assists them in increasing their productivity and timeliness thus making the job easy and seamless. Also, the software comes with a tracking device which enables the company to know the location of their drivers in real time. This enables the company to be able to send assistance to the driver in case of any problem or breakdown of the vehicle while on the road.

Small businesses, particularly those looking for an organic growth fail more often than they think. The success rate being fairly low, startups and small businesses need a foolproof strategy to be successful in the long-run. There are several things a small business owner can do to take her business to the next level. While on one hand, setting up of goals, planning in that direction and organizing the tasks is imperative, staying put with the latest technology is also equally important on the other.

The latest trend that small businesses have been seen to follow is embracing the cloud technology. The bookkeeping technology has taken a sharp turn, moving up from the traditional methods to accounting on the cloud.

QuickBooks Cloud: A New Way of Managing Finances

QuickBooks Cloud is bookkeeping software that serves the users with all of the necessary accounting tools at a single platform. It has not only made accounting and bookkeeping easier for its users but also made documenting simpler for CPAs, entrepreneurs and owners. Here is how an entrepreneur can grow a small but resilient business with the help of QuickBooks Cloud.

• Embrace The Cloud, Once and For All

To compete with the larger firms and make a mark in the market, firms need to move to the cloud already. QuickBooks Cloud is an innovative way that offers anywhere, anytime accessibility along with a slew of unique benefits such as printing checks, managing payroll, keeping a track of inventory, managing the invoice etc on a single platform, without depending on paper.

• Enjoy Increased Productivity Finally

Small firms need to work on their productivity. Since the workforce is comparatively smaller, SMBs need to work out a system that helps them to grow. QuickBooks cloud is highly scalable, thus when a firm grows, the growing functions can be easily managed without increasing the firm’s expenditure.

• Make Tracking A Habit

In the traditional methods of bookkeeping, entrepreneurs would keep a lot of tasks on the mind instead of on record. This can be classified as an inefficient method of running a business as it is a careless method of tracking the tasks. With QuickBooks Cloud, tracking can be done on the software in no time. The software unfailingly reminds the users to make the payments on time, to track the inventory and to schedule or/and attend the upcoming events.

• Keep Up With The Taxes

QuickBooks Cloud helps its users to stay updated with the changes in tax laws. Along with that, tax payments have also become a lot easier as QuickBooks software helps to organize the taxes beforehand. Tax payments with QuickBooks are a stress greatly reduced for the firms.

• Be A Learner

A successful entrepreneur understands the importance of being up-to-date with what’s latest. Learn where the competitors and leaders are going. The customers need keep on changing and so does the market. Thus, a SMB must keep up with the market to be in business in the long run.

• Backup and Backup

Cloud means multiple backups. And with QuickBooks Cloud, an entrepreneur is making sure that he has several backups for his most valuable company’s data. Loss of data owing to any possible cause can mean a loss of thousands of dollars to the firm. Thus, every company is required to keep its data safe.

• Enjoy Better Planning For Your Business

Cloud helps the firms to plan its future in a better way. The scalability feature of cloud helps firms to expand and contract their functions easily. With easy access from anytime, anywhere, the entrepreneurs can carry out the work with the clients and CPAs even if they are located at a remote location in any part of the world. Thus, better planning and problem solving made easier on multiple levels.