These 10 tips will help you focus on improving areas of your business.
1. Keep score
It's amazing how few small businesses have an accurate idea of the daily, weekly and monthly numbers and financial trends in your business. If you lack the financial skills, hire a professional to help but always be clear.
2. Set goals
Like keeping score, setting goals and objectives is an essential part of business success. Set goals and use them as an ongoing planning tool to ensure you continue to move forward in your small business.
3. Use effective marketing
It's easy to waste money on ineffective marketing. Learn how to use low budget high-impact marketing to improve your small business. Test one or two new tactics and see which perform best before adding them to your marketing mix.
4. Master Business Presentations
A powerful business presentation can help improve your small business by leaps and bounds. Powerpoint or Prezi can be great tools to familiarise yourself with.
5. Monitor Trends
Stay current on trends and issues happening in your industry and local community. It is important to know what is coming downstream.
6. Sharpen Your Selling Skills
A high return area for business improvement is the sales function. And whether you're a one-person operation or managing a sales team, you must focus on sales improvement. This can be online or offline.
7. Find Best Practices
Every industry has its own ways of doing things that are tried and true. Avoid wasting money and time reinventing the industry is generally a good approach unless you're set on building the next Google. Try model yourself on those who have gone before you.
8. Motivate Staff
Talented and motivated staff members can bring on big improvements in business. Learn what motivates your employees to higher levels of performance. This applies to contractors also.
9. Know Your Limits
Every successful business owner has a clear idea of their limitations. By knowing your entrepreneurial personality type, you can manage your resources and find help in areas of weakness. You might be an excellent salesperson but not as strong in finance.
10. Take a Break
Running a small business is hard work. Sometimes the best way to improve your business and re-ignite your passion is to take a break and get away from it all.