“Grow your Business” Series

Business Plateau Woes? Three Ways To Encourage Business Growth

by
Three ways to encourage business growth for service business owners

With every company’s period of growth comes a time of stagnancy. It is inevitable that, despite your efforts, growth will stall and you will find yourself looking for new ways to enhance your company’s operation. The good news is that you have the tools and knowledge at hand already to jump start things all over again. Here are a few different ways that you can encourage additional business growth to overcome your plateau period.

Leverage Automation

It is hard to find the time to grow your business when your time is spent on repetitive operational and administrative tasks. If you want to have the time to focus on growing your business, you need to simplify some of those time-consuming tasks. Automation is the best way to go. That way, thing are completed with minimal manual intervention, allowing you time to focus on other needs.

For example, payroll automation can save your business hours of manual labor, and the associated costs, every week. There are many different services available to help you automate your payroll processing. Explore your options until you find one that offers the services you need at a reasonable price.

You can also automate your email distributions. Create newsletters or alerts in a mass email platform, designate specific mailing lists, and then let it do all of the email distribution for you.

Tap Your Resources

If you find yourself struggling to come up with new ideas to spark growth, it’s time to tap your resources and use their expertise. Your staff can be a valuable pool of new and fresh ideas for your company’s growth and sales. There are a few ways that you can do this.

Host brainstorming sessions. Separate your staff into groups and host some brainstorming sessions to encourage the free flow of ideas. You can even change up the groups and try again, because the different group dynamics can help spark new ideas and conversation.

Put out an open suggestion call. Let all of your staff know that you are open to all sorts of new ideas and suggestions to encourage business growth.

Develop A New Product Or Service

If you offer a new product or service, you can not only expand your customer base, but also potentially sell that offering to your existing customers as well. Consider your company’s current offerings and mission, then develop a product or service that complements it.

Market that product widely as a new offering, both through the use of traditional ad campaigns and also direct marketing to your existing customers. The more you can get the word out, the greater chance you have of increased sales.

Running a business does not need to be complicated!  Keep it simple!

For more valuable articles to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Business Analysis: What Not To Do

by
business analysis What Not To Do

It is important to analyze your business. Not only does an analysis allow you to make sure everything is running as smoothly as possible, you might also see ways that you can improve and even grow your business.

However, analyzing your business is not always easy. Here are some things that you shouldn’t do during the analysis.

Do it all yourself.

You may be too close to your business to look at it objectively. Other people can give you an objective look at your business. They may see something from a distance that you don’t even notice. Get help and listen objectively.

Don’t focus on the big picture, look at everything.

Too many business owners get stuck on one key problem during their analysis and they can’t look any further. However, it is important that you look at how you do everything in your business and how it runs. This includes your systems, employees, and your overhead.

Only do one analysis.

If you don’t analyze your business on a regular basis, your business is not going to grow. You will continue to do the same thing with the same result for years and years. In order to find better ways to do things, you should constantly analyze your business and make the necessary changes.

Don’t look at any other opportunities.

A part of your analysis should include other business opportunities that you may be interested in. If you skip this part, you may miss out on a few chances to grow your business.

To grow a strong business, you must analyze your business on a regular basis. This helps you to improve and even expand your business, instead of staying stagnant.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more valuable articles to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Increase the Value of Meetings with Four Tech-Driven Tips

by
increase the value of meetings

How to increase the value of meetings, conceptually, is a difficult beast to tame. Too many meetings lead to lower productivity due to the level of distractions. Too few meetings… also lead to lower productivity due to employees having low information on their actual tasks.

And between all of that, there are issues that unexpectedly arise from the quality of the meetings themselves. The very structure of a meeting can lead to inefficient results, causing confusion or eating up working hours with a focus on topics that aren’t actually helping anyone improve material results of the task at hand.

Simply put, an effort to increase the value of meetings is one of the most difficult skill sets to perfect, regardless of the type of business at hand. With that in mind, here are four essential tips geared towards generating a positive ROI on any new equipment needed to increase the value of meetings:

  1. Rely on simple, accessible technology to keep the focus on communication over IT. 

With the myriad options available, it’s easy to fall into the trap of meetings relying on too many technological variables with the potential to cause issues. Focus on meetings that facilitate simple, broadly compatible technologies, such as projectors that easily serve content from personal devices. When presenters only have to connect a familiar device through HDMI, time-consuming troubleshooting disappears.

2. Schedule video meetings whenever appropriate. 

Even within the same building, it’s often a boon to be able to quickly meet and exchange ideas or issue instructions without the logistics of going to a physical meeting space.  Getting in the habit of video conferencing makes it easier to build meetings where even a single participant who is off-site can be brought in at a whim, seamlessly.

3. Craft an immersive meeting experience. 

Attentiveness is the currency of meetings. It’s incredibly easy to reflexively go through the motions of a meeting, especially for experienced employees. Keep attendees engaged by cutting down on downtime, setting a structure that asks for input from everyone present at a consistent pace, and always ends with a strong call to action that succinctly rephrases exactly what needs to be done going forward.

4. Leverage software to book and schedule meetings. 

A major roadblock for meetings, especially in corporate settings, is the deceptively complex process of booking and scheduling. Avoid this by standardizing an RSVP system, so each attendee receives an invite they are meant to respond to. This cuts down on unexpected absences and blocks out exactly how much time away from the regular working day is required for the meeting in question.

Following these simple tips, you’ll be well on the path to increase the value of meetings. Contact us today for more business advice on how to keep your business running profitably.

Business Growth Tips to Scale Your Business Successfully

by
How to Scale Your Business Portal CFO Photo

Growing an existing business over time requires more than just doing what works over and over again. No matter what you sell or provide to your customers or clients, if you want to scale your business successfully, you need to identify pathways to expand into new markets.

There are only so many consumers who want to buy your widgets or hire you to perform a certain service. While the internet expands many companies’ reach to the global marketplace, doing the same thing repeatedly usually nets you the same results.

How can you scale your business successfully in the most economical way possible?

1 – Identify Other Things Existing Customers Want

If your small business sells customized dog collars, it stands to reason that the people who buy them might want harnesses and leashes as well. Offering products or services closely aligned with existing ones helps to fuel business growth in a safe and affordable way. With more time-sensitive product lines, such as software or medical equipment, sticking with one offer could mean failure.

2 – Determine How to Satisfy a New Customer Base

Another option is to offer existing products or services to an additional targeted group. Dog training schools and kennels may want your colorful harnesses and leashes as much as pet owners. Learn to identify potential expansion possibilities with growth expert help.

3 – Know Where Your Industry is Heading

Spend time studying your industry to keep up with new product or service opportunities and also buying trends and customer opinions. Economical business growth means no wasted time, money, or attention. Competitor experiences may help you tweak your own efforts.  Small and medium-sized businesses may not want to take over the world, but scaling up for more success always improves your position in the marketplace.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

Why Customer Loyalty Is More Important than Customer Acquisition

by
why customer loyalty is more important than customer acquisition

If you’re looking to grow your business profitably and for the long term, what’s the most important strategy to focus on? The answer might surprise you. Contrary to what many entrepreneurs think, customer loyalty and retention are far more valuable to a small- or medium-sized business than new customer acquisition.

Customer acquisition is expensive. Obviously, it’s important to spend some effort on acquiring new customers, especially when you first launch a business.

But customer retention should always be a priority, and be part of your business strategy. By focusing on customer loyalty, your business gains two advantages. The first is that happy, loyal customers are repeat customers—you don’t have to put nearly as much money into attracting new customers, if you can keep existing clients coming back. Second, loyal customers are more likely to become brand advocates for your business. They are more likely to refer their friends, family, and acquaintances to your company.

Again, that’s money you don’t have to spend on customer acquisition: your previous customers are doing your marketing for you. It’s a compound effect. Current customers will keep coming back to do business with you, and will refer new clients to you as well.

How to Build Customer Loyalty

So, how can you build a pool of loyal, repeat customers? This is one of those times where you have the upper hand as a small business. Quite simply, it makes people feel good to support small business. Plus, you have more freedom to build real connections with clients, establish trust, and ensure that clients are satisfied with your goods or services. You’re not constrained by the internal processes and bureaucracy rampant in large firms—you can spend more time and effort ensuring that every customer has a fantastic experience with your business.

That’s really what customer loyalty boils down to: setting a strong foundation of trust and exceptional service with customers. And because most people are used to purchasing from (or working with) large, impersonal corporations, the slightest personal touch will make your business really stand out.

Build on customers’ good first impressions by staying connected. If you’re a small florist, don’t let your relationship with a newlywed couple end after you arrange the flowers for their wedding: send them a happy anniversary letter a year later. (Bonus points if you send it just before their anniversary, so one of them has time to buy flowers from you again in celebration of the occasion.) It’s all about staying top-of-mind, without being intrusive or annoying.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

Tips for Growing Your Small Business Profitably

by
how to grow your business profitably

The desire of most small and medium-sized business owners is to get to the point where they are growing their business profitably. The challenge is that competition from huge businesses may hinder the prosperity of small enterprises. But this does not imply that achieving success as a small entrepreneur is impossible.

If you want to grow your business, you should adopt and implement the right business strategies. Here are some of the approaches you can consider implementing that can help you when it comes to growing your business profitably.

Embrace Innovation

Many customers will often go shopping with the intention of finding out what is new in the market, and if you want to capture their attention, you should consider offering quality products or services at the right price. Embracing innovation earns your brand a good reputation from clients, and it will also set it apart from the competition.

Innovative business operators exceed the expectations of most customers because they offer something beyond the ordinary and that gives every buyer value for their money.

Consider Diversification

A precise analysis of your established market may reveal other needs that relate closely to what you are offering or market segments with several similarities with the product or services you are selling.

Leveraging market segments with similar characteristics to what you are offering by making them another source of income for your business is an excellent way of diversifying your products or services, which will promote growth.

Prioritize Excellent Customer Service

Small business owners who offer substandard services lose most of their customers to competitors, which diminishes the potential of growing their operations profitably. Offering exemplary customer service is not an option if you want to achieve success as a small business owner.

The advantage of offering your customers excellent customer service is that it will not only delight them, but it will also encourage such clients to refer others to you, and that will result in the growth of your enterprise.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you find hidden profit and improve cash flow at www.portalcfo.com.

Business Advice – Goal Setting for Long-Term Business Success

by
Goal Settings for Long Term Business Growth

One of the best ways to grow your small or medium-size company is to set and achieve business goals. Having a vision for the direction of your business is necessary for consistent and long-term growth. With business objectives firmly in place, a company can move forward.

The Importance of Business Goals

Without business goals, you may flounder and waste time, money, and resources as you try different things hoping some will prove profitable. The best approach is to carefully determine what your business is all about. Who are your ideal customers? What are your main services or products? Only after answering such questions can you accurately choose a plan of action that works for your business model.

The first step in goal setting is choosing long-term goals, usually three to five years into the future. Once you establish long-term goals, you break down all steps to create relevant short-term goals. These are small, manageable steps needed for accomplishing the long-term goals.

According to the Inc.com article, How to Set Business Goals, there are four main categories of business goals: service, social, growth, and profit. Service goals involve raising customer satisfaction levels with such ideas as using new technologies to become more efficient and productive. Social goals help the community with volunteer work or charitable giving. Growth goals are expanding the company in ways such as opening more stores or increasing service or product offerings. With profit goals the business owner wants to improve the bottom line. For example, you may want to increase sales five percent every quarter.

Tips for Achieving Goals

Here are a few tips to help your goal setting efforts.

Specificity

Be specific when goal setting by cleanly defining what you want. If you want to increase profits, how exactly will you achieve this?  Will you reduce expenses and/or raise prices?

Brainstorming

Identify all the steps required for achieving a goal and then brainstorm ideas and activities. Get your employees to participate to keep ideas flowing.

Deadlines

It’s important to set deadlines for each short-term (and long-term) goal. Reaching milestones keeps you moving in the right direction.

Focus

Once you have set goals and established a plan of action, you have to remain focused on each short-term goal.

Commitment

To achieve any goal, you have to stay committed. This means working on goals every day.

Celebration

When you reach a milestone, celebrate that small success. It will help keep you motivated.

Goal setting is an important component of every successful business. By choosing long-term objectives and working towards them, you can keep your company on track, leading it to the results you envision.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Check out ways I can help you make more money at www.portalcfo.com.

A Formula for Success

by
formula for success for owning a business

In business, we’re all trying to find the best way to flourish and prosper within our markets. Experimenting with the latest trends in marketing, taking cuts in corners, and the never-ending need to outshine, outsmart, outsell our competition seems to be creating more work; when the goal should be to work smarter and not harder. What we should do is start looking back at the core of business integrity. Read on to learn a formula for success. 

Build relationships

Connecting with others more personally can go a long way in any business. Relationships are the vehicle that will drive you to success. This doesn’t mean to get personal; it simply means to go out of your way to listen and truly understand the other person you’re working with. Whether it’s a co-worker, client, or the “go-to” company that caters the monthly meetings, the people we interact with are people. The rapport we build with them can bring more rewards to our ongoing interaction than any other strategy. Send a thank you note, give them a word of praise, do something extra that lets them know they’ve been acknowledged and appreciated.

Go the extra mile

No matter if we’re signing checks or sweeping floors, our position within a business is important. Every action we take has our name on it. Our success is dependent upon every detail that makes up the entire picture. Going the extra mile on even the smallest of tasks will stand out. Jim Rohn says, “Always go the extra mile, because most people won’t even go the first mile”. Before passing the buck, go the extra mile and you will see that opportunities are often waiting. If we’re driving towards success, doesn’t it just make sense to go the extra mile?

Persistence

The key to making all this work is persistence. One compliment isn’t going to bring the rewards of building a rapport. This requires time. Going the extra mile once isn’t going to get you noticed; you still need to cover some ground.  Creating a habit of these qualities brings a refinement to your character. Over time, these qualities will begin to compound and the effect will spill over into your success.  By simple observation, we can see the best formula for success uses principles we’ve been taught throughout our lives.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Three Fun and Creative Ways to Promote Customer Loyalty

by
Promote Customer Loyalty

Three Fun and Creative Ways to Promote Customer Loyalty

If you own a retail or service business you are most likely always on the look-out for ways to grow your customer base, repeat business, or word of mouth customers. Try one or all of these simple ways to promote customer loyalty and put smiles on your patron’s faces, while putting cash in your till.

#1:  Offer a gift card exchange.

Around the holidays many people receive gift cards. Sometimes, the cards are to places they just don’t care to patronize for one reason or another. Put a sign on your counter that states that you will exchange one of your gift cards (or a credit, if you don’t offer cards), for your customers’ unused gift cards to other establishments.

Your customers will appreciate the opportunity to exchange unwanted cards for yours and they might even spend more than the card value. You can sell the cards online for a small discount, so you won’t lose much by making an exchange.

Be sure to ask your customers to let their friends know about your exchange program and call the number on the backs of the cards to check the value before making an exchange.

#2:  VIP programs can boost sales and fortify customer engagement and retention.  A few ways to reward your most loyal customers are:

  • Have exclusive VIP sales.
  • Open doors early on the first day of a sale for your VIP customers.
  • Have a points system where customers accumulate points with each purchase. Once they’ve accumulated a certain number of points, they will receive a gift, gift card,  discount, or a store credit.
  • Give store credit of gift cards for VIP customers’ birthdays.
  • Offer benefits like free returns or free shipping to VIP customers.

#3.  Contests and giveaways are flexible and fun.

You can spend as much or as little as you want, both on contest prizes and on your marketing efforts. Before hosting a contest, make sure whatever you plan is legal in your state. Many states regulate raffles, bingo, and other games of chance. Contest prizes should always drive business. Award store gift cards, credit, discounts or a collectible that your business offers. Contests should encourage repeat business, provide you with contact information for future promotions and add to your bottom line. Get your creative juices flowing with these ideas:

  • Have customers submit photos showing how they use products or items purchased from you.
  • Have a naming contest for a temporary mascot, stuffed animal, or caricature.
  • Customers can pop balloons or spin wheels for discounts, or gift cards.
  • Hand out printed puzzle pieces with purchases. The first customer to complete a puzzle wins a prize. The completed puzzle might be a photo of your storefront.
  • Hand out letters of the alphabet, that can be used to complete a crossword puzzle made up of words relating to your business or promotions. Keep a supply of blank crossword puzzles on your counter.
  • Have a local soap or candle merchant create a unique scent just for you and let customers submit name suggestions. Award the winner with a store discount or gift card along with one of the special scented products.
  • Engage your customers by celebrating obscure holidays and events with customer discounts, prizes, or gift cards. If you can think of it, there is probably a day to commemorate it. Everything from Penguin Awareness Day to Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day can be turned into a fun way to broaden your reach and increase customer loyalty.

Contest ideas are only limited by your imagination. Remember that contests should be designed to allow you to collect email addresses or other customer information you can use in future promotions. If you are comfortable with using social media or cell phone apps to engage with your customers, there are a number of applications and formats designed expressly for creating contests that increase customer interactions.

Whatever means you use to increase your store traffic, promote customer loyalty, or to garner valuable marketing material, keep it simple. Nothing is more frustrating or discouraging than a complicated campaign that will confuse your customers and cost you more than it is worth.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more information on business analysis, business planning, and ways to grow your small business profitably, please check out our website www.portalcfo.com.

3 Tips to Increase Your Company’s Operational Efficiency

by
how to increase operational efficiency in your business

Every entrepreneur should strive to make their company more efficient by reducing or eliminating wasteful actions that can erode profits.  Here are three strategies that can help increase your company’s operational efficiency:

  1. Perform an Efficiency Audit

Before you can decide what you’ll need to change, you will need to complete an Efficiency Audit of how your company operates. Go through every procedure and system and analyze them. Are there any procedures or systems that aren’t effective anymore? How can you further improve the ones that are currently working?

You can also send out questionnaires to customers and employees to get their input on possible inefficiencies in the business. Later, you can review their feedback and discover additional issues that you may not have been aware of before.

For example, if you scour the company’s social media accounts and emails and notice that there is an uptick in customers complaining about long shipping times, there may be an issue with your courier or inventory management system.

  1. Document Every Procedure and System

After you’ve assessed the company’s operations and decided how you’d like to improve them, you should document everything. Closely track every task associated with the business and write it down. Clearly describe what each task entails and include pictures or diagrams whenever necessary. We suggest you keep the information organized on several documents uploaded to a cloud-based document system or another centralized platform.

It will be much harder for you to scale your business or be able to quickly onboard new hires if you don’t document your company’s procedures and systems. Your employees will also be able to do their job much quicker and more efficiently when the procedures are explained in detail.

  1. Create Workflows

Finally, we recommend that your company implement workflows to increase your company’s operational efficiency. The best way to incorporate workflows is with a software solution since manually writing down the workflows on paper can increase your chances of human errors and other mistakes. An automated workflow will help you and your employees make faster decisions faster, remove potential bottlenecks, and complete higher quality work.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

Business owners, check out ways I can help you build a clear path to achieve financial freedom at www.portalcfo.com.


Manny Skivoflax LinkedIn