Finding new solutions to the problems that you’re having will become a daily part of your life. When you commit to running a business, you commit to all of the many problems that it might bring with it. From financial spirals, to the worry of hiring your first employee. Hurdles will appear every single day, but overcoming and adapting is one of the ways that a business grows. But as you grow as a business, and all of the problems you face seem to be growing and growing, it can be hard to manage it all. You might hire an employee, or perhaps even a managing director, but the problems will still keep popping up. So it might be time to think about these flagging areas of your business, and how investing in them might help you turn a corner. Up until now, you might have only been tackling the problems as and when they come, rather than thinking about how money you could funnel to the area, will help resolve the returning problems once and for all. So, we’re going to highlight some of the common flagging areas of a business, and how you could easily turn it all around if you know your business is struggling with one of them!
Everyone Struggles With Finances
Small or big, new or old, a business is always going to have a struggle with money. Even if this struggle is short lived, perhaps because of an issue that required a large amount of money to fix, it’s still a money problem that a business shouldn’t need to have. Now, just like with your money in your personal life, it can be very hard to turn the bad, into the good. When you get yourself stuck in a certain cycle, it can be so hard to find a way to change what you’re doing. So for example, you’ve got yourself into a routine where each bit of your business demands a certain amount of money. But, this amount of money might be far too big, in all sections of your business. But once your business gets relying on it, it’s hard to reduce that back down. Now your accountant might hand you some advice, but an accountant can’t understand the processes a business has to follow, so all they can suggest is money strategies, without realising the impact on the business. So it might be worth leasing with both a financial advisor, and a business advisor, to see what it is that can be done to reduce costs in specific areas. Once you start to do that, you can focus on using the spare money to free up another flagging area of your finances that you might have, and that’s business debt. Most of you will have had to take out a loan to begin with, and that loan might not be creeping down as quick as you’d have liked it to. So work of re-giggling everything, and then funnelling money to other struggling areas.
Customers Create Nightmares
Lord knows this is true. From the moment you start dealing with customers, you start to realise what you’ve got yourself in for. They expect so much, even if your business is at a stage where it can provide so little. All it takes is a customer to come to you when they’re having a bad day, and if you’re not giving them the answers or what they want, you just have a storm on your hands. But it can be said that as business owners, we also don’t help the situation. As a small business, customer service can be hard to manage, especially if the volume doesn’t suit your company. By this, we mean you’re experiencing an influx of customers with questions, but it’s still only you and your small team trying to deal with it. So it might benefit you to look into an answering service, whereby you will never miss a call again through a company who will virtually help you. Then can take a message, get the customers details, and pass it all onto you. Now although you’re still leaving your customer waiting, you’re not leaving them unanswered. As long as you can get back to them on the same day, it should help to keep a few situations calm. You should also think about putting yourself and your team through some online training based around customer service, and managing calls. The more you perfect your phone manner, the better the outcome for both you and your customers!
Management Creates More
It’s all well and good trying to pin half of your problems on the customers that are coming your way, but management can create so many more. If you’re the only person working for your company at the minute, then this applies to you. If you have managers employed to work alongside you, then it will be worth sharing this with them. It’s so easy to become relaxed with your role within a company, but this relaxed attitude is often what’s creating the problem. Tasks can be left far too late to complete, and problems might not be actioned for far too long after they crop up. So what you need to do, is focus on becoming a solution based manger, always on the lookout for something to solve. This way, you’re only ever bettering your company, and preventing issues arising before they even have!
A Failing Online Presence
It’s so hard to compete with all of the people on the internet at the minute, but as a small business, you might find it even harder. But if you simply deploy tactics like SEO, you might be an improvement. It’s an expensive tactic that small businesses seem to avoid, but it soil purpose is to optimise your website and business, making it easier to find in search engines. Through link building and other techniques, you could quickly see your rankings improve, making it far easier for people to notice you!
