A lot of businesses, especially modern tech startups, are not always precisely planned or gracefully executed. The “measure twice, cut once” proverb isn’t exactly the most popular one in the world of business. It’s mostly “shoot now, ask questions later”, which ultimately leads to a shaky foundation.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to improve the inefficiencies in your business. With the four simple tips listed below, you can minimize costs, maximize profit margins, and overall expedite the rate in which your business grows:
Ask For Feedback
You can’t really know which parts of the business work and which don’t until you ask for feedback from consumers and other businesses. It may be tempting to avoid objective and unbiased feedback to spare your emotions or you may not simply care of what other people are saying about your brand, but this data set may be the only real one that matters. Ask for feedback on a routine basis, whether it’s every month or every quarter, to stay updated on what the public thinks about your brand. Processing this data can give you clear clues as to what you should be improving in terms of your product’s design and customer experience.
Automate Your Marketing Campaign
Being hands-on isn’t always a good thing. As a business owner, you need to divide your time and attention on different aspects of the business. Spearheading your marketing campaigns is simply inefficient and therefore costly to your business, especially for smaller businesses and teams who do not have enough manpower. Automating your marketing campaigns is a smart strategy, especially for cash-strapped businesses. It lowers costs by reducing the manpower needed to manage extensive and laborious campaigns. That being said, not every marketing automation software will align with your business’ needs and goals. Routinely evaluate your business’ needs and switch around tools until you find the one that best suits you.
Improve your Hiring Process
As the gatekeeper of your business, you need to be strict with who you let in. The wrong kind of people can impede progress and give your brand a bad reputation. It’s important to do prior research on the candidates that you bring in for an interview. The cost of hiring and training people is significant. For instance, if you are hiring a full-time web developer, you’ll need to take your senior software engineers away from their desk in order to give candidates a technical interview, which could last for a few hours, depending on how many candidates you interview. For each hour that your software engineer isn’t on the job, it could be costing you anywhere between $30 to $100. Before you even conduct your interviews, make sure you know what traits you are looking for already. Know the technical qualifications and technologies you are looking for as well as the personal traits that could win a candidate the job position.
Bring in Experts
Improving your business means tapping into the decades of expertise of other professionals and businesses. Being a good leader and entrepreneur means accepting that there are areas you aren’t good at. Delegating tasks that you aren’t experienced in can free you up to focus on things that you are good at and that are important, such as product design and supplier relations. An IT staffing agency, for example, is a good company to hire to fill in job positions that your business needs. You can also work with outside consultants to give you a different perspective on things.
Improving your business doesn’t have to come in one fell swoop. Sustainable long-term changes take time. In addition, it doesn’t have to be a sophisticated change. Even the slightest and simplest changes in menial tasks, such as how you handle payroll or who you delegate specific tasks to. Last but not least, know that improving your business is an ongoing process – it never ends. Luckily, there’s more ways than the four mentioned above to improve your business.
Homerun Nievera, Negosentro.com |
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Homerun Nievera is the publisher of Negosentro.com and WorldExecutivesDigest.com. He has interests in several tech and digital businesses as director and chief strategist.
Homerun is a digital evangelist, content marketer and lifelong learning advocate. Homerun is the “He Said” in the popular Facebook Page He Said, She Said. Email at ask@homernievera.com.
