Philip Harman Leverage Small Business Tips To Keep Your Company Afloat
The economy as we know it is in trouble. If things continue to fall apart as they are currently, is your business ready to weather a big financial storm?
There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who have been through these downturns before. These men and women provide valuable small business tips that can really make a difference in providing a way for a small business to survive in tough times. Here are ten small business tips to help you deal with a bad economy.
– Cautiously cut costs. Anytime the economy slows, companies of all sizes start looking for ways to cut their costs. This is not a long term solution. You can decrease prices for a short period of time to spur sales, but if you keep them low for too long, it will end up hurting your business.
– Turn employees into sub contractors. In my company, health insurance is one of our biggest expenses. You can easily cut this cost by turning your employees into sub contractors and cut out insurance costs altogether.
– Keep putting money into advertising & marketing. When everyone else is trying to cut their marketing and advertising budgets, you need to increase yours and capture market share. Hard economic times really weed out your competition, if you are smart, your business will grow.
– Keep business strategies and plan long term. Many companies located in Asia always map out their business strategy around 15 to 20 years out. They basically follow the way of the turtle to win the race. Guess what? It works! Marketing is not a sprint, you should have a long term plan and execute it each and every month.
– Be wise in choosing your marketing techniques. All marketing should be tracked so you can determine your ROI. Eliminate any marketing that is causing you to lose money. Make sure to only choose marketing methods that you can track effectively.
– Revamp your marketing tools. If you have marketing methods that are working for you, this is the time to make them better. Better marketing will always grow your business.
– Automate process whenever you can. Anytime you can automate processes, you will be saving time and money. Why do something yourself if a computer can do it for you? Take time to research possible solutions to your tasks and get rid of things that waste your time.
– Spend your time wisely. 80% of your business is generated by 20% of your customers. Therefore, you should be spending at least 80% of your time tending to those customers who bring you the most business.
– Be happy with what you have. Too many times, companies feel that they need new computers, new handheld devices, etc. If things currently work fine, make do with what you have.
– Reduce your inventories. Reducing your inventory is one of the biggest ways you can reduce your expenses. Try to keep your stock levels just high enough to meet demand.
So, it is vital for you and your company to start preparing for a downturn in business, even if you aren’t experiencing one currently. Small business tips like the ones above will definitely help you make it through the downtimes and come out even stronger.
