Best Tips to Keep Your Business Moving Forward


tips-business-moving-forward

In these uncertain times, the challenge is to keep the business growth in the right direction. To do that, you need to move forward. These tips will show you the way.

Every organization, regardless of the size and scale, has gone or will go through a phase of stagnation. To drive a business forward, you must keep an eye on the future. With the vision intact, you need to think about the decision you make, trust your sub-ordinates, and be prepared for the challenges that might come your way. Here are four tips to help you take charge and move your business forward.

A Good Leader Delegates
Being a leader can be tough. You will have so many responsibilities on your shoulders, which can difficult to manage. So, you must learn to delegate the work to the right people. To get the best out of people, you have to entrust them with responsibilities. Give your employees challenging tasks and stand with them through failures. Supervise with a keen eye, but also allow your employees to flourish. This is the easiest way to move forward. It gives you some extra time on your hands, which you can use to strategize. And it sets a good foundation for rainy days.

   Also Read: 10 tips for growing your business

Time Tracking for Productivity
Time tracking is a tool most HRs fail to use properly. You should use a time tracking software that offers you a cloud backed data. CloudBooks integrates this with payroll and client invoicing. By doing this, you not only save time but can use this data to locate the gaps. With this data, you can find out where you are going wrong. The day-to-day record of a business determines its growth. Better management of these daily tasks will save you money, time, and energy. You can keep a track of the pattern your organization creates and make necessary changes to get better.

Get in Touch with Clients
Sometimes, businesses end up losing their best clients due to lack of communication. Whether you like it or not, your clients are your biggest investors. And not just in terms of capital. Happy clients means word of mouth marketing. Which is the best kind of marketing in terms of conversions. So, turn up your customer service when stuck in stagnation. There is probably something your client wants that you are not delivering. Be open to feedback, don’t shy away from criticism. Being service focused is extremely rewarding. So, take quick actions on complaints, and respond to queries. Moreover, keep a check on what the clients are saying about you. Check reviews, and collect testimonials from them. This will help you view things in a different light. Document everything and try to bring forth reasonable changes.

Strategic Marketing
Good marketing strategies have saved many good companies from many bad losses. Small businesses are generally familiar with digital marketing. You probably have some marketing strategy going on, review it, and mix it up. Change your schemes or tweak it here and there to generate more leads. You can explore newer dimensions of marketing, like video marketing, webinars, and so on. See where the problem lies, if there are not enough conversions happening, launch some juicy offers. Put your marketing activities to various tests, and keep an eye on what works best. Engage your target audience through consistent posts and good content.

   Also Read: Clever Marketing Tips for Small Businesses on Budget

How to Plan Your Business Growth After And During a Recession?


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The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected small businesses, with twenty-five percent expressing concerns over the supply chain and twenty-nine reporting a drop in sales. To make matters worse, the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed that the US is in a recession.

What can you do to ensure you are one of the recession-proof businesses? Here are the top 6 proven strategies to not just survive, but also to tap into the business opportunities during the recession and emerge successfully from the effects of the pandemic.

• Keep close watch over your company’s financial health

Since most small businesses fail due to a lack of consistent cash flow, you must monitor the metric closely during a recession. Having proper data is important, so ensure to invest in proper invoicing software for small businesses, such as the one from Cloud Books that can help in business expense tracking. Once you have the crucial data, you can proceed to cut back on unnecessary expenses and spend more wherever needed to keep the company afloat.

  Also Read: 10 tips for growing your business

• Offer new products and services

A time-tested way to attain business growth in a recession is to build multiple revenue streams by offering new products and services. As the needs of the market change during a recession, it would be prudent to offer repurposed versions of your product to meet those demands. Coming up with more cost-effective variants of the product/ service can also help.

• Ramp up your marketing efforts

Small businesses often make the fatal error of cutting back on marketing. With the recession happening, it is more important than ever to come up with innovative campaigns to reach new customers and retain the older ones. One of the first things to do is analyze your customer’s recession behavior, following which you can tailor your marketing to increase your conversion rates and bring in new prospects.

  Also Read: Looking to the Future: Preparing Your Business For Success or Failure

• Explore various financing options

The best time for exploring credit options is before you need them. Even if you do not require loans or lines of credit, it is best to keep track of them for use on a rainy day. As a small business owner, you can choose from business credit cards, credit lines from the Small Business Administration (SBA), and invoice financing or factoring, which allows you to sell your unpaid invoices to a factoring company.

• Look into insurance/ disaster relief

One way to raise money to keep the company running through a recession is tapping into your business insurance funds. Also, during times of disaster, many organizations provide disaster relief. For instance, the San Francisco Small Business Resiliency Fund has been giving out up to $10,000 for making business payments, so reaching out to such groups for assistance can bolster your chance of survival. It is also worth noting that you can get SBA Disaster Relief Loans for a low-interest rate.

• Consider international expansion

Expanding globally can be a great way to diversify your business even if your operations at home are not yielding results.You may still get consistent revenue from elsewhere. However, this is to be undertaken with meticulous planning and market research.

Bottom-line

Although we cannot predict for sure when things will get back to normal, effective business strategy during a recession can go a long way in helping you stay afloat. There are also numerous new opportunities that small firms can use to their advantage. All that is required is the willingness to follow the proven measures to get through and thrive in a recession.

  Also Read: Five Tech Solutions Your Small Business Needs