Every business owner wants to see their company grow and thrive. You put time, effort, and money into building your business, so of course you want it to succeed. If you’ve set the New Year’s resolution to have you business grow this year, then you have an uphill climb ahead of you. We’d like to offer you some helpful tips to make sure that you meet your goals and that your business is as profitable and successful as possible.
Set a Clear Goal
First and foremost, let’s talk about your goal to “have your company grow.” Great as that may sound in theory, it’s not a very clear goal, is it? Do you want your company to grow in size or in profitability? Exactly how much growth do you want to experience? How will you measure that growth?
If you want to succeed, you need to set a clear, measurable goal for your business. Decide what sort of growth you want to experience, how much of that growth you want to see, and how you will measure the growth—in dollars, percentages, number of customers, etc. Once you have this figured out, set smaller goals to meet throughout the year to help keep you on track. This will make the goal seem more manageable and will help you get your employees on board.
Now that we’ve figured out how to properly set a New Year’s resolution for business growth, let’s talk about how to actually meet that goal.
Use Proper Tools
In order to experience the growth you desire, you need to utilize the proper tools. Arguably the most important tool you can employ in this sort of resolution is proper advertising. Your business can’t grow if you don’t draw in more customers and make more sales, and you can only do that through proper advertising.
These days, online advertising is the way to go, so if you don’t have a strong online presence, then it’s time that you started working on one. Make sure your business has active social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Ensure that your business listing on Google is correct and up to date. Get your loyal customers to leave positive reviews on these platforms and encourage them to share your posts on their own social media accounts. This is only the beginning of how to properly market yourself online, so do some research and brush up on other techniques to ensure you’re bringing in as many new clients as possible.
You’ll also want to ensure that you’re using time-saving tools in the office that will make your employees more effective workers. This can include anything from efficient computer systems to document management software and scanners. Anything that your workers need to do their job efficiently, do what you can to provide it.
Do More with Less
So now that we’ve mentioned the idea of providing all these tools to your employees, let’s talk about the concept of doing more with less. These two concepts are closely connected, because having the proper tools will make your employees more efficient, saving them time, and allowing them to take on additional tasks.
For example, how much time do your employees spend on data entry or searching for paper documents in filing cabinets? If you were to utilize a document management system like eFileCabinet, you could use features like Zonal OCR and automated workflow to drastically reduce the amount of time your workers spend on those tasks. Instead, they can focus on serving more clients and customers, which means you can take on more clients and make more sales without hiring even one more worker—hence, doing more with less.
This is the best way to grow a business, as you can increase your gross income without having to increase your business’s operating expenses. Obviously, this gives you an even higher net income and more profits which you can then invest in growing your company even further.
These tips are simple concepts, but their effect on your business can be endless. So what are you waiting for? Start setting some New Year’s resolutions for your business and make 2016 your most profitable year ever!