10 ways to improve your business

Number 1:   Understand the needs of the customers and serve them well.

The customers are the lifeblood of generating revenue for your organization. The customers pay your salary and keep your business afloat. It is therefore important that you understand the real requirements of the customers.  You can understand the requirements by listening very carefully to the customers and ask questions. Do not assume that you know what is best for the customer. It is true that you may have some ideas on improvements in product features and benefits, however you could improve those features and benefits by asking the customers what they really want. This may also mean that you will need to perform customer surveys as simple as interviewing the customer and asking questions like (1) what additional can we do to meet your needs? Or  (2) How do you like the products and services we offer?

Ensure that employees great customers with enthusiasm  and help them with  their requests. This help  includes taking a customer directly to the location of the products they seek and  devoting some time to ensure that unique benefits and features of the product or services are explained.

If customers need to browse on their own allow them to so but assure them that you are just within the vicinity should they need help. Sometimes sales can be lost by not paying attention to customers and allowing them to wander over the facility without asking if they need help. Start with the assumption that individuals want to be treated well when they enter your business. Remember they have an underlying interest in seeing some product or service.  Now it’s your responsibility to assisting them determining if you can meet their desire products or services needs. If you have the products or services that they need it is up to you to convince them that it’s worth doing business with you. 

Number 2:  Treat your employees with respect

Most employees that start in a new job or assignment are excited because they like what they are doing  and have a passion for how they could help the organization. They often are enthusiastic when they come to work for the first time. There are some organization where this enthusiasm decreases because the employees’ ideas are not accepted and used to benefit the business. Treating an employee with respect means that you are willing to solicit and listen to their ideas. As the business owner or manager create an environment where the employees are respected and treated well. Help them to be successful by identifying and providing proper training for meeting and exceeding the customers’ expectations. Ensure that you have some time to meet with employees and share the success of the business and convey appreciation for their contributions. Employees are often encouraged by positive feedback and are more receptive for improvement ideas at that point.  Employees want to know that what they do matter.  If the employees realized they have a stake in the business, they are more likely to be committed to increased performance.   Providing employees with the right levels motivation often leads to increased loyalty. Employees will want to take on new responsibilities and improve the processes within the organization. They will also be more likely to  step up when it comes to training and advising other employees. A significant part of treating employees with respect is paying them well including providing bonuses based on overall business performance. Keep in mind if employees are treated well and paid well, they will also understand when the business hits some challenging times and they are  asked to make some sacrifices in order for the business to survive.

Number 3: Reinforce the importance of customer service to your employees

As owners of the business, remember that it is important to convey to your employees that they are there to provide service to the customers. It is therefore important that the customer has a pleasant experience every time they walk into your business. Having good customer service does not come without investing some time and properly training employees. It is important that there is ongoing training for new and existing employees and what good customer service looks like and represents. As the owner or manager, you also have to be sure that you modeled the behavior of good customer service. Don’t become numb to the excitement of having the first customers walking through your door and having the ability to provide quality service to those individuals. In fact, it’s a good idea to incorporate some kind of incentive program for teams and employees to be rewarded based on how well a job they do at meeting customer expectation and delighting the customers. The incentive may include monetary rewards and bonuses for the employees. In doing this you will convey to the employee importance of customer service. In fact, employees need to understand that the customer is essential to them getting a paycheck and that without the customers the business will not survive. Talk about customer service to your employees in your daily and weekly meetings. Take the opportunity to provide feedback to all employees and find ways to improve their service to customers. When you do this, use positive reinforcement. Express this in the form of “ I really like the fact that you accompany the customer  to the location of the product.  You did that really well. One additional thing you may want to do is also a show them the different type of color schemes that they may select to complete their project. They seem like they might have appreciated that since they were interested in different color schemes “. In providing this kind of feedback, you have not just conveyed a message to the employee, but you have helped  to look for opportunities to be of help to the customer. Even if the customers did not buy any products at that time, you’re likely to have them back as satisfied return customers.  Remember that building a business is a long-term endeavor and it’s important to have all the owners managers and employees of the business  focused on serving the customers. Customers will return personally or recommend your business  to others that’ are looking for your products and services . Think of the long-term impact of meeting the customers’ needs on a day-to-day basis. 

Number 4: Understand how you keep the business profitable

Start up by having a good understanding of your business and how you price your products and services. You should price your products and services  so  you will have enough leftover at the end of the day to cover all your expenses and have enough flowing from the bottom line to generate increase cash flow. When was the last time you looked at your product pricing and identified if you had enough gross margin to cover all your expenses? It is a good idea to set up your income statement such that you know what your earnings before interest and taxes are first and then strategize on  what income you need and how you could manage your expenses to meet the earnings. Key component of that Is understanding your pricing and holding steadfast to the sales that you have to make to keep generating cash flow. It is important to manage the equation revenue minus expenses equal profit. Additionally, it’s a good idea to look at your expenses and understand that includes fixed and variable costs. Remembering that your business will always have the fixed costs, and that you must cover that fixed costs first before you start making a profit. It is of prime importance to manage the fix costs and control the variable costs that goes into creating your products.

One of the mistakes new entrepreneurs make is to believe that once they have increased revenue they could start spending more because they’re bringing in more money. But managing the overall equation is essential to your business success. So far we’ve just talked about the income statement but managing the balance sheet is equally as important. This involves that other equation of assets equal liabilities plus owners equity. We will just touch on one of the primary assets that you need to manage; and that is accounts receivables. If you offer products and services on credit, you have to manage the account receivables very well or you could run into trouble. One of the wise actions that you could take related to account receivables is to get paid up front for your products and services. This approach brings cash in immediately. It increases your level of cash flow and helps with the activities that you could do to invest in your business.

Number 5: Have a way of measuring your overall performance.

To know when you are performing well, you should have a way of measuring your overall performance. This includes taking a look at customer satisfaction measures, employee satisfaction measures and shareholder value. But this is just a start. How about your performance with respect to collecting account receivables? Do you have customers who owe you funds that are in arrears for greater than 90 days, and over 120 days? These represent delinquent account receivables. But how did it get to this state? Do you have someone in charge of collections for accounts that are in arrears from customers? How are they incentivized to make sure they stay on top of collecting accounts in arrears? Remember that accounts receivables include services and products you’ve already provided but you have not yet got paid for. You cannot afford to continue this situation for long without it having an impact on your business, so you have to measure things like account receivables outstanding and do everything feasible to bring that money in. If collecting money is not your core business, it may be a good idea to have a collection agency take care of those account receivables. On the other hand, it is not worth investing your people’s time chasing after accounts for which it is unlikely that you’ll get $0.40 on the dollar. Some companies consider selling off those accounts.

Number 6: Ensure that you have an annual Business Planning Process.

It is important for each business owner to take some time off to focus specifically on the business. if there is a leadership team associated with the business this is a good time for the leadership team to get together for a weekend focused on refreshing ideas and what will be done from both a strategic and business planning standpoint to improve the performance on the business going forward. This is an ideal timeframe to look at sales targets and set the goals for achieving the desired profitability results for the next year.  I would suggest that it is important to set up annual leadership meetings. To establish an annual leadership meeting where you review the objectives for the current year and look into the future for those things that you will be doing to make this business successful. My recommendation would be that this can be held over two to three days where the leadership team focuses solely on the agenda for that time and disconnect from the business to focus on the future and what has to be done to make the business successful. A key element here is that the results of the business planning process should be used as the first stage and it has to be implemented over the next 12 months before you meet again to refine and adjust for the following year. This is a dynamic process and not a one-time activity.  In order to make the business plan real and the content tracked  it must be monitored at least on a monthly basis.

Number 7: Become knowledgeable on your products and services.

I am personally impressed when I walk into a business where there is an employee who could make me aware of the main features and benefits related to a particular product or service. I am more impressed when they can make me aware  without trying to sell me. If a sale result from the interaction, it should truly be based on the time that employee made on educating me about the products or services in an effective manner such that I  understand and want to buy the product.  Therefore, I encourage you  as business owners to always be in the mode of learning becoming knowledgeable about the details of your products and services, so that you could explain it to your customers. Focus on what is in it for your customers and the benefits related to the product or service. Be willing to go the extra mile to accommodate the customer needs at hand. Build relationships with your customers based on being knowledgeable on those products and services you offer.

Number 8: Use Social Media to drive your business

It  is clear that if your business relies on operating strictly from a brick and mortar base, you should be thinking how you could expand your reach to customers. The internet is readily available means of  expanding your reach to customers. You may use Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook as a mechanism for getting your word out about your business. Of course, you can use traditional ways of advertising such as signs, and newspapers, but you’ll notice a number of these have gone electronic.  The Social Media mechanisms will give you additional business tentacles  and connections for getting news out about your products and services.  I suggest that you take a look at various YouTube videos that provide guidance and how to set up social media accounts.

Number 9: Adopt the idea of using virtual teams

Consider the idea of using virtual teams. Virtual teams have become even more evident during the latest pandemic. This has become more evident as we adjust to the new  environment of  working remotely including from home. Managers have to trust their employees and trust that they will do the right thing at all times while the employees try to juggle multiple  issues including those taking place with the family  at home. We know that with parents working from home and kids that are being taught online that it is important to realize that juggling of responsibilities will  occur. The key here is to have a set of objectives and ensure that those objectives are being met.  Be conscious of not overloading employees. Find ways of meeting schedules and requirements using electric tool. Regular communications between employees and their bosses have become more important and necessary with a distributed workforce. There are some examples that are already adapted to the distributed workforce environment. A salesperson who is traveling regularly is not visibly being managed on a day to day basis. However, that salesperson gets the work done based on some agreed on expectations and sales goals.  You and the people in your business are best suited if you establish some mutual expectations for working without face-to-face contact. Having regular updates and status meetings are important aspect of this new relationship that needs to be fostered and developed. The use of Zoom, Skype and other virtual communications tools has made it easier for virtual teams to communicate.

Number 10:  Think of new and more effective ways of improving your business processes.

As a business owner remember that there are steps that you perform on a daily basis.  Some of those steps are repetitive. This includes steps such as taking sales orders, invoicing for the sales, ensuring that the invoices are sent out, and payments are received and placed in your bank account. These set of activities are connected in what are called processes. There may be significant savings remaining dormant in your processes because you don’t realize that you have such processes, or you have not identified the processes for getting orders out to the customers. If you could first identify those steps you could then determine  both the necessary and unnecessary  actions that you are performing. How can you refine those steps to make the process even more efficient? Is there a less expensive way you could use for performing the steps related to the processes in your business? It is good to come to the realization that what you are doing today may be done better. Taking the time to identify the processes in the work you do and refining those processes may be the best approach feasible for saving on costs and increasing your revenue. The objective is to get your products and services out faster with better quality. You may even start thinking about how to use technology to improve the processes that you are currently doing manually. Remember the end result is how you could make your business more effective, and profitable and serve all the stakeholders.

© Delroy V. Morgan – Zing4Success.com       Zing4Success Strategic Management and Planning. You may not copy and or publish this article without the author’s explicit and written permission.

About the Author:

Delroy Morgan is Founder and President of Zing4Success Strategic Management & Planning. Delroy has expertise in strategic planning, business planning, asset management and financial assessment. He has over 30 years of combined business and engineering operations experience.   

Delroy has been instrumental in helping businesses streamline operations. He led corporate business transformation, managed the development and execution of corporate annual business plans and strategies for energy generation and distribution utilities and provides training to small businesses. He has facilitated CEOs, VPs and business units’ employees through the corporate business planning process. He works with employees across the company to link actions aimed at improving overall customer/client satisfaction and business owners’ value. 

He is experienced at evaluating a firm’s performance, and establishing performance measures that drive superior business results. His expertise is rooted in having an understanding of leadership, strategic planning, financial statements, contractual agreements, engineering, and project management. He teaches Finance and Accounting as an Adjunct Professor. Delroy is a recipient of the Judith S. Zak Adjunct Teaching Excellence Award from Medaille College. 

Delroy received an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BS-Mechanical Engineering from City College of the City University of New York. 

“Business leaders motivate others to maximize their performance by implementing sound business practices, controlling costs and streamlining business operations to deliver value for customers and stakeholders” –Delroy Morgan