In today’s highly competitive world, businesses constantly look for ways to optimize resources to produce greater results. It is no longer enough for businesses to just do more business—they must do better.
Through a maximum focus on efficiency and effectiveness, small businesses can grow and thrive by maximizing the use of their resources. There are many ways to accomplish this end; however, there are several tactics that all healthy businesses should employ to maximize their performance.
Here is a look at just five of those invaluable strategies.
1. Define Goals and Delegate
Goal setting is a critical component of any business, but small businesses have a unique challenge regarding this process. Smaller companies often have fewer resources than their larger counterparts, and finding time to set goals in addition to running your business can be difficult.
By following these steps, you can set clear goals that will help you achieve greater impact with limited resources:
Define Your Objectives
The first step in setting goals is defining the objectives you wish to achieve. These should be specific, measurable, and attainable. For example, if your target is to increase sales by 10 percent this year, you’ll need to define how much additional revenue must be generated by what date.
Set Deadlines For Each Goal
This will help ensure you don’t lose track of your progress. Be sure that each deadline is realistic so that the amount of time needed to accomplish each objective is defined and aligned to avoid conflict or overlap.
Prioritize Goals
Some goals will be more important than others, so prioritize them by assigning numerical weights or values based on their importance relative to other objectives. This will allow you to focus on those areas most relevant to your business’s success.
Make Sure That Your Goals Are Measurable
Measurable goals can be measured by the number of units sold, the amount of money earned or saved, the number of hours worked, or any other quantifiable measure of progress. This will help ensure that you know when you have achieved each objective and whether or not it has been successful.
Always Delegate
Another important thing that small businesses should do is learn how to delegate tasks among their employees or others willing to help out with them. This way, they will get more done with less effort and save time and money since they don’t have to hire outside help for everything that needs doing in the business.
2. Spend Time On Team Leadership
Team leadership is a skill taught to your team leads where they are given the tools, processes, and leadership skills to empower their subordinates, enhance the entire team’s success, and indirectly maximize the productivity of the entire business operations.
Team leader training also teaches employees about various aspects of the company, including its products and services, and how each employee can help make things run smoothly.
The more knowledgeable employees are about their jobs, the better they can perform them and the more productive they will be.
Instilling team leadership training in your team leads helps you get more done with fewer people, which saves you money and allows you to focus on the bigger picture, like marketing, sales, or accounting.
3. Smart Financial Planning
Financial planning is identifying and prioritizing financial goals, creating a plan to achieve them, and then executing that plan to ensure the achievement of those goals (while remaining under budget). It involves making informed decisions on saving, investing, and spending to increase your business’s overall net worth over time.
Some also term financial planning as “managing your business that involves planning, budgeting, and forecasting.” It’s also a way of ensuring you have adequate cash flow to keep your business running smoothly.
Financial planning helps you manage your business in the following ways:
- Identifying areas where you can improve efficiency and reduce costs.
- Helping you forecast the amount of money you’ll need each month or year.
- Helping you determine how much money to set aside for capital purchases like equipment and vehicles.
- Ensuring that your cash flow is adequate to meet your obligations and maintain a healthy balance sheet
4. Diversification Of Marketing Efforts
As a small business owner, you have limited resources and time. If you spend all of your time and money on one marketing effort, it could fail and leave you with nothing.
By diversifying your marketing efforts, you’re spreading risk and ensuring that others will pick up the slack if one effort doesn’t.
For example, if you spend $1,000 on Google AdWords ads and they don’t bring in any customers, Facebook ads could be more effective at reaching your target audience at a lower cost.
Also, figure out what kind of audience you’re trying to reach. Do you have a niche? Are there certain groups of people who would be interested in what you have to offer?
Once you’ve figured out your target audience, it’s time to start thinking about how they consume media and what they like most.
For example, young people may prefer social media sites like Facebook or Twitter over traditional websites because they are easier to navigate (and cheaper). They may prefer traditional print magazines and newspapers if they’re older because those publications include more content than most Internet publications.
There are many ways for small businesses to proceed when it comes down to marketing their businesses — here are some examples:
- Blogging
- Podcasting
- Social Networking
- Online Advertising
- Internet Marketing
5. Embrace Change and Innovation
The world is changing rapidly, so it’s important to stay on top of trends and adapt quickly if necessary.
If you’re already offering something unique, take it up a notch by expanding or adding something new altogether. This could be as simple as adding new colors to an existing product line or creating a complementary product that complements your main offering (e.g., e-books).
In Conclusion
Though it might seem common sense, the most limited resource businesses will likely face is, “time”. With budget and staff in mind, small businesses must strategically use “time” to achieve their goals.
