Picture this, it’s the end of the month. You’re poring over your business’ end of month financials, and realizing you came dangerously close to not meeting your bottom line.
You show up every day, see your employees working, and stay late almost every night yourself. Why does it seem like you’re not running an efficient business?
Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, you need to improve your business efficiency. Keep reading to learn all about the top 5 ways to improve a business, and how you can implement them to increase your bottom line.
1. Pinpoint the Problems
First step: analyzing your systems to find weak points. Weak points throw kinks in a business’ efficiency, so they need to be eliminated.
There are a few ways to do this. The first is to take an anonymous survey of your employees.
Create a questionnaire that will identify procrastinative habits, ask for improvement ideas, and offer a space to write in any other insightful comments. After all, your employees are in the trenches, so they know how your business operates day in and day out better than anyone.
It’s essential to keep these surveys anonymous, too. No one will be willing to share they and five others take a long lunch every Friday if they think they’re going to get in trouble for it. Reassure them that no punitive action will be taken against them for their honesty.
The second way is to hire a business systems analyst to assess your business’ current modes of operation. Their job is to find areas where your systems can improve, so it’s a good investment!
2. Find Your Client Avatar
If you’re not seeing consistent results from your advertising or marketing budget, it’s probably because you’re not reaching the right eyes.
The client avatar is a super specific embodiment of your target demographic.
During your client avatar research, you’ll nail down all the details of your dream client. It’s fictional, of course, but inspired by your real target demographic.
In nailing this down, you’ll be able to address your target demographic one-by-one instead of en masse. This will help communicate your business’ message loud and clear through crafting emotive marketing tactics that appeal to individuals.
When you read an email-list email in your inbox that starts with “Hey guys,” it doesn’t feel like you can connect very well. You know you’re being addressed along with thousands of other people, so you don’t feel very special.
When it starts with “Hey, friend!” it’s a different story.
Honing in on your client avatar is the easiest way to increase the efficiency of your marketing and advertising budget. It doesn’t make sense to reach the eyes of those who won’t buy from you, so take the time to filter those people out.
3. Stay in Your Zone of Genius
You’ve probably heard the old business adage–you can have time, or you can have money.
What if there was a way to have both?
It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. It’s as simple as outsourcing projects that aren’t in your wheelhouse.
Look at it like this. Say your business needs a new website. You don’t know the first thing about web design, but you know web designers can be pretty expensive.
You set out to try to design the site yourself, spending almost an entire week trying to figure out WordPress and Squarespace. By the end of your sojourn, you’ve come up with a website, sure.
But it’s not SEO-optimized, it’s not aesthetically pleasing, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect the values of your business.
How valuable is a week’s worth of your time in your business? It’s probably more valuable than the cost of hiring a web designer, right?
While up-front costs for services like this can be pricey, it’s totally worth it if it means you’re staying in your zone of genius. That’s where the real money-making happens. Once you leave it, you’re leaving money on the table.
Create both time and money for yourself and your business by outsourcing projects that don’t come naturally to you.
4. Digitize Your Employee Time Clock
The technology industry is growing at an alarming rate. Don’t let your business be left behind.
Implementing software that’s designed to streamline business processes is a good idea to improve efficiency. How much time do you spend creating employee schedules, managing paid time off, tracking expense reports, managing payroll, and managing overtime?
Probably way more than you’d like, right? Programs like Time Clock Hub can automate all this for you so you never have to touch a spreadsheet again.
It goes back to outsourcing. It’s silly to spend valuable hours doing administrative work that a program can do for you. Spend that time bringing in profits for your business, instead.
5. Champion Your Employees
Over half of American employees believe that only a business that offers a good work-life balance is worthy of their time. You want them to maintain that positive outlook on your business once they’re working for you, too.
Your employees are the ones who are bringing in money. They’re the ones doing your business’ work day in and day out. If they’re not happy, you can bet they’re not focused on increasing your bottom line.
To make your employees want to work for you and help grow your business, you need to treat them well. Implementing some simple work-life balance practices can go a long way.
Treat the entire office to lunch once every couple of weeks. Let them know it’s to say thank you for all their hard work. 34% of employees feel that they’re not recognized or acknowledged enough in the workplace– that statistic could go down in a hurry with a simple gesture.
Improving Your Business Efficiency
You’ve read up on the best ways to work smarter, not harder. By now, you should be able to implement these business efficiency tips to increase your bottom line in a hurry.
Want to learn more? Check out our other business articles!
