The Reckon team have 5 tips to make things easier for your small business. ~WizeOwl
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Feel that sting? That’s small business pain. It comes in many forms and there are ways to manage this hurt… Consider the following business improvements to stave off or relieve your small business aches.
1) Random marketing? Schedule your social media and content
It’s a 24/7 gig these days, creating content and social media amplification can be tedious and painful. Take the task by the scruff of the neck by creating a content calendar (this is the hard bit) which maps out social media posts and ideally also tracks concurrent advertising, blogs and other content pieces you are planning to run.
Spend the effort every month or perhaps fortnight to bash all of these out in advance, it helps that you will be in ‘the zone’ while you do this so you will have remarkably consistent pieces. Now just schedule them in advance. Set and forget, more time for other tasks. Check out tools like Buffer to make this scheduling idiot proof.
2) No time? Automate like a car factory
Let’s take that trope even further. Want more time, clearer processes and swift action? Is poor time management hurting your business? Consider automating, or using time saving tools for… Everything! We live in the golden age of super easy apps and processes, make use of the world’s fruits to automate:
- Email campaigns
- Accounting
- Payroll
- Timesheets
- Cybersecurity
- Printing
3) Poor organisation? Successful businesses use a CRM
Disorganisation and improper record keeping – especially when speaking of clients and leads is a major source of hurt for small businesses. Get rid of it.
A number of stubborn businesses refuse to use customer relationship management (CRM) software. Instead, their sales teams rely on business cards, handwritten notes and other antiquated methods that are nowhere near as effective as using CRM software. Meanwhile, their successful counterparts have empowered their sales teams with CRM and have likely noticed an uptick in deals. While non-CRM businesses need hours or even days to find new leads or updated client information, those with the software have all of this information in one place and available immediately.
4) High staff turnover? Learn to keep the best
Attracting, finding, vetting, paying and keeping employees is a huge area of pain and expense for many small businesses. You are only as good as your people, and once found, it is in your best financial interest to keep them. How?
- Offer clear pathways to a raise or promotion. Nobody wants to work in a tunnel without a light at the end.
- Create balanced work loads and don’t foist all the boring thankless work onto one person. They will get bored. They will get fatigued. They will quit.
- Foster responsibility. Let your employees take full responsibility for campaigns, targets and deliverable outcomes. People flourish when they feel what they are doing is important, appreciated and up to them.
- Conduct reviews often. Don’t let any negative feelings fester, talk regularly with your staff and review what they are feeling and thinking about their role. Be a listener.
- Have fun! Nobody wants to work in a sterile fun sucking environment 40 hours a week. Small things make a big difference.
5) Accounting and cashflow issues? Look to cloud accounting
The benefits to small business of consolidating your accounting needs to a cloup app are broad indeed. Tax, payroll, bank reconciliation, invoicing…. you will be doing these things! But what other ways can cloud accounting apps provide benefit and soothe business pain?
- You can access your numbers anytime from anywhere and do so easily.
So can we. So can your bookkeeper. So can someone else in another store. So can anyone else that you need or wish to give access to. - You can issue invoices from anywhere at anytime, even from a tablet or mobile.
No more waiting until you get back to the office. You might even be able to speed up your cash flow by taking payments on the go. - You can automatically upload bank transactions.
You don’t have to, but it does save time. - With automatic bank feeds, it becomes much easier to keep your numbers up-to-date.
Remember that old saying – what you can measure you can manage? You will have the power to know what is happening in your business at all times. - Multiple people can access the same file at the same time.
Gone will be the common problem of the client, the bookkeeper and the accountant all wanting to work on the file at the same time yet only one having the current file at any one time. No more re-entering invoices, no more incorrect restores, no more avoidable time wasting.
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Would you like to get started with cloud accounting? Bizwize can help. Contact us today.