There comes a point where every business needs a certain amount of tweaking. Bobby is joined by Joanne Hession to discuss how best to tackle fine-tuning your business.
TWEAKING YOUR BUSINESS
Even though you’re paying attention to everything and working really hard, sometimes things don’t go right and if your business is struggling before you go into panic mode, remember its all about getting over these hurdles and tweaking and twisting your business rather than waiting for failure.
If something is not right with the business, do I tweak it or throw it?
Every single business goes through ups and downs where they need to keep on twisting and changing things to get them right both for the business and for the customer. It is ALL about increasing the demand and profit for your product/service – not much else matters. You have to keep on changing things and reinventing.
Tweaking
Sales of course is the barometer for your business to tell you if things are going right or wrong. However, pay key attention to your customers, what they are saying and not saying and watching your cashflow is also vital. Customers are the best people to tell you what to do with you business, listen to them.
If you are stuck, use the networks (listen to information about Networks on podcast from week 7 of the Getting Started Series and see notes on Newstalk.ie) you have to get trusted peers to input on how you can tweak your business – they may see things you never would.
When is it time to pull the rug?
Even as a start-up, you are the financial controller of your business. You can delegate/outsource the bookkeeping function, but you mustn’t delegate keeping an eye on the finances overall (cash coming in, future cash planning and so forth. To many this sounds a lot more complicated than it is. A really simple system on excel can be used to start and the finances needn’t be hard – if you can count the money in your pocket you can manage the finances for your business, its all about money in/money out.
A lot of small businesses are working really hard to sell sell sell but the reality is that there is no growing market for their product/service – they are fishing in a dry ditch. If the sales aren’t there things need to change! Get out or pivot.
In a start up some of the most important things to do are to:
- Stay alert!
- Listen to those around you and especially your customers
- Keep an eye on your finances
- Keep moving forward
A few good questions to ask yourself:
- If I was going to sell this business now, would I buy it? What would have to change before I’d buy it?
- Have we a small, loyal customer base but are having trouble attracting more users? Is it a marketing or sales problem or are we fishing in a dry ditch?
- Do I have the right team in place?
- Is there another way?? Are there other revenue streams we’re not seeing? Is the business model the correct one? etc
