My Experience In How To Increase Profitability
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top tips:
• The more information you have, the better your decision-making will be.
• Drive down costs and be ruthless about getting paid on time.
• Share ideas with other businesses through networking.
• Be prepared to lose a few clients in order to focus resources on your most profitable customers.
Take financial control
Financial management is definitely the place to start when you're seeking to increase profits - there's no point doing anything else until you've got costs and cashflow under control. We devised a plan to reduce our borrowing, eliminate our overdraft and implement rigorous financial management procedures. We also changed several of our suppliers.
Research the market
Once we had finances sorted, we set about researching the engineering market with a view to growing the business - at the time, we positioned ourselves as structural engineers only. The objective was to add services that utilised our existing skills pool, while offering customers a one-stop-shop that would allow us to take on larger projects, as well as attract new customers.
Through a mix of competitive analysis, customer consultation and instinct, we put together a marketing plan to launch the new services, produced new sales materials to support them and advertised them online using Google AdWords, which has proved highly successful.
Strive for continuous improvement
The initial momentum can soon wear off, so it's been important to have systems in place that encourage us to regularly review our profitability. We include profit and loss accounts in our monthly management meetings and cascade the findings down to all staff, encouraging feedback and ideas. We've also expanded in-house training provision to keep a stream of talent flowing through the company as we grow.
The figures speak for themselves - our profits were up 50 percent last year.
Some advises:
Base your business in the Magic Triangle
Honesty, integrity, and quality are the three sides of the Magic Triangle of business success. Create the kind of company that stands for something more than the bottom line, and your bottom line will increase.
Understand the true brand experience
It's not your advertising and marketing--it's what happens when a customer attempts to do business with you. How helpful and courteous are your staff, both in-store and on the phone? How friendly and useful is your website? How does the customer really feel about working with you?
who and what you are
All we have to do is put out the right signals and make the right noises. There is magic though, and that happens when you are completely clear on who and what you are.
• Define who you are - your values, identity and purpose
• Define what you want to offer. Get really specific on what your business is about and make sure it's congruent with who you are.
• Define who you want as your clients. Their age, employment status, demographics, etc.
With these steps done you should now be able to hone in to your target market and approach your prospective clients communicating clearly that you have designed your service specifically for them.
• The more information you have, the better your decision-making will be.
• Drive down costs and be ruthless about getting paid on time.
• Share ideas with other businesses through networking.
• Be prepared to lose a few clients in order to focus resources on your most profitable customers.
Take financial control
Financial management is definitely the place to start when you're seeking to increase profits - there's no point doing anything else until you've got costs and cashflow under control. We devised a plan to reduce our borrowing, eliminate our overdraft and implement rigorous financial management procedures. We also changed several of our suppliers.
Research the market
Once we had finances sorted, we set about researching the engineering market with a view to growing the business - at the time, we positioned ourselves as structural engineers only. The objective was to add services that utilised our existing skills pool, while offering customers a one-stop-shop that would allow us to take on larger projects, as well as attract new customers.
Through a mix of competitive analysis, customer consultation and instinct, we put together a marketing plan to launch the new services, produced new sales materials to support them and advertised them online using Google AdWords, which has proved highly successful.
Strive for continuous improvement
The initial momentum can soon wear off, so it's been important to have systems in place that encourage us to regularly review our profitability. We include profit and loss accounts in our monthly management meetings and cascade the findings down to all staff, encouraging feedback and ideas. We've also expanded in-house training provision to keep a stream of talent flowing through the company as we grow.
The figures speak for themselves - our profits were up 50 percent last year.
Some advises:
Base your business in the Magic Triangle
Honesty, integrity, and quality are the three sides of the Magic Triangle of business success. Create the kind of company that stands for something more than the bottom line, and your bottom line will increase.
Understand the true brand experience
It's not your advertising and marketing--it's what happens when a customer attempts to do business with you. How helpful and courteous are your staff, both in-store and on the phone? How friendly and useful is your website? How does the customer really feel about working with you?
who and what you are
All we have to do is put out the right signals and make the right noises. There is magic though, and that happens when you are completely clear on who and what you are.
• Define who you are - your values, identity and purpose
• Define what you want to offer. Get really specific on what your business is about and make sure it's congruent with who you are.
• Define who you want as your clients. Their age, employment status, demographics, etc.
With these steps done you should now be able to hone in to your target market and approach your prospective clients communicating clearly that you have designed your service specifically for them.
20 Nov 2008 18:22
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