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Whether you are a business owner yourself or helping your children kick off their own startups, it’s important to understand that there is many different money drains that can have a significant impact on profits. It’s important to remember that the best way to boost your business profits is to plug up these money drains and cut costs – without affecting quality. With this in mind, let’s take a look at those biggest small business financial drains and explore what you can do to improve them.
Employee turnover
If your small business has a high employee turnover, you are wasting a lot of money. The hiring process is expensive – advertising for available positions; setting aside time and resources for checking resumes and holding interviews, and training up new staff all costs cold, hard cash. If you want to plug this particular gap, focus on training current employees, so they are up to speed, offer them a fantastic working environment, and ensure they are happy – it is a far more cost-efficient way of working than continually hiring new people.
Process inefficiencies
How tight are your business operations? While small businesses tend to be leaner and more flexible than their bigger competitors, many suffer from inefficient processes, which, ultimately, cost you a lot of money. It could be stumbling blocks in your marketing that mean you are focusing too much on cold prospects rather than warm ones. It might be that a particular team in your business is using programs or software that is far too complicated and cumbersome than needs be. As a business leader, you need to be proactive in finding these inefficiencies and productivity drains if you want to save money.
Contract issues
There is a huge range of issues that can occur with contracts – or the lack of contracts. You have to make sure that your contracts are as tight as possible, or the likelihood is that you will face problems in the future. As https://www.meadowbrookdirect.com/ points out, you could counteract any issues with contractors that break the law by looking at surety bonds. And you should also consider including indemnity clauses in every contract you make, whether with a customer, supplier, or employee.
Poor customer service
Treat a client well, and they will be more likely to come shopping again. Treat them poorly, however, and they will never come back – and, even worse, they will also tell up to ten of their associates about their experience. According to https://www.snapsurveys.com/, bad customer service is a huge money drain for small businesses, and if you want to survive – and thrive – you will need to have a long, hard look at your service provision if you want to turn things around. Don’t forget, finding new customers costs six times more than selling to new and old customers alike. That’s a lot of money that you won’t need to spend if you can provide first-class service each and every time.
As you can see, there are many areas of your business that can lose a considerable amount of money. Plugging those gaps is essential if you want to get your business finances in good shape.
