3 steps to better business profits than 70% of your competition

How can you get better business profits?

Every business owner should have a strategy in place to increase the profits of their business.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? And yet 70% of the people I’ve spoken to who own small and medium-sized businesses don’t even have a basic strategy in place.

What they have instead are excuses.

The most common excuses we hear are:

• “I’m already doing everything possible.”
• “I know everything about my business, and it’s already operating at its capacity.”
• “There’s no point. We’re all doomed!”
• “I don’t have any money to make any changes.”
• “I’ve spent all money on advertising, and it hasn’t made any difference.”
• “I don’t want to work any harder than I already am.”
• “I’m waiting for the economy to recover. After that, everything will be alright.”
• “If I make more profit I’ll have to pay more tax, and I’m paying too much tax already.”
• “My business is so unique there’s nothing you can do to help me.”
• “I’m just too busy.”

That’s right: 70% of your competitors aren’t willing to perform a simple strategy review or set up a basic action plan to improve their business. They’re happy to just keep doing things the same way, and see no reason to change.

So despite what they tell you they’re not interested in attracting more customers, increasing their turnover or making a bigger profit.

That’s bad for them, but great news for you—if you’re willing to put in the effort.

How to get a jump on your competition

Start by identifying areas of your business that aren’t operating to their full potential, or delivering the results you need. Then develop and implement an action plan to improve those areas of your business so you can increase your profits.

Your profit improvement plan doesn’t need to be complicated, lengthy or costly. And if you need a hand developing and implementing your plan, I can certainly help. (I work regularly with owners of small and medium-sized business to help them implement their profit improvement plans.)

Three steps to increasing your business’ profits

1. Critically review how your business is performing. What does your business look like today? More importantly, what do you want it look like in a year, two years and five years from now?
2. Identify everything that needs to change, and create a list.
3. Create a plan to act on three of the items on your list. It should include both items that will give immediate results and items that will have the biggest potential for long-lasting results.

In many cases the action items you identify will be easy to implement, and for little or no cost. But they’ll make a substantial improvement to your business’ profit and its value.

Tip: One thing you should definitely do is make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay you. Choose a payment service that supports credit card, Direct Debit and BPAY payments, and list these payment options on every invoice you send out.

Of course, not all the changes your business needs will be easy and cheap to implement. But if they can put you ahead of 70% of the competition, then surely it will be worth it.

Contact us to improve your business strategies and put plans in place. 

We also offer a Client Advisory Board service – a great resource for every business. You get industry experts in your very own board of advisers, ready to help make your business a success. To learn more about this exciting service, contact us.