Whether you’re a brand-new small business owner or already established, excelling at your craft is only one piece of the pie. Even if you provide the world’s best services or sell the greatest products on the market, running a small business also involves understanding administrative tasks, managing relationships with clients and suppliers, creating a marketing strategy, and knowing how to organize your finances.
All these aspects are crucial for not only staying afloat, but also scaling your business well into the future. It may seem overwhelming at times but breaking it down into bite-sized pieces can make it more digestible. Here are several tips, tools, and pieces of advice for both new and established small business owners.
Top Tips for Small Business Owners
1. Organization is key.
Being organized as a small business owner encompasses a lot of different things, but let’s look at it from a big-picture perspective. Proper time management, documentation, and streamlining of tasks across the company can make or break a business.
Time management is essential for all members of your team, and this happens by setting and keeping definitive deadlines. It’s important to establish a detailed timeline that includes the necessary steps to hit those deadlines. Ensure that tasks are assigned clearly and with transparent direction, and employees are given the tools and resources they need in order to stick to pre-determined deadlines.
Organizing your documents is also a critical factor in small business ownership. This means keeping accurate financial records, employee documentation, tax returns, transaction history and vendor payments, etc. It’s important to keep copies of all invoices, receipts, and payments for accurate bookkeeping and tax filing.
2. Find your personality.
There are likely many businesses out there just like yours, but what makes small businesses so special is their uniqueness and personal touch. Clients and customers want to be heard, understood, and appreciated. They also will gravitate towards brands they resonate with and that align with their core values. Identify your core values and define how you can put them into practice to make your client and customer journeys special.
This could look like hand-written thank you notes, small gifts or freebies alongside a purchase, or special loyalty discounts. You can also show your personality through your content by sharing pictures or videos of your team, providing a look into your behind-the-scenes processes, and other ways to show your authenticity.
3. Know your market and learn how to pivot.
Staying up to date on industry trends and market shifts is important to remain successful as a small business. Listen to customer feedback, compare to competitors in your space, and take advantage of industry data to learn what’s working and what’s not. You may need to change your business model or pricing strategy to find an approach that works, not just for you, but for potential customers. Flexibility in small business can mean the difference between swimming against the current and with the current.
Helpful Tools to Make Small Business Life Easier
There are so many tools out there that can help small business owners run their businesses more efficiently by automating processes and allowing you to focus on more strategic tasks. These are a few of the types of tools, platforms, and software that we recommend.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that uses data like web activity, purchase history, and customer engagement to build “profiles” of your customers and their wants and needs. This allows you to pinpoint areas where you can target your customers more effectively and personally.
- Accounting software to help automate day-to-day accounting and bookkeeping tasks, eliminating the time constraint of manual data entry.
- Payroll management software that allows you to easily assign hours to employees, turn those hours into direct wages, and get your employees paid faster and easier. Payroll is often one of the biggest time-consuming tasks for small business owners.
- Automated marketing tools that allow you to build campaigns from templates or from scratch, create show-stopping messaging, and then automate those campaigns to run in the background while you focus on other business tasks. These automations help you reach the right customers at the right time.
- Project management software where you can create detailed to-do lists, assign tasks, collaborate with your team, and track project progress with ease.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help you serve your customers faster, provide better service and support, and answer questions in a timely manner. AI chatbots are a great way to service your customers outside of regular business hours.
- Financial management software to help you keep track of your financial records, send invoices, receive payments, and have everything all in one place.
There are many tools like this out there, so make sure you shop around. Some tools are free while others may charge a subscription fee for added features.
At Republic Bank, we’re dedicated to helping you effectively manage your small business finances, grow your business, and have confidence for the future. To chat with one of our team members, reach out us today by calling 800-526-9127! Plus, find more financial tips and resources here.