Time flies by so quickly when you’re running your own small business. As you focus on the day-to-day work, the days quickly turn into weeks and before you know it, another year has passed you by. Sometimes you get so hung up working hard in your business that you lose sight of the big picture and forget to work on your business. Use our monthly checklist to help assess the health of your business and ensure you are staying in control.
- Take a step back and do a financial overview on your business – Make sure you have a tight grip on all your finances. Make sure you are carefully managing your expenses and bills, invoices, payroll and taxes.
- Review your suppliers – Are your suppliers charging you a lot but you’re not seeing good value for money? Set aside a time to look for new suppliers.
- Review your annual sales – look at your year to date sales and compare them with previous years. Are purchases and gross profit levels in line with your industry?
- Monitor your stock – You should carefully match stock levels to sales forecasts, ensure stock storage is safe and secure, and work with your accountant or bookkeeper to find the optimum stock levels.
- Make an impression on your customers – in an overcrowded marketplace, it is important that customers remember you. Ensure you are using all the available communication methods to keep in contact with your customers such as email, phone, Facebook etc.
- Use Social Media – social media is an extremely effective marketing tool if you use it wisely. Make sure you are regularly posting new blog content, sending out new tweets and posting on Facebook and other platforms of social media.
- Review your website – Implement the use of Google Analytics! It is a great tool that makes it easier to understand who & when customers are using your website. It will identify which parts of your website are under-performing and pages that have the most traffic.
- Keep on top of industry performance – sign up your email for Google Alerts! Get industry specific news delivered straight to your inbox.
- Keep your data safe – Running physical computer servers & hard drives leaves your business open to risks of data loss & theft. Consider moving to a cloud-based application to store date and ensure your information is always available and automatically backed up.
- Talk to your financial advisors – arrange regular meetings with your accountant to review your business performance. Work to ensure your small business is on track & in line with industry standards.
Talk to the team at DGL who can help put you on the path towards success!