You might be freaking out and thinking that your business is broken. You might feel better about this if you kept busy doing things that matter, not doing busy work! If you have a solid social media strategy in place, you’ll know that publishing new posts in a consistent and frequent manner is super duper important. I’m alive! Whether you’re posting once a day on Instagram, four times a day on Facebook or 50 pins a day on Pinterest, you know how time consuming it is to take photos and find content that’s relevant to your audience! Stock up on content! If you’re posting once daily, see how you might create 30 posts within the next few days. Working in batches saves you time and doing this during a slow month will help take the social media load off your plate when your busy months come. Also consider taking the time to set up social media automation apps and software. Even if it’ll only take you 15 minutes to get something set up, I know a lot of creatives procrastinate on .
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Want to make more profit? Just sell more, right? Well, you know it’s not that easy. In fact, there’s been some dire economic news lately, the gist of which says sales are down across most industries. In the face of falling retail sales and low expectations for a swift recovery, what are the chances your company will be the one to defy the odds and triumph with a record sales season? You might very well be that exception to the rule. But if you’re not, that’s OK too—there are other options. Here are the three quick ways to increase your company’s profitability without making more sales. Research shows a small 1 percent increase in price can raise your operating profits by a whopping 11 percent. Even with this knowledge under their belts, companies have historically avoided implementing price hikes. According to pricing expert Ryan White, this trend has already begun to change. That’s why, when considering the most appropriate path to profitability, more companies are turning to pricing improvements.
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While it can take years to build a meaningful increase in sales volume, pricing hikes can be implemented quickly—often in less than three months—and have an immediate impact. If you could put all of your invoices side-by-side, you’d probably expect to see your biggest customers receiving your best prices. For most companies, though, this isn’t always true. In fact, what you often find when you dig deep is the exact opposite—that somewhere along the line, your smaller customers negotiated the same, if not better, prices than customers placing exponentially bigger orders. Sure, fixing this issue on a single small account won’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. However, when you seek to remedy this error on all of your small accounts, which could be hundreds or even thousands of customers, you’re suddenly standing in the midst of what could turn out to be a major profit-increasing opportunity. You’re probably offering a variety of discounts to different customers, ranging from relatively minor deal-sweeteners like free freight to costlier, long-term perks like steep volume discounts. While it’s natural to want to offer a discount to your best customers, it’s also a way to erode your bottom line.
OK so your product isn’t selling well right now. All is not lost. You can still turn a profit as you try to turn things around on the sales side.
A common mistake small business owners make in their accounting involves poor cash flow planning, which can lead to financial problems even when sales are good. Cash flow refers to the real-time stream of money in and out of your business. When you book a sale, you might record that as revenue on the day the sale is made, but you still might have to wait weeks or months for the money to arrive, depending on the terms you offer customers or if your clients are slow in paying bills. One reason a profitable business might be short cash when it comes time to pay bills is that it averages monthly expenses in its budget. For example, if you pay your insurance premiums quarterly but enter your insurance expense into your annual budget by monthly average, it doesn’t show the larger payments in your budget. In addition to creating a master budget, prepare a cash flow budget you use to manage your payables. Even if you manage your cash flow well, you might find yourself short of cash if you encounter unexpected circumstances, such as a price increase by a supplier or a large cash outlay for a repair. In some instances, you can handle these unexpected expenses and remain profitable but not have enough cash to pay your bills.
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Do Market Research. If you’re interested in starting a small business and qualify, you should apply. Profitable franchises are profitable because w else has worked through the plan, smoothed out all the kinks and come up with something that makes money. Entrepreneur Insider is your all-access pass to the skills, experts, and network you need to get your business off the ground—or take it to the next level. Starting a small business isn’t for everyone, but it can be a good option in slow employment markets when you have been laid off. Most angel investors are your friends and family members, but others may be interested in helping fund your enterprise. While your sales volumes may increase over the holidays, expecting them to double is a little unrealistic.
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Relentless optimism wtile a key trait of successful entrepreneurs. But while optimism is critical for a new business owner, letting it compromise your objectivity can be mooney to your cash flow. Unfortunately, not every interested looker will actually make a purchase.
While your sales volumes may increase over the holidays, expecting them to double is cna little unrealistic. By applying quantitative forecasting methods, you can use actual past revenue data from your own business or other businesses in your busimess as a basis for tracking trends and predicting future sales. This information, along with some objective intuition, will help you come up with more realistic future sales projections. No matter which method you select, make sure to base your future sales expectations on objective businesw and sound judgment.
This will save you from overspending based wgipe pipe dreams that monfy never come true. The reality is that while, yes, it does take money to make money, not all startup expenses are created equal.
If you want your business to make money, then, keep your eye on the bottom line, considering the cost-benefit of every single expense. After all, every dollar you spend on your business is a dollar that is ultimately taken away from your profit margin. Along with your revenue forecast, create a realistic budget, and stick to it. Some companies have even benefited from incentivizing customers through discounts for early payments.
But without tracking your day-to-day cash flow, you may still find your business monney a tight spot. For retail companies, the months just before the holidays are a time when cash flow can be particularly tight. You need more inventory from your suppliers to prepare for an influx of sales, but if those supplier payments come due before your sales actually happen, you may have trouble paying bills on time. Using a cash-flow statement will help you track your inflow of revenue and outflow of expenses during a specific time period.
This may be no big deal if you have a cushion of savings on hand. But if your company is working from a zero account balance, one slow sales month could mean instant disaster. That way, even if you experience unexpected stalls to cash flow, you have reserves in place to protect.
Cash-flow issues are one of the greatest challenges of business ownership. Entrepreneur Media, Inc. In order to understand how people use our site generally, and to create more valuable experiences for you, we may collect data about your use of this site both directly and through our partners. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to the use busniess that data. For more information on our data policies, please visit our Privacy Policy.
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February 22, Every business, seasonal or not, experiences lulls. Maybe you know when your lulls will come. Maybe business has started slowing unexpectedly. Either way, you may be better off treating this slow period as an opportunity.
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And, who knows, maybe in the process you’ll find a monye generator that will help your business during its busiest times. Think about related services or products your customers would appreciate. If you own a gourmet food store, for example, you might stock specialized kitchen equipment or add an online ordering and delivery service. If you’re a landscaper, you might add snow removal during winter.
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