3 Ways To Be A Forward-Thinking Small Business

November 3rd, 2022

Best business practices change fast with the new technological advancements we’re experiencing. Or do they? These three essential tips are some of the oldest, proven principles in business. You can leverage technology to help you achieve them, which will result in more revenue and growing your small business.

At Payroll Vault, we’re committed to making sure your business is equipped with the tools you need to succeed. That’s why we have our staff answer our phones in real-time with genuine one on one conversations with payroll specialists, and a service commitment to you, the business owner.

Use these three tips to help you expand your business by building it efficiently.

Focus On Your Customers

Your business ultimately serves your customers - they’re the end of the line when it comes to your sales cycle. Why do so many businesses forget to focus on this crucial fact?

“Customer experience” is the hot catch phrase across all industries consistently, which is the basic concept of offering your customers a more rewarding experience every time they interact with your brand. While this might seem obvious at first glance, plenty of businesses get caught up with the bells and whistles - the packaging that your product comes in, and not what the customer will get out of the product.

Visit sites like Google or Yelp! to see what actual customers are saying about your business. You can use this as an opportunity to respond to them (using positivity and thankfulness for their time and comment) which shows everyone else that you’re actively engaged in their happiness.

Better yet, take control of the conversation by asking your customers if they enjoyed their experience. If they respond yes, provide them a link to your Yelp! and Google reviews to make it easy for them to leave you a kind review. If they respond no, then offer to correct the situation. You can use this feedback to change your service so that all your customers enjoy it more.

Focus On Your Offer

Working backwards, your offer is what connects your products and services to your customers. In other words, focus on making an irresistible proposal and you will have more customers, which translates to more sales.

It can be tricky knowing what will best connect with your audience, since groups of people vary widely when it comes to their purchasing behavior. Staying flexible and trying new things is one possibility. But savvy marketers know that A/B testing is the way to go when trying to conduct tests like these.

You develop two similar pieces of content that your audience engages with, such as an email, your website, or even a tiny little call to action button that your audience clicks on your website. You can measure the results of each. If you have an email open rate of 28% with one subject line, and only 22% with another subject line, choose the better subject line and then look at the content of the inside of your email and split test again.

This is an easy method of finding and implementing what really works.

Focus On Your Employees

Showing your employees that you care about them goes a lot further than telling them. Prioritize them with specific praise for what they’re doing right, rather than general flattery. For example, “great work everyone” will be lost on your employees. But, “Susannah, I see that you hit all your goals for last month and it really reflects well on customer engagement. Thank you for your hard work.”

Don’t forget to praise all employees who are doing well, more than just your sales team, and provide positive encouragement or praise in the form of what can be improved, for employees who are facing challenges.

The greatest display of showing your employees that you care is making sure that they’re always paid on time. Sounds like common practice, but many small businesses experience cash flow shortages, especially as they scale up and take on more expenses and more employees to pay.

There’s a solution for that too. Payro is a company that offers short-term payroll loans with same-day funding and rates as low as 1.5% per week. It’s a secret weapon that many small businesses use to ensure their employees always get paid no matter what, and still keep out of long-term debt that can eat away at their revenue.

Set up a free Payro account today to make sure you have access to a payroll loan should you need it. Even big companies like Amazon and Google experienced cash flow shortages in their early days - unfortunately, 82% of small businesses can actually fail if they don’t manage it properly*. Generally, cash flow issues are a good sign because it means you’re expanding!

Summary

Focusing on your customers, your offer, and your employees are the three things that will help you increase the efficacy and revenue of your business. Make sure you remember to:

Drive happy customers to review sites, while fixing problems for unhappy customers.
Use A/B split testing to see what’s most effective with different groups of your customers. Focus on small but effective changes and use what works best.
Sign up for a free Payro account so you can get same-day, low interest short term payroll loans as you expand. It takes 24-48 hours to get approved, so make sure you sign up today to keep that option open should you need it in the future.

* “82% of small businesses can actually fail if they don’t manage it properly” references the following article: https://preferredcfo.com/cash-flow-reason-small-businesses-fail