Small Business Tips
The Internet has battered down many of the traditional barriers to starting a successful small business. And the advent of crowdfunding has made getting your idea off the ground easier than ever.
According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), micro-industries accounted for 99.3% of all private-sector businesses in 2017. Indeed, 99.9% were small or medium-sized (SMEs) operations.
The FSB also reports that SMEs employed 16.1 million people last year, which accounted for 60% of all private-sector employment in the UK. The combined annual turnover of SMEs was £1.9 trillion. That’s 51% of all the country’s private-sector income.
So, if you’re tempted to strike out on your own, what qualities will you need to create a successful small business?
What’s the profile of a successful small-business owner?
We could discuss drive, leadership and vision until the cows come home. They’re all vital qualities for a small-business success story. But this is 2018. In the second decade of the 21st century, almost nothing is more important than a willingness to harness new technology.
Embracing new technology
You’ve got a lovely, shiny website. But are you checking and analysing traffic trends? No? You need Google Analytics. Integrated with your website, Analytics will tell you the journey your prospects take through your website and how long they read each piece of content. Best of all, it’s free.
What about email? G-Suite not only provides professional business email but also access to Google Docs, Slides, Drive and other productivity-boosting apps.
Then there’s MailChimp. These days, regular communication with customers and prospects through an email list is the way to go. Like water dripping on a stone, persistence pays off. MailChimp can help you build personalised marketing campaigns.
Need some automated project management? You need Trello. Accounting software that integrates with thousands of other platforms? It’s Quickbooks. An app that automatically tracks and records your mileage in the background as you drive your car for business? That’ll be MileIQ.
Strategic business planning skills
It’s vital that your business follows a plan. That means doing a strategic audit and writing a business plan should be your starting point.
A business plan is a brief description of your business that outlines your objectives, strategies, sales, marketing and financial forecasts. If you’re approaching a bank for a business loan, you’ll need one that sets out your long and short-term goals and measures your progress against them.
Business plans don’t have to be complex and shouldn’t be packed with jargon. They’re just a useful summary of your business that sells your idea to potential customers and investors. Planning like this will help you think strategically and develop ever-bigger goals.
A collection of education and marketing material, produced in Cardiff by the Health Promotion Authority for Wales (HPA), primarily for the Heartbeat Wales Project, 1987-1993.
Marketing skills
You won’t get far without a marketing plan. Without marketing, you won’t find new customers, and without new customers, your business will starve. As might you.
These days, the marketing waters have been muddied by the need to be savvy online and to master inbound promotion: digital marketing is a new ball game requiring new skills. The need to stay on top of social media and the emergence of fresh disciplines such as email marketing and digital sales funnels have created a new breed of marketer.
Whatever the media, one constant is that marketing-led businesses tend to buck the trend and drive more revenue than businesses with less focus on marketing. Cut your marketing teeth on one of the many excellent books on the subject, or by investigating training courses run by the Institute of Marketing.
Sales skills
Hand in hand with marketing is sales. Face-to-face selling is quite an art form, one that requires subtle negotiation skills. From initial contact to wrapping up a transaction, the selling journey is a six-step process:
- Prospecting for leads
- Making initial contact
- Using sales materials to persuade the prospect
- Dealing with objections
- Closing the sale
- Following up
You can get more information on techniques with a simple Google search, and there’s no shortage of sales training videos to be found on YouTube. Always remember to ‘ask for the order’: accomplished sales professionals generally leave a meeting with an order or, at very least, the promise of further negotiations.
Financial skills
If you can’t manage your cashflow effectively, you run the risk of losing disgruntled employees or not being able to pay suppliers.
Nobody’s suggesting that you should take a degree in accountancy, but knowing the financial basics about your business is a minimum requirement. That means being aware of the selling price and cost price of each product, and therefore the margin.
A crash course in financial terminology will also serve you well: terms such as gross profit margin, net profit, fixed assets, profit and loss, and balance sheet should roll off your tongue. Knowing the figures attached to these phrases might also be helpful – especially if you plan on making an appearance in front of Peter Jones and friends.
