Posts Tagged ‘business improvement’

One simple way to increase profits

Monday, September 6th, 2010

How do you increase your profits?

The most common reply I hear is “get more customers”.  However, getting more new customers can take a long time and be costly.  Instead, wouldn’t it be easier to sell more services to existing customers?, the customers who already have an established relationship with you and like the service/ product you provide. 

When trying this approach, an common mistake is to market every service you provide to every customer.  The problem with this is that the one service a customer needs may be hidden in the middle of a list of loads of services or you may be marketing inappropriate services to the wrong customers.  For example, there would be little point in me sending marketing messages about payroll services to all my clients who work alone.  They (currently) have no need for this service and it would be obvious that I wouldn’t have put much thought into their needs.

How to get the right messages to the right customers

There’s a simple and practical way to get the right messages to the right customers.

Firstly, open a blank spreadsheet.  Start at column “B” and list all the services/products you supply across the remaining columns.

Then, in each row, list the name of each of your existing customers.

Once you’ve done that, work through each customer and “tick off” the services they currently buy from you by highlighting the relevant cell.  When you’ve finished doing this for every client, you’ll be left with a chequerboard effect, the white spaces being where customers doesn’t buy those services from you.  You’ll be amazed at how much “white space” there is left!

The second, and equally important, stage is to work through the list again, this time highlighting irrelevant services for each customer e.g. payroll for single person businesses.  Once you’ve done this, you can start to market your products/ services intelligently to the customers who may have a need for them.  As customers buy more from you, you can update the matrix, crossing off each service as it is purchased.  Once the spreadsheet is completely shaded in, you know you’ve maximised your income potential.

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Posted in Business Development, Profit Improvement | 1 Comment »

Think Visibility – An Accountants View

Monday, September 6th, 2010

This Saturday I attended the Think Visibility conference in Leeds.  The conference covers subjects such as search engine optimisation, the use of social media and how to get great PR as well seminars on affiliate marketing and spamming!

The majority of the audience were from the digital industry and a couple of people asked me why I was attending, seeing as I run an accountancy practice.  Well, my attendance was down to three reasons:

  • I work with a lot of clients from the digital industry, from freelancers to agencies.  Attending these events helps me understand their industry that little bit more and helps me add value to their businesses.
  • Whilst the seminars did include some technical content, a lot of the content was delivered in plain english and my notepad is now full of great ideas that I can introduce into my own business.
  • I may be able to share some of the ideas with my non digital clients and help them find the expert help to implement them.

What about the day

I’m not going to go into lots of detail about what I learned as the experience will be differant for every attendee.  One particular point did stick in my mind though…..One of the speakers discussed ROI on social media, but called it Return On In action, i.e. the measuring of not doing anything…a term I really like.  We often measure the return we’ll get from investing in a project or new piece of software, but seldom do we consider the cost of doing nothing.   It’s funny that during these tough times many businesses have chosen to do exactly that…..nothing.  I often here “we know we should do XYZ, but it’s going to cost us and we don’t really want to spend that much”.  

How often do Digital Agencies talk to their clients about the cost of doing nothing, I wonder?

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Posted in Business Development | No Comments »

Stress proof your business and your life

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Owning and running a business can be incredibly stressful. So we have decided to do something about it by producing a book called “Stress proof your business and your life”.

 You can find it on Amazon at £12.99 – but you are welcome to a copy with our compliments.

 But please don’t be put off by its title, since it is categorically not only for people who are stressed. In fact, one of the key benefits from reading it is that you’ll get dozens of excellent ideas for putting a great deal of extra cash into your business and personal bank accounts.

 There are four parts to the book.

 Part 1, Stress proofing the business stuff, looks at what people can do to reduce and prevent the stress caused by their business and its financial situation. And it provides simple yet effective solutions to common challenges such as:

  • Not making enough profit
  • Running out of cash and other similar cashflow problems
  • Being forced to work more than you want to
  • Having too many things on your to-do list
  • Too much depending on you, and too many things that can only be done by you
  • Not getting the right life-work balance
  • Not having the information you need to make sensible decisions
  • Losing too much of what you earn to the taxman
  • Other people, especially customers and your employees, behaving unreasonably or unfairly

 Part 2, Stress proofing the money stuff, looks at what people can do to reduce and prevent the stress caused by their personal financial situation.

 In these first two parts much of the emphasis is on strengthening the financial and business fundamentals – since they are so often the primary sources of stress and anxiety for business leaders. But strengthening them is also extremely worthwhile for people who aren’t suffering from stress.

 Part 3, Stress proofing the personal stuff, broadens the discussion by explaining how to reduce and prevent the stress caused by the other things going on in people’s lives.

 Finally, Part 4 brings it all together into a practical action plan.

How to get your FREE copy 

So, would you like a copy?  We would be happy to send readers of the blog a complimentary copy….all you need to do is drop us an e mail or call the office on 01422 365981 and we’ll get one sent straight to you.

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Posted in Business Development, General Business, Profit Improvement, Recession, cash management | 1 Comment »

Working on your business – Whats that all about?

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Here at Accountancy Extra we are huge fans of Michael Gerber and the book E Myth Revisited.  So much so, that we provide new clients with a copy of the book.

In the book, one of the concepts discussed is “working on your business, rather than in it”, but what does that really mean?

Working on the business includes activities such as

  • Networking meetings
  • Researching a new product
  • Working on your cashflow
  • Putting together a business plan
  • Reviewing your gross margins, or
  • Systemising your business

How often do we start to do one of the above and then abandon it as a customer calls wanting something, or we need to attend to an urgent e mail from a client?

I often think about running a business a bit like preparing for the World Cup.  A top class footballer doesn’t just turn up 10 minutes before kick off and expect to be brilliant on the pitch.  Instead they invest years of training for their big moment, and, once they’ve made it into the international team, they continue training in between matches.  If they don’t, their performance will not improve – in fact it’ll probably go backwards and their place in the team will be taken by another player.

So what does that mean for your business?

Well firstly, it’d be great if you could do your preparation before starting your business.  Sadly, this is rarely possible.  However, constant investment in improving your business should be high on your list of priorities, if for no other reason than to stop you slipping backwards!  A lot of business owners start off with the right intentions and then let them slip as they get busier, i.e. they revert to Technician Mode.

You should set time aside each week to work on your business, think about the footballer in training each day.

Working “on” your business is exactly that – setting time aside each week to do all of the things mentioned above and more. Taking the time to look at how your business is performing and how you can improve. The main reasons why most Business Plans and Budgets don’t work for you is because they have no clear action plan broken down into what you need to do on a monthly and weekly basis (We’ll cover this area more in future posts).

 How much time have you scheduled into your diary in the next few weeks to look at how your business is performing?

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Posted in Business Development, General Business, Profit Improvement | No Comments »

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