Blackburn Accounting

The state of our ‘Business health’ is as important as our own.

A smart Business operator will undertake regular checks of both!

In the following, we examine the Business!

The health of your Business is reliant upon and impacted by the ‘state’ of key parts, you could say these are the vital organs of a small Business!

You can see why undertaking a regular Health Check is critical to the ongoing life, success of your or any small Business.

In the following we examine these vital parts:

Business Reflection

Business Planning

Goal Setting

Systems and Processes

Staff Performance

Smart Businesses recognise the importance of taking the time for Business reflection as an opportunity to do just that, reflect, review and revise. Examination allows for any changes or improvements that are needed. Simply put, there are risks if you don’t take the time to reflect and plan!

Business reflection is important, offering a number of benefits.

Benefits, such as providing the opportunity to step back, take ‘stock’, to see if you, we, are on track or not. This can be said of both the Business and the individual. We can all learn from our mistakes, and failures. Lessons learned that can be built on.
It is also a way of keeping yourself, ourselves accountable. Who doesn’t want to improve their Business and own performance. It’s the chance to grow and improve and be open to new opportunities that otherwise may pass by.

If you a small Business operator you will understand how easy it is to be taken-over and engulfed by the everyday business of running a Business. Life gets ‘frantic hectic’ and you can lose sight of the bigger picture.

Is that you?

Try these, 5 ‘Easy’ Steps to take to effectively reflect on your Business

Revisit your Goals.

Revisitng your Goals is the opportunity to ‘take-stock’, critique, and determine where you are in achieving your goals. Are you on track! Have milestones been reached? Analyse, measure performance, acknowledge celebrate gains, and wins and learn from losses.

Business Planning

Reflection and planning provides benefits, such as, allowing you to prepare for the now and future. Continual planning gives you the focus to get the job done. Importantly it fosters critical thinking and a disciplined approach to conducting yourself and the Business.

It also allows you to examine your strengths and weaknesses and use those experiences to consider other opportunities while recognising the risks. Without reflection and planning you can find yourself, your Business going down the wrong path.

Goal Setting

Christmas Shopping

November is a time when the smart shopper starts looking at purchasing that special present for family and friends.

BUT, before you rush into a ‘spending frenzy’ take the time to read our following guide,

‘6 Ways to Shopping and Spending Wisely’.

Yes, think before you buy! Thoughtful buying and spending habits can leave you and your loved ones happy and thankful, without the stress of ‘over-debt burden’!

Often the trap of over-spending is getting caught up in the expectations that we place on ourselves, to buy bigger and better, thinking that’s what others expect from us. We want to impress and jump in with all cash registers cha-chinging!

But we pay the price later. If you are living on a ‘budget’ it’s a fact that over committing financially usually brings only stress and pain when the ‘bills’ come in. Why give yourself a ‘debt hangover’, when there are some ways to help avoid it.

6 TopTips, Ways to Shopping and Spending Wisely:

1.Sit down now and review your finances.

Draw up a Budget to establish what can you realistically allocate for Christmas shopping. Vital to stick to it! With rising costs and inflation makes sense to do more with your cents!

2. Don’t spend what you don’t have

or more than you have budgeted for.

3. Paying with cash!

It may be old-fashioned, but its an ‘oldie’ but a goodie - 'if you can't afford it, cash, don’t buy it', particularly when looking at 'descretionary' purchasing, ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’ items.

4. Be wary of going crazy with credit!

A good question, a GREAT question!

The answer?

If you are a Business proprietor READ ON, answers lie in the following 5 KEY areas:

1. What makes an amazing Workplace

2. Staff retention

3. Attracting new talent

4. Staffing issues

5. Hiring for the holidays

1. What Makes an Amazing Workplace

How do you fare to the ‘MOST WANTED’ list below?!

Honest leadership
Flexible growth for employees
Meaningful work
A clear Vision and Identity. Culture – what the Business is all about and their place, the Employee, and how they can contribute.
A collaborative environment
Open communication
Work-life balance
Relationships: Wellness and Wellbeing, Respect and Recognition, Training and Support

As you can see many of the items listed are basic to HR and developing strong bonds, the building blocks for creating that ‘Business Everyone, Everybody wants to work for’.

How many ticks did you get?

If you have ‘gaps’, don’t wait, take the steps now to offer all the above to attract staff. Create, your, ‘the Business everyone wants to work for’!.

Business Strategy

2. Staff Retention

Retaining staff, a challenge in a time of a tight market, with staffing shortages, resignations and competitive workplaces. A challenge faced by many operators, particularly small Businesses.

Staff retention is now key to running a successful Business!

Are you affected?

Yes, then don’t wait, start developing your Employee Retention Strategies to boost Job satisfaction and help turn the tide! Take action now!

Here are 5 Strategies

Strategy 1: It starts with Orientation, ‘Welcome aboard’!

When you welcome a new employee be sure to include an ‘onboarding’ meeting. It’s not just about the job/ role requirements, its vital the Company Mission and culture is discussed, and how they can contribute to it and grow. This conversation sets the scene and tone for building healthy, happy, working relationships.

Strategy 2: Pay and Conditions

Silly Season

It’s that time of the Year again!

And as we anticipate the fun festivities of Christmas, and New Year celebrations if you are an Employer are you ready, ready for what can be a very silly season for some.

Records show that it is a time of increased risk of health and safety misadventure caused by alcohol and recreational drug indulgence, too many ‘party’ late nights, and resulting fatigue that can affect performance and behaviour.

Now is the time to prepare and act! By taking some simple steps you can help avoid the silly season becoming a headache or hangover!

In relation to your Staff, start planning now on how to ‘best’ manage this season so that everyone gets to enjoy the occasion. Do this by developing strategies, policy and clear guidelines concerning attendance, behaviour and general ‘frivolity’ during this coming period.

The following are my 8 BEST Tips for staff management during the ‘silly season’

Establish clear guidelines, codes of conduct, for what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the workplace. Importantly ensure these are communicated directly to all employers so there is no misunderstanding or confusion about behaviour at both the workplace and work-related functions.

HR Policies, Health & Safety. Now is a good to visit all your HR policies to ensure they are current. Update as needed and adopt and implement any gaps. For example, most of society are now engaged in social media activity that can come into the workplace. There needs to be clear policy set around this.

In advance, actively promote and communicate your HR policies to all employers, raising awareness of sick leave, drug and alcohol policies. Conduct Information sessions and refresher training courses.

Are you about to embark on a marketing campaign offering ‘mega discounts’?

Yes,

then keep reading to gain value tips on what DISCOUNTNG is all about, importantly what it takes to make it a successful campaign!

Simply put, the Do’s and Don’t's!

DO your planning, develop your Discounting Strategies
DON’T ‘jump in, cutting prices without prior preparation.

What's it all about!

In a nutshell, the aim of ‘discounting’ is to drive sales by reducing the original price of goods but it takes careful planning to achieve the results you want.

‘Discounting strategy’ is the planning on how to offer discounts and specials and still make a profit! For example, short-term discounts can motivate potential consumers to make an immediate decision to buy.

Discounting is a strategy used for a number of purposes such as;

to attract, persuade, motivate new, potential and inactive clients.
to help move ‘slow or old’ stock
to achieve sales targets during a down or slow period
most importantly, to improve cash flow.

To help, here are 5 Discounting Strategy Tips:

Discounting methods

Is discounting worth it?

Types of Discounting Strategies

Timing your Strategies

Does discounting affect your sales targets

1. Discounting methods include:

Cash: discount for cash payment instead of credit
Loyalty: discount for loyal, frequent customers/clients
Trade: discounts for trading in a similar product
Quantity: encourages purchase of more of the same product

2. Is Discounting worth it?

Discounting requires careful planning. It can attract more customers but before offering ‘cut’ sales prices you need to consider the following;

Determine, calculate the best discount price that still provides a profit
Establish your current profit margin, markup and break-even point

Know what your competitors are offering and doing
Decide the ‘sales price’ period, time
Develop a Marketing Plan targeting current, potential and past customers

3. Types of Discounting Strategies

The type, such as examples below, will depend on your Business type and customer base. It is essential to know your customers, to have an understanding what strategy method is likely to attract them.

Special deal, offer or price
Package/ Bundle
Valued added
Seasonal, Occasion
Quantity purchase

4. Timing Your Strategies

Don’t have a ‘willy-nilly’ approach. It’s all in the timing, it's been said before! Different strategies work better at different times. This is about planning in sync with specific events, milestones etc. For example, seasonal sales, Festive celebrations, Easter holidays, school term breaks.

5. Does discounting affect your sales targets?

Do your homework. Before embarking on a discounting promotion it is essential to understand the workings of your pricing structure. That means, if changing the sales price and markup of your products you need to understand how it will affect your profit margins and sales targets.

Do your sums. You need to know your gross margin, markup ad breakeven figures to conduct a sale without making a loss. That is calculate, to work out how the discounted price will affect your profit margin. In other words, the sales increase needed to counter the effect of discounts on your gross margin.

Use these Tips to develop your Discount Strategies that will allow you to offer discounts and specials while still making a profit!

You are ready now to start your CAMPAIGN!