Here we are in 2016. The leftover turkey has been finished, the mince pies and chocolates have all been eaten and gym memberships have been taken out to reduce those expanded Christmas tummies.
….which means it’s a brand new year for your business! Happy New Year!
So, how are you going to make 2016 a GREAT year for your business? With 12 months of trading ahead of you, there’s plenty of scope to turn over a new leaf, put your plans into action and start seeing some amazing results over the first quarter.
With this in mind, we’ve pulled together our top 5 New Year resolutions for your business, to give you a little inspiration.
1. Fire yourself from the business
It’s great when you’re a business owner and can see the company growing off the back of all your hard work. But as the business grows, and your team expands, there will come a time where you have to make a quite fundamental move…
You’ll need to switch from working IN the business to working ON the business – and that means firing yourself from company, so you can be a full-time MD (eek!).
To be a great boss, you need to change roles. Rather than getting bogged down in the everyday work, you should be focusing on bringing in new business, talking to existing customers and planning out the future of the business. And to do that, you need to delegate the day-to-day tasks and put yourself firmly in the driving seat (making ‘vroom vroom’ noises is optional).
Click here to see why you should fire yourself from your business
2. Know your cash flow from your profit margin
If you can bring in a healthy profit from your sales, the world is your proverbial oyster. But if you’re struggling to break even, your business faces an uncertain future.
Having a real focus on making the company profitable is vital if you want to meet your long-term goals and objectives. But many business owners confuse profitability with cash flow, and there’s a big difference when it comes to the financial management of the company.
- Profitability is having enough sales to cover ALL costs – the overheads of the business, tax and the owners’ drawings.
- Cash flow is about knowing WHEN you’ll get paid – and having enough cash in the business, at the right time, to pay those overheads.
So, if a customer regularly fails to pay their invoices on time (you all have one of those, we’re sure), that’s a cash-flow problem. But if the reason you’ve got nothing left in the piggy bank is that you’re price point is too low, that’s a profitability problem.
In essence, making yourself profitable is about minimising your costs, setting realistic prices and making sure you make as many sales as possible (and selling to the right kind of customer – the ones who pay their bills on time!)
Find out more ways to make yourself profitable
3. Make it easier to get paid
Late payments have a huge impact on your cash flow situation.
Building up a big back-log of unpaid invoices not only increases your aged debts, but also eats into your admin time – the hours your spend pulling off debtor reports and chasing up customers for payment would be much better spent elsewhere in the business.
But there’s one really easy way to resolve the thorny issue of late payments: make it easier for your customers to pay you!
In the cloud age, it couldn’t be simpler to set up new ways to receive payment. If you’re using Xero online accounting, you can set up payment options, such as PayPal, from within your online invoicing. Customers can then pay you with the click of a button as soon as the invoice pops up in their email.
Or go for a Direct Debit option, like GoCardless, and set up customers so you take their payments directly from their account as soon as you’ve pinged them an invoice.
And if you’re a ‘bricks and mortar’ business on the high street, there are all kinds of whizzy card readers and Xero Add-ons that will allow you to take contactless payments from cards and smartphones with Apple Pay or Android Pay etc.
Find out more about payment gateways
See how GoCardless’ Direct Debit solution gets you paid quicker
4. Give your performance a kickstart
With a system like Xero at the heart of your business, you’re not just benefiting from a fast, effective accounting solution. You’re also generating all sorts of data about the day-to-day story of your business.
This goldmine of data can hold some very revealing truths (and even a few surprises) if you dig down into the nut and bolts of the numbers. Running regular reports on sales, performance, cash flow and other non-financial elements gives you an incredibly overview of how the business is working – and where you may need to work a little harder too!
And by putting targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) in place, you put a real sense of impetus and drive into your monthly performance reviews
See how KPIs can turn around your business
5. Keep your people happy
A business is nothing without a happy team. And having a real focus on your team’s satisfaction and engagement is just as important as dealing with the financial side of running the business.
One way to keep a smile on everyone’s face is to put together a benefits package that’s suited to your team’s needs. And by benefits we’re not just talking about an annual bonus. Although financial incentives work well for sales teams, not everyone has their eye on the dollar prize.
Things like childcare vouchers, matching pension contributions, or offering more flexible working hours are all ways to give something back to your hard-working people – and if the team are happy, then you’ll do better business in the long run.
See how employee benefits create a happy team
Here’s to a brilliant 2016!
We hope those five resolutions give you a great starting point for making 2016 a great year for your creative agency.
Want to know more top tips for making your business run like clockwork? If you fancy a coffee and a chinwag about your performance, get in touch to arrange a catch-up.
