Running a company costs a lot of money – there’s no way to get around that. You have to spend hundreds, and even thousands, before you’re able to make a penny of it back. And that’s at the smaller end of the scale. If you want to grow to a medium sized enterprise and beyond, you’ve got endless expenses to try and tackle.
It’s key to try and save money wherever you can, and be as cost effective as possible in traditionally expensive areas like your marketing, your inventory, and your long term fixed costs. As such, here’s a few things to know about properly tracking what you’re spending and where – and why many small businesses are wasting more money than they think.
You’ve Stuck with Rising Insurance Premiums
How much are you paying for your insurance? If you hold more than one insurance policy at a time, how much is the collective cost?
The longer you hold onto a policy, the higher the premium is going to get – and there’s no guarantee you get the right level of cover on the other side. Because as time goes on, your business needs (and level of liability) are going to change.
So don’t stick with an insurance policy just because it’s easier than shopping around for a new one. Get on top of this rising premium issue and cut it back; you may even be able to negotiate a lower premium by telling the provider you want to leave.
You’re Not Controlling Your Inventory
When you walk into your stock room, what do you see? A lot of boxes and bags packed up on shelves? For sure. But do you also see the massive pile of waste waiting to happen? And when you think about the amount of money you’ve sunk into stockpiling your inventory, that could be quite the loss to your overall profit margin.
So it’s time to start controlling your inventory properly. Turn to stock control software to make this a much easier process, where you can track what’s coming in, how long it’s been there, and have a view over what you’ve got at all times.
Remember, you don’t want to run out of stock, but you don’t want to overstock either. That’s what leads to half of the stock room being dumped out when it’s either no longer selling or is past its best before date.
You’ve Set the Wrong Marketing Goals
What do you want out of your marketing campaigns? You need to set the right goals on the way to achieve this overall metric, but you need these goals to be both reflective and realistic.
Don’t let lofty ambitions get in the way of smart goal setting. Whether you use the actual SMART system, or you simply break down the big goal into its smallest, most baby step kind of parts, you need to set your goals in a more structured way.
The cost of business is more than people think!