The end of the financial year is a great time to assess where you currently are in your business, and think about where you’d like to go in the next year, and beyond.
This is where goal setting becomes crucial. And this shouldn’t be something you reserve for the end of the financial year either, rather it should be something you consistently work on all year.
But there’s no better time than now to set a chunk of time aside to inspect your progress, strategies, offerings, and big vision.
Here are 8 financial goals every small business can set this year, to help you stay focused and keep you moving forward.
Manage your cash flow
This doesn’t mean you decide to cut spending on services and equipment that you need to continue thriving as a business, but it means taking a look at all the areas where you could potentially cut back on expenses.
Maybe you can make the move to go paperless, or reduce printing unless absolutely necessary?
Maybe you can change the software you’re using, or opt to use more technology in your business instead of hiring extra staff?
Maybe you can see what tasks are really necessary for staff to be doing, and which ones can be discarded in place of tasks which are going to be more beneficial to your business?
Maybe you can relocate to a place with cheaper rentals, or source a cheaper supplier?
Your expenses should always, ideally, be less than the revenue you’re taking in, in order to maintain a positive cash flow. If you’re currently suffering from negative cash flow, now is the time to look at where you can reduce your expenses.
Equally, if you’re well in the green, this is a great time to look at where you can invest some profit back into your business to improve your operations or offerings for next year.
Hire some help
If you’re currently running your small business on your own, with little to no help, and you’ve reached the point where you can’t physically scale up; this should be the year you commit to expanding by hiring some outside help.
This doesn’t need to be a full-time employee. It could be someone part-time, a remote worker, or even a freelancer to take care of whatever tasks you need doing, so that you can concentrate on growing your business.
Don’t rush into anything. Make sure you’ve got enough money flowing in to make this move before going ahead.
Create a content strategy to increase traffic
If you don’t already have a website with a blog that you regularly update, or a lead magnet to build an email database, you may want to consider investing some time and energy into this. This could be the perfect task to outsource to a freelancer.
Relevant, engaging, and educational content is a great way to boost your website traffic, which often results in more sales and clients, as well as a relationship of trust and loyalty with your customer.
Share your content on your social media channels, and encourage employees to share it too.
Perfect customer service process
Do you currently ask your customers and clients for feedback on what you’re providing them with? If you do, are you sharing this feedback where other potential customers can see it?
Do you have an effective way to deal with customer complaints and refunds?
Do you have a database where you record customer’s details, and can continue to stay in touch with them after the initial sale?
These are all best practices to create a stellar customer service process which increases satisfaction, and positive referrals.
Assess your current offerings, and create something new
To create a buzz around your business and give it a new lease of life, you may want to consider creating a new product or service; especially if you haven’t done so in a while.
A great way to decide on what to offer can come from previous customer feedback, along with your vision for your business over the next one to three years.
If you’re happy with your current offerings, maybe you can look at marketing an existing one in a fresh way, to bring it back to life again and create excitement.
Increase your margins
Year after year, any business hopes to continually increase its profits.
Increasing your prices can be tricky, especially if you’re already in line with or above your competitor’s pricing; and your target market isn’t prepared to pay a whole lot more for what you’re offering.
This is when you can look at your current margins. Maybe you can negotiate a better deal with your current suppliers, or source a new one. You could also re-look at the materials and technologies you’re using, and see if you can replace them for cheaper options, without compromising your product.
Up your social media presence
Even if you’re new to the social media game, it’s not too late to use platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to market your business, and increase sales.
Investing some of your marketing budget on social media influencers is a great way to tap into your target market, because they often have an audience who already trusts their recommendations, tastes, and suggestions.
If you’re totally new to social media, it’s wise to pick one platform, to begin with, and set a goal for including it in your goals for the coming financial year.
Spruce up your business plan
When you started your business, you probably drafted some kind of a business plan, however rough or detailed it was.
But when was the last time you looked at it, or gave it an update?
You’re probably a totally different person at this stage, and your business probably looks a lot different to how it did back then.
So what better time is there than now to revisit your old business plan, take a look at how things have progressed since then, and create a new plan for the next year to support your current goals and dreams?
Commit to setting your own goals this week
These are simple financial goals which every small business can make.
The plot in some time to go through the above, and select the goals you’d like to focus on for the coming financial year.
For more financial goals advice, book a discovery call or contact us at 1300 459 302 and get one on one advice from our business experts here at UpCoach.
