– Are your sales numbers not where you want them to be and you’re finding you’re spending a lot of time on tasks that you really shouldn’t be wasting your time on? That’s what we’ll talk about today on The Money Factor.
1. My sales numbers are less than I expected. What can I do?
If your sales numbers are not where you’re expecting them to be you’ve gotta have a deep hard look at what’s going on in your business. First of all, ask yourself were your expectations realistic. Did you set the bar too high? There’s nothing wrong with having that bar set at a level that’s going to stretch your team and your performance and make you reach for the stars, but is it realistic? Has something happened in your marketplace that’s now thrown those numbers out of whack and you can’t meet and exceed those goals? That’s one place to start. I’m not saying reduce the bar, just sense check it, make sure that it’s in line with where your market’s actually at and where your business is at today. Then have a good look at your sales team. Or is it you making the sales? Have you, or they, been doing all the activities that they should have done? All too often nowadays I find people are just sending emails and saying I’ve ticked a box but they’re not actually reaching out to people as much as they should on the phone. You know, it’s one of those things, if you’ve spoken to somebody, okay, you may have to leave a lot of voicemails but there are statistics out there that show that if you keep leaving voicemails you will eventually speak to somebody. It might be frustrating but you’ve got to make the phone calls. So again, are you doing the right things, is your sales team doing the right things? Those could be two areas that you should start with. Then have a look at your product or your pricing. Is something there that you need to adjust? Be bold, don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions of you and your team. All those things are really areas that you can start with looking at. So, there could be a number of reasons why your sales are a little bit off this year. It could be, as I say, the economy, it could be a certain competitor, a whole bunch of things. Spend time talking to your team, the people that are actually talking to your customers. They’ll give you the indicators that you need. And again, have a good, hard look at your numbers, reevaluate them as you need to. Maybe there’s something simple that you can do that will give you a quick win to get those numbers back on track.
2. I spend so much time on admin tasks that I can’t get around to driving my business forward and I can’t afford to hire staff. What can I do?
You know as a business owner we wear many hats. I understand that and can relate directly to it. If you have a small team, it’s hard, you have to take on board a lot of different responsibilities. Those can be distractions to actually focusing on the task that you need to grow your business. So again, have a look at what do you spend your time on during the day? Is it stuff that you could maybe put off to outside core hours? Then do it, reschedule your day, re-prioritize. See if you can delegate some of those menial tasks or tasks that you don’t need to be spending your valuable time on so much to another member of staff. They may actually enjoy taking on board additional responsibility and see it as coming from you as something really powerful for them that will make them more productive and it will save you time. Another thing to look at is what can you outsource? So, there are so many things available nowadays. I’ve found fiver.com is a great place to go for real simple stuff, you know, you don’t wanna spend time creating a fillable PDF form, you can spend five dollars and have somebody else do it and save yourself a couple of hours where you don’t really know what you’re doing and it’s not time that you should be spending as well. So again, outsource. Receivables, who are chasing your AR? That’s something that we handle for a lot of our clients and it’s a great way that saves them time. Not only do we provide them with the financing now, but we’re also enabling our clients to redeploy some of their staff members away from things that they were doing on the receivables and putting it over to us. So again outsourcing is another idea that I would say take a good hard look at. So again, I understand, things happen, you get pulled in a lot of different directions. Be selfish, look at your time. Don’t let people interrupt you if there’s something that you really need to get done. Make sure that you’re looking at where you’re spending your time most productively. –
3. I’m importing goods from China and I didn’t factor in the additional costs of the new tariffs. What should I do?
Importing nowadays is getting more expensive. Tariffs are in the news, nobody really knows how far that’s gonna go or if it’s gonna last if this is all gonna settle down again. There’s a lot of uncertainty. So, if you are finding the prices of the goods that you need to import are going up, and it’s difficult for you to pass that pricing on to your customer that’s a real challenge in your business. One of the things you’ll have to do is look at your cash flow. And again, at Eagle Business Credit we’re helping people look at where can you save money, but where can we help you with your cash flow as well. So if the cost of your goods are going up and it’s not something you can pass on to your clients it’s going to impact your cash flow. You’re going to need help. That’s something we look at every day here at Eagle. Again, we’d love to look at your business, see how we can help you. Importing goods is tricky, tariffs, nothing you can do about them at the end of the day. That’s outside of our control. But there is something you can do. Look at how efficient your business is and whether you have the right funding partner in place to weather the storms that tariffs can bring and the uncertainty in the marketplace. Give Eagle a call, we can give you a hand.