Small businesses face a high degree of competition on virtually all fronts. This level of competition means that small businesses must distinguish themselves from their contemporaries to achieve entrepreneurial success.
When it comes to small business growth, tweaking the small things can make operations run smoother. With that in mind, let's review some simple yet effective strategies for improving small business productivity.
Work on Documentation
One of the biggest pitfalls small businesses face is improper organization and documentation. Bad organization costs precious time and resources and can negatively affect your business's reputation and professionalism. Imagine a customer calls asking a question, and you don't have the records organized to give a proper answer.
To that end, small businesses must amp up their documentation efforts to dot every "I" and cross every "t." Documentation includes things like:
- Keeping all records of business finances, including customer transactions, cash receipts, and invoices from independent contractors.
- Ensure all deadlines are marked on a shared calendar that all relevant team members can access.
- Keep all regulatory documentation together and periodically review it to ensure your business is compliant.
Automate Smaller Tasks
All businesses have to complete repeatable and routine tasks daily. One way to streamline business enhancement and increase operational efficiency is to automate as many of these smaller tasks as you can so you can free up resources and brain power for more complicated tasks and strategic development.
For example, you can automate your CRM to follow up automatically with customers who abandon their carts before checkout. As another example, you can buy software to automate payroll tasks. AI also gives new avenues for improving your small business, such as automated chat support bots.
Surveys have indicated that businesses and workers could save between six and seven hours of busy work each week if they had access to the proper automation tools. That is nearly an extra full day of productivity, which can be a major profitability boost.
Get Customer Feedback
Small businesses must prioritize their customers' needs and desires — after all, they buy your products and services! Therefore, allowing customer feedback is one simple way to engage with customers and improve customer relations. For example, you can send recent customers a short survey asking them about their experience and what the company could do better.
Feedback gives businesses new ideas about improving the customer experience while boosting customer engagement. Customers who see businesses taking and implementing feedback are more likely to trust and respect the brand.
Prioritize Your Website
About 80% of US consumers shop online, meaning you must prioritize your website design and UX experience toward the goal of improving your small business. A bad UX experience or a slow website can cause many to abandon your page without buying anything. Also, a poorly designed and optimized website negatively impacts your business's capabilities and reputation, undermining all the hard work you've put into customer acquisition and retention.
