28 Feb
5 ways to get your business ready for the year
As a start up, how ready is your business for this year? Are you a startup founder who's eager to scale your business? As a startup, how ready is your business for this year? Are you a startup founder who's eager to scale your business? If you have successfully started a startup. Scalability is the ability of a startup to grow. Or, to put it more precisely, a scalable business can adapt to a larger capacity without compromising performance or losing revenue. How ready are you for this year?
Check out these 5 ways you can get your business ready for the year...
Evaluate your financial status - When you’re trying to assess your financial situation, it can be tough to know exactly where you stand – or how you compare to others. The best way to assess your personal financial status is by creating a Net Worth statement.
Add up all of your assets (bank, investment accounts, equity in real estate). Next, subtract liabilities/debt (including credit card balances, car loans, mortgage debt). What's left is your net worth. Optimally, you want to monitor this amount periodically and strive to make it grow.
Secondly make a list of the balance, interest rates, and monthly payments for each of your debts.
Evaluate your finances to understand whether you can pay down these debts faster than you have in the past. Then, calculate your monthly debt-to-income ratio by dividing the amount you owe by the amount you make.
The key to getting out of debt for good is simple - stop going into new debt until you have cleared the old debt. This also helps you to build a good credit history.
Thirdly, ask yourself these questions; Do you regularly contribute to your personal savings? Do you have enough savings to cover an unexpected expense or emergency? The answers to these questions should be the basis for setting your spending prowess.
Check your credit status - Checking your credit reports at least annually is important for several reasons. Regularly reviewing your credit report helps you identify errors on your credit report on time and correct them.
Secondly, it keeps you focused on paying your debts on time and otherwise manage your credit wisely. Subscribing to a monthly delivery of your updated credit reports makes this even easier. Please visit www.crccreditbureau.com/product/crc-icon-plus or call 08072090622 for more information on CRC Credit Monitors.
Get paid for outstanding invoices - When it comes to your daily business routine, getting paid for a job-well-done should be the least of your worries. Unfortunately, however, you can spend hours following best practices and sending out the perfect invoice, yet you come across clients who forget or, worse, outright refuse to pay.
When you find yourself in this kind of situation, you must balance the need to be paid against the fear that you will irritate your client or damage your business relationships. Hence, the need to develop a plan to follow up on late payment. Your client may have simply forgotten about your bill, so you need to approach the situation with care to avoid losing the client. You must however ensure your invoicing procedure is good enough to get the job done.
Evaluate your services - A good starting point for your review is to evaluate what you do - your core activities, the products that you make, or services that you provide. Ask yourself what makes them successful, how they could be improved and whether you could launch new or complementary products/ services or offering credit services to increase revenue.
After the crucial early stages, you should regularly review your progress, identify how you can make the most of the market position you've established and decide where to take your business next. You will need to revisit and update your business plan with your new strategy in mind and make sure you introduce the developments you have noted.
Secondly, look for avenues to bring your products/ services to the right target market that gets their needs met.
Give your business a fresh new look - This is all you... How do you want your customers to perceive your brand and reach you? Is your brand logo appealing enough? How inviting is your business space? Is your website user friendly? Are you active on social media? Start ticking and getting to work.
If you have answered all these questions and gone on to get these things done then you can boldly say you are ready to on the challenge to take your business to the next level this year. We wish you luck!
Last question we want to answer though is, have you checked your credit report lately?
