Going Beyond the Basic: Steps on How to ensure Your Business Becomes Successful
Everyone knows the basics for setting your business on a course towards success.
You should:
- Create a comprehensive business plan,
- Make sure that you have the capital to execute the plan,
- Put your customers first,
- And, stay alert and focused on your goals.
Collectively these are very important for any company’s success. But with many companies doing these things, new businesses still fail more than 80% of the time. This is because any company seriously interested in success must do much more. Here are some additional critical actions a company should put into practice to beat the odds and succeed.
Keep Learning
The moment you think you know enough to guarantee your company success, you are actually on the road to failure. Smart business leaders constantly put themselves in learning situations. This means continuing relevant classes, becoming mentees to successful business people, and dissecting companies that are succeeding the way they want their company to succeed.
This constant striving for pertinent knowledge keeps them prepared to steer the company correctly and to recognise critical points in the life of their business and how to manoeuvre. Knowledge is king when it comes to business success, and there are plenty of guides out there to help you.
Get a Comprehensive Indemnity Insurance Policy
It is not discussed enough, but many businesses face massive challenges from unforeseen lawsuits. You can think you have all the bases covered and do everything right, but the unforeseen happens, and someone gets injured, or you do not fulfil an obligation, and a lawsuit is brought against your company. Without the proper insurance, your company can be exposed to great damage, and in some cases it might be damage from which it cannot recover.
The way to avoid this is to buy a professional indemnity insurance policy from a top provider. This type of policy can cover your business up to £5 million, pay your defence costs in the case of a lawsuit including solicitors’ fees and expert counsel, and pay your compensation bills. This type of policy becomes your best defence if you’re found to have provided poor services, bad advice or dodgy design, which has resulted in your clients or others losing money.
Create Great Communication with Your Employees
You, of course, need to hire skilled and dedicated employees, but you need to do much more. As a manager, you need to know exactly what your employees are thinking at all times. Are they happy? Do they feel appreciated? Are they unsure about what you think of them? Are your expectations of them clear? Are any of them having problems at home because of their work commitments? Are any of them thinking about quitting? If you cannot answer all of these questions with certainty, you need to develop close communication with your employees.
Make sure that they know you are interested in what they have to say and how they feel. And allow them to take advantage of being able to communicate with you directly, without fear of being chastised or punished if it goes against what your thoughts are about them or their abilities. They need this space to be honest with you.
If you find that some of your employees are worried about neglecting their home life and responsibilities because of work commitments, you should discuss with them how to rectify the situation.
Perhaps they can work from home part of the time. Maybe you can rearrange their schedules so they can spend more time with the kids during the week. The benefit to you is happier employees who connect their work lives with their real lives in a healthy way. Also, this deeper level of communication will likely increase their productivity because they know that they are being considered in the bigger picture.
Business success is dependent on many critical factors, but all of these factors are within your control. Take the time to evaluate your options and build from there.
Make Full Use of Technology
The proliferation of business software applications in recent years has simplified many of the processes needed to run a company.
Software can help you reduce the amount of time you spend on administrative tasks. While most businesses use accounting software, there are a host of other tools you should probably be using. Expense software such as Receipt Bank can help you seamlessly record your invoices and receipts into your accounting programme.
If you are an employer, software can help you better manage your staff. By using HR software such as CakeHR, you can perform any number of tasks from managing annual leave to conducting performance reviews to onboarding new employees.
CRM software can help you manage client data all in one place and enable you to better serve your customers. Meanwhile, project management software such as Monday.com and Trello can help your teams work more effectively together, thereby improving productivity.
With so many cloud based solutions on the market, you are sure to be able to find a cost effective solution to fulfill your needs.