BusinessHABEase Ways to Manage Your Business: In simple terms, leverage means using resources to maximum advantage. In business, these resources include your time, effort, money, knowledge and people. With leverage, you increase your ability to do more with less – building profit along the way.
You work smarter, not harder. You get more sales at lower costs. And increase profit through efficiency. Your people work together and enjoy the relationships that come from teamwork. You deliver what you promise so customers keep coming back.
It’s a win-win for you, your people and your customers. Here are 4 ways to leverage your business.
Also read; 110 Hot-Selling Products for Export Business in Nigeria
1. Time | Focus on What Matters
How much time do you spend on activities that create value? By value, I mean tasks that directly produce sales, grow profit, improve service and delivery or help others do these things.
Take some time to analyze how you spend your time. Then focus on the critical tasks while eliminating, delegating or outsourcing others.
Here are a few things that will help you do this:
- Have goals and an action plan. Without goals, everything seems important.
- Tap into technology. Your calendar and to-do list are as close as your phone.
- Schedule time beyond meetings. Important tasks should be scheduled too.
- Turn off distractions. Your phone, email and people. Interruptions are time killers.
2. Sales | More Customers With Less Effort:
When it comes to maximizing revenue, your marketing and sales channels can go a long way toward improving this area.
Good marketing with clear messages and targets can help you attract quality prospects. Why chase after the wrong people and waste a lot of time trying to convert them? Combine this with a great sales management system – and you get more customers with a lot less effort.
Next, think about sales channels. You can personally sell to individual prospects in a traditional one-to-one manner. You can grow exponentially faster by selling online, but this model doesn’t work for all businesses. So why not build a network of people who sell to the same people you do. Then let them do the work and pay them a fee for the sales they generate. You both win. Again, you get a lot more sales with a lot less effort.
17 Ways to Request and Accept Payment for International Exports in Nigeria
3. People | Help Them Be the Best They Can Be
Your people may be your most valuable asset, but only if you leverage their skills and capabilities.
It starts when you hire and bring them on board. Invest the time to find the right people to join your company – even when you feel rushed to get someone in there. But even the most skilled individuals need time to learn and understand YOUR business. Orientation and training are critical to getting them off the ground running and contributing. Especially today, new hires want to feel that they are making a difference or they won’t stick around.
If you have low employee turnover and long-tenured team members, hiring may not be a priority. But you should still look for ways to leverage your people. Are you maximizing their skills and providing new challenges and opportunities?
As your business grows and technology changes, job responsibilities will also change. When was the last time you looked at your organization structure, positions, and job descriptions? Are they still relevant? Do your people have the skills and knowledge to take on additional or different work? This is an area often overlooked. But it can improve workflow processes and keep your team engaged and challenged.
4. Effort | It’s All About Systems
Regardless of industry, every business has key processes to develop products and services, build demand, satisfy demand and manage the business. These include common functions such as marketing, sales, customer service, manufacturing, shipping, service delivery, technology, human resources, finance and strategic planning.
A lot of tasks! But the more efficiently you operate, the more profitable you become. You can leverage all areas of the business when you ask the right questions, focus on continuous improvement and take advantage of technology and people. You can take it a step further when you look for others/partners to help you grow without doing the work!
When you master the leverage game, you get more of what you want with a lot less effort. Pick one of the areas above to focus on and get started.
5. Leverage Your Business With Systems
Must read article, How to Start Side Hustle Business in Nigeria
If you are serious about creating leverage with systems, visit my website and check out my Ultimate Systems and Procedures Guide. Designed specifically for small business owners, my step-by-step guide with templates and examples makes it easy to do it yourself.
Joan Nowak is a business coach, consultant, and trainer. With an emphasis on results, she helps small/medium size businesses build profit through leverage – marketing, sales, operations, systems and people.
- You know what’s best for you, not somebody else.
When you’re calm and tuned in to your heart, you’re definitely your own best authority. Now, if you’re emotionally sideways or in the thick of a heavy issue, don’t make any earth-shattering decisions. When you come back to a neutral place, you’ll see more clearly and take actions that will serve you. You may listen to all the outside advice you’d like, but in the end, you have to make the choice that feels best to you.
- Things go quicker, easier, and cost less.
When you look at the standard process for creating something in your business, you may accept it for the way it is. But what’s possible when you create a new standard? If Eva Gregory and I had listened to Chicken Soup for the Soul’s process for book publishing, we would’ve taken forever to write our book for them.They said it would take about 1.5 years. We said we knew it could take less. When we finally got the green light, the process took less than a year. The actual writing took three months. Easier than I’d ever imagined!
Another example is the purchase of my first house. I had no realtor and neither did the seller, who was out of communication in rehab. I had no prior experience in real estate. I took the sale on as a learning seminar.
When I finally went in to sign the escrow papers, they couldn’t believe how I’d completed the process by myself. (I found myself some loopholes.) Lots of people helped me, but my newbie spirit looked at everything as possible rather than as an obstacle.
Other post; 11 Ways to Start Abrasive Sodablasting Business in Nigeria
- Be a pioneer! If your mind can think it, you can create it.
If people settled for what was in front of them, nothing new would ever be created or invented. Sure, other people might tell you that you’re nuts when you think outside of their box. So what! They’ll try to convince you that your idea or way of thinking is impossible or illogical. If you have the vision, I promise it’s a worthy cause to pursue.Do you see something that can be improved upon in the world? Take action! Sure, the big dogs might already have a team working on it. But as history will show, newbies can and do prevail. Google took on Yahoo and MSN with some pretty sweet results.
- Current rules and choices may not fit you. Create a new choice for yourself.
When options a, b, and c don’t feel good, you’ve got to create choice d and maybe an e, f, and g. The best perspectives happen when you start looking for new combinations of the available elements. Let’s say you want to take some friends out for a special dinner. The two restaurants you had in mind are both booked solid for that evening. Don’t settle for something less.
If you knew you were going to get the ideal food, service, and atmosphere at those two restaurants, how would you handle this situation? You might get an idea to call back the restaurants with some wild pitch for them to let you in. If you were grounded, you possibly might get a yes. You also might talk to some friends to get new ideas. But you definitely wouldn’t let this minor setback throw you off.
The rules in the U.S. used to make it difficult to travel in Cuba. (Maybe they still do!) Do people find ways of doing it? Yes! And many of them are legal! You can always find a choice that meets all of your criteria. Stay in possibility and you will find your perfect solution.
When you’re truly following your heart, you’ll always make decisions that are in your highest good, as well as the good of others.
Read also; 24 Tips to all Self-employed Personals in Nigeria
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Jeanna Gabellini is a Master Business Coach who assists high achieving entrepreneurs, corporate leaders & their teams to leverage fun, systems and intentionality for high-octane results. An entrepreneur for 25 years she has a treasure trove of kick-butt tools to give you peace & profits.
BusinessHAB