Grow Your Small Business: Here’s What You Need to Know

Hey there, fellow entrepreneur! Congratulations on getting your business off the ground. Now, you’re probably wondering how to increase your sales and keep your business growing. Well, we’ve got some tips from an accounting professional—a CPA—that you can implement to give your profits a boost!

No matter how long you’ve been in business, you’ve had your share of challenges, so it’s crucial to focus on profitable strategies and continuous improvement. By constantly innovating, closely tracking the numbers that matter, and getting an outside perspective every now and then, you can achieve sustainable growth.

That’s why we’ve put together this article – to highlight a few areas where making just one small change could lead to a nice boost in your bank account. As accountants, it’s our duty to examine both sides of the coin and provide you with insightful analysis to assist you in making the best decisions for your successful business. So grab a cup of coffee and let’s dive in!

Truth #1: Innovation In An Ever-Changing Market

Your creative ideas brought life to your business and your innovation keeps it alive. The market is flexible and susceptible to change, especially after surviving massive changes during the pandemic. If you are not adapting to changes, then you could be missing lucrative opportunities right in front of you.

There are a few things you should continually monitor to ensure you are one step ahead of the competition. These include evolving customer needs, industry trends, and new technology. One important question to always ask yourself is, “How can I tweak this to give me an edge in the market?”

What are some strategies for innovation?

• Communicate regularly with your clients

Maintaining strong relationships with clients is crucial to the success of any business. Regular communication can help you stay top of mind, and your clients can also provide you with reviews, testimonials, and referrals, in addition to repeat sales.  Not only that, but by staying in touch with your clients, you can gain valuable feedback to continually improve your small business and even keep track of how their needs and preferences evolve so you can position your business to best meet their needs.

• Stay on top of trends

Keeping an eye on current on-demand trends in your industry can help you anticipate where the market is going and how best to adapt. By analyzing trends, you can see what is or isn’t working for your competition and adopt the best strategies for your business.  This can include product or service offerings, marketing channels, pricing strategies, and even use of technology. Speaking of technology…

• Use the best technology and automate where possible

As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to improve efficiency and cut costs. Technology is evolving at breakneck speed and is one of the largest overlooked leverage opportunities in any business across the country. Business automation is one such example – by automating repetitive tasks, you can free up your time to focus on what really matters – growing your business. The cost of technology is often less than the cost of staff time, and with fewer costly errors. Plus, with increased productivity, your staff will  have more time available to allocate to higher value tasks.

DISCOVER: 4 Best Accounting Software Options For Small Businesses Recommended by a CPA

Here are some questions you can ask yourself and your staff to start thinking about how to constantly improve your business operations:

• How can I more quickly build trust with prospective clients – marketing, sales, post-purchase?
• Have I given them a compelling reason to do business with me as opposed to my competitors?
• How can I make it easier for them to do business with me?
• How often do I call my best clients and ask for their feedback on our product or service?

LEARN MORE: 10 Questions to Ask Your Accountant Before You Hire Them

Truth #2: Focus On The Right Numbers (Ignore The Noise)

Tracking the right metrics is crucial for making informed decisions to grow and develop your business. But it’s also necessary to avoid being distracted by vanity metrics or those that don’t ultimately drive your business. With marketing efforts increasingly moving online, there is no shortage of metrics these days – clicks, opens, impressions, conversions, likes, and shares, to name a few. Email marketing has become the main digital marketing tool for many small businesses, while more recent trends such as live streaming and influencer marketing have been on the rise.

Bad news: When you’re facing a screen jam-packed with metrics, it’s difficult to know which ones to focus on.

Good news: There are usually no more than a handful of metrics which are the key drivers of any business’s success once you really dig into the numbers. These will vary based on your business model and industry, so identifying the ones that matter most to you can help you in achieving sustainable growth.

The first thing to do when you feel bombarded with numbers is to figure out which ones actually matter. Inevitably, there will be some relationships between the metrics you’re looking at – some will be leading indicators, some will be lagging, some will reflect symptoms, and some will provide insight into the cause.  If you’re unsure of which metrics to look for, you can always consult with an accounting professional.

Once you identify the metrics that matter for your business, make sure to regularly track them, and more importantly, use the information to make better and more profitable data-driven decisions for your business. Make sure to align your strategy with these metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs), making sure that all business activities, from product development to marketing, are geared towards achieving the desired outcomes.

For example, if one of your KPIs is customer retention, your strategy may focus on post-purchase reassurance, improving the customer experience and consistently underpromising and over-delivering value. By identifying and focusing on the right metrics, and aligning your strategy accordingly, you can more easily achieve sustained growth and success.

Truth #3: You Can Only Get So Far Without Help

As a small business owner, your goal is to grow your small business, but the reality is that you can’t do it all on your own. Making a business successful requires a wide range of skills, including finance, marketing, operations, HR, and sales, as well as managing all the moving parts and people. It’s unrealistic to expect to become an expert in each discipline and likely not the highest value use of your time, so this is where your staff come in.

While you concentrate on working on the business rather than in it, your vital staff handle the daily duties necessary to keep the company running. In your role as owner, it’s crucial to concentrate on strategy and plans for continued growth – driving innovation, implementing new systems, investigating new markets, and establishing connections with major partners and customers are a few examples.

The major challenge you will encounter is that you are too close to your business to critically see where the largest opportunities lie. You’ve become accustomed to your current ways of doing things and they’ve likely served you well. But you are, with almost complete certainty, overlooking potential that exists in your business because it’s nearly impossible to get perspective and look objectively at your business when you are involved in the day to day. The old saying “you can’t see the forest for the trees” reminds me why an outside perspective is so valuable.

Additionally, an outside perspective might offer new insights into areas of improvement, help you uncover blind spots, solve challenging situations, and suggest innovations to adapt from your competitors or even other industries. An outside professional with a fresh perspective can look at your business with a critical eye and identify where you might be leaving money on the table.

Every business faces challenges and obstacles, and sometimes these can feel insurmountable. While it’s important to have confidence in the skills that have taken you this far, it’s equally important to recognize that you don’t have to go it alone. Seeking help from professionals in areas like finance, marketing, operations, and human resources can provide fresh perspectives and expertise to help you overcome these challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. By working collaboratively with professionals bringing an outside perspective, you can unlock more of your business’s potential and realize previously overlooked opportunities.

READ MORE: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Accounting and Tax Services in Canada

Manage Your Business: How To Benefit From These Truths?

You’re probably wondering what steps to take next after reading through this far. Here’s a list of 5 potential actions applicable to your business:

1. Call one of your best clients and ask for their honest feedback on how you can better meet their needs
2. Research industry trends – if you’re unsure how to do this, you can read industry publications, use your competitors for inspiration or even go further afield by looking at what industry peers in different markets are doing
3. Examine your business processes to identify areas where technology could automate work or at least improve productivity
4. Identify a few key metrics that are the most impactful for your business and start tracking them regularly to enable more profitable and data-driven business decisions
5. Have conversations specifically around business growth with outside professionals, such as your small business accountant, to benefit from their expertise and fresh perspective

When growing your business, it’s helpful to have a team of professionals by your side. Your lawyer is the expert for legal related matters, while we believe your accountant is the best positioned to understand your business finances, inside and out. A qualified CPA can help you understand  your financial statements and provide recommendations and business advice for growth. Accounting professionals have the benefit of working with many businesses like yours and seeing firsthand the financial results of what is working and what is not. By combining innovative ideas, a focus on the right metrics, and the right resources and support team, you can give your business the best chance for success and growth.

Debunking 5 Myths About Starting and Growing your Business

1. You need huge funds to start a business

This isn’t always true. Yes, some businesses need a big starting fund, but many others don’t. Today, with the internet and working from home, you can start a business on a tight budget. Start small, test your ideas, then grow from there.

2. You can’t sustain rapid business growth

This is a myth. With good planning and flexibility, businesses can keep growing fast. The trick is to keep checking your plans and adjusting them as you go.

3. You need to hire staff immediately

You don’t always need a big team to start. Many successful businesses begin with one or a few people. As your business gets bigger and busier, that’s when you might need to hire more people.

4. Business growth depends on the industry

While your industry can impact your business, it’s not the only thing that matters. Many businesses succeed in tough industries by being unique, offering great service, or coming up with new ideas. What matters most is how you run your business.

5. You have to take risks all the time

Running a business does involve taking risks, but they should be well-thought-out risks. Not every decision should be a big gamble. The most successful entrepreneurs make decisions based on research and good advice. Often, steady, small improvements can lead to big growth.

Now that you have some new strategies to implement into your business, what’s next? Are you ready to take your small business to the next level? With the right accountant, you can do so much more for your business. We’ve made it easy for you, so with just a few clicks, you can connect with a wide range of highly qualified and experienced accountants, each with their unique areas of expertise.

Whether you’re looking for help with taxes, financial planning, or any other aspect of your business, CPA Guide has you covered. As accounting professionals, we’ve seen firsthand how small businesses grow when they leverage the right professional expertise. In CPA Guide, we help with just that. So let us do the hard work and  find the right accountant for you!