SMEs are vital to the UK economy.
They’re dynamic, innovative, full of ideas and open for business.
They’re also busy. TOO BUSY.
A recent study showed that 1 in 3 SMEs (including small and micro businesses) said they were ‘too busy’ to properly design a business growth strategy.
As a result, businesses are neglecting important elements of their business that are too often seen as being ‘non-essential’ to day-to-day business activities.
Things like social media, staff development and market analysis.
If you’ve ever put any of the above on the back burner because your To Do List is already a mile long, you could end up stifling your company’s future growth potential.
In this blog, we explore 5 things which can easily get lost in the shuffle and explain how you can put them back on the agenda.
Train
If you’re fighting against the tide of an ever-increasing to do list, planning some skills and development training for yourself or your staff might be at the back of your mind, especially if it means a day out of the office or an afternoon spent in the training room.
However, training is a great opportunity to expand the knowledge base of your employees, bring new skills into your teams and boost overall performance.
It’s also an opportunity to plan for the future. By training, developing and upskilling employees, your firm can be ready for the next stage in your company’s growth, the next big market development or the next business opportunity which you can win.
Promote
Marketing is key to the success of any business, but it’s no longer enough to send email campaigns and hope for the best.
Social media gives businesses a voice in a crowded market and a way to engage with customers and clients, build relationships and establish brand awareness and loyalty, but it’s amazing how many organisations can’t find the time to maintain a solid presence on social media.
In today’s market, social media marketing and effective online customer engagement is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s a cornerstone of a successful business growth strategy.
Manage
For big businesses, managing internal processes is straightforward. There’s the finance team, the admin team, the HR team, the customer services team and so on.
For smaller businesses, there may not be teams to handle each of these key areas. In fact, many of these internal processes could be tasked to a single member of staff.
As a result, finding time to file taxes, manage payroll, deal with HR queries and keep accounts in order can be an uphill struggle.
However, these activities are vital to the smooth running of any business, and your firm must be able to manage time effectively and invest in these areas to ensure they are well staffed and fully equipped to keep the firm running at a high standard.
Reflect
It can happen so easily. You finish one project and already the next deadline is looming. It’s constantly full steam ahead and you never get time to catch your breath.
But a crucial part of any effective business is the ability to reflect on what you’ve achieved, examine your last project and learn from your successes and failures. Otherwise you run the risk of repeating old mistakes and never improving your product or service.
Understanding where you went wrong, looking at the market, analysing your competitors and planning ahead are all crucial in developing a sound business strategy. The more you know about your market and your place within it, the better placed you’ll be to grow.
Grow
Which brings us to the final thing too many businesses simply don’t have time to do: Grow.
With your workload piling up around you and your eyes fixed on the computer screen, it’s difficult to look to the future of your business and move forward.
For small and even medium sized businesses, much of the difficulty in fully investing in the crucial business practices outlined above is a lack of time.
With limited staff and a lack of resources, every hour is critical, and businesses can’t afford to waste any time while sourcing new work, chasing dead leads or gathering vital market intelligence.
You need to put your time to better use if you want to realise your business potential.
Find, win and grow
Supply2Gov Tenders lets you manage your time better, so you can focus on the business processes all too often put to one side by businesses with big ambitions.
We find business opportunities from over 3000 sources and put them in one place, saving you valuable time and resources better spent on building a strategy for success.
In addition, we only deliver the contracts relevant to you, so you know that every contract is a real growth opportunity.
Sign up to a Supply2Gov coverage area that suits your business’ ambitions, with local, and UK wide packages available.