This is part 2 of a two-part series of blog articles I developed and wrote, specifically aimed at the small business owner, to unpack the essential characteristics that one needs in today’s volatile marketplace to succeed and become profitable.
My main goal was to focus on how we should approach our businesses (Part 1 of 2), and, the kind of concrete actions and behaviors we need to do more of (Part 2 of 2) to ensure we drive operations, boost income, secure cash flow, increase sales, and navigate the tax landscape with confidence.
This then the second part, and I do hope you leave this article feeling inspired anew to take on the challenge of owning and operating a small to medium enterprise within the South African landscape.
May you indeed be inspired!
Strategic Leverage of Digital Assets
We have to realize that we cannot survive in a digital media by just existing online. A website and social media accounts are not enough; we have to move towards a more strategic approach and be more efficient in our efforts by using the right tools and techniques.
Ad spend must be directed to reaching our ideal customer within a specific geographic area. Go into campaigns with compelling offers, even if that means taking lower margins. Forget about vanity metrics, and track conversions and ROI. Know what the size of the bangs is you are getting for your buck.
Make sure to keep a close eye on your brand’s visibility by ensuring you meet the local search engine optimization (SEO) criteria. At the very least, you want your business to pop up in the search results for your area.
Do not lose track of your current and regular customers. Utilise tools such as email marketing, newsletters, discount vouchers, and WA Business to re-engage past customers or to announce promotions. If your customers supported you before and you offer an excellent service or product at a reasonable price, chances are they will buy from you again.
Make sure you can sell and market online; this opens up a 24/7 revenue stream. This approach expands your marketing reach, reduces cost per lead, improves customer engagement, and drives direct sales.
Proactive Cash Flow Management
Active and engaged financial management begins with being in charge of every cent that goes in and out of your business.
Accelerate payment and collection by invoicing immediately, follow up rigorously, and offer multiple convenient payment options (EFT, online payments, mobile payments).
To provide you with greater cash flow reach, make sure you regularly negotiate favourable payment terms with your suppliers. Negotiate longer payment terms with suppliers, but try to keep customers’ terms shorter, not because you are mean, but because every day counts!
Take a ruthless approach to cut unnecessary expenses. Review all monthly subscriptions, operational costs, and energy usage. See if paying cash may save you unnecessary interest.
Build a reasonable cash reserve. Even a small money buffer can prevent panicked decisions during lean periods or cash flow shortages. The rule of thumb is to build a reserve that will allow you to continue operating for three months without any income. This may take a while to generate, but the peace of mind it can create has saved many a company before.
Refining Your Value Proposition & Upselling
It is critical to evaluate and articulate why customers should choose your business and then to offer them even more. Too little is being done to position customers at the centre of all operations and decision-making.
Are you clear in your communication, marketing, and messaging about the exact problem your products and services solve for your customers?
What exactly makes you genuinely different and better than your competitors? Price is a race to the bottom. Focus on unique benefits and consistently differentiate yourself from the competition. This is a lot harder to do than most companies think. Be good at telling your customers how you are different and why it matters.
Teach every member of staff how to become a master upseller! Once a customer is satisfied or blown away by your unique product or service, ask how you can offer them complementary products/services that genuinely add value and increase their lifetime value to your business even more.
An increase in the average transaction value will boost repeat business, strengthen customer loyalty, and directly impact overall revenue, allowing you to offer a wide range of new services and products to your customers.
Collaboration is the New Networking
Look beyond your immediate circle for growth and start by engaging with local business forums such as local chambers of commerce or industry-specific associations. These are incredible sources of leads, partnerships, and shared knowledge.
Try to seek out complementary partnerships specifically. Can you partner with a non-competing business to offer joint services or cross-promote? For example, a bakery and a coffee shop, or an IT consultant and a web designer.
Leverage the experience of others, or share your own, to build valuable relationships. This can take the form of several mentorship sessions or a few presentations to a group of young business owners, upcoming entrepreneurs, or colleagues in the same industry.
Don’t be afraid to reach out and share your experiences. Take pictures, share them in your social media accounts. Expand your reach, tag other professionals for engagement, and open up conversations. These actions generate referrals and provide meaningful learning opportunities.
This kind of focused and sincere collaboration, combined with an openness to share skills, knowledge, and experiences, opens doors to new markets without massive marketing spend.
Stay Ahead with Regulations and Tax Compliance
An essential first step to stay ahead of SARS and other regulatory bodies is to engage with a registered accountant, preferably also a registered tax practitioner. One of the main tasks of your accountant is to ensure you are compliant, to identify legitimate deductions, and to plan for tax obligations.
Another critical step is to make sure you understand the basics of all key legislation related to, for example, POPI, B-BBEE, VAT, and Income Tax, to name a few.
Embrace new technologies and utilize digital tools such as cloud accounting software and document management systems, improving accuracy and reducing time spent on recordkeeping and accounting.
Like your cash reserve, make sure you set aside your tax provisions. Don't fall behind on any payments due to SARS. Budget for your tax obligations throughout the year and make the payment when they need to be made.
Avoid crippling tax penalties for late or non-payment, like the plague! It frees up your time and ensures your financial house is in a position for sustainable growth, making sure you can sleep at night and know your business is in sound financial hands.
Closing Remarks
As I bring this blog series to a close, I am reminded of an important story told to me by a close friend.
At the time, she was working as a property sales executive in an open-plan sales office. One Monday, after a dismal attendance at her show house over the weekend, her boss and sales manager called her to his office.
He asked her how she was, and she, quite emotional, explained her frustration of not having collected one potential buyer’s details, and she was thinking of quitting.
Her boss, after listening to her outburst and frustrations, told her that it was impossible, almost a mathematical certainty, for her to work that hard, week after week, and not to be successful.
And he was right, two years later she was crowned as the top sales executive in the group and has continued a marvelous career. You see, I think it’s like that with all of us at some point in our business. We work, we struggle, we take chances, we put in the hours, but without success.
Agreed, that can genuinely be disheartening, but this is where we also need to believe in the total of all our small, sometimes insignificant actions and the knock-on effect of all those small steps.
My message to you then: Just keep on working every day, be loyal to your clients and your income, be kind to your staff and clients, and you will see your empire rise. Of that I am most sure of.
Be brave. Be bold. Be your best!
For any assistance with critical business decisions, tax queries, analyzing your financial data, or for any accounting-related services you may require, please take a look at our comprehensive portfolio of services or call us on +27 82 561 7024.
You can also send us an email at myrtleo@mbasa.org for more information.
My main goal was to focus on how we should approach our businesses (Part 1 of 2), and, the kind of concrete actions and behaviors we need to do more of (Part 2 of 2) to ensure we drive operations, boost income, secure cash flow, increase sales, and navigate the tax landscape with confidence.
This then the second part, and I do hope you leave this article feeling inspired anew to take on the challenge of owning and operating a small to medium enterprise within the South African landscape.
May you indeed be inspired!
Strategic Leverage of Digital Assets
We have to realize that we cannot survive in a digital media by just existing online. A website and social media accounts are not enough; we have to move towards a more strategic approach and be more efficient in our efforts by using the right tools and techniques.
Ad spend must be directed to reaching our ideal customer within a specific geographic area. Go into campaigns with compelling offers, even if that means taking lower margins. Forget about vanity metrics, and track conversions and ROI. Know what the size of the bangs is you are getting for your buck.
Make sure to keep a close eye on your brand’s visibility by ensuring you meet the local search engine optimization (SEO) criteria. At the very least, you want your business to pop up in the search results for your area.
Do not lose track of your current and regular customers. Utilise tools such as email marketing, newsletters, discount vouchers, and WA Business to re-engage past customers or to announce promotions. If your customers supported you before and you offer an excellent service or product at a reasonable price, chances are they will buy from you again.
Make sure you can sell and market online; this opens up a 24/7 revenue stream. This approach expands your marketing reach, reduces cost per lead, improves customer engagement, and drives direct sales.
Proactive Cash Flow Management
Active and engaged financial management begins with being in charge of every cent that goes in and out of your business.
Accelerate payment and collection by invoicing immediately, follow up rigorously, and offer multiple convenient payment options (EFT, online payments, mobile payments).
To provide you with greater cash flow reach, make sure you regularly negotiate favourable payment terms with your suppliers. Negotiate longer payment terms with suppliers, but try to keep customers’ terms shorter, not because you are mean, but because every day counts!
Take a ruthless approach to cut unnecessary expenses. Review all monthly subscriptions, operational costs, and energy usage. See if paying cash may save you unnecessary interest.
Build a reasonable cash reserve. Even a small money buffer can prevent panicked decisions during lean periods or cash flow shortages. The rule of thumb is to build a reserve that will allow you to continue operating for three months without any income. This may take a while to generate, but the peace of mind it can create has saved many a company before.
Refining Your Value Proposition & Upselling
It is critical to evaluate and articulate why customers should choose your business and then to offer them even more. Too little is being done to position customers at the centre of all operations and decision-making.
Are you clear in your communication, marketing, and messaging about the exact problem your products and services solve for your customers?
What exactly makes you genuinely different and better than your competitors? Price is a race to the bottom. Focus on unique benefits and consistently differentiate yourself from the competition. This is a lot harder to do than most companies think. Be good at telling your customers how you are different and why it matters.
Teach every member of staff how to become a master upseller! Once a customer is satisfied or blown away by your unique product or service, ask how you can offer them complementary products/services that genuinely add value and increase their lifetime value to your business even more.
An increase in the average transaction value will boost repeat business, strengthen customer loyalty, and directly impact overall revenue, allowing you to offer a wide range of new services and products to your customers.
Collaboration is the New Networking
Look beyond your immediate circle for growth and start by engaging with local business forums such as local chambers of commerce or industry-specific associations. These are incredible sources of leads, partnerships, and shared knowledge.
Try to seek out complementary partnerships specifically. Can you partner with a non-competing business to offer joint services or cross-promote? For example, a bakery and a coffee shop, or an IT consultant and a web designer.
Leverage the experience of others, or share your own, to build valuable relationships. This can take the form of several mentorship sessions or a few presentations to a group of young business owners, upcoming entrepreneurs, or colleagues in the same industry.
Don’t be afraid to reach out and share your experiences. Take pictures, share them in your social media accounts. Expand your reach, tag other professionals for engagement, and open up conversations. These actions generate referrals and provide meaningful learning opportunities.
This kind of focused and sincere collaboration, combined with an openness to share skills, knowledge, and experiences, opens doors to new markets without massive marketing spend.
Stay Ahead with Regulations and Tax Compliance
An essential first step to stay ahead of SARS and other regulatory bodies is to engage with a registered accountant, preferably also a registered tax practitioner. One of the main tasks of your accountant is to ensure you are compliant, to identify legitimate deductions, and to plan for tax obligations.
Another critical step is to make sure you understand the basics of all key legislation related to, for example, POPI, B-BBEE, VAT, and Income Tax, to name a few.
Embrace new technologies and utilize digital tools such as cloud accounting software and document management systems, improving accuracy and reducing time spent on recordkeeping and accounting.
Like your cash reserve, make sure you set aside your tax provisions. Don't fall behind on any payments due to SARS. Budget for your tax obligations throughout the year and make the payment when they need to be made.
Avoid crippling tax penalties for late or non-payment, like the plague! It frees up your time and ensures your financial house is in a position for sustainable growth, making sure you can sleep at night and know your business is in sound financial hands.
Closing Remarks
As I bring this blog series to a close, I am reminded of an important story told to me by a close friend.
At the time, she was working as a property sales executive in an open-plan sales office. One Monday, after a dismal attendance at her show house over the weekend, her boss and sales manager called her to his office.
He asked her how she was, and she, quite emotional, explained her frustration of not having collected one potential buyer’s details, and she was thinking of quitting.
Her boss, after listening to her outburst and frustrations, told her that it was impossible, almost a mathematical certainty, for her to work that hard, week after week, and not to be successful.
And he was right, two years later she was crowned as the top sales executive in the group and has continued a marvelous career. You see, I think it’s like that with all of us at some point in our business. We work, we struggle, we take chances, we put in the hours, but without success.
Agreed, that can genuinely be disheartening, but this is where we also need to believe in the total of all our small, sometimes insignificant actions and the knock-on effect of all those small steps.
My message to you then: Just keep on working every day, be loyal to your clients and your income, be kind to your staff and clients, and you will see your empire rise. Of that I am most sure of.
Be brave. Be bold. Be your best!
For any assistance with critical business decisions, tax queries, analyzing your financial data, or for any accounting-related services you may require, please take a look at our comprehensive portfolio of services or call us on +27 82 561 7024.
You can also send us an email at myrtleo@mbasa.org for more information.
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