Far too often the focus in business is on turnover or revenue as the main indicator of success. It is true that cash is king and cash flow is vital to survival. However, the most important focus for us all in growing our businesses should be on increasing our business profit.

We need to take a cold hard look at how much profit we are currently generating, set goals for our profit level and identify the key changes and actions that will help us achieve this.

By applying relatively small changes across a number of areas of the business, this can compound the effect to raise profit levels considerably.

At Building Bridges we use a business development system that is proven to increase profit by 68%. This is done by focusing on 5 main areas of your business and working to make changes in these areasto create significant growth.

NB. You can find out more about this at one of our regular FREE events (contact Building Bridges for details).

We first need to be mindful of the factors that can eat into our profit levels:

  • Impulsive spending – where are we making purchases that are not thought out and will not provide a good return on investment?
  • Small margins – which products and services are we making minimal margins on and what should our strategy be for dealing with this?
  • Your customers – which are the customers that are high maintenance and eat into our time and costs?
  • Loan interest – are we paying over the odds and can we look to renegotiate and find a new deal?
  • Suppliers – are our suppliers charging us considerably over the going rate and are we on punitive terms and conditions?

 

These are all areas where we can make changes to improve our profit position.

We also need to proactively go out to raise profit levels using further strategies:

  •  Improve our marketing and sales procedures to get more customers
  • Get our customers to buy more often and increase how much they buy
  • Manage our costs, both the fixed costs and the costs associated with a sale.

 

On the latter subject, these are all areas where we can manage our costs:

  • Look for lower interest rates and improved financing
  • Improve the deal we are getting from suppliers or find new suppliers
  • Look at our hours of operation and whether these can be reduced
  • We may be able to lower the bases salary or our employees and have a portion based on performance measures.
  • Look at moving to lower cost business premises
  • Eliminate areas where spending is not being used and appreciated. Memberships and subscriptions are a good starting place for this.

 

It is also worth reviewing the pricing strategy for your products and services, as a well thought out price rise may well be a good route to raise profit levels. Some things to bear in mind here are:

  • Look at your competition and what they are offering.
  • Distinguish yourself effectively to provide an opportunity for higher pricing.
  • Look at the margins you are making in each area and see whether this implies a need to raise prices for certain products and services.
  • Look at where you can provide increased valuetoincrease your prices.

 

As indicated earlier, profit is built from a number of areas and by making the right changes in each area, small changes can compound to provide significant results.

Join us at a free event or arrange a free 30 minute consultation to develop a clear strategy for your profit growth.