New year may bring change in our habits, but it’s giving a time line of 10 more days to set many things afresh. Get the ‘10 Business Growth Hacks for 2023’ implemented so that your get 10% growth in revenue and 20% growth in profit month on month.
10 Growth Hacks for SME Business
1. Business Budget for Jan 2023
Get the P&L report (profit and loss) of November 2022 from your accountant. Then prepare the budget for January 2023 based on November P&L.
Budget need to contain,
- Revenue channels (verticals)
- Direct expenses (fixed & variable)
- Indirect Expenses (fixed & variable)
- Other Income
Purpose of budget is to aim at 10% growth in revenue and 20% growth in profit. Include your key employees to arrive at the figures of increased income and reduced expense.
2. Cost controlling
Once again make use of last month P&L and next month budget and identify your top 5-7 expenses. Dig deep on these figures and find ways to bring it down by 20%.
Example,
Power – Note down the electricity reading every day at 9AM and at 7PM and monitor day & night consumptions. Get the help of a local electrician to do a power audit. Old UPS, equipment, usage of lights & fans after working hour all shooting up your bill.
Purchase – Negotiate for fresh rates. You can try 20% of your purchase to a new supplier. Procure items in advance to avoid last minute purchase, which you lose command on rates.
Fuel – Get the log book implemented
Pre-approval – Make sure that all expenses need to be pre-approved by department heads well in advance. Curtail the habit of spending first and then getting approved.
3. Revenue Growth
Get your sales records for last one year and analyse. And make a list of customer or product line or area you lost for the last 6 months. Reach out to them and bring back. It is easier to get the old customers than to find new.
4. Expansion
Identify new market or product line or verticals. Start expanding your business to this new area. Expansions are not for business growth alone; you get new learning from it.
Do you know,
- Automotive spray painting is done for home interior works
- Animal driven vehicles (bullock cart) are market for Tyres
5. Productivity
One of the top 3 expenses would be employee cost. 20% of employees are likely to be underutilised. Do an employee productivity audit on the measurable output of every person. Insights you get from this exercise will help you to redeploy your work force for better output.
6. Automation
Plenty of cloud-based tools are available to get our work done. Imagine you pay subscription charge of 10k per month and productivity, quality and deficiency of your team improves by 25%.
Create an Automation Champion in your company to explore such tools and get the automation done. Project management, work management, work flow, customer relations, HR all can be automated.
7. Fresh breath for Marketing and Brand Building
Keep your presents live and active among your past, present and future customers and prospects. So, make use of social media and digital marketing. This is fuel to your future growth. You cannot get this done quickly when you need it. So, keep building this up. Believe, after 5 years an investor is going to value your company by 10X than what it is today.
8. CDO (Chief Destruction Officer)
Assign the role of CDO to people. CDO will remove all systems, process, technology, roles and infra which is obsolete and function as obstacle to your business growth. In fact, he is creating space, time, energy and opportunity for the new developments. You need not have CDO full time, get the role executed by your persons.
9. Visit Market Leaders
Fundamental technique used in business management is not to reinvent wheels. Plenty of successful business are around us. Do visit market leader and learn from them. You tell them your purpose of visit. Some will open up, some hide, some mislead. But, you still learn. A market leader means businesses who are number one or two in their respective operations. It ranges from MNCs to a local shop in the street.
10. Assign Process Owners
Identify process owner for each of the hacks mentioned above. Encourage them to get the desired result. You get the company grow as well as develop the leadership within your company.
Your company is as good as your team.
