Every business needs to make money. After all, profit means expansion and the ability to impact the community even more. When your business is successful, its success has a domino effect. You get to hire more employees and therefore impact more people’s lives, and help inject more capital into your community. Everybody wins.

For small business owners, it’s critical to be making a profit. The more viable the business, the longer it can retain staff, expand, and bring value to its customers and employees. But how do business owners large and small remain increasingly viable – short of resorting to cutting staff and salaries? Fortunately, there are many ways from automation to reducing costs to outsourcing to boost profits fast. Here are four strategies to help get you started!

1. Increase prices – but don’t alienate customers.

Sometimes business owners are afraid to raise prices; they fear that doing so would alienate customers. We must remember that in business, prices need to be raised periodically to meet rising costs, otherwise businesses suffer where it hurts – in their profits. Raising your prices can help to grow your profit margin and in most cases, small increases add up without affecting your relationship with customers. 

 2. Cut costs – find cheaper ways to do business.

This one is a no-brainer but so many businesses lag in this department. They get too comfortable doing things the “old way” or the way they’ve always been done. Just about every business can find cheaper, more cost-effective ways to do business. What about you? Can you outsource noncritical functions? Can you source or manufacture your products? Can you eliminate waste or streamline processes and services?

Going paperless for example, is not only better for the environment, but it helps your business rely less on paper – that alone saves your business money. When you go paperless, you not only save money on paper, but you don’t have to buy storage cabinets, folders, binders, and printer toner. Expert tip: If your business goes paperless, don’t forget to back up important documents. Once you do that, empty your file cabinets and prepare documents for shredding and then recycling in that order. 

3. Leverage technology.

One of the fastest ways to increase profits is to save time; every small business owner knows that time is a precious, finite resource. Saving time means you have more of it to focus on income-producing opportunities. Our advice is to leverage technology because your time is so valuable.

Automate processes to create efficiencies; use technology to help you keep better records, manage your customer relationships and even handle payroll. Here are some small business favs: Deluxe Payroll for payroll automation, MailChimp for email marketing, Buffer and Hootsuite for social media automation, and QuickBooks for tracking expenses. If you’re not already using these efficiency tools, you should get started today. 

4. Know your customers.

It’s important to understand your customers. You need to know who they are, what their needs are, and their pain points. Each customer is unique, so you can’t treat them all the same. Customize your services to fit each customer. If you don’t already know, determine who is most profitable; who has room to grow. From there, create and follow plans to keep them with you and growing. Always be thinking, “What more can I do for this customer? How else can I serve them? What other products or services can I deliver?”

In reality, increasing your profits comes down to: generating more revenue, lowering expenses, and increasing sales. However, you don’t have to do all three at once. When you make slight adjustments in one area, you’ll start noticing positive changes in many aspects of your business because everything is connected.

At AdviCoach, we offer business owners in-depth tips on increasing profits and efficiencies while cutting expenses. We evaluate your core operations and show you different ways to increase cash flow while lowering costs. If you can use this kind of help from a qualified business coach, call me and we can explore.