Entrepreneurs – Signs That You Have Expanded Your Business Too Quickly
Entrepreneurs – Signs That You Have Expanded Your Business Too Quickly
The biggest sign is that your internal systems are starting to creek a bit. Where you could rely on a paper or spreadsheet system or notes are left on yellow stickies that doesn’t work any more. Messages are missed, orders are forgotten so your customers are unhappy. Payments to your suppliers are late so they are not delivering as quickly as you would like. Worse still you don’t chase your debtors very often and they are taking advantage of this, so there goes your cash flow.
You are promising your customers things that you cannot deliver – because you are just too busy. Your company standards slip because you don’t have the time or staff to deliver to and look after your customers like you used to do.
You hire more staff to help but you don’t have the time to train them properly so your business standards are slipping and your customers are complaining. Your office or shop is creaking at the seams and there does not seem to be enough space for them all.
You order in more stock and the space seems to get even smaller. Not to mention the car park that is so full of staff cars that your customers can’t get in!
Lastly and this is what usually brings it home to you – your partner and family start to complain that you do not spend enough time with them.
So what do you do? Well dust off your business plan and discover all over again what you wanted to do with the business.
• Take the day off – lock yourself away in your office or your home and plan out how you are going to handle customers, staff, stock, accounts and systems.
• Call your staff together tell them what you are going to do to make your business more efficient and enlist their help.
• Take your most trusted member of staff and ask him/her to help you.
• Put your less trained staff with a better trained member of staff and start a mentoring programme.
• Contact your customers and tell them about the new improvements and offer them a discount on their next purchase.
• Contact your suppliers and apologise and make arrangements to pay any arrears and pay on time in the future.
• Ask your staff for ideas about improving your systems and install an accounting programme if necessary.
• Put a member of staff in charge of chasing your debtors with a vengeance. Ensure that all future invoices say that a % charge will be made for late payment. Ditch the bad payers if necessary.
Keep focussed and good luck!
Entrepreneurs a Signs That You Have Expanded Your Business Too Quickly - To learn more about this author, visit 's Website.
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You have been running your business for some time and things are going well, but you are starting to notice that you are getting some problems and maybe your profits and turnover aren’t so good. Could you be expanding too quickly? Here are a few symptoms and some suggestions as to what you can do about it.
The biggest sign is that your internal systems are starting to creek a bit. Where you could rely on a paper or spreadsheet system or notes are left on yellow stickies that doesn’t work any more. Messages are missed, orders are forgotten so your customers are unhappy. Payments to your suppliers are late so they are not delivering as quickly as you would like. Worse still you don’t chase your debtors very often and they are taking advantage of this, so there goes your cash flow.
You are promising your customers things that you cannot deliver – because you are just too busy. Your company standards slip because you don’t have the time or staff to deliver to and look after your customers like you used to do.
You hire more staff to help but you don’t have the time to train them properly so your business standards are slipping and your customers are complaining. Your office or shop is creaking at the seams and there does not seem to be enough space for them all.
You order in more stock and the space seems to get even smaller. Not to mention the car park that is so full of staff cars that your customers can’t get in!
Lastly and this is what usually brings it home to you – your partner and family start to complain that you do not spend enough time with them.
So what do you do? Well dust off your business plan and discover all over again what you wanted to do with the business.
• Take the day off – lock yourself away in your office or your home and plan out how you are going to handle customers, staff, stock, accounts and systems.
• Call your staff together tell them what you are going to do to make your business more efficient and enlist their help.
• Take your most trusted member of staff and ask him/her to help you.
• Put your less trained staff with a better trained member of staff and start a mentoring programme.
• Contact your customers and tell them about the new improvements and offer them a discount on their next purchase.
• Contact your suppliers and apologise and make arrangements to pay any arrears and pay on time in the future.
• Ask your staff for ideas about improving your systems and install an accounting programme if necessary.
• Put a member of staff in charge of chasing your debtors with a vengeance. Ensure that all future invoices say that a % charge will be made for late payment. Ditch the bad payers if necessary.
Keep focussed and good luck!
Entrepreneurs a Signs That You Have Expanded Your Business Too Quickly - To learn more about this author, visit 's Website.
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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