Tweet

8 Tips to Tune Up Your Business

Guest post by: MIchael Daley

Article Overview: A business service adviser can help your business run smooth and avoid future breakdowns. Whether it's preventive maintenance or a major repair, get an expert to fix it right the first time. Here are 8 tips to perform a business tune up.

8 Tips to Tune Up Your Business

Just like your car, a business needs a tune-up every once in awhile. Your business is made up of hundreds of complex components that work together to ensure that when the customer comes in to your retail store or website they can purchase a product or service. If any of these business components wear out or are neglected, the result can be a loss of sales or even worse, a bad customer experience. A tune-up not only provides preventative maintenance on your business but it also identifies worn out and ineffective processes. Just as a mechanic runs diagnostics and performs repairs, you should assess your business and make operational or process changes to improve performance.

Here are some tips to help you tune-up your business.

• Review your profit and loss statement as well as your balance sheet. Is there any waste that you can cut? If sales increased by 20% how are you spending the extra cash flow? Do you have enough cash to get you through the next quarter?



• Prepare an employee evaluation for everyone in the business. Make sure you have the best employees for each job function. Ask them what they can do better and what you can do better.



• Review your website. Does the content need to be updated? What do competitors' websites look like? Do all your links work? How do you appear on Google?



• Review your sales from your POS system. This can be done by comparing some data to last year. What is your average ticket and average customer count for a week? Rank your categories by income and identify those best selling items within each group. Start cutting the slowest selling SKUs by having a sale. Reorder the best sellers and try to increase their inventory by 20%. Ask your vendors for discounts or better shipping options.



• Do a physical inventory. How much retail money is on the floor? Are items grouped logically so that customer flow stimulates emotional buying? For instance, if you are a car dealer, put some special wheels on display in the showroom. Use display tables to create the illusion that products are a must-have, enticing customers to make impetuous purchasing decisions. If you cut back on inventory, make sure your displays do not look like the business is struggling. Move your racks or display cases to give the store a fresh look and clean everywhere!



• Determine how fast your merchandise turns over. Whether you determine a month's supply or a day's supply, knowing the turn of your inventory can tell you how long it will take to work through the inventory you purchased. To determine a month's supply, simply divide the retail value of your inventory by your average sales for a month. Each industry has its own guidelines for a normal inventory turn. If you want no more than a 90 day supply then if you sell $400,000 a year you never want more than $100,000 in stock. Of course this can fluctuate due to seasonality but it's a good guideline. Too much inventory? Then have a plan to sell out the slow movers. Don't buy more until you balance your inventory.



• Prepare a marketing plan for the next 12 months. If you already have one determine what's worked and what more needs to be done. Establish timetables and budgets.



• Review your customer lists. Do you have a program that keeps track of all your customers? Once you review most of the tune- up checklist and make changes to your operation or store, then send them an invitation to come see your new inventory selections or participate in a special sale? Do you have a list of potential customers? For instance, can a vendor become a customer? Have you reviewed all your customer guest books, email inquiries, or set up a referral incentive?

Properly maintaining your business with periodic check-ups can produce a robust atmosphere of enthusiastic employees, satisfied customers, efficient processes, and most important, a rapid acceleration to incremental profits. And if you are like me, I take my car to a qualified mechanic to have the tune up and get necessary repairs. You should take your business to a qualified, outside business adviser for an independent assessment and who can offer doable recommendations for improvement.

Maybe it's just preventive maintenance or it could be a major repair that your business needs. Conducting a comprehensive evaluation, review, and analysis of your business and operations will let you grab control and keep it running at peak performance.

Related Articles
  Salesmanship and Empathy
  Leading Is Like Playing the Guitar
  Performance Expectations - 5 Tips and 5 Questions
  Bookkeeping Tips on Tips
  3 Steps to Customer Intuition
  Easy Energy Fixes for Big Savings
  Five Tips for a Smoother, More Efficient Tax Time
  The Key in Life Coaching is Spiritual Empowerment
  Sales Tips I Learned from My Cat
  E-Mail Tip #24 - Using Proper Etiquitte
  Speakers, Coaches, and Experts: Write to Sell During a Recession
  Top 5 Tips For Good Customer Service
  Closing Too Early- The Risk of Overdoing it
  The Christmas Close - Insurance Sales Training
  Your Business Can Survive this Economy
  I Need to Read My Own Book
  Beginner's Mind
  BUSINESS / SOCIAL INTERACTIONS (LISTENING
  Company Newsletters Give You PR Control
  Increasing Your Impact and Influence - When You Don't Even Know Them

Article Tags: business, business tune up, customer, employees, inventory, maintenance, mechanic, preventive, profit, sales, tune up, website



Related Forum Posts
Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Exclusive: Interview with Results - Hi Forum Members, I'm helping start up a Business Coaching and Consulting company here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a Subsidiary of RSC Business in Los Angeles). As a Research and Development Intern I am required to practice my listening and interview skills by surveying Small and Medium Businesses on thier Business. This Survey is designed by RSC Business to also assist the Business being interviewed more insight into their own business. I am looking to interview about 30 businesses across North America over the span of 3 months. At the end of these interviews I will be publishing a report of the results and they will be made available for free to the Interviewees. The Report data will include responses from a minimum of 100 interviews. I would like to extend this opportunity to members of the Forum. If you would like to have this short 20-30 minute interview conducted on your Business and you reside in North America please send me an email or PM. Please contact me at andy[at]jvprosperity[dot]com to arrange our interview and to get free access to the results when they are published.
Re: HOw to market a B2B consulting company - [quote="zohahunt77":428owzbi]Hi, I was wondering if anyone can tell me the difference between B2B and B2C. I don’t know about b2b marketing but I have done marketing so know things about it. I will suggest you to take online services which will spread your business all over web network. Online marketing is the best way to market any business.[/quote:428owzbi] B2B = Business to Business - You are marketing to other businesses. B2C = Business to Consumer - You are marketing to consumers.
Patent Walk-Through - Hello everyone! My name is Alex, I'm 18 years old and I'm constantly drawing up new ideas and inventing stuff. I sketch stuff down everywhere I go and on anything I can write on. I'm a big member of our local Future Business Leaders of America chapter (FBLA). In the future I hope to work my way up to being a Venture Capitalist. I think of myself as a pretty creative person who is very motivated. Some of the ideas and inventions I come up with are pretty far out but others I consider marketable and to have great potential. Being 18, I have little to no connections and no resources. I've been surfing this site pretty frequently for the last year and have finally decided to join the forum group. Anyway, here's my question... Basically, I have no idea how to get a patent together the costs and the overall process. As of now, I think I have a great idea that, as far as I know has not, ever been done before. I'm really excited about this idea. I'm a total novice at this and am willing to learn all that I can. Any information that you can provide me with would be great. Again the main things I want to know are: 1.Overall Process. 2.How Long It Takes. 3.Costs. 4.Anything That You Think I Should Know. 5.Tips/Experiences. 6.Confidentiality. 7.Must I Make A Physical Model of My Idea? Thanks guys! -Alex


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Work at home Opportunities for the Disabled

••••••>SEO Tip Of The Day: HTML Validation

The Future of Online Marketing

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.