Spring is not only the perfect time to kick out the dust, clear the air and re-organize your home, it’s the perfect opportunity to revamp your business. As we come to the end of another week in lockdown, some of us might be finding we have a little more time on our hands. Instead of breaking out the mops, why not use this time to re-evaluate what’s working and what’s not in your business. We’ve put together a few of our top tips to help make sure your business is performing at its best.
Review your goals
Reminding yourself of your business goals and plan is a good way to check your progress. Are you where you need to be, or have you wandered from the path? Unless you spend time re-examining it’s hard to know if you are hitting your goals. It’s also a great way to evaluate whether your goalposts have moved and need to be relooked at. Even if your business is performing well it’s still important to review your goals. Perhaps you have exceeded them, which is fantastic, so what else can you be doing?
The priority here is to simply reflect, what’s worked well, what could have worked better and what improvements could you make. Your time is precious so make sure you prioritise what is important and what is going to bring the most value.
Clean up your CRM
Not always a simple task, but one which can be instrumental in keeping your business on track – cleaning up your CRM system. Having accurate data is crucial to the long-term success of any business. Use this time to make sure yours is in order so that you can get the most out of it.
Identify any inactive records that are no longer needed. If you don’t already have a process in place to remove these, now might be the perfect time to look at this as well. Carry out some data validation to ensure your data is free of any errors. Review all your user accounts and clear up any which are no longer needed. You could also assign different levels of roles to users if you feel this would be beneficial.
Decluttering your CRM will not only help you send out tailored communications to your database, ultimately it will help generate sales and grow your business in the future.
Clear out emails
We’ve all got that inbox we don’t check or folder we put emails in we don’t know what else to do with. Take some time to work through email inboxes and delete anything that’s not needed or no longer relevant. Also use this time to pick up conversations which may have been forgotten or send replies to anyone who is waiting for a response. By having a good clear out you could also improve your computer’s performance, depending on which email provider you use – an added benefit!
Does your inbox fill up with subscribed emails from websites you visited once? We’re all guilty of signing up to email updates, blogs and social accounts throughout the year but by decluttering our inboxes it can help us focus on what is important. Unsubscribe from any unneeded accounts that aren’t providing any value.
Look at your finances
Review your expenses and evaluate where your money is going to help improve the financial intelligence of your business. There’s probably not a lot you can do about some elements, take rent for example, but you can look at your utilities, phones, shipping, and any other services your business may use. Consider making changes or cuts where necessary.
Wholesale electricity and gas prices have recently reached their lowest point in a decade. This makes it an excellent time to secure good prices for contracts that are coming up for renewal in the next few months and for those who may wish to look well into 2021 and 2022 in order to achieve good savings. Make sure you aren’t paying ‘Out of Contract’ rates for your energy. Check out our recent COVID-19 Energy Advice blog for more around this.
Refresh your marketing strategies
In a similar way to reviewing your business goals, dusting off your marketing plan and re-examining your strategies is an important process. Have a look at which strategies have generated the most leads, look at your conversion rates and think about what has worked well. This can help you spend less time in the future on activities which may not have served you well or brought much value.
Take a look at your website. Is the content still relevant and up to date? Is it in need of a bit of revamp? You may find that some pages haven’t been updated for some time. Processes, products or services may have changed and pages on your website may have been missed. Review each page individually and make a list of any changes that are needed. You can then prioritise these depending on importance, search traffic and/or page views. Why not publish a few more blogs or add some testimonials from happy customers? It’s good to freshen up the content on your website.
It may also be helpful to check out your competition. Look at what other people are doing to see if there is anything you are missing or any gaps you can fill. Check out other websites and see what your competitors are up to. Have they spotted trends you haven’t? Spend some time analysing what they are doing and consider the reasons for it. You don’t always need to follow suit, but it could give you some new ideas.
Conclusion
We have the opportunity at present to consider 3 things. Firstly, survive; how are you and your business going to survive COVID-19 and the numerous challenges that come with it? Secondly, reset; what can we do to prepare for coming out of lockdown? How do we stagger the return to work? What does the new normal look like to your company? What opportunities has working from home bought and how do you reset taking these into account? Finally, we need to look at relaunch; how are you going to relaunch the business in order to capitalise on new opportunities? What new products and services could be created? There has never been a better time to innovate and reflect. Survive, reset, relaunch.
