My business partner and I have been working together for about 8 years now and since then we’ve both learned a lot about business. When things start to go well you’ll start to feel like you know everything. But the harsh reality is, you don’t.
Just the other day my business partner and I were talking on the phone and we were trying to figure out all of the small things that the company could do to increase revenue and profit.
Funny enough, the majority of the ideas I came up with required our employees to put in some time. The problem with this is that our employees are already busy, which means they won’t be able to get to these things for months.
So what do you think is the right solution for us to take? Maybe hire another employee?
The problem with hiring more employees is that it takes time to find good ones and once you’re able to hire someone things don’t necessarily move quicker. At first you’ll have to get the employee up to speed and train them… even if they already claim to know everything.
The right solution isn’t to hire more employees, but instead it’s to adjust the way you are thinking. For years we always thought about what our team could be doing to take the company to the next level. And although that’s something every company should do, you should also be thinking about what you can be doing to take your company to the next level.
What I mean by this is that what are 5 things you can do that will increase your company’s revenue and not take any of your employees’ time?
Here are some things that my business partner and I have been doing that help increase our companies bottom line:
Content creation
As many of your know I haven’t “directly” made money off of my blog till last week. Not only do I blog because I love helping other people, but it opens up doors for me. For example I have met hundreds of successful entrepreneurs because I blog on Quick Sprout and many of those entrepreneurs became customers of one of my companies.
In addition to blogging I also write newsletters and other various forms of marketing materials for my businesses. This content not only helps bring in new customers, but it also helps create a better user experience. This makes it so that our customers pay for our services longer.
Social media marketing
Social media doesn’t convert, right? Well it does if you know how to leverage it. Not only have we setup Twitter accounts for our companies, but we have setup Facebook fan pages and even blogs.
By being engaged in these mediums on a regular basis it helps us:
- See what people are saying about the space, which allows us to make more educated business decisions.
- It allows us to understand what our customers are saying about us. If they are upset, we try and resolve the problem.
- We can see what people are saying about our competitors. And if they are unhappy with our competitors, it allows us to approach them and potentially bring them over to our company.
- Branding our company as one of the thought leaders in the space is important to us. Being a thought leader will drive more customers to your business.
And if you are wondering what the trick to leveraging social media is… all you have to do is be engaged on a daily basis and truly provide valuable information.
Blog because you can write about something that will benefit your customers. Twit because you want to engage with potential customers. And create a Facebook fan page to allow your customers to express themselves.
Build relationships
There is nothing wrong with hiring business development guys or employees that do your sales and networking for you. But keep in mind that when they leave your company, your customers may leave too.
I know it’s not easy to hire talented developers and designers, but it’s a lot harder to hire someone that can build relationships for you.
With all of our companies it has always been my business partner and me who meet up with other entrepreneurs, network with investors, and even strike up the big business development deals.
Why do we do all of this? It’s because we don’t want to build relationships just for our current company, but we want to build relationships that will help whatever company that we end up creating 10, 20 or even 30 years from now.
Customer support
By no means is customer support a fun thing to do, but my business partner and I are a big believer that every founder should at least spend a small portion of their day dealing with support issues.
If you don’t know what problems customers are facing, or what’s causing them to get upset, then you won’t be able to create a big business.
I know I have said this before, but it doesn’t matter what you want, all that matters is what your customers want. And if you want to understand what your customers want, then you have to talk with them on a regular basis.
Without doing this, you won’t know what your company should be doing next. Yes, you may have an idea of what you want, but as I mentioned above, that doesn’t mater. So take the time and listen to your customers, especially the ones that aren’t satisfied.
Conclusion
If you want to grow your company you have to get out of the mindset of thinking about what your employees can do to make things better. You have to be somewhat independent and figure out what you can do to make things move along.
I don’t care if you have a rock star team, employees make mistakes and things get delayed. So although you want to rely on them, you also have to learn to rely on yourself. And the best way to do this is to figure out what you can do.
