I often hear people say ‘I am working really hard but my business seems to be stagnating’, this is probably due to working in rather than on the business. For a business to be successful, you need to focus on your strategic goals, and take steps to achieve them.
As business owners of small and medium sized enterprises, we often get pulled into the nitty gritty of running our businesses on a day to day basis. It could be dealing with a customer issue, or a staff management issue or purely a product or service review. It is really hard to take yourself out of your day to day management role and review the strategy and direction of your business. However it is critical to do this on a regular basis, ideally weekly or monthly, but here at KMA Accountancy would certainly recommend half yearly or quarterly at the very least.
Once a week we meet with fellow business owners and discuss areas of our business that we want to improve, we block out a couple of hours in our diaries, sit down in a quiet meeting room, and discuss the business issues that are keeping us awake or causing us pain and bounce ideas off each other. This enables us to come up with a clear strategy to implement to remove this obstacle from our path.
It’s all too easy to get lost in the day to day work, to put off these meetings, but it’s really important in moving the business on to where we want it to be. It’s all about taking time out to focus on the bigger picture. It’s easy to do, but it’s also easy not to do. It’s the constant small step changes that makes a massive impact over time.
Here at KMA Accountancy we like to practice what we preach, we do this process with our clients. We meet with our clients and discuss what is their really pressing burning issues that are worrying them and keeping them awake at night. We discuss the issues and help them to come up with a strategy for overcoming them and making those step changes in their business, be it improving systems to free up more time, increasing your marketing reach and getting more sales, increasing sales , increasing overall profitability in the business down to delegating more, outsourcing or advising on staffing issues and incentives.
I would definitely recommend setting aside a couple of hours with your accountant to bounce ideas off and help you to get clear in your mind how to move your business on and achieve what you want from it, before even more time just flies by.
Good luck in working on your business. If I can help then please feel free to contact me.
Kim Marlor http://www.kimmarlor.co.uk
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