Navigating with clarity for business growth

Every business needs a strong hand on the tiller. To thrive, you need strategic consideration directing how you grow. And, regardless of whether you’re a large corporate, an ambitious SME, or an enthusiastic micro-business, you need to know where you’re trying to get to. Such statements are well understood, of course, but to put them into practice actually requires a lot of thinking.

For a business to grow, someone has to anticipate the hurdles ahead, proactively pursue a strategy for business development, have a good grasp of the facts and figures, and plan.

Most business owners understand this kind of focus is needed. However, when they’re in the thick of it day in, day out, they often lose sight of how to leverage the theory. For example, they’re aware of the need to plan for growth, but they don’t necessarily have a clear idea of where they are at any point in time. They also know their market well, but they’re not always aware of the gotchas waiting round the corner for an expanding business. So, how do they move forward?

Business owners who have the foresight to turn to seasoned professionals for advice, support, and help are the ones most likely to enjoy continuing success. And the kind of professional who can help bring some assurance to their growth is their accountant.

Your accountant is your best business friend

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how great your marketing plan is, how dynamic your employees are, or how teched up you are, if you haven’t got a grip on the finances, you’re working blind.

When people talk about their accountant, visions of number crunchers slaving over a calculator spring to mind. And yes, in every type of business those financial details matter; so having a trusted partner who will ensure the accounts and tax returns are compiled and filed on time will make a difference. However, that’s only a small part of what an accountant can bring to the table.

With the right financial team, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your financial reporting. You’ll enjoy regular analysis of your business activities, and you’ll benefit from financial risks to your business and profit opportunities being identified early on. Plus, you won’t have to be the one liaising with the likes of HMRC and banks etc.

FINANCE

How do you choose the right accountant?

Of course, every business deserves the best and someone who has considerable experience of working in a comparable business should be top of your list. An accountant with that background will understand your industry, know what traps to look out for, and have a good feel for how to spot new opportunities. And on top of that, they’ll bring a whole raft of additional benefits you can enjoy.

They’ll take care of the details

An accountant will ensure key reporting is carried out in a timely way and provide financial oversight. They will track your cashflow and report to you on a regular basis, flagging concerns before they appear as problems in the business.

They can free up your time

Keeping a firm grip on the finances is time-consuming, particularly if it’s not your specialism and you just want to get on with running your business. So having a qualified and experienced individual carrying out that work on your behalf frees up your time and saves you money. Remember, they’ve already traversed the terrain your business is crossing with regard to finance, so they can work quickly and effectively on your behalf. Which means you can focus on seeing through the strategic plans you have for growing your business.

They will prepare budgets and forecasts

If you’re in strategic planning mode, you can’t operate without a clear picture of where your business currently is and where it is hoping to go. You need information to make your plans and a good accountant will provide considered forecasting supported by appropriate budgets.

They analyse and offer decision-making insights

To make a decision quickly you need accurate, up-to-date information to hand. Whether it’s regarding your cashflow, your key clients, or other KPIs, your accountant can help pull this information together and drive your business forward.

They make sense of the data

An ambitious business owner can suffer from information overload. A good accountant will make sense of the data at their fingertips and present it to you in a meaningful way. For example, they’ll assess profitability across market sectors and help you outline profiles of profitable customers. With their input, you’ll be able to increase margins, control business costs, and snap up opportunities.

They flag risks early

A switched-on accountant proves their worth by enabling business opportunities, but they also help prevent disaster by spotting risks in advance. They’ve trodden this path before, and they know what to look out for.

They’ll ensure you’re compliant

There’s no point in missing a filing deadline if you don’t need to. The VAT man, HMRC, and other regulatory bodies are on the lookout for abnormalities, so missing a deadline just raises your profile in the wrong way. A good accountant, therefore, will ensure all your accounting and financial statements are submitted in a timely fashion.

Nothing is certain in life – except death and taxes, of course – but tapping into all the skills and knowledge of your accountant will help to reduce uncertainty. Their expertise can provide you with the information you need to make key decisions for driving your business forward in a controlled way. And if taxes are one of the few certainties in life, they’ll at least ensure yours are paid on time too.

Why complaints can help sales

Accept it… sometimes things go wrong. No matter how hard you try, no matter what processes you put into place and no matter how good you and your team are, sometime, somewhere, somehow, something will go wrong. How your business responds though can be the difference between losing a customer and a future sale.

When it all hits the fan…

I appreciate that it sounds counterintuitive to think of a problem with a customer order as an opportunity, but it is. Let me explain why.

You have probably seen numerous variations on a theme of “5 stages of customer service”. They will usually be along the lines of:

■ Listen

■ Empathise

■ Solve

■ Act

■ Confirm

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this process. You listen to the customer, make it clear that you understand their problem, then you offer a solution, if that solution is acceptable to them, you action it. Finally, you check everything is OK and close the case. The customer is happy, and you can go and have lunch. Next time you complain to a large retailer you will see these steps in action. They are commonly used because they work.

There are two things to think about here though that could be telling you an opportunity is being missed.

Firstly, very few of the business owners reading this article have a closed, single sale, based model. Most of us are servicing repeat customers. Secondly, it is focused on the problem at hand (the messed-up order) not the future potential.

It is right there, in that last point that a big opportunity could be being missed. The Service Recovery Paradox Let’s look at that customer service issue in a different way for a moment and focus down on the last step. The Service Recovery Paradox was first proposed in the early 90s by McCollough and Bharadwaj and, to paraphrase a much larger concept, it relates to the ‘good will’ generated by resolving a problem. It suggests that if you resolve a customer problem in a satisfactory way, they will not only remain loyal and tell others, but their opinion of the business will also become more positive.

So, let’s look at that last step again considering the Service Recovery Paradox. At stage 5 in the list above, you could have the following:

■ A happy customer

■ A customer who will be glad to hear from you

■ A customer who is currently very positive about your business

■ Now think about your sales teams and funnels.

How much better would they perform if every potential customer could be described using those three bullet points? It’s pretty much a salesperson’s dream customer.

Need help with your sales? Get in touch with The Sales Ace.