You can define success in a number of different ways:

• Success might be to lose “X” number of pounds
• Success might be to put on “X” amount of muscle weight
• Success might be to finish “X” number of degrees
• Success might be to acquire “X” amount of wealth

But when it comes to your business, success usually has a more universal definition that centers on employee loyalty, customer satisfaction, revenue growth and profitability. While some businesses have been able to sustain success throughout the years, you might currently sit in a situation staring at your “best years” through a rear-view mirror.

On Nov. 8, we elected Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, to “Make America Great Again”. While I certainly hope that President Trump will do a great job in fulfilling said goal on the “macro” level, your business sits on the “micro” level and your success is more weighted on the decisions you make in operating your enterprise, rather than decisions made in the Executive branch.

So for this article, I wanted to provide some tips to “Make Your Business Great Again” through focusing on employee morale, customer service, revenue growth and higher levels of profitability.

Employee Morale

High turnover and low employee morale can play a huge part in decreasing the success of your organization. To “Make Your Business Great Again,” you want to make sure in terms of employee management, that you follow some of these tips below.

• Don’t Mistreat Employees: This includes overly micro-managing them, being rude, playing favorites, etc., all of which reduce employee morale.
• Provide a Work-Life Balance: While your business might be “the world” to you, it might not completely by the “world” to your employees, who might want to enjoy the aspect of work and family life. So structure your business in a way that affords employees said perks, including implementing virtual teams and off-site/work-from-home procedures.
• Provide Appreciation: You should show appreciation to your employees for a job well done, or even just continuing to hit their basic objectives.
• Do Not Employ Bad Leadership Skills: Far too many managers and employers lack people skills, as well as, the ability to properly lead, inspire and motivate their workforce.
• Eliminate Disorganization: Many companies are flat out unorganized, with constant changes in leadership, product, direction, etc. This makes it hard for employees to be excited or build towards something meaningful, which decreases their personal “connection” to the organization.
• Provide Promotions & Raises: If an employee doesn’t feel as though their hard work will be rewarded through higher pay, this discourages them from working as “hard” as they need to work to continue the progression of the organization.

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Customer Satisfaction

Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. You want their initial business, as well as their continued business, referrals, etc., as all of these aspects keep your business operating. Where there’s no customers, there is certainly no business, but to “Make Your Business Great Again,” you want to make sure you aren’t doing some of the things below to turn off customers:

• Bad Customer Service: Quite frankly, your customers should be treated as your boss and you should function as their “employee” to a certain extent. Good customer service, going out of your way to help customers, and making sure you thank them for their service, should always be top priorities. This includes putting the right people in “customer facing positions”.  Many companies put the wrong people in these positions who do not have the right customer service approach in mind. All of this reduces the chance that a customer will do business with you in the future, reducing the likelihood of them providing referrals, etc.
• No Loyalty Programs: Help incentivize your customers to return to your business, by starting up various loyalty programs. Loyalty programs help get your customers back into your business more often and contribute to higher spending levels.
• No Customer Retention Strategies: Ignoring feedback from your customers can cause them to not feel as though their “needs/wants” are being properly addressed.

Revenue Growth

To boost revenues, you have to either increase the number of customers you serve, increase your prices, increase the amount of transactions per customer or increase the average ticket per customer. A good revenue growth strategy would focus on all of these aspects.

• Increase Your Customers: Here you would focus on marketing strategies that utilize both primary market research and secondary market research, to identify who your customers are, where they are, and how to best communicate to them the existence of your products/services.
• Proper Pricing Strategies: Keeping the prices of your competition in mind and the value of your services, you want to focus on good pricing strategies that do not price you out of the market, but aren’t priced too low to where profit and operational continuation becomes a challenge.
• Increase Average Ticket and Customer Transactions: This is a focus on pushing more value-added services and bundled services. You want said “add-ons” to be of value to the customer and help increase efficiencies within the products/services that the customer is already interested in purchasing.

Profitability

To increase profits, number one, focus on everything above as all of those strategies contributes to having a more profitable enterprise. But in addition, you want to employ the following:

• Cut tasks, activities, divisions and employees that aren’t adding value to the organization but are just adding costs.
• Design your business in such a way to minimize costs and acquire gains. This could mean a few different things. Incorporating your company in a different way may offer more opportunity for profitability, for example.
• Building business credit and working on improving your business credit scores can help save you money on financing. Depending on which types of loans your business has currently acquired, that could be tens of thousands of dollars in savings a year.
• Partner with excellent business advisers such as CPAs, attorneys, etc., who can bring ideas to the table that offer higher levels of operational efficiency, which reduce bottom-line expenses.

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