Cash rich, but time poor

Are you too busy making money to have the time to enjoy it? I meet a lot of business people in the work I do. Some are really successful. A lot are doing OK, making money but working really long hours and usuallly 6 days a week.

 if you're continually tired it’s difficult to keep your momentum going. You may unknowingly give your customer poor service. And sometimes you might think ‘what's the point!’

Your health may suffer as you don't have the time to look after yourself. Relationships with family and friends may suffer as you are short-tempered and resentful of the demands they make. Your business may suffer as you spend most of your time working ‘in’ the business leaving no time for planning for the future.

Successful business people do at least 5 key things to create a business that delivers them great results. Just think how it would feel having more energy, having the time to exercise and eat healthily, having the time spend with family and friends in a relaxed manner.

So what are the 5 keys?

1.      Get your price right

If you don’t charge enough you will never make enough profit and you wil spend your time just trying to keep up with your work

2.      Delegate or outsource

You can’t do everything so don’t try. Why spend the time learning how to use book-keeping software when you could be marketing or meeting prospects?

3.      Differentiate yourself from your competition

Your customers will only choose you on price if there’s nothing that differentiates you from your competitors. Know what makes you special (in the eyes of your customers, not your mum!)

4.      Know who your customers are

Not everyone is your customer so you need to pick who you want. This will dictate everything you do in your business

5.      Measure what’s important in your buisness

Don’t leave it to chance. Decide what measures are important to your business and look at these regularly (and by that I mean monthly)

If you would like a free copy of my e-book ‘7 Mistakes Small Business Owners Unwittingly Make…. and how to avoid them’ then email gloria@murrayassoc.co.uk

How do you know if you charge enough for what you do?

 Are you cheap? Are you good value? Do you give customers great service? You have to choose which two are important to you as you can’t be all three – it just doesn’t work. Something’s got to give.

Pricing is key to the profits in your business. Over the years I’ve seen so many businesses go out of business because they didn’t charge enough. They ran themselves ragged doing a great job and giving great customer service at really low prices. But in the end it wasn’t enough and they gave up. It was too much like hard work and without the rewards.

So think about what you do. Have you forgotten to charge for something that’s an integral part of your product or service? Is there something that takes longer than you had anticipated when you first set your prices?

Are you being unrealistic about the quality of customer service you can deliver at the price you charge? Please don’t drop the quality of your service, your good customers will happily pay more for this. Do you like crappy service? It costs more but it’s not something you can compromise on.

Do yourself a favour, have a look at what you do and how you charge for it. At the end of the day your customers will choose on price if that’s the only difference between you and your competitors. Give them bloody good service and let them know you care. They will pay more and stay with you longer