Tips for running a successful business

The Chamber of Trade offers a simple plan for success. Every trader and every business has followed their own unique path to success. Over the next few months, we will ask every Chamber member to share their story of success so that we can learn from one another.

Every successful business begins with a high degree of planning or a high degree of luck.

The chamber recommends beginning with a solid plan, but leave room for following your gut feeling, especially when it comes to managing people.

Plans are often a blueprint for success, but always replan as soon as circumstances change, too many businesses are inflexible and lose valuable opportunities when ideas fail. Creating a trading plan involves a lot of moving parts.

Understand finance, especially, your costs of sales

I once worked for a company that spent over one million pounds in wages when the income was far less. It was a no brainer that an owner’s ego was running his company when emotion needed to take a back seat. The best way to manage a business would be to apply costs in accordance with sales, so affordability always controls growth.

Knowing your market really helps

Making educated decisions and knowing the traits of the market helps. Knowing pricing, costs of sales and competitor information helps pricing and quality factors. Market research is not just browsing the internet, but visiting and knowing what customers want is essential.

Trends are fantastic if you want to copy your competitors

Being creative and a trend setter is far better. If you want to be a leader, you need to be a risk taker and that involves understanding what people want.

Personalisation is the future of Buying

People prefer to visualise themselves emersed in a product. Products are often tailored and bespoke for clients today, and if products are above quality, a premium price is expected for the extra work and effort needed.

People do not want to wait

If people must wait for weeks to have items delivered, people will shop around and find a product that comes quicker. Quality products will try to prove me wrong here, but, in a world where competitors are falling over themselves to deliver items quicker, the better the delivery time, the better opportunity of capturing sales will be.

Supply Chains

It’s crucial to be supported by a supply chain for your products that helps you avoid tying up your working capital with stock. The best businesses are those who have more working capital to avoid taking too many risks in stock holding. A wise trader will not risk more than they are prepared to lose. Setting risk levels should be part of good planning. If you are selling products, make sure you are selling what people want to buy.

Upfront Payments

Imagine being paid upfront before you deliver your product? Successful companies are making money and profit, before delivering their products. Companies like Starbucks are making hundreds of millions of pounds selling gift vouchers to customers who want their friends and families to experience the Starbuck products. When you have quality products, think about how you can maximise sales. Pending orders can give you extra cash flow beyond your wildest dreams.

Seeking Customer Feedback

Just because customers never complain, does not mean that customers are happy. By inviting customers to give feedback or by asking more relevant and pertinent questions, on predicting trends and happiness.

Affordable Selling Prices

We have seen greed play a massive part in pricing as companies try to catch up with profitability levels after the pandemic. Economies of scale often mean reduced prices for companies who can buy in bulk and smaller companies charge high prices because they cannot. The key to justifying higher prices must be more about quality and bespoke services.

Re-investing Profits

Profits are not actually for spending and wasting but for reinvesting back into the business. So many companies run themselves into the ground and fail to reinvest, renew, and refurbish. Call it a British Disease or call it greed. Too many business models use their profits to divide amongst the investors and shareholders, without withholding profits to re-invest back into business. We often see companies ruined so that they can be sold off cheaply.

Using Emotions Running your Business

Emotions are actually very important when running your business. Owners with a high level of emotional intelligence not only lead with empathy, authenticity, and humility but also understand and manage their emotions and those of their team.