STAY ON TOP OF YOUR BUSINESS

In business there will always be tough times ahead and how you deal with them will determine whether you will go under or live to tell the story. A lot of SMME’S especially kasi (township) businesses think they are the only ones experiencing challenges; well I invite you to watch business news daily and you will learn two things: the first one is the challenge of starting a business and the second one is keeping afloat and profitable.

These challenges cut across and are experienced by all small, medium and big business. This is an uphill battle that really needs a sharp confident and dedicated mind. The FNB and GIBS Report highlights; Start-up fail nine in ten over a two year of operation. The recent VAT and continued fuel hike increase are nothing to what is coming, Should the country fail to curb corruption and to create more jobs. This will change a lot things, especially in the way in which small business run their daily business operations, cash flow will be impacted.

Remember such increases tend to have a far-reaching consequence as they have a butterfly effect. For some businesses though this may well be the very devastating blow that will sink the ship. Apart from increases and other challenges that you could think of; at the at the core of business failing is poor planning. Thousands of busi nesses never take time to really plan. They live on day-to-day’s eventualities without control of their destiny, and such behaviour fuels the inevitable failure therefore. Let me ask this question, as a small business since the breaking of news on VAT and Octobers fuel increase what have you done apart from complaining about the price increase? Believe you me only a few thought of going to the drawing board to establish what these increases will mean and how they will impact on their businesses including their personal lives, to make informed decisions that are well thought rather than emotional and rushed and reactive decisions. The decision may not necessarily be about you and increasing your prices or buying less quality and a quick fix that will compromise your business in the future. If you want to survive you need to go back, begin to take stock of what’s happening and how to deal with such proactively and to employ proper planning and strategies to enable you to stay afloat as you strengthen your business to a profitable future. At this point many business strate gies and plans including yours if you have one, are long due for serious indepth review to adjust the financials projections.

Tough time means accessing loans will be a challenge and high repayment plans will be the business of the day. This calls for you to revisit the business vision and the objectives to see if they are still relevant to the initial goals considering these changes and other influencing factors such as customer behaviour and buying patterns in such economic times.

HOW TO STAY ON TOP OF YOUR BUSINESS

This can be a tricky thing since it is not as straight forward as you could hope. You will need a combination of things, your passion or hunger to grow and unwavering dedication, problem solving skills and your tenacity in action. Your action must be focused to the following:

•Know your business and be clear on the state of affair of your business

•Research: what do you know about your business and the industry

•Identify key industry players from the biggest and smallest.

•Be clear who is you customer and what interest them.

•Finally review your product and service also identifies how you can improve on it?

To get to greater heights you can not do thing as they are or were done you need to redefine state ments such as business as usual by being on top of your business. The best thing is to know how to get help, building and nurturing rela tionships. Turn your cell phone to a useful resource a management tool and a mobile research resource.