How to carry out a business health check
Everyone’s familiar with age-old adages such as changing your toothbrush every three months, changing the oil in your car every six months, and swapping your partner at least every third child (or every second house move, whichever comes first). OK, I made that last part up. The point is that change brings an opportunity to improve. Of course, change can also mess with something that’s working – if it ain’t broke, don’t arbitrarily fix it because the calendar says it’s due.
So, what about business health checks? How many times per decade or per year or per month or hour should you be kicking the tires on your business venture? We’re going to say at least once per year should be fine, unless you’ve recently run into difficulty and need help isolating the cause. But what should the health checks include?
Check your marketing approach
Marketing agencies make magic happen. For a monthly subscription fee, your business can access the finest digital marketing minds and benefit from specialized marketing techniques designed to make you stand out in your niche – certainly beats the pants off paying for an in-house team that could cost more than ten times as much each month.
But. And there is always a ‘but’. Something to consider is whether your chosen marketing agency is producing the best possible results – or could you be better off switching? ‘Audit existing agency’ style services from agency minds who know the red flags to look for when it comes to ROI could save you untold fortunes on a marketing budget that may not be being used exactly as claimed. If somebody else is wasting your money, you deserve to know.
Check your business expense budget
Managing your yearly business budget is not too dissimilar to managing your personal finance budget. There’s budgeting for rent or a mortgage. There are utilities to think about. Insurance must be paid, of course. But for business, we also have to factor in expenses such as staff training, marketing, and monthly payroll (amongst other things).
As a rule of thumb, obviously try not to spend more than you earn in revenue per month. That’s straight forward enough. But also try to save enough to cover any unexpected expenses. Writing down all of your incomings and outgoings is the difference between spending blindly and knowing for sure that your bank balance is in rude health. Learning to manage a business expense budget is fast and simple and could tidy up any leaky holes in your finances overnight.
Map and manage your business processes
Quick question: how many people make up your teams at work? Maybe three or four in a few teams, maybe eight in others? And how many of those people all agree on the exact direction each task should take, with full acknowledgment that the chosen methods to execute ideas are the best possible use of staff time and skills? Honesty hurts sometimes. But streamlining and removing roadblocks doesn’t happen without first admitting roadblocks exist. Map and manage your business processes for instant results.
