Increasing sales and cutting expenses isn’t the only way for your small business to increase profit. Supply chain costs, digital payment processing fees, and your labor line are often the first things that come to mind—but it’s time to think outside of the box. Sometimes strategic investments and innovations can help you make the most of what’s already coming in. For example, improving communication and reducing risk with wall mountable LED monitors. Here are 6 ways you can increase your profitability.
1. Know Your ROI
You must measure the return on investment (ROI) of everything you and your team invest your time and money in. This is particularly important as your small business continues to grow. Strategies that worked at a lower volume will at least need to be revised and often traded in for more effective alternatives.
Begin by identifying your key performance indicators (KPIs), and when applicable, your cost per acquisition (CPA). However, you must look beyond generating new leads and strategies to improve your CPA—to strategies that optimize time.
Time is money, so evaluate whether everyone on your team is performing job duties that maximize their skillset. For example, as a business owner you may have done it all when you launched your business. Now that you are established, you should invest your time primarily in your clients and team and delegate all other tasks. Take this same approach when determining employee job duties to ensure everyone is making the most of their time. This may mean creating new positions to take on the delegated tasks.
2. Leverage Technology
There are a variety of ways that technology can increase profits and save time and money. For example:
- Upgrading to industry and goal-specific software to create custom workflows, improve scheduling, communications, project management, and more.
- Upgrading to sensors and smart technology that perform tasks and automate actions, reminders, and alerts.
- Upgrade to wireless power transfer technology for smart devices so that you no longer have to charge, check, or change the batteries on essential electronic devices and safety sensors.
- Strategically place wall mountable LED monitors in your lobby, breakroom, and throughout your business to improve communication.
- Hanging Wall Mountable LED monitors in your window or in the eye line of your cash register to announce sales, promotions, and BOGOs.
3. Train Your Team
Training is an area that many small businesses have a tremendous area of opportunity in. Training ensures new hires hit the ground running and shows that you value your team enough to invest in them. Not all your training has to be performed in-house, as there are live and virtual training companies that you can work with. This may include pre-set live or online training courses or live and virtual courses that are personalized for your company.
Training your team can include any combination of:
- Initial training that all team members or departments must complete when they are hired.
- Position-specific initial training, recurrent training, and as-needed training.
- Training anytime compliance, procedures, protocols, software, technology, or operational systems change.
- Employee-specific training to ensure team member skills remain competitive, and as part of individual development plans.
- Use Wall mountable LED monitors to schedule initial onboarding of personnel.
- Utilizing wall mountable LED monitors to post updates and reinforce training and procedures.
4. Leverage External Experts
Wish you had a chief financial officer, but can’t afford one? Or maybe an HR expert, recruiter, marketing department, or accountant? We live in an exciting time where you can leverage external experts without taking on the expense of a full salary. This might be another small business owner who will dedicate an assigned number of hours to your company each week or month. Or a larger firm that has a team of experts. For example, an external payroll processor.
Not only do they process payroll, but ensure you stay on top of payroll taxes, deposit adequate funds, are compliant with overtime payments, and more.
External experts are an investment, but they cost significantly less than creating a full-time position. They often pay for themselves by reducing risk, reducing costly mistakes, and identifying innovative solutions. For example, if you’ve been doing your bookkeeping and accounting yourself you may not be leveraging all of your eligible tax benefits. Or you may not see the areas of opportunity on your PNL.
5. Consider Relocation
As you may already know, Mega LED Technology recently relocated from California to Texas. There were a variety of reasons for this move, but we find it to be win/win/win. It keeps our consumer costs such as shipping low and reduces operational costs such as rent and taxes. Nearly half of the Mega LED Technology team moved with us, maintaining the same annual salary—but enjoying a cost of living that is at least 25% lower.
However, relocation doesn’t have to mean moving out of state! Maybe you move to a facility with lower rent or to a location with higher rent but more foot traffic for your restaurant or retail location. Also, consider outsourcing some of your workforce to other budding nations with exceptional talent pools. The Philippines, India, and Pakistan can be great choices for creative work, writing, or a number of other skilled jobs.
6. Cost-Saving Green Benefits
Sustainability is likely one of your company’s green initiatives, but there can be many cost-saving benefits to going green. Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Invest in the upfront cost of solar panels to save on energy costs in the long run.
- Swap out incandescent and fluorescent bulbs and signs for LED bulbs and signs, which use up to 80 percent less energy.
- Seek out innovative ways to monetize waste. For example, donating day-old baked goods to a local food bank as a tax write-off.
- Identify ways to upcycle waste to create new products.
- Consider purchasing used or refurbished electronics and office furniture.
- Minimize printed signage waste by upgrading to wall mountable LED monitors for communication and advertising.
Ready To Upgrade To wall mountable LED monitors?
If you are in the market for ground or wall mountable LED monitors, we invite you to reach out to Mega LED Technology today. We have ready-to-order scrolling signs, but most of our signs are custom-built to your individual specs. This includes signage solutions for a variety of industries. Reach out today for your FREE quote!
It’s nice to know that it’s easy enough to use solar power to keep LED digital message signs on. I’d like to have that kind of signage for my future business because it’s they can easily be customizable. Knowing that they are also very energy efficient is just icing on the cake.
Aw, this was an incredibly good post. Taking the time and actual effort to
produce a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate a whole lot
and never manage to get anything done.