7 Critical Success Factors Every Small Business Owner Faces

With a slowing economy small business owners face many marketing and operating challenges.  In order to thrive in a challenging operating environment it is imperative entrepreneurs master these critical success factors.  Taking action today is the key to moving your business in the positive direction of growth and profitability.

1. Implementing a culture of continuous improvement will engender your employees to seek out means to elevate the customer experience.  A change in mindset from “Just get the job done.” to “What can we do to deliver a better product or service cheaper, faster and higher quality?” takes time and commitment from management for as long as your company exists.

2. Benchmark and adopt best practices from other businesses in your industry.  Collaborating with other business owners in your industry on processes will allow you to accelerate your quality improvement goals.  If you are a leader in your industry you may want to adopt best practices from other industries and implement them in your business.

3. Setting and tracking metrics in your business is imperative.  Every business needs a baseline of data to work from in order to build efficiencies into the organization.  Once you have information on the performance of your business you can now analyze what areas of the business needs improvement.

4. Training your employees is a key part of any successful business.  Regular training sessions will communicate to the employee that they are important and you want them to improve their performance.  Training sessions do not necessarily have to be formal events.  Simple feedback during morning meetings with ways to improve processes may be all that is needed in many cases.

5. Systemize your operations for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.  Every part of your operations should have a standardized process that is taught, implemented, tracked and feedback given to the employee responsible.  The benefit to your business is consistency of performance by the responsible employee.

6. Develop marketing and conversion processes for predictable revenue streams.   Without customers you have no possibility to generate revenue.  Take the time to test different elements of your marketing and lead generation processes.  Once you find marketing tactics that produce revenue streams find ways to leverage those for further growth.

7. Manage working capital and minimize taxes to ensure you are getting the maximum return on investment possible.  Take every measure possible to put idle cash to work in interest bearing accounts.  At the same time review with your tax professional to make sure you are taking advantage of all tax programs available for your business.