Analysing the competition

Many business owners spend too much time and energy worrying about what the competition is doing, instead of listening and responding to customers needs.

But focusing on customers does not mean that you can just ignore the competition. From time-to-time, a review of who is doing what in your market segment can be a worthwhile exercise.

Here are some easy ways to kick off your competitor analysis, all from the comfort of your computer. All you need to do is jump on the Internet.

Competitors’ websites
Don’t stop at the home page. Read the “About Us” section and review descriptions of their products or services. Here are some other things to pay attention to when reviewing your competitors’ websites:

• descriptions of products/services

• strategic alliances

• pricing

• customer lists or testimonials

• recent contracts won

• staff

• how often the site is updated

Local competition
On the Google home page, search the names of your competitors and the generic description of your product/service category and location (if appropriate). Try alternative phrases as well. In other words, if you want to find out who’s competing with you in the catering industry in Sampletownnes, also try phrases like “catering” and Sampletown. Don’t limit the search to Google, try the other search engines like Yahoo as well.

Industry associations
If you target specific industries, review the websites of those industry associations. Information such as memberships and exhibitors lists at recent trade shows or conventions may reveal whether your competitors are actively marketing to the same industry.

Despite what information you gather, the fact you have competition should help you to constantly revise your strategy and improve your products and services.

Preventing a business burnout

If you’re the kind of business owner whose average working day consists of feeling anxious, exhausted, helpless or stressed, then you may be teetering on the very brink of burnout.

Burnouts are a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. They usually occur when owners feel overwhelmed or unable to meet the constant demands of running and managing a business.

In addition to negatively impacting on a business owner’s individual work performance, burnouts can also create secondhand stress for the owner’s employees or coworkers.

While running a business can take up much of an owner’s time, it is important for owners not to neglect their responsibility of staying physically and mentally healthy. To avoid burnout from happening to you, here are five tips to creating a happy, thriving workplace:

Realise that you can control your emotions
A person’s thoughts ultimately determines their feelings. We have 100% control over what we think i.e. the way we interpret situations, the expectations we place upon ourselves, so make the conscious effort to find a benefit from every situation and go easy on yourself if things don’t necessarily go to plan.

Focus on goals
Becoming goal-oriented instead of time-oriented can help to maximise efficiency and stay focused on your business’s key objectives. Regularly think about your reasons for starting the business to make sure they align with your professional and lifestyle goals.

Establish boundaries
Try to avoid working beyond a set number of hours each week, make sure you unplug from technology when you get home and spend some uninterrupted, quality time with family and friends.

Avoid multi-tasking
Multitasking has been found to reduce productivity by 20-40% and can increase the chances of making mistakes or errors. Try developing the habit of single-tasking throughout the day so you can focus completing a task with maximum efficiency.

Nurture your health
Being healthy can shield owners from stress and improve their resiliency. Regularly exercising, eating a balanced diet and getting a sufficient amount of sleep each night are all small changes that can make a big difference.

Developing a positive and productive business culture

Business culture is not often acknowledged in our everyday conversations. Rather, it is ingrained in our daily workplace habits and routines.

Business culture is usually fostered by senior management to employees through communication styles, workplace structure and environment, as well as employee responsibilities and expectations. Businesses with a healthy culture usually benefit from high levels of productivity and employee satisfaction. Some characteristics of strong workplace cultures include:

Communication at the forefront
Strong communication skills are necessary to develop a healthy business culture. Good communication often results in efficient and effective work, relationship building and decreased task ambiguity, leading to higher performance levels. Honest and clear directions can provide employees with greater task clarity and overall expectations to consider.

Strong diversification of employee qualities
A diverse team can offer a range of perspectives and attitudes towards areas such as problem-solving, decision-making and approaches to creativity and innovation. Although sharing similar viewpoints is important to maintain vision; incorporating differing personalities helps to develop a culture that is open to new ideas and hence greater innovation.

Advocacy of employee feedback
Listening to the opinions and needs of staff can help generate a positive and highly productive workplace. Using two-way feedback is a great way to involve the employees opinions, gaining further insight into what is and isn’t working. Employee involvement leads to healthy workplace culture and higher chances of long-term employee retainment.

Avoid these common tax mistakes

Many small businesses fail each year simply because they don’t plan or dedicate enough time to taking care of their taxation responsibilities.

Bad habits, such as putting obligations like GST, payroll tax and super guarantee contributions on hold are often the biggest contributors to a business’s financial downfall.

Below are three common tax mistakes that can limit a business’s chance of success that should be avoided at all costs:

Failing to keep good records
Keeping good records increases the chances of maintaining good business. Neglecting to record or keep track of business costs and therefore, relying on estimations means it is more likely a business will miss out on valuable tax claims.

Not paying the superannuation guarantee
Businesses who want to avoid harsh penalties from the ATO must ensure that their employees are paid superannuation when it needs to be paid. Unfortunately, many businesses put off making superannuation guarantee payments when cash flow becomes an issue.

Not keeping track of tax law changes
Not following tax law closely means a business is more than likely to miss important changes that affect them. Changes to payroll tax rates, for example, are important for business owners to be aware of since they may need to withhold more to cover any rate increases. Failure to keep correct books usually results in hefty tax fines.

Navigating through a crisis

No matter how hard a business works to avoid them, disasters can happen. When it comes to managing them, some businesses may simply bury their heads in the sand and hope that nothing bad will happen.

However, it is crucial that businesses are able to steer themselves through a crisis and be able to come out on top. Here’s a brief guide on how to to this:

Look and listen
Regularly reviewing your business’s environment and listening to what employees, customers and clients say about the business will help keep owners in the loop regarding their business’s internal and external systems. This can help identify and solve problems or consequences before they intensify.

Create an action plan
Preparation alone does not guarantee crisis prevention. Creating a crisis action plan can help address possible crisis scenarios, how situations might evolve and identify a business’s response options.

Choose a crisis management team
Businesses can address problems early if they have a team ready to respond when disaster strikes. These people should be responsible for gathering information to define any underlying problems or assess who the crisis will affect.

Notify people
One of the worst things a person can do during a crisis is to keep their stakeholders in the dark. Putting off communicating with others will only contribute to growing speculation or even imply that an owner is unable to control the situation. The quicker the response time, the better.

Remain accountable
If a crisis is a result of your fault, it is best to assume full responsibility for your actions, apologise and provide corrective initiatives. While crises may damage your image in the short-term, acknowledging that you are at fault and fixing the problem shows that have your business’s and customers’ best interests at heart.

Keeping up with your employees

When you are kept busy with the ups and downs of running a business, it can be easy to fall out of touch with your employees. While this doesn’t necessarily bring about any immediate repercussions, not keeping up with employees can be quite costly in the long run, in terms of employee engagement, work ethic and job satisfaction.

In order to retain hard-working employees, employers should consider the following issues and how they might address them:

Employees keep an eye out for new jobs
Even though an employee may appear happy in their current position, the chances are that they are keeping an eye out for new work. To avoid losing an employee to a new job position, employers should consider meeting with employees on a regular basis to obtain feedback and discuss job expectations and concerns.

Employees may not be as engaged as you think
A disengaged employee is of no benefit to anyone. While employees may appear to be working hard in the office when you’re around, it can be very easy for them to become distracted when they feel like they have no purpose. Purpose is key to employee engagement. Employers should make their employees feel that their efforts contribute to a business’s overall goal, as this can be both rewarding and motivating.

Employees aren’t satisfied with their pay
Compensation is one of the leading drivers of an employee’s attraction and retention. If your employees aren’t happy with their pay, you need to know about it before they find a better option elsewhere. Giving a pay raise or bonus isn’t always an option. However, there are budget-friendly ways to compensate employees, such as offering workplace perks or benefits.

Redundancy payments

Redundancy arises in the workplace when an employee’s job no longer needs to be performed. It usually occurs due to the outsourcing of staff or cutting staff numbers and assigning the duties involved in the role equally amongst other staff members. It may also occur due to a business ceasing to make a line of product service.

Over time, there has been an increase in employee expectations of receiving a lump sum (over and above pay instead of notice and any leave entitlements ) when they are made redundant. While this right was limited to award employees or those under various company schemes in the past, the introduction of the Fair Work Act in 2010 made the payment of redundancy a universal right in such circumstances.

However, not all employees are paid a redundancy. In the following circumstances, employers are not obliged to pay redundancy to staff who lose their job:

• when an employer has fourteen or less employees at the time of the termination

• when the business is sold and the employees are taken on by the new employer

• when employees are on a fixed term contract that has expired

• when employees are employed on a casual basis

There is also a further exception for employers if they can prove to the Fair Work Commission that they were proactive in finding new roles for employees. To do this, it may be a good idea for employers to work collaboratively with their HR or management to secure interviews for their staff and assist staff with preparation of CVs.

Paying attention to the buying process

Understanding customer behaviour in regards to purchasing products and services is crucial to improving a business’s marketing strategy and increasing its sales and profits.

And while business marketing techniques and strategies have changed over time, the decision-making process customers undertake before making a purchase has generally remained the same.

Understanding how this decision-making process applies to your business and its customers, can help business owners create a marketing strategy that provides customers with the right information at the right time.

Stage 1: Problem identification and evaluation
No matter the industry or business type, the buying process always begins in the same way: the customer realising that they have a need. Once a customer’s need has been identified, they usually begin seeking information to find a way to address that need. This is where business owners should step in to provide valuable help and resources in order to establish trust and authority.

Stage 2: Narrowing down and decision-making
Customer decisions are based on a number of factors. Businesses need to identify those factors to understand what would make a customer choose their products over others, so they can present those reasons to customers during this stage.

Stage 3: After purchase
A business’s marketing strategy should not stop after a customer makes a purchase. Building and maintaining customer loyalty involves staying in contact with customers after they have made a purchase to ensure that their experience with a product is a positive one. Some customers may feel unsure after making a purchase, so it is important for the business to reinforce that their purchase was a good one. The better a customer’s experience of your product or service, the more likely it is that they will recommend you to others.

Why you should get out of the office

Taking a well deserved day, week or even month off from work could be the very thing your business needs to thrive. Here are four reasons why taking time off away from the office can have a positive effect on your health and your business.

Breaks up the routine
While the same old routine can make a difference between floating around the office and actually accomplishing tasks and projects, everyday routines don’t inspire innovation or change. Sticking to the same routine will produce the same results. Taking a break and creating the space to be able to come up with new and inspiring ideas can help fix any issues that hold your business back.

Gives your quiet time to think
Sometimes your brain needs to take a break in order to think more clearly in the future. Allowing yourself some quiet time to think provides the opportunity to learn, self-critique and identify what your business should and shouldn’t be doing.

Opens you to new ideas
Taking the time to think and analyse your performance in all areas of the business can help you identify, learn or even re-learn new things and great ideas. If you’re not allowing yourself time to observe and witness other people doing great things, you may be inspired to do them yourself.

Helps find purpose
Successful people know what they’re doing, why they are doing it and where they want to go next. It can be difficult to find this kind of purpose when you’re stuck behind a desk all day. Don’t lose your ability to determine what you’re doing and where you want to take your business next; take some time off to find your purpose.

Develops staff initiative
Sometimes not being in the office can be good for your staff as well. When you’re not available to answer questions or manage tasks, staff have the chance to develop their own autonomy through making decisions and working with the rest of your team.

Get the most out of your business insurance

No matter how hard owners may work to avoid them, disasters are an unavoidable aspect of life, and can strike a business at any time. Whether they take the form of IT system failures, floods, fires or earthquakes, unfortunately there is almost nothing a business owner can do to ensure that their business will be 100% protected from a crisis.

However, when it comes to claiming business insurance for a disaster, there are some ways to make the road to recovery run a whole lot smoother.

Take out adequate cover
Underinsurance can often be an issue at claim time since many small businesses mistakenly renew their policies without updating their cover. Hiring more staff, acquiring new property, stock and contents, increasing your revenue or taking on additional contracts means that a business’s policy must be updated. This includes any new purchases made under the revised small business tax write-offs.

Gather supporting documents
The more information a business owner can provide to their insurer, the better. This includes copies of receipts, financial records, photographs (if possible, before and after the disaster) and asset registers. Owners may want to consider keeping these records somewhere other than their business premises for extra protection, such as with the business’s accountant, backed up on a portable hard drive, or stored in the cloud.

Be patient
Some circumstances in disasters can slow down the claims process. For example, minor damage to a commercial vehicle can normally be fixed in a week, whereas major damage to a building will take a longer period of time to repair. If items have been stolen, the time taken to replace them depends on how easy they are to replace. Repairs can also be slowed down if there is a higher demand for builders or materials following a major disaster.