Small business owners have a lot of pain points they must deal with – from issues with partners to handling growth and scaling. Take a look at these common potential disasters and learn how you can avoid them.
- Unorganized Employees
When staff isn’t organized, there’s the potential for all kinds of disasters with products/services, orders, customer service, and more. When you bring on a new team member, include organization tips and tricks during orientation and training. Make sure new employees understand the workflow, and have all the tools they need to stay organized. Your CRM can help keep your team on the right track in terms of the customers they’re working with and where they are in the sales funnel. Everyone should be taking advantage of the project management features to stay on top of tasks, and the mobile features, so they can add and edit information as needed when they’re away from the office.
- High Turnover
High turnover is costly. A 2012 study showed it can take 20% of a worker’s salary to replace them. You’ll lose money while you’re overworking other staff members to fill the void while you look for a new employee. You’ll pay recruiting costs, in the form of job ads or a professional recruiting service. You’ll also pay for lost productivity while you’re training the new employee.
Avoid this by taking care of the employees you have. Even if you’re too small to offer a full, comprehensive benefits package, you can take a number of small steps to show your staff how important they are to you.
- Careless Mistakes
Careless mistakes can be costly for a business – especially if they’re related to purchasing or customer experience. There’s no way to avoid mistakes all together, but a concrete workflow and policies that help employees know what to do and who to go to if there’s a problem can keep small mistakes from turning into major issues. Avoid overworking employees, as too many hours on the clock can lead to less sleep. Not only does less sleep lead to a decrease in productivity, but it increases the chance of careless mistakes.
- End of Year Craziness
The end of the year requires all kinds of reporting and fiscal year tasks. It also falls at a time when the entire team is busy with the holidays and family. It can be easy for the whole staff to get stressed out and create havoc in the office. Start early and work on everything a little a time, delegating tasks as needed, to ensure everything gets done before it’s time to take time off. When everything’s finished ahead of time, it’s easier to relax and enjoy your break because you’re not dreading the pile of working awaiting your return.
- Poor Record Keeping
Record keeping matters in business for a number of reasons – accounting, customer service, government regulations… if there’s not a good system in place for everyone to follow, filing taxes and taking care of customer experience issues can be a nightmare. To avoid this, teach your staff to use all the features of your CRM to their fullest advantage. The reporting features make it easy to see the business from a bird’s eye view, and can help hold everyone accountable.
- Payroll Processing
Small business owners wear many hats, since it’s not always possible to hire outside services to handle the tasks that overwhelm them. With QuickBooks, which integrates with Insightly, you can easily manage payroll on your own. For $25 a month, plus $2 per employee per month, you can handle paychecks, including tax calculations. For $39/month, plus $2 per employee per month, you can also handle tax forms, along with electronic filing and payment of taxes. If you’d rather, you can have payroll handled for you at just $79/month, plus $2 per employee per month.
These tips won’t guarantee business runs smoothly all the time, but they can prepare you for a number of issues that may come up over the course of running your business.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
