Top Ten Small Business Best Practices

Small businesses have an inherent advantage over big companies in terms of being agile and flexible enough to adjust to any situation. As an entrepreneur, you can easily implement changes and adapt best practices in your business, to ensure viability, profitability and social responsibility.

Here are some tips shared by top entrepreneurs, which can help you get ahead in your business.
• Incorporate. A lot of small businesses are sole proprietorships. In this case, your business is essentially you, and whatever legal liabilities your business might incur would be your liability as well. Make it a point to establish the identity of your business by separating it from your own person. This also goes to say that it’s good business practice to be on the right side of the law. A lot of small businesses start out as home-based businesses, which are part of the informal sector. But if you plan to stick to your business in the long run, it would be a good idea to register your business name and pay the proper taxes.
• Consider a point of sale system. Most small business manually manage inventory, cash and credit card payments, and customer profiles. If you run a POS system, you will be able to monitor all these from the back-end, without having to be on-site all the time. POS software and hardware integrate different systems like client profiles, credit card payments, inventory tracking, receivables, payables, and the like. These systems can even help you automatically compute your tax payables.
• Manage customers. You can track customer preferences and support inquiries through a customer relations software. This way, you can predict regular and recurring sales from your regular customers. A customer relations software can also be used to record customer complaints, and resolution of these. This can be particularly helpful if you receive similar complaints in the future.
• Expand with e-commerce. Aside from selling products and services online, you can start expanding your business online through e-commerce. For small quantities, you can start by selling on eBay. For bigger quantities, you can sign up with merchants like Amazon.com, who can handle logistics and support for you. Alternatively, you might want to do the online selling yourself by adding e-commerce and shopping cart functionalities to your company website.
• Do viral marketing. Apart from e-commerce, another way you can harness the Internet’s potentials is through word of mouth marketing. You can successfully spread the word about your products and services by publishing a business blog. This weblog does not necessarily to have content about your products only, but rather you should focus on publishing useful information, opinion and tips about your industry or niche. For instance, if your small business is about organic health food, then you can publish a blog about health in general. This helps establish credibility and authority, and potential clients will remember your name when they think of health.
• Outsource. Small businesses thrive by maintaining a lean organization. You might want to consider only keeping a small staffing detail, who are focused on doing your core business competencies. Other administrative work, like headhunting, accounting, and maintenance can be outsourced, and these can be on a contractual basis.
• Secure your information. Most small businesses don’t have an in-house IT support staff. And yet software and hardware are essential in today’s business environment. Be sure your information and data are secure by installing anti-virus software on your computers. Also keep your files and systems safe by encrypting these and using strong passwords, in case of attempted data thefts.
• Telecommute. An added benefit of online tools like email, videoconferencing, and collaborative software is that employees can now work from the comfort of their homes. This saves time and reduces cost related to commuting to and from the office. Employees also tend to be more productive, because they can just worry about doing work rather than travel time.
• Make the most out of meetings. Meetings are considered a bane by employees and managers alike. For a small business, it makes no sense to hold two hour meetings that just leave everyone too burned out to actually do work. Minimize meeting times to at most 30 minutes, and be sure meetings result in solid action plans, rather than plans that will be the subject of further meetings.
• Have an exit strategy. While most small businesses are cherished by their owners as a labor of love, some are established as start-ups and secure funding along the way. This might require you to think of your exit strategy early on. Will you be turning over shares of stock to the investors after five years? Will you still be in control? Will you cash out on your investment and move on to a new business?

Small businesses bank on their ability to be flexible and adaptable to change. Whatever business you are in, these simple tips can help enhance your productivity and ultimately contribute to a better bottomline.