In recent months, many businesses have been facing financial uncertainty. If you have been experiencing revenue and viability issues, it’s only natural to look for ways you can safeguard your business and secure its future. Here are just a few of the many ways you can go about it:
Consider Relocation
Rent is one of the highest monthly costs for many business owners. While you and your small team might need somewhere to work, the high lease fees may be making you reconsider. Short of requesting that everyone work from home, you could look at serviced offices.
Rather than paying multiple bills for rent, utilities, and maintenance, you can pay one affordable weekly or monthly cost. Serviced offices also come with furniture, reception services, meeting rooms, internet connectivity, and more. You can often enjoy significant savings while also gaining features and services you didn’t have in your long-term office lease.
Adjust Your Advertising Avenues
An advertising or marketing budget is one of the first things businesses cut during hard times. However, it can be worth adjusting it rather than doing away with it altogether. You still need customers to walk through the door, so getting rid of it may not be the wisest decision.
Instead, consider whether your current marketing techniques offer enough bang for your buck. By decreasing your budget and using cost-effective advertising avenues like social media, TikTok ads, and Google, you may be able to make significant savings while also seeing an upturn in sales.
Make Your Insurance Payments
One of the first things many businesses do when facing financial uncertainty is to cut costs. However, even if your business insurance payments are seemingly too high to manage, do your best to keep paying them.
All it takes is one disaster or accident, and you may find yourself in an even worse position. Talk to your insurance coverage provider if your monthly payments are too high. You may be able to adjust your coverage to a more affordable level or cut specific elements that don’t seem necessary right now.
Negotiate with Suppliers
Almost all businesses value loyalty, and your suppliers are no different. They need the patronage of companies like yours to keep their lights on. Rather than immediately looking for cheaper supplies, which can be a stressful undertaking, see if you can negotiate their bills.
Don’t be afraid to ask for more competitive rates and longer payment windows. It can be a win-win for everyone – they don’t lose a customer, and you can save money and improve your chances of keeping your head above water. The worst thing they can do is turn you down, and if that happens, you’ve still lost nothing.
Cut Luxuries
As heart-breaking as it can be to say goodbye to those business luxuries that you and your team enjoy, it may be necessary to keep the lights on. Take a look at your current expenditure and see if there is anything you can manage without.
Barista coffee, catered lunches, magazine subscriptions, packaged mints you keep at the reception counter – they can all be worth scaling back to save money until you’re on your feet once more.
However, when you do cut these luxuries, make sure you communicate the reasons to your team. They may even have other cost-cutting ideas they can volunteer.
Most businesses will face financial hardship at least once, but it doesn’t have to spell the end of your operations. The money-saving measures above should be able to help you save enough to keep the lights on until sales increase once more.
