Five Things That Your Business is Overspending on (and How to Fix It)

Every coin you waste in your business is precious and can be directed towards improving services and products, or reaching more customers. Most companies face the problem of funneling their money towards irrelevant expenses and often it is because they do not take time to reassess their way of “doing things”. If you keep doing the same things over time simply because you have been doing them this way, you could be wasting a significant amount of money. Here are some of the areas in which businesses spend too much money and how you can fix it.

1.  Hiring More Employees than Necessary

Today’s era is one of independent contractors and virtual assistants, so businesses do not need to hire salaried full-time staff to deal with daily tasks. Businesses can outsource these duties to freelancers who can work on a per-project or hourly basis. Your business needs to monitor their salaried workers constantly to make sure their positions genuinely require a full-time employee and only add new positions when the workload calls for it.

2. Indirect Marketing Campaigns

Data analytics have come to play a significant role in everything that businesses do and any company that fails to measure its marketing efforts can find itself left behind. Before purchasing paid advertising or posting on social media, ensure you monitor how your efforts are faring on first. The results of your current email blast could affect your decisions on future marketing campaigns for a long time so it may be worth it. Each dollar you spend could bring in more money for your business.

3. Failing to Monitor Business Expenses

Wining and dining your prospects or clients can be essential for a growing business but you should watch out for those fancy eateries (yep, I know). You could be spending more money than you need to in this area if you do not pay close attention to things. There are various expense- monitoring apps available to help you keep track of your business expenditure. If you are using professional accounting software, like Xero, you can also pull reports at different intervals to show you where exactly your money goes.

4. Is Your Business Overpaying?

If you do not hone your negotiation skills, you may end up spending more money than is required on equipment, supplies, office space leases, manufacturing, and other resources you use to run your business. Learn how to negotiate with your vendors so that you can save money which can be directed toward business growth. You probably spend a lot of time negotiating with your clients to make sure you get the best prices for your services or products, so why not use the same skills on your budget expenditure? Use the 80/20 rule to identify which 20% of your business expenses have the biggest impact on your overall expenditure.

5. New Technology

Businesses usually feel that they should invest in the most up-to-date technology, be it operation management software or devices to help them utilize this software. In addition to spending too much money on software and devices, you could also be investing in building a better marketing foundation and building systems that will allow you to scale your business.

As an independent marketing consultant, I help business owners to design and implement cost-effective marketing strategies that more than pay for themselves. If you are looking for a way to scale your business reliably, using proven strategies, I look forward to having a chat.

To your success,