It’s imperative that businesses look at reducing overheads in your business because cutting overhead costs is normally one of the fastest and the easiest ways to reduce losses and return your business to profitability.
So if you’re struggling with cash-flow, changing your organisational structure or just want to become more profitable here are 5 ways to reducing overheads in your business.
Reducing Overheads in Your Business
Just like there are a variety of ways to skin a cat, the same applies when reducing overheads in your business. Here are some of my favorite and easiest ways to reduce overheads:
- Review your current staff (both employees and contractors) – Set some time aside to review your current organisational structure. Assess the hours you’re paying for staff. Could your business still run efficiently if you reduce hours? Are you paying staff $60 an hour for $20 an hour tasks? Sometimes we start to get comfortable with everything in our business, but when you set aside the time to work on your business vs in your business such as reviewing your current staff, you might just be surprised by how much you’re spending and where you could cut costs.
- Clean up your email list – When was the last time you cleaned up your email list? This simple task could save you a shit ton of money – especially if you’re paying in US dollar and don’t live in the USA, thanks to the exchange rate. I suggest you go back and look at who has engaged with your email list over the last 3 months. For those subscribers that haven’t engaged, I would strongly encourage you to create a re-engagement sequence to try and get them engaged. Take those who don’t re-engage off your list so you’re not paying for people who don’t want to be on your list.
- Review your Paypal/Credit Card/Bank Statements – Pour yourself a nice glass of wine or make yourself a cup of coffee and spend some time going through these statements. I recently did this and saved over $200 in apps I wasn’t even using from the Apple store that were auto-renewing every year. Explore what subscriptions you have. If you’re using them but not to fullest maybe downgrade. An example is that I have the Canva premium but I’m not using it so I’ve downgraded to the free version.
- Automate low value work – My friend James Rose has used a tool called Zapier to automate over 75 hours of work per month! {yes, you read correctly, 75 hours}. Automation is a no-brainer for any business looking to become more cost-efficient. If a task is low-value, repetitive and easily replicable, it can be handed over to a machine. Assess what current tasks are being done by humans and what tasks could be automated. If you want to learn more about how to automate tasks and stop wasting time and money check out my podcast episode where I interviewed James.
- Track your time – This is something I personally do and also work on with my coaching clients. The more time-efficient your company, the bigger your operational savings, but without knowing where your business’ time is actually going, you won’t know what to change. For example, I use a tool called Toggl to track my time. When I started using this tool I found out very quickly that I was spending too much time on the initial discovery calls – I was spending 5-6 hours per week. So my team and I are currently looking at hiring a salesperson because a salesperson will be cheaper than my hourly rate. This will free time for me to work with more clients in a 1:1 small business consulting capacity in order to help them reach their own business goals.
As a business coach for women, when working with my clients I typically see that most businesses can cut expenses up to 15% without affecting the business.
It’s important that once businesses [like yours] start to implement reducing overheads in your business, that you monitor these changes to ensure that these changes aren’t impacting your team, growth and further profitability.
Where to From Here
If you’re struggling with not only reducing overheads in your business but also feel stuck and lack the clarity and strategy you need to move your business forward – I’d love to hop on a 30-minute discovery call to explore your goals, struggles and how I might be able to help you move your business forward. Book in for your free 30 minute discovery call here.
Have a fab day and hope this helped you to start thinking about reducing overheads in your business,
Ange
