Cut Business Overhead Without Cutting Your Business
We’re in a tough economic period right now and everyone is looking to cut back. But there’s a big difference between cutting back and cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Many companies and businesses are cutting expenses indiscriminately across the board. In many cases they’re cutting some of their most valuable assets (people), or they’re cutting back on things that I don’t consider expenses, like advertising and marketing; things that bring in business.
So in the spirit of “cutting smart” let me start you off with a few ideas that could save you money while not cutting back on your ability to bring in business.
1. Watch those phone bills. In our office we use Skype for almost all our outbound calls.The cost: $2.95 a month per line for unlimited calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada! If we call overseas, the cost is 2.1 cents per minute. If you make a lot of overseas or out of the country calls, for $9.95 a month you can make unlimited calls in the U.S., Canada and 36 other countries around the world.
Plus, since you call from your computer (there are also wireless Skype phones available), no matter where you are in the world, you can make phone calls from your laptop, allowing you not to have spend a fortune on cell phone calls when out of the country.
We’ve saved so much money using Skype, it’s allowed us to drop two AT&T phone lines and lower our monthly cell phone bill since we don’t use as many minutes. Skype also offers incoming lines and now has a new feature called “Skype for Business.” Check it out at www.skype.com.
One other thing; check your phone bills every month with a fine tooth comb. More often than not I find mistakes on my bills, especially my cell phone bill. This has saved me quite a bit of money over time.
2. Cut back on the entertainment budget. The restaurant owners aren’t going to like this; but cutting back on business lunches and dinners will save you money without losing you business. I think during these stressful economic times clients want to see that the companies they buy from are being smart and not “blowing money” on unnecessary things like expensive bottles of wine or overpriced tickets to ball games. Look at the idiot auto execs who flew to D.C. in private jets while asking for a taxpayer funded handout.
If you’re trying to cut back, it stands to reason that so are your clients. Don’t you think they’re going to want to know if the money you just spent on that $200 lunch couldn’t have gone towards lowering the price of whatever they are going to buy from you?
I think you’ll impress clients more by showing them you’re putting your money where it’s going to help them the most: into your products and services.
3. Does that really need to be sent overnight? I am amazed at how many companies, big and small, use overnight delivery when it’s absolutely positively not necessary. So many clients say “Send it overnight” out of habit. We usually ask them if it’s critical that they receive it the next day. Most of the time they say, “No” and we end up shipping UPS ground, which is not exactly slow, and saves us quite a bit of money.
4. Develop the living heck out of what you have. I constantly hear business owners ask, “How do I find good people. It’s so difficult. What do I do?” This is not an uncommon problem. Let’s face it; there’s only two ways to find good people. Steal them from someone else, or develop your own.
Considering the cost of poaching the competitions people, it’s a lot more cost effective to ramp up your training effort and develop your own people. Plus, when you develop from within, it creates a much stronger organization. People that grow with a company feel a greater attachment to it than mercenaries who sell themselves to the highest bidder.
Being a company that develops and trains from within also makes you a magnet for the better recruits.
As always, I’d love to hear from you. What are you doing to cut back on your business overhead without cutting back on your business?
