The Three Keys to Growing Your Business

Grow your business by investing in employees, helping customers and knowing your finances.

Everything you need to thrive, even during tough economic times, is well within your reach. You simply need to look at things from a different, more positive perspective. Consider the following suggestions for growing your business through building on what you already have.

Utilize and Increase Your Greatest Asset

Any company’s greatest asset is the people who work there. No matter how the economy is doing, and the number of customers coming through your dealership door every day, you need to be getting the most you can out of your staff. It is necessary to continuously educate and invest in your staff.

Keeping up with technician training schools and customer service training can increase your dealership’s productivity and enhance your management skills.

In addition to training and educating staff, you also need to motivate and inspire your team. Empower them by constructing a mission statement that you and your team can focus on. When you have a mission clearly stated, you’ll have employees who aren’t just showing up for a paycheck; they are inspired and eager to go to work.

Support Customers, Create Loyalty

Meeting the needs of customers is no longer enough to win them over. What additional services can you provide for your clients that are a minimal cost to you but have a high value for your customers? You could consider offering to educate consumer and commercial customers on basic equipment maintenance.

Hosting small courses at your dealership is a great way to get customers into the store while showing you care that their equipment is taken care of properly. You can merchandise pre-made maintenance packages for them to purchase that contain oil, filters, belts, spark plugs or trimmer line. Send customers a reminder in the mail or give them a quick phone call when spring and winter maintenance is advised to show customers you are once again thinking of them.

Customers can conduct minor maintenance procedures—those that offer you little profit—on their own, while leaving the larger high-margin repairs to you. By offering customers direction with repairs, you are also helping yourself in the end by avoiding low-profit repairs.

Know Your Finances, Grow Your Business

It’s easier to grow your business’s profits when you truly understand your finances and expenses. Many people fear the unknown, and many dealers and small business owners fear financials. The new model of business success is being built on financial understanding.

Understanding your finances allows you to:

  • Set a budget.
  • Make educated decisions.
  • Set goals for business growth.
  • Evaluate success vs. failure.

Many Dealer Success Guide articles can help you develop financial policies and communicate those policies with customers and staff. To better understand your company’s finances, you can hire an accountant or financial consultant.

If you’d like to start small, there are several free online resources available. The Business Owner’s Toolkit offers tools for understanding basic bookkeeping, creating balance sheets, and also preparing and understanding financial statements. Once you better understand the finances, you can take action and look at new ways to increase cash flow and reduce overhead while maintaining customer satisfaction.

Many dealers may feel they can only grow their business with an increase in sales, but by focusing on employees, customers and finances, you can build on what you already have.

Stephen Edwards is a financial coach and author who implements the financial and personal success principles he learned from working with today’s leading influencers. For more information, please click here.

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