better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Marginal Or Sustainable?

10 January 2016

How good is your business? Seriously, how successful are you? A marginal business is one that makes a profit, but not much of a profit and is vulnerable to the loss of one customer, or where the truth is we’d be better off getting a PAYE job and increasing our take-home income pay.

A sustainable business is one that makes enough profit to generate surplus cash that we can save for a rainy day (and we are guaranteed to get those every five years) or to reinvest back in our business.

Into which group does your business fall? Be honest here.

A few years ago my accountant suggested my own business was becoming increasingly marginal and maybe I needed to do something about that. So I did. I set up a sales spreadsheet and hired a PA to help me manage enquiries and make sure that once a month we sat down to discuss what I was doing to generate work, who needed a nudge, who was wasting my time and who needed a quote or a visit and so on.

Most people try to do everything themselves and can suffer because they lose focus and forget to do important tasks, such as sales and marketing. By investing in a pair of hands and setting up a defined process I sidestepped my own weaknesses and began to increase the activity in my sales pipeline. My business is now successful and has moved out of the danger zone and I still keep up with the sales activity, having learned my lesson!

Instead of working in our business we need to work on our business and how many of us really do enough of that?

It’s a straight choice. Work on the business and be more successful, or skimp on it and be marginal.

What do you need to do differently?

Next week: Crossing The Rubicon