10 Overlooked Ways to Improve Business Performance

Businesses work hard to grow and succeed, but many often overlook the things that can have the greatest impact on their performance. These 10 overlooked ways to improve business performance are simple methods that'll keep your company moving forward and help you thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.

1. Seek Out Negative Feedback

You'd think that negative feedback would be exactly what you don't want to hear, but you'd be wrong. Negative feedback can be just what you need to grow and improve your business. It can motivate people and organisations and inspire them to become better. Why? Because it pushes people to make a change. It can help your company innovate, rather than allowing it to remain stagnant.

If you ignore the bad, you’ll get to a point where you’re looking at flat-line growth and can’t expand to reach more customers. Learn to look for and embrace negative feedback, and you’ll see a consistent flow of good growth.

2. Audit Your Content

Content creation is essential for any business. It has the ability to positively impact performance through an increase in engagement and the development of a wider audience.

However, auditing existing content often falls to the bottom of the list in terms of importance for bustling businesses. It may seem like a time-consuming and non-urgent task, but a regular audit of your content can really make a difference. It can highlight ideas that aren't working or bring up any holes in the current content strategy that need to be filled.

Once the content audit is complete, you'll be able to identify how you can make the most of your content strategy, and either generate new content or take a new direction with the current content. Ultimately, you want to have a cohesive and up-to-date content library that can help drive traffic and customer loyalty.

3. Add Additional Value to Your Existing Offerings

The core features of your products or services can be easily replicated by countless competitors in the market. This is why business owners need to carefully examine their offerings and adapt them in unique ways that increase the customers' value perception of these offerings.

Focus on improving quality, design, practicality, reliability, delivery speed and customer experience. Providing your clients with additional benefits and features that your competition may not offer is a value-adding strategy that can help differentiate your business from your competition and put you on a path to growth and continued success.

4. Reduce the Steps in Your Sales Process

The best way to increase business performance and drive revenue is to simplify your sales processes. Your main focus should be to enhance customer interaction, not deter it.

It's easy to think that going through a series of steps or lengthy processes is a normal part of doing business or processing a sale. But, this can create a high level of frustration for consumers, which makes customers less likely to make a purchase. And as an entrepreneur, you know that frustration can be costly. This is especially true if your business depends on repeat customers.

By reducing the number of steps customers have to go through when they buy something, you can cut down on the time, frustration, and cost associated with buying your product.

5. Build Systems That Measure Progress and Performance

Businesses often set goals but overlook the importance of tracking performance, especially over time. Using metrics to track and monitor your company’s progress and performance can help you make adjustments in response to events and trends, giving you the information you need to make important decisions.

This approach helps you make the best use of your time and resources, while keeping you accountable.

6. Charge for the Value That You Deliver

Too often, companies fail to develop a viable pricing strategy and end up losing out on valuable business. They fail to take into account the difference between cost and value, the pricing set by competitors, market demand, and how much clients are actually willing to pay for a particular product or service.

Your pricing strategy should align with the value of the benefit provided to your customers by your business. This means you need to base prices not only on the cost associated with producing or delivering your products and services, but on the value you provide to your customers.

7. Revisit Undecided Prospects

Yes, you know who your prospects are, but do you ever follow up with them? Or do you just put a large majority of your accounts on autopilot?

Staying in touch with your current clients and keeping them up to date on your business is important, but it's also vital that you reach out to your undecided prospects. If you fail to do so, you’ll miss opportunities to garner more business, which will impact your revenue in the long run. Revisit undecided prospects to find out if they have any needs that you haven’t yet addressed and to identify where you can help.

8. Repackage Services or Ideas

The way we think about different business ideas can significantly impact how our products or services are received by customers. When relying on traditional marketing or advertising campaigns, companies can miss out on the very niche market that could greatly benefit from their product or service.

By offering services or products in a more unique or original way, companies can quickly be ahead of the curve in their market.

9. Develop a Customer Experience Plan

Having a solid product is important, but customers want more than just a product. People want a sense of place where they can feel they belong. Each encounter you have with a customer or potential customer can be a defining moment in their relationship with your company.

A customer experience plan is a roadmap for every single customer interaction you have. It works to ensure that every interaction with a customer is based on trust and great experiences. When you deliver an authentic and outstanding customer experience, people feel like they are a part of your world, and the business grows.

10. Implement Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a process of sorting through a large number of possible outcomes and mapping out what could happen if each one occurs. This could include processes for handling inventory, managing customers, or shipping products.

Scenario planning can help businesses get ahead of future issues and plan ahead for how to handle them. The process can be very valuable in organisations that are trying to develop effective strategies to improve business performance and stay ahead of changes and developments.

If you are looking to optimise your business' performance and reach new levels of success, schedule a clarity call today.