Businesses can sometimes have a high overhead cost or are just looking for ways to reduce their spending to use it on more useful or practical things. Most businesses these days have many subscriptions to softwares and services they don’t necessarily need or can use an alternative. Businesses are doing some small things wrong that may add up to a lot of money. Whatever the case may be, here are 10 tips and tricks of how to save money for your business.
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1. Phone Service
What phone service provider does your business use? If your business is a startup or wants to save money and uses a big corporate phone provider, you may want to rethink that. Services like Google Voice or Kall8 provides you with a free or cheap phone number for people to call you. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for “special” services with a large corporation, try something cheaper that is just as reliable. This way, you get to enjoy the same service for a much lower price. If you’re using your phone to handle appointment bookings and reservations, you should use Set a Time. Set a Time allows your business to accept appointments online for free. It’s a lot easier for your customers and clients and it helps you save time, money, reduces no-shows, and more.
2. Website
Hold on! Stop the “call us or email us” stuff. Surprisingly, many businesses don’t have a website. This means that business does not have an online presence. Depending on the business, being online is very important, especially since almost everything is moving towards the digital age/version. Telling a potential client to call, email, or fax to your business means you’re losing customers. Don’t waste money on trying to get clients without having a website. If you’re in need of a website, you can try a free website builder like Wix or you can have a professional web development agency design and develop a website for you at an affordable price.
3. Lights
Shut off your lights! Many times, businesses leave large lights on all night. This wastes energy as well as wastes money. If your business leaves its lights on for security, you can try an alarm of some sort. It is a better investment than leaving the lights on all night. Remember, every dollar counts. A dollar can be spent towards growing your business or other useful projects for your business. You can also use commercial night lights or LED lights that use very little electricity. This will help reduce the cost as well as keep the environment calm and safe at night.
4. Software
Switch out your expensive software. Even if your software is cheap, try to find something cheaper or even free. You can even try to find open source software. Open source software means the software is open for anyone to develop or expand on towards a better software. It’s free and will be free forever. For example, many businesses may have an accounting software they enjoy using but have to pay a hefty price each month. Most of the time, not all the features are used. Why not find something cheaper or free for your business and see if you can “live” with it. We’re pretty sure you can. We get it, most people don’t like change but remember, saving a few dollars and using it towards something better can go long ways.
If you’re using an online appointment booking software, you can see if Set a Time is something you may want or need. Set a Time can help your business accept appointments online for free, with many features you may not be able to resist. 🙂
5. Inventory
Many times have we seen businesses starting out with way too much inventory. Of course, having your product stored up and ready to ship is always good but if no one is going to buy them, they’re useless. Before ordering (more) inventory, make sure to plan and/or sell your existing products you have first. Once you have people buying, you may be able to increase your inventory in a manner in which it won’t hurt your business financially.
6. Go Green
We love trees but it’s time to go green. It’s time to save the environment and the earth. Going paperless and switching to cloud/online or digital solutions can help in many ways. Say you have hundreds of documents that need to be kept. Instead of saving it on paper in a filing cabinet, why not store it online in a cloud storage solution like Dropbox or Box? This will allow you to save money on paper, ink, pens/pencils, and much more. It will help your business become more productive and will help your business become more organized. Like we said previously, almost everything is going online or digital. Now would be a good time to switch to the computer or digital version of things before it’s too late!
7. Marketing/Advertising
Thee are ways to advertise or market your business. We’ve seen companies do billboard or television advertising but ended it up being a huge fail. The result was lots of money being lost. Instead of marketing physically, your business can invest in marketing digitally or online. Most of the time, it’s much cheaper and a lot more effective. The best part of digital marketing is there is less work and a higher ROI (return on investment). Browse through our blogs as we post more and more marketing articles for small and large businesses.
8. Negotiate
We really didn’t want to put this on here but it’s such a good tip. Many may think it’s common sense but it’s not, and not for the bad reasons. We understand many people are happy with prices others may give to them. Some people may be shy to negotiate as they may not be as good or skilled in it. We understand those excuses but negotiating is definitely a good way to save money. Imagine if you can bring the production of your product from $10 to $7. That would mean if you produced 1000 products, it would be $7000 instead of $10,000. That’s $3000 saved! Negotiating can be learned – easily. Not everyone is the best at it but you just need to be able to convince the other side. Negotiating will definitely save you money, and often can help you save money fast!
9. Bulk
Buy things in bulk. If you have to buy paper towels for your business, you’re probably better off buying it in the biggest pack it comes in rather than buying a couple of them or one of them at a time. It will save you a couple of dollars now but will save you quite a bit of money in the long run. Good places to buy in bulk for pretty cheap would be Walmart, Costco, and sometimes Amazon.
10. Do Your Research
Know your customer or client. Know who you are selling to. Do your research before spending money on advertising or marketing. Do your research before designing a product the way you want it. Make sure to do your research before going out into the market. This will save you tons of money in the now and in the future. This is something not to be lazy on but to be proactive on. You want to make sure you do enough research so that your business can save money as well as make money.
Save Money For Your Business
After all, these techniques will help your business save money. Instead of wasting money on things you thought your business needed, you can use it towards marketing, sales, or something else that is more important. We hope this article helps your business grow and save money. Let us know what you think in the comments! Good luck and enjoy!
