Target These Ideas
For a Successful Small Businesses

There are a lot of challenges facing small business owners these days, including rising interest rates, changing customer demands and more.

One of the most important involves staffing. Nearly half of all small business owners ae facing staffing shortages or, perhaps worse, staff members are problems rather than contributors.

There are a lot of reasons for this, from the lasting impact of COVID to demand for higher wages and conditions like remote offices. Regardless, what’s clear is that successful businesses have solved this riddle. In most cases, these businesses have successfully updated their hiring practices.

Without going into detail – and those details will vary with individual industries and businesses – most businesses that succeed in hiring are flexible. They are prepared to examine the issues with open minds. Even such difficult issues as payroll and salaries They realize that putting topics like pay and benefits off the table may be putting them out of the competition. If this is impossible, then other ways to attract top talent must be found.

However, one thing is clear - the businesses that have found success in the challenging labor market are the ones that have evolved their hiring practices.

To reach and attract the qualified, motivated job candidates you want, you will also need to approach the hiring process with an open mind. 

Don't be afraid to expand your hiring budget to offer bigger salaries, signing bonuses, or better benefits. If expanding the budget is completely out of the question for you, find other ways to attract top talent. That may be location or workplace culture, or perhaps a combination. Whatever it takes to help attract the talent you need.

Client Retention

Another critical factor involves your customers. Clearly, gaining and keeping them is critical. Of course, if doing that was simple, few small businesses would fail.

A lot of lists include various ways of saying the same thing: “Don’t forget your customers. Study them and their purchases.” Think about how those could change with today’s economics and other factors. And never stop thinking about them – you won’t be alone if some of your calculations err. Remember how airlines laid off staff at the beginning of COVID, then within no time began trying desperately to find replacements?

We also see other bad moves by businesses. While it’s always smart to look for new clients, your priority should be keeping those you have. It’s far more difficult to bring on new customers than it is keep the ones you have. Especially for small businesses with limited resources, a lot of care needs to be taken in everything from marketing to staff assignment.

Look for Help – The Cheaper the Better

These and the many, many other challenges for small business can be addressed with some help, including a lot of help from free and low-cost sources.

Midwest Small Business Finance shares information from many local non-profits. These include KCSourceLink and Mid-Continent Public Library and its Square One small business program. The Small Business Development Center at UMKC is another.

All the above offer courses, webinars, libraries, and other resources where you can find information that may prove life saving for your business. Mid-Continent, for example, has detailed economic and demographic data that can provide insight into potential markets within local communities.

The one limit a lot of this has is that it comes with a big demand for time – your time. But you knew that building a small business wasn’t going to be easy!