Money & Finance
Ask SCORE                                                                        Word Count 441

Give Your Business a Makeover

Is your small business stuck in a rut? Perhaps your customers no longer seem
excited and your staff has stopped offering fresh new ideas. Or maybe the
competition has been giving you fits.

Now could be a good time to give your business a makeover. It could be a
major makeover or a minor makeover. What’s most important is that you find
a way to breathe new life into your profits and get the business back on the
fast track. Small, agile businesses have a big advantage in this area over the
big and slow ones. You can move quickly to spot changing conditions and put
changes into operation.

Stand back and take a top-to-bottom look at your business. In order to identify
where changes are most needed, you’ll have to dig for details about your
products or services, your marketing and sales efforts, customer service,
competition and more. Has your customer base changed since you first
started? If so, this could be one area where you need to make changes. Is it
broader or narrower? Older or younger? More upscale or less? You may need
a new image, revved-up branding or perhaps just a rewrite of your marketing
materials to address the needs of this changing customer base.

Take a hard look at whether your products or services are performing to
customer expectations. Remember that your goal should be to exceed
expectations, not simply meet them. If customers are luke warm on your
business, find out why. Perhaps competitors are doing a better job, or maybe
they’ve created add-on products and services that you haven’t. Your own
customers can help with your makeover if you ask them for feedback.  

If your marketing message has never changed, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate
and devise a new one. Try revisiting your original business plan. You might be
able to recapture some of the insight and enthusiasm you originally had from
that document. Think back to your most successful promotions, presentations
or sales efforts. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you might be able to
update and expand an approach that has already worked for your business.

Some old-fashioned brainstorming sessions can help rekindle your
managerial flame. Meet with your most trusted advisors, partners, employees,
friends and outside consultants. Ask for their view on what your business can
do to improve itself.  

For more business makeover ideas, contact SCORE "Counselors to
America's Small Business." SCORE is a nonprofit organization of more than
10,500 volunteer business counselors who provide free, confidential business
counseling and training workshops to small business owners. Go to www.
scoredm.org on the web or call (515) 284-4760 between the hours of 10:00 A.
M. and 3:00 P.M. Monday through Friday.