How to take advantage of slow winter months: Part 4

This four-part blog series will discuss how to take advantage of slow winter months. Downtime is not a bad thing as long as you are building an effective business strategy.

HERE ARE A FEW OPTIONS TO CONSIDER:

1. Nurture Current Customers
2. Find New Customers
3. Learn New Skills
4. Prepare Your Business

   PREPARE YOUR BUSINESS

Here are four ways you can take advantage of slow winter months to prepare your business for the upcoming year. Many of these suggestions might be those dreaded tasks you’ve been procrastinating over.

   1. ACCOUNTING & BOOKKEEPING

These slow winter months might actually be the most important time for your business, especially when it comes to planning your finances. Make sure you use your spare time to review your accounting and balance the books to prepare for tax season.

As you’re reviewing your finances, make sure you plan ahead for the next year. Set money aside to have enough to support you through potentially slow months next year. If you’ve been tracking your income pattern over the past few years, it should give you a strong indication of when you’ll need that stash of savings. If you don’t think ahead, it could very easily put your business in jeopardy.

   2. CREATE/IMPLEMENT TRAINING

It can be difficult to hold training sessions for your employees during the busy times of the year. Mostly because you probably don’t want to take your staff off the projects they’re working on. With that being said, it’s still critical to provide training to your staff so you can run a safe and efficient construction business.

Take the time to create and implement training programs for your staff. If you’re doing this on an annual basis (at the least), you can expect consistent improvement in your business. This process will also help if you have turnover because you can always keep new employees up-to-date.

   3. REVIEW INVENTORY

If you’ve budgeted money out for the end of the year, assess whether you need new equipment. Conducting an inventory of all your supplies and equipment will ensure you enter the new year prepared. Also make sure you plan for additional equipment or supplies you may need as your company grows. If you don’t need to make any immediate purchases, put aside some money for your potential expansion.

   4. SET PRICING & FINANCING

Now that you’ve reviewed your accounting and bookkeeping, lock your pricing and financial programs in place for the coming year. As you may already know, offering payment options to every potential customer is necessary for optimizing your pipeline. Being able to offer financing can also be a critical tool in your sales kit, and here are just three reasons why:

• Financing will help you close more deals

• It will enable you to land bigger projects

• You can reduce the need to discount your services.

Be sure to click the link if you’d like additional information about Medallion Bank’s home improvement financing programs.

As you can see from these four articles, there’s plenty to keep you busy during the slow winter months. It’s up to you to decide where you want to prioritize your time and effort. Create a plan using the suggestions from this blog series to maximize your efficiency and productivity this season.