How Small businesses Can Make the Most of the Slow Season

How Small Businesses Can Make the Most of the Slow Season

It is common for many small businesses to have busy and not-so-busy seasons. Many accounting firms, for instance, are often busy during the second half of the year while work is usually quiet in the first half. Some retail stores may be busier during holiday periods and the end of the financial year.

If this applies to you, it’s important to know that you shouldn’t despair and sit out the wait until the busy times come around.

There are three ways you can use your downtime to benefit you and your business.

Identify Potential Areas of Efficiency

One asset business owners have during a slow season is time, which can go a long way if some of it is used to identify areas where the business can be more efficient. By reviewing your business’s finances and practices, as well as seeking feedback from stakeholders, you can improve your business before the next busy period.

You may find that there are processes that could be streamlined or done away with altogether without harming your business’s overall performance. You may also find ways to increase output through things like the better use of technology. Moving your accounting over to a cloud based system like Xero, for example, will likely deliver you huge savings in efficiency when the busy times return. By identifying areas of greater efficiency in the slow season, you can get the most out of the peak period.

Solidify Relationships with Clients

This is a highly important point for businesses that are either in an industry where client loyalty is usually low, or if they are reliant on a small number of clients. Maintaining relationships is difficult to do in the peak season as production demands constantly keep business owners and their employees from maintaining their professional networks.

In the slow season, however, business owners and managers have more time to meet with stakeholders and strengthen their professional networks. The slow season is the perfect time for you to take clients out for a coffee or even make a few simple calls to stakeholders – these can go a long way in building and maintaining client trust and loyalty.

Take Care of the ‘Behind the Scenes’ Work

This can often be a daunting and disliked exercise for some business owners, who may not like the often-mundane administrative work that goes with the successful running of their business. Despite this, the slow season is the ideal time to catch up on things like taxes, bills, business strategies and the like.

By taking care of all of the ‘behind the scenes’ activities during the slow season, you can help make sure that your business can operate at the best capacity possible in the peak season without any unnecessary interruptions.