How To Ensure Your Business Succeeds In The Long-Term

**Collaborative Post**

If you’ve dreamed of starting your own business for most of your life, the last thing you want to happen is for it to fade into obscurity within a few years. However, this is unfortunately the case for a lot of small business owners, 45% of whom are first to close up shop within just five years. Fortunately, there are certain steps you can take to prevent this!

Read on to find out how to ensure your business succeeds in the long term!

Stay on top of your finances

Staying on top of your finances is one of the easiest ways to ensure your business is still around in ten, fifteen or even twenty years. After all, financial instability and insufficient capital are often the key contributors to business closure, as without money, you won’t be able to continue to provide goods or services to your customers. 

There are many ways in which you can ensure your finances remain in good order, from regularly reviewing financial statements, obtaining funding, and even hiring an accountant. 

Invest in cybersecurity

By now, you likely already understand the importance of good cybersecurity for businesses. After all, without a good cybersecurity system or protocols in place, you’re leaving your business incredibly vulnerable to a cyber attack. 

Not only could this mean that hackers or cybercriminals are able to access sensitive information, such as customer data, leading to financial and legal troubles, but this could also cause irreparable damage to your reputation. For the most part, customers are unwilling to support or return to a business that has experienced a significant data breach. 

Streamline business operations

Working to streamline your business operations can also fuel growth. This is because it means that your team then has more time on their hands and will find it much easier to meet deadlines. This will reduce customer complaints and help you to build a more positive perception of your brand moving forward.

Streamlining business operations can also help with employee retention, as it can significantly reduce workplace stress and burnout, which are key reasons why people tend to leave their jobs. 

Fortunately, there are many different ways in which you can streamline business operations. For example, you could start by utilising time-saving technology that automates certain tasks for your employees. Alternatively, you could simply ensure that your team receives thorough training during the onboarding process so that they get up to speed as quickly as possible and are able to confidently execute any tasks that are delegated to them.

Set your team up for success

While you may take on many roles in addition to your CEO duties, your team contributes heavily to the overall success of your business, whether they’re working in marketing or customer service. As such, by setting them up for success, you can set your business up for success, too.

This starts by ensuring they hit the ground running from the moment they join your team by providing them with comprehensive training that gets them up to speed. You may also want to pair them with a more senior member of their team who can act as a mentor during this time. Not only will this help them ease into the role and ensure that they always have someone to turn to, but it will also strengthen the relationship they share with their colleagues.

In addition to this, you may want to cover or subsidise the costs of any additional training they may wish to take on (provided it is relevant to your business). After all, there are many benefits tied to having a more skilled team on-site! 

Improve your employee retention rates

Poor employee retention rates can have a profoundly negative impact on your business. Not only will you have to increase spending on recruitment, but the remaining employees will be forced to carry out additional work in order to fill the gap left by the departing employee. 

Furthermore, high turnover rates will deter the top applicants from applying for a role within your business, as this often signifies issues within the company culture or working environment. 

As such, it is crucial that you take a proactive approach to improving employee retention rates. If this is something that you’ve struggled with in the past, don’t worry - you’d be surprised how fast you could turn this around.

For example, you should start by allowing your employees to give you feedback on what you can be doing better. While this can be garnered through face to face meetings, you may also want to give them the opportunity to submit anonymised online forms. This is because they are much more likely to be honest in an anonymous form, as they feel as though they can speak without repercussions, which may not be the case during an in-person chat.

You can then use this feedback to implement changes to your day-to-day practices that enrich your employee’s experience at work, whether you work to (reasonably) reduce their workload, upgrade the break room, or tackle an overly competitive working culture.

In addition to this, you should develop a workplace wellness scheme that helps employees take care of both their physical and mental health. Doing so will encourage employees to work harder and more productively while also reducing sick days and retention. 

Final thoughts

Whether you’re looking to grow and scale your business over the coming months or simply trying to stay afloat during a particularly difficult time, you’ll be pleased to hear that there are plenty of steps you can take to ensure that your business succeeds in the long term.

From ensuring your finances are handled correctly to taking care of your employees' varying needs, the guide above is the perfect stepping stone to success. However, you must view business longevity as something that you have to continuously work toward, as opposed to something you’ve already earned. This means that you’ll need to adopt new strategies moving forward, especially if your industry is undergoing rapid change.

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