Taking the first step and starting your own business was the initial milestone in the history of your company. Meeting the challenge of building your enterprise to achieve your dreams is admirable; therefore, we want to give you some useful tools to help you reach a new level.
Growing is not a simple task. From understanding all the details of your operations, projecting your results, and building valuable relationships, to making assertive investments and strategic decisions, you will have to take new steps to consolidate the evolution of your company. If your goal is keeping reaching bigger targets, you should include the following points in your business strategy:
Watch the details of the processes of your company
When you focus on everyday tasks, you can lose sight of the general business strategy you drew up for your company. It would help if you made a special effort to analyze your administration scheme under the eye of your long-term goals. Keeping detailed supervision of your operation and understanding your processes will help you identify your strengths and opportunities to stand out.
Back-office task control will allow you to organize and efficiently manage every procedure. Continually monitoring your customers' relationships, your paperwork management, and your human resources administration may offer you better chances to improve your performance. When you have current and updated insightful information about the actual performance of your company, you can promptly make the best decisions for the future.
Improving your efficiency can assure you a better performance in any load you take. If you control your expenses, promoting constant savings, and knowing your cost per mile, you can optimize the operation of every truck you own, increasing your earning's margin and making your growth a lot easier. Also, you will be able to control any possible operative risk, as policies' expirations, preventive maintenance, and audits.
Counting with a financial ally like Summar, that in addition to offering you tailor-made factoring services, can take care of invoice collection, will reduce your administrative burden. In Summar, we can help you create, register, and keep track of your invoice's status, do credit checks on your brokers, and take care of collections so that you can focus on the operation of your business.
Plan the execution of your budget, analyze the results
A central aspect of your growth process is knowing the specifics of your earnings and expenses. Besides establishing a competitive cost per mile, based on your experience and market standards, you also need to measure your revenue continuously. The more control you have over your operation costs, the bigger the savings opportunities.
If you are in your growth stage, don't forget to include in your budget the costs of the investments you need to be more competitive.
Your customers' payment schedules can negatively affect your cash flow, obstructing the execution of your budget in the estimated times. Easier and faster payments for your invoices are vital to having a healthy cash flow, and with Summar, you can get your loads funded in as fast as 2 hours!
Keep thinking about the future
Set accurate and easily measurable goals. This way, you will have a route map that will take you to your business, upgraded. Remember that any decision you make today will affect your company; that's why you should align your choices with your projections.
Also, be prepared to deal with the different risks that can emerge in the process. The most accurate lesson of 2020 and the sanitary emergency is how important it is to have a risk management plan, thinking about the challenging scenarios your business can encounter. If you know how to react to a difficult situation, you will not need to stop your growth plans, and you'll be able to reach new levels of productivity.
One goal you can set for your business can be establishing a minimum margin for your loads. This will help you determine which ones are good deals, and how many loads you should take to reach the revenue needed to reinvest in your business. You can calculate your margin by dividing the value of your fixed costs over the number of loads you transported in a given time. This result will be key to decide on a high-impact investment, allowing you to assume a new debt responsibly.
Harvest healthy relationships with your customers
For your company to keep growing, it is imperative never to stop increasing your operation. That is why you need to focus on taking care of your brokers and customers; you should build their trust to become their carrier of choice. This trust is mostly based on schedule and quality compliance, as well as excellent customer service.
Over time, your good reputation will be the perfect tool to build a network that gives you the chance to grow your client list. Your quality, punctuality, conflict resolution abilities, and the cost-benefit relationship of your service are critical for this to happen.
Strategic investments are the actual key
Every growth implies a constant reinvestment in the business, to upgrade your instruments and enhance your process so you can accept new challenges. Fleet upgrades, digital transformation, and risk management, adapted to follow the accelerated rhythm of the market, are a must to offer added value to your clients.
To achieve the growth you dream of, consolidate your processes, and increase your profits, reinvesting is necessary. You need to work with a funding company that allows you to control and optimize your cash flow and improve your clients' payment schedules. This way, you will have easy access to the necessary resources to keep on going any growth strategy you can imagine, with perfect timing!
Learn more about our freight factoring services, tailor-made especially for you!