If you’re a business owner, you may be overwhelmed with new problems on a regular basis. In order to improve the performance of your business, obtain sustainable growth, and become more profitable, it’s in your best interest to follow the best practices of successful companies.

Clearly Define Your Business Strategy

In order to get the most value from your business, carefully defining your strategies helps to keep everyone in your organization focused on short-term and long-term goals. Strategies don’t have to be overly complicated, and some simple examples include:

• Reducing costs and waste
• Developing new markets and becoming more competitive
• Adapting to new technologies
• Increasing efficiency, productivity or quality
• Improving employee skills through training

Creating a business strategy helps to assess your current environment, identify strengths or new opportunities, and eliminate weaknesses or threats. Hiring a third-party to review your business strategy can provide an objective point of view and add value elements to your strategies that you might have overlooked.

Improve Your Operational Efficiency

Best practices in operations help to convert materials and labor into goods and services as efficiently as possible, in order to maximize profit. Examples of best practices used by operational managers include:

• Purchasing equipment or software upgrades to improve productivity
• Improving communication coordination to deliver information quickly and accurately
• Evaluating revenue collection processes to improve cash flows
• Training employees to develop more efficient skills

Bringing best practices and innovation to quality management, inventory control, delivery, and data processing helps to fill gaps in process workflows. Successful companies will streamline their operations to cut unnecessary expenses, simplify employee workloads, and ultimately dominate their industry.

Attract and Retain the Best Talent

Successful businesses attract, develop, and motivate their employees; from the ground floor to senior management. In order to get the best out of your people and attract the best talent, you can:

• Set realistic targets and reward achievements
• Communicate clearly within all levels of your organization
• Involve employees in the development of the business
• Adopt flexible work schedules
• Implement policies that encourage equality and diversity
• Offer continuous employee development and training

The best employees are often able to identify areas of improvement and adapt their methods to changing market demands. By trusting the developed workforce, a business can keep processes heading in the right direction, and streamline operations, and stay ahead of the competition.

Embrace Your Digital Footprint

As technology continues to evolve, businesses are capitalizing on new ways to market and sell their products and services. Best practices for successful businesses involve harnessing the Internet of things to benefit their market in several ways, including:

• Improved global reach through websites and online sales
• Lower costs by moving away from traditional storefronts, brick and mortar, or wasted ad space
• Level the playing field by servicing geographically different markets
• Increase targeting through websites, e-mail lists, and social media campaigns

Implementation is key for a successful marketing campaign. While too many ideas can complicate your message, monitoring your campaign can make it easier to pivot, eliminate pitfalls, and optimize your resources. 

Offer Superior Customer Service

Exceptional customer service can help your business build a competitive advantage, increase your revenues, and expand your market. Some of the easiest ways to improve the customer service experience through best practices include:

• Create policies to keep customer service consistent
• Only make promises you can deliver on
• Treat negative feedback as an opportunity to grow
• Use devices that the customer is most comfortable with, either by phone, e-mail or in person
• Respect your customer’s time
• Empower employees by provide recognition for exceptional customer service

With customer service leading to satisfaction, your clients are likely to recommend your business to friends and associates. Keep in mind that a customers’ experiences will be defined by the skill, timeliness, and quality of the support they receive.

Avoid Barriers to Implementing Best Practices in Your Workplace

In many organizations, best practices can be slow to spread, even if the ideas are productive, cost-effective, and easy to understand. The main barriers to adapting best practices include a lack of knowledge about the processes, no motivation from employees to make changes they’re involved with, and a disparity in the skills required to implement them.

For your business to succeed, your organization needs to work together to adjust in accordance with the marketplace by figuring out what works, and eliminating what doesn’t. A best practice tends to spread easily throughout the organization when success has been demonstrated, and all employees see the benefits of it.