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How an accountant can support your business development

Chartwell • Mar 16, 2022

HOW AN ACCOUNTANT SUPPORTS YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

As your accountant, we won’t just look after the financial side of your business. We can also advise you on the strategic side of your company, including the importance of business development as vital part of your growth plan.


Business development (BD) is what helps your company move from slow, organic growth to fast-paced, hypergrowth. And it’s only by putting the right drive and expertise behind your BD that you can turn your strategic ideas into real success stories.

So, how can we help you achieve this?

HOW AN ACCOUNTANT SUPPORTS YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT...

TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR STRATEGIC GOALS

The starting point for any kind of BD activity is to pin down your goals and aims as a business. When you know what you want to achieve over the coming months, it’s far easier to define a strategy for success. And that’s easier to do when you talk to an objective adviser, like us.

We can sit in on your board meetings, talk to your executive team and get a real handle on what makes the business tick. And, armed with this knowledge, we’ll work with you to drive the direction of your BD and find the best opportunities for you to focus on.

HELP YOU CREATE A CLEAR BD STRATEGY AND PLAN

Having a defined set of BD goals is a good starting point. But to put this all into action in a productive way, you’re going to need a comprehensive plan for your BD projects.

Our years of experience advising business leaders and their teams really comes into play here. We know the best routes to take, the budgets that will be needed and the right tactics for bringing in more contracts, sales and partnerships. By putting these strategies into a clear plan, and linking this to agreed timescales, you have a BD route map to follow and action.

INTRODUCE YOU TO A BROADER NETWORK OF BUSINESS PARTNERS

We work with a wide range of businesses across many different sectors, industries and niches. By introducing you to our network of clients, we welcome you into a supportive community of like-minded business owners. And that’s excellent news when looking for new partnerships.

Whether it’s attending a local conference, an online webinar or one of our in-house client events, you’re going to meet new people, share new ideas and make the right connections. This is a great way to build alliances and work together with other local businesses. And when you’re well-connected, you set the very best foundations for your future BD activity.

PROVIDE BETTER ROUTES TO FUNDING AND INVESTMENT

Whatever goals you’ve set for your BD projects, it’s likely that you’re going to need additional funding to finance this activity. Investing in your expansion, or new partnerships, is vital to getting a good return on your BD, so great access to finance is a definite bonus.

We’ll advise you on the most appropriate funding channels and how you can use these facilities to finance your BD plans. And we can also link you up with banks, lenders and business finance specialists. You will get the advice and finance you need to bring your BD to life.

HELP YOU TRACK AND MEASURE YOUR BD PERFORMANCE

Meeting your BD targets takes time – and a whole lot of dedication. Measuring your BD performance over time, helps you stay on track and gives you a good indication of how well you’re tracking against your planned progress.

We’ll help you create the reporting and metrics you need, so you have clear data to track your progress over time. You can log your activity in your project management system, or your client relationship management (CRM) software, and keep clear notes on contacts made, relationships built and targets converted etc.

If you want to get more from your BD, please do get in touch. We’ll partner with you to put some real drive, experience and impetus behind your BD strategies.

The seventh cause of poor cashflow - Sales levels are too low

By Anna Stubbs • 19 Apr, 2024
It might sound obvious, but it isn’t to many businesses. If current sales levels don’t support the overheads and other cash demands on the business, then your overdraft will keep increasing. This means that your business in its current state is not viable (unless you have ongoing access to new funds from investors or financiers). There are five ways to improve your sales levels. These are: 1 . Increase customer retention . Stop your customers from defecting to the competition. 2 . Generate more leads . Gain more enquiries from people who are not yet customers. 3. Increase your sales conversion rate. Get more of your prospects to buy from you. 4. Increase transaction frequency. Engage your customers to buy from you more often. 5. Increase transaction value. Help your customers to buy more products or services from you. There are literally hundreds of individual strategies that you can implement within these categories to increase sales. Sending you a list would be pretty silly of us and overwhelming for you. Some strategies don’t apply to your industry, and some just won’t work in your business for whatever reason. What we have found through experiencing a wide range of client situations over the years, is that certain things do work in each type of business. There’s a pattern that we see in clients - both good and bad! How does a business grow its sales without its owners becoming overwhelmed by a mountain of change? The best and most supportive way to grow and improve a business is to have someone looking over your shoulder from time to time, helping you build a plan and a forecast, and keeping you accountable to making the changes that will make the most important differences. Without that support, we all end up in our business and never working on it. Talk to us about how we can provide that support.

The sixth cause of poor cashflow - Overheads are too high

By Anna Stubbs • 19 Apr, 2024
Overheads isn’t typically a place where you will find a lot of wastage. Our experience is that business owners are very careful about managing their expenses, and the smaller the business, the truer that statement is. Having said that, as a business grows, so do the layers of hierarchy. Management control can deteriorate, and the business can become a bit flabby. The trick is to trim the fat but not the muscle when evaluating your expenses. As an absolute minimum, every business should do a thorough review of its overheads at the same time every year, so that it becomes a natural routine. Here are some questions to ask yourself: Do appropriate managers and key staff have individual expense budgets? If so, how are these managed? Have you conducted a formal review of all debt service costs and related fees? What policies and cost control processes are in place for sales staff? Include all working away allowances, vehicle reimbursement expenses, entertainment, and credit card use. What was your total marketing and advertising spend for the last 12 months? Have you analysed each component of spend based on effectiveness and results to the business? When was the last time you renewed your IT support contract? Have you negotiated a fixed monthly fee? If so, is your current fee and contract appropriate (consider migration of services to cloud)? List all subscriptions you pay monthly for SaaS cloud services. Are you using all these services and on the right plan for each? Conduct a cost-benefit analysis. And finally, do you consider your accounting fees a cost or an investment? If they’re a cost, you need to reduce them. If you’re getting value from your annual spend with us, maybe you should invest more to get better business outcomes! Best practice for keeping control over spending is to set budgets and monitor them monthly. Talk to us about the best way to do that. We can show you the impact reducing your overheads can have on your cashflow.

The fifth cause of poor cashflow - Gross profit margins are too low

By Anna Stubbs • 19 Apr, 2024
Your gross profit margin is what is left from your total sales after variable costs are deducted. For example, if you're a retailer and your sales in a given period are £1,000,000, and the cost of the goods you sell in that period is £650,000, then your gross profit margin is £350,000, or 35%. In the above example, if you implement some strategies to improve the margin from 35% to 39%, your gross profit will improve from £350,000 to £390,000. That’s an increase in profit of £40,000. You may need to increase your overheads a little to get that increase, however, if you get the results, it will be well worth your investment and energy. There are many ways to lift gross profit. Some will be appropriate for your business, and some won’t. For example, if you’re a retailer, you could focus on reducing stock shrinkage and theft, avoiding some discounting, and making sure you minimise obsolete stock. If you’re a contractor, you might focus on rework and wastage, ensuring all work and materials on jobs get billed, and team member productivity. We can help you to determine the best strategies to lift your margins. We can then run your figures through our Cashflow & Profit Improvement Calculator to show you the impact of seemingly small changes. Don’t let poor margins destroy your cashflow and working capital. Get some help from us to make a better plan.
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