If you are self-employed or have a small business, managing your business in summer can become more complex. You have some vacation employees, and sales probably decrease because your customers have also gone on vacation. In short, you must prepare to face the seasonal factor in the results of your company. In short, how do you manage your business in the summer?
This article shows some strategies and techniques to direct, manage, and better manage your company during the summer.
Keys to Managing Your Business During the Summer
To manage a business in summer, whether small or large, you need planning. It would be best if you considered a whole series of factors so that you can face this time of the year in the best possible way.
The idea is to start planning not when you are already in the middle of summer but several months before. At the beginning of each year or the end of last year, you can have a strategy to implement during this time.
Vacation management in human resources
According to the collective agreement and the Statute of Workers, your company’s workers can take a few days of vacation during the year. In many cases, employees will take vacations during the summer unless you have a greater volume of work during this time in your company.
In any case, you must keep complete control of the summer vacations of the employees. So, you can anticipate who will perform the tasks the employee on leave stops doing. Some companies, for example, take the opportunity to hire temporary employees during July and August or take fellows to perform simple tasks.
Sales planning
If your business sales reduce in the summer, you also need a ‘crash plan.’ That is, you must do something to bill more, considering that maybe many of your clients are on vacation. Consider, for example, the famous “summer sales” that we see right now in many clothing stores.
It is a clear incentive for people to take advantage of these moments to buy with discounts. It may be an option to sell more, which does not mean you have more profitability for each product sold, but you can increase your demand by reducing prices.
Control of expenses in the summer
Summer is usually a time of greater tranquility in the offices, so it can be an excellent time to sit down and analyze your company’s expenses for the new season in September. For example, during these days more electricity is consumed, for example, in air conditioning. Still, on the other hand, you can reduce it in other areas by having fewer employees in the office.
Let’s also think about the costs we invest in our online store. Is it worth launching an advertising campaign in summer, when most of your clients are companies, and these are now closed for vacations or are the people who must make the decisions not in the office?
You can also study what investments you should make during this time since some of your suppliers are also making summer sales. It could be an excellent time to buy or invest in materials or machinery for your office.
Compare your data with other summers
How much does your income increase or decrease during July, August, and September? Sometimes, you may even want to put the “closed for holidays” sign for a few weeks since keeping your business open in the summer will not always be profitable.
Don’t be afraid to compare your data through your ERP online with previous summers. How much and how was it sold last year? What techniques were then used to sell more? What decisions were made to optimize internal work processes during this time of year?
Plan the other quarters
Maybe you can’t do anything substantial, so your summer turnover equals the rest of the year. It is impossible to pretend that sales are the same for your business, perhaps in summer and Christmas. Therefore, you should consider not investing more resources in summer to get more deals but minimizing expenses and concentrating your efforts on selling more at the times of the year it sells the most.
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