3 Ways to Work Smarter and Keep More Profit

Many promotional product professionals hit a wall when their sales peak at a certain level: they feel as though they are working harder but making less.

The good news?

Everyone hits this wall.

It’s normal.

The thing is, you either let the wall stop you or, you deal with the wall, brick-by-brick.(It’s much easier than you think, read on).

There are three ways to work smarter, earn more profit, and overcome growth obstacles:

1. Increase Your Efficiency. You’re stuck. You know how to grow sales, but for some reason, it’s not working anymore. There’s a saying, “You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”* In other words, the thinking that got you to where you are, is not the same thinking that will help you get to where you want to grow. You need to think differently about your business; you need a new system, a stronger environment that will allow you to achieve your next level of growth. Our Guide to Creating a Modern Office explains how a better office “ecosystem” can help clear away the clutter so that you can flourish and thrive.
2. Spend more time selling. Sounds obvious; it’s not! We often think that if we simply work harder, we’ll make more sales. But everyone has a maximum capacity. “Working harder” is not the answer. To grow beyond your personal max-limit, you need to recalibrate your business to make more room for growth. Dealing with the wall brick-by-brick does not mean dismantling the wall. Sometimes, you need to build a better foundation beneath you so that, eventually, it becomes high enough so that you can simply step over the wall. We’ve created a Guide to Growing Your Team that gives you tips and tools for structuring the right support environment to help you grow. It includes role requirements, hiring tools, retention advice, staff development, and more.
3. Improve your cashflow. “We were always focused on our profit and loss statement. But cash flow was not a regularly discussed topic. It was as if we were driving along, watching only the speedometer, when in fact, we were running out of gas.” That quote, made famous by Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer, epitomizes the #1 wall that growing entrepreneurs face: cashflow. What you need is more cash on-hand so that you can avoid financing orders (which simply leads to giving away more profit). Check out our 3 Simple Ways to Improve Cashflow for tips on how to keep more of your money. You can also listen to our insightful conversation with Chief Financial Officer Rod Brown of MadeToOrder as he discusses some of the financial mistakes made by entrepreneurs and how to avoid them.

The best thing about hitting a wall is that it forces you to stop and rethink your business. After all, breakthroughs only occur because of the wall. “There are four kinds of people in the world,” writes one author**, “Those who build walls. Those who protect walls. Those who breach walls. And those who tear down walls.”Which one are you?

*Quote by Edward de Bono

** Quote by P.S. Baber