How can an SME stay competitive? Large businesses have repeatedly proven their ability and willingness to leverage their sizes to achieve their goals. For SMEs, the situation is vastly different. They get financial penalties for misbehavior that they must pay in full or face even harsher consequences. Many small businesses are failing to pay their employees’ bare minimum requirements because they are struggling to stay afloat.
Without the same financial resources as the big businesses, how can smaller enterprises compete? How can SMEs afford to stay competitive in their chosen industries especially in the upcoming year?
How SMEs can Stay Competitive in 2022
To remain relevant in the year 2022, SMEs have to adopt better approaches, favoring intelligence and agility oversize. We’ve learned some intriguing things through the years about how SMEs can stay competitive. These are some of them:
Speak up to the proper people
Governments are universally chastised for being out of touch and imposing unrealistic compliance obligations on corporate executives, regardless of political ideology. But how many of us have written to or otherwise contacted our local member of parliament or relevant minister to express our concerns, wants, and suggestions for a change?
The value of that collective data speaks loudly about the size of the problem. This in turn can lead to better political action if every single business owner who needs help contacted the relevant ministry. So speak up, give voice to your ideas for bringing significant change to your company, because more voices equal more momentum and urgency for improvement. You can begin by contacting your local government representative today. Inquire about any grants lined up for the year 2022 and begin to position your business for a few.
Prioritize getting to your target audience first.
The largest advantage SMEs have over large businesses is also their biggest disadvantage: their size. Think of this as a competition between a mouse and an elephant. If the elephant wants to step on the mouse, it can do so without hesitation. The mouse, on the other hand, has to be extremely cunning to be able to outmaneuver the elephant.
The public sector isn’t the only place where clumsy bureaucracy thrives. In many respects, big businesses are the masters of red tape. They’re so large, like elephants, that they can’t see what each of their four legs is doing, or their own tail. Their cost-cutting sprees can rob high-growth company units of essential operating capital. Their approvals processes for everything from new products to fundamental public statements are so long that the world has moved on by the time they achieve a consensus.
This is the main competitive edge that SMEs have and you should exploit this in the year 2022. In most cases, SME decisions are reached in a single meeting and the accompanying announcements can be made in a matter of seconds on social media. So once you’ve made a decision on your products and services, don’t stall for more time trying to make it ‘perfect”. Get it to the market quickly so that even when the bigger brands eventually come knocking, the customers would stick with your familiar product.
Outsource whatever isn’t profitable.
In a small business, resources are usually limited. That implies that all available resources are put to the best possible use. Business executives are prone to be engrossed in trivial duties and arduous tasks. It’s astonishing how frequent it is for SME owners to have the mindset of “I’ve always done it myself” or “no one can do it up to my standard.” This worldview has a monetary cost.
Cleaning the office toilets, conducting data entry, or doing other similar tasks costs the company money – time that could be better spent sending out invoices, answering those extra client calls, or submitting tax paperwork ahead of time to avoid interest penalties.
For SMEs, time is an important asset, and it should be treated as such. As a result, outsourcing and automating such jobs become a top priority in order to free up time for money-making operations. If you have to perform any task up to 4 times, seek out an app or employ someone for it.
Place more emphasis on a personalized experience
Consumer trust is at an all-time low. This is one of the reasons why investing in real, meaningful connections with customers/clients is so important. According to this survey, about 55% of customers trust organizations they buy from less than they used to. Also, 69% of customers say they don’t believe in marketing. Add the fact that there has been over 59% of client acquisition costs in the last five years and the situation gets dicier. In the end, there is more competition than ever before, with more commercials and items vying for our attention.
There are numerous non-monetary or low-cost methods for attracting and retaining loyal customers. These range from free lunches to organizing on-site yoga/meditation/cooking or other classes. Others include partnering with local gyms and cafes to offer discounted memberships and implementing internal newsletters. Such letters could share individual achievements and successes across the wider business.
Seek out mentors in your industry
It’s easy to feel isolated when you’re running a business. Mentors can provide you with valuable insights because they see the issue from a different perspective. They also have the ability to bring several life and business lessons to the table.
To truly stay competitive, you need a fresh or shared perspective every now and then. Small firms frequently face a lack of process (something big organizations excel at). This causes their leaders to lose momentum and focus. The result of this is a fall in sales and customers looking elsewhere. So start small but don’t let that stop you from dreaming big.
Conclusion
Finally, to stay competitive in 2022, remember to cultivate a better working relationship with your team. Employee engagement matters because employees who have a meaningful relationship at work have 50 percent higher job satisfaction, better devotion to their professions, and a stronger feeling of societal influence.
When employees feel appreciated, as if they are worth more to a company than just the money they bring in, they become more invested, which has a huge impact on customer relationships. Please check out other insightful posts on SME360.