Small Business Owners: Let’s Talk Training & Why it is Crucial

Training is important for small business because it represents a good opportunity for employees and business owners. It allows them to grow their knowledge base and improve their job skills to become more effective in the workplace. Don’t think of training as boring, think of it as an investment! Training empowers you and your team to learn new skills, refine existing ones and promotes performance and productivity. These are the ingredients which allow you to be the leader you’ve always dreamed of!

Here’s our top 5 most important areas for training:

Financials

Understanding how to read these financial statements is the first step in understanding your business’ financial situation and a step towards making informed, strategic business decisions. It’s common among business owner’s to only review their financials once a year, at the end of a financial year, after it’s been prepared by their accountant. With some training Business owners can understand how to read the financial statements on a day to day basis and make those important decisions on the basis of facts and financial information. Training on financial statements creates a good basis for business owners to grow their business as an entrepreneur.

Marketing

How do you know whether your marketing plan is effective?  Do you have a system which enables you to compare and analyse how your website or marketing campaigns are tracking? Having the ability to understand and compare your marketing tactics is highly effective for the success of any business. Marketing is often accompanied by a large cost so it is important to understand your marketing analytics to maximise the bang for your buck. A basic training on Marketing (even if you outsource it) will enable you to make correct decisions.

Human resources

As a small business owner there are so many things to manage and take care of – sales, customer relationships, marketing, etc. – the list is endless. With all of these responsibilities it’s challenging to find the time for things that may seem lower on the list of priorities, like HR for example. Having a strong understanding for human resource management can have a huge impact on the culture of your organisation and the well-being of your staff. Being knowledgeable in human resource management will enable you to develop and implement policies for your business to ensure everyone is being looked after.

System operations

We all want our businesses to run smoothly and efficiently but often don’t know how to achieve this. Well, we’re here to tell you that systems and processes are essential to the longevity of every business and it’s all about having the right procedures in place to ensure your business is operating optimally. By having solid systems in place you’ll have the ability to 1. Measure your performance 2. understand and keep up with trends and 3. streamline your processes to increase efficiencies. Systems often connect different departments together so it’s important to understand how to set up these systems and put them into practice.

Upgrading in your own industry

It’s as important for you as a business owner as it is for your employees to continually grow and upgrade your skills to stay up to date with industry changes. Training in your field means you can work more efficiently each day and are always aware of new and smarter ways of doing the same activities.

With the end of financial year just around the corner perhaps it’s time to review your internal training methods and improve any pain points you may encounter. At Sum and Substance we’re passionate about training business owners on the financial side of things allowing them to make informed business decisions. If you would like our support in training you or your team how to do your own books then please contact us. We can be reached at (03) 9424 9447 or email. You can directly book in  a time to chat by clicking here. You can view our training options here.