5 Steps to Spring Cleaning Your Small Business

The spring cleaning mentality offers you a chance to take a good look at things that have been piling up all winter and make some meaningful changes to prepare for the rest of the year. Why not try a round of spring cleaning for your small business as well?

Over the years, your small business can become just as cluttered as your house, and it’s never a bad idea to take some steps to make your work life as organised and productive as possible.

Here are 5 things you can do to kickstart your small business spring cleaning.

1. Evaluate your overall goals

Start by sitting down and taking a mental inventory of your small business and its direction. Are you on track with the course you thought your business would be taking when you started it? Compare your current business plan to your company’s mission statement. Do they line up? If not, figure out what needs to be done to make sure that your small business is moving forward in the direction you want to be going.

2. Eliminate anything that’s not working

Once you’ve figured out how you want to proceed, you need to identify anything within your small business that’s holding you back from moving forward. These could be bad habits that you’ve let slide in yourself or your employees, products that aren’t selling, sales tactics that aren’t converting – anything at all that’s not helping your small business move toward its goals.

Don’t be afraid to prune these things and make room for what you truly want – growth.

3. Begin new growth

Now that you know the direction that you want to go in, and you’ve gotten rid of practices that will hinder you, set out to begin some new growth in your small business.

Double your sales calls for a few weeks. Identify a new market to advertise in that will bring you targeted leads. Commit to a new level of customer service to attract more repeat business.

In short, break out of your comfort zone and watch your small business improve.

4. Straighten your office

Just because you’re “cleaning up” your small business doesn’t mean that you don’t have to clean the space as well. Take a day or two and overhaul your workspace.

File old documents, organise your desk and take care of any old business. Maybe you could get some new organisers and calendars to help you stay more on top of things this year. You may even want to move your furniture around to give everything that “new” feeling.

5. Clean up your web presence

Take some time to go through every page of your website and look for things to clean up.

Maybe you still have some webpages focusing on old promotions or links to outside sources that no longer exist. Get rid of anything that isn’t helping you attract new business and double check to make sure that everything that’s staying is up-to-date and reflects your overall goals for your small business.

None of these things will take very long, but once they’re all done, you’ll have a sleeker, more focused small business that’s putting its best foot forward.