“Business is doing fine, I don’t need it to run more efficiently,” said no one, ever... Efficiency is key for any business to survive in the market, especially a jewelry & diamond business. With resources becoming more limited, you must do everything you can to make sure your time and money are spent on the right things. Once you become more efficient, you’ll find you have more time to focus on improving other aspects of your business, and ultimately get ahead of the competition. Follow our 8 Tips to Run a Successful Jewelry & Diamond Business, and watch your company grow before your very eyes:
1.- Prepare a Business Plan
What is a business without a business plan? Doomed to fail. How can you run any kind of business if you don’t even know what your goals are for running it and how you’re going to get there? The answer is -- You can’t. That’s why the first step in making your jewelry & diamond business more efficient is creating a business plan. This will help guide your way to growth. Be clear about how much you’re going to spend upfront versus how much you plan on making. Come up with your goals, do what it takes to achieve those goals and look back at your plan to see if you succeeded. Everyone starts a business with an objective in mind, what’s yours?
2.- Technology is your friend
There is a reason that there is such an emergence of technology in this day in age. Technology is made with the purpose to make your life easier. Don't ever run your business with a pen and piece of paper. Use technology to track your inventory, operational costs, income vs. expenses, payroll, and more... This will make sure you run a tight operation and allow profits to pile in. Even if you’re using technology right now, is it the most updated version? Changes are being made every day with efficiency in mind. Implementing new technology into your business process will make a huge difference in the time it takes to get things done and how effective you are in doing so.
3.- Outsourcing
There is no need to do every little thing by yourself. Find out what doesn’t need your undivided attention and supervision, then outsource that work to the experts. These tasks can include human resources, accounting, administration and marketing. As you let others take care of those minor tasks, you can focus more on the major aspects of selling your jewelry & diamonds. You’ll find that outsourcing will allow your business as a whole to become much more productive and effective in reaching the goals you’ve mapped out in your business plan.
4.- Focus on Main Activities
As we said about outsourcing, you will have more time to focus on the bigger tasks at hand. These tasks are the main activities that require more time and attention on your end and will help you stay ahead of the jewelry & diamond game. What is it that you do best? Wholesaling? Manufacturing? Resell? Once you find out, focus on that portion of your business. If you put all your focus on these main activities, your business will be able to maintain a strong foundation for you to build on.
5.- Start Networking and Never Stop
Networking is key in anyone’s career. Seek out other business owners, entrepreneurs and experts in the jewelry & diamond industry to increase your presence and get your business’ name out there! You can do this by participating in community events or joining different jewelers’ groups online. Not only will you be able to promote your business, but maybe learn a thing or two from other experienced jewelry & diamond business owners.
6.- Automate Your Work
Automating our work goes hand in hand with introducing technology into your business process. Think of how much more productive you could be if there were things that just happened without you lifting a finger. It seems like a dream but is in fact, very possible. There is various software out there that reduce the need for human power to help you conduct meetings, analyze results, check on inventory and so much more. Figure out what doesn’t need to be done by an actual human and automate it!
7.- Talk to your Customers Through Social Media
Without customers, you don’t have a business. So, it’s important that you provide your customers with quality service. And an effective way to do that is through social media. Social media is a great way to spread brand awareness and improve customer service. Whether through Twitter, Instagram or any other social media platforms, customers want to see that you care, and these platforms are a great way to reach so many people. Make sure you utilize comments to see what your customers want and any concerns they have. Let them know what you sell, share your experiences and promote your brand.
8.- Regularly Track Productivity
Tracking your productivity on a consistent basis is essential to make sure you understand what's working and what isn’t. Sometimes it’s easy to just put things on auto-pilot and forget about it, but this also runs the risk not going back to check on results and optimizing your processes. With so many types of software tools, tracking how much jewelry & diamonds you’re selling can be fast and easy to manage.
Now that you know our 8 Tips to Run a Successful Jewelry & Diamond Business, it’s time to put your limited resources to good use! The Barak ERP system can handle most of the workload with any jewelry/diamond-based operation. From tracking inventory, income vs. expenses, pricing, customers, vendors and more… Never use Excel to run your business again -- Schedule a meeting with a Barak sales rep to get an online demo today!