When you’re running a business, it can be overwhelming to decide where to improve. The key is not to do everything at once. Instead, pick three areas to focus on this quarter—small, focused steps can lead to big progress over time. Here are some helpful small business improvement ideas:
Improve your Business Processes
Start by looking at your business processes. You can improve how things run day-to-day with methods like PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), creating standard operating procedures, or setting up a clear onboarding process for new clients. A bit of structure goes a long way.
- Improve your process with PDCA
- Create Standard Operating Procedures
- Create an onboarding client process
Improve Profitability and Decrease Cost
Next, think about profitability and cost. Explore simple ways to lower expenses—like optimizing tools, renegotiating with suppliers, or streamlining operations. Focus on your most profitable customer segments, and if your value supports it, don’t be afraid to raise your prices. Prioritize what really matters to your customers, and shift time and resources toward those activities.
- Lower your cost – here is how.
- Focus on profitable customer segments
- Raise your price
Do what matters most for your customers
Success comes from focusing on what matters most—especially to your customers. Instead of spreading yourself thin, prioritize the activities that truly add value. Do less, but do it better.
By redistributing time and energy toward customer-focused improvements, you’ll create stronger relationships and more impactful results. Regularly check how your operations are performing to make sure your efforts align with your goals and are delivering real value where it counts.
- Improve your focus by prioritization (do less and redistribute the gained time to customer value items)
- Run performance checks of your operations
Enhance your Customer Insights
Understanding your customers better can also make a big difference. Create a quick Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey or ask for reviews to gain insight into what’s working and what’s not.
- Create a NPS survey
- Activate reviews
Delegate Workload
If you’re feeling stretched, it might be time to delegate more. That could mean hiring, simplifying your offerings, or documenting processes so tasks can be handed off more easily. You might also experiment with using AI to reduce routine work.
- Increase hiring
- Remove complexity – reduce, minimalize, restructure
- Create stop lists
- Record standard operating processes in a document
- Add some AI to your processes
Add resilience to your business
Add resilience to your business by getting your finances in shape. Start with a simple 3-month cash flow in Excel. Think ahead—what could go wrong, and how can you prepare? Even basic risk management can make you more adaptable.
- Get your finances in order, start by creating a cashflow in excel, 3 months ahead
- Look at future pitfalls
- Do risk management
Marketing Structure
Your marketing deserves structure too. Set aside a budget (typically 5–10% of revenue), define your target personas, and write down your marketing strategy. A good marketing briefing for any agency or partner saves time and improves results. Don’t forget to clarify your current brand positioning—it’s easier to evolve it when you know where you stand.
- Create a marketing budget with 5% – 10% of revenu spend.
- Define your personas
- Build your marketing strategy (write it down)
- Create a marketing briefing for your agencies
- Define your existing brand (just documenting the now)
Improve your Sales effectivity
Improving sales can be as straightforward as refining your sales process, developing a sales script, or installing tools like Leadinfo to track website visitors. A simple CRM helps organize follow-ups and build better customer relationships.
- Improve your sales process, consider hiring an extra sales rep and increase your sales processes
- Create a sales script
- Install leadinfo (track companies to your website)
- Get proper structure with a CRM
Leverage Technology
Make technology work for you. Apply marketing tech (martech) principles and introduce helpful AI tools with clear guidelines. This boosts your team’s efficiency without adding complexity.
- Upgrade your effectivity with martech principles
- Enhance your interactions with AI (+guardrail)
Build Reach
Finally, work on your reach and tracking. Strengthen local SEO, develop a clear content strategy, and review your optimization efforts. Build a basic KPI dashboard—track no more than 10 key metrics, such as customer satisfaction (NPS, CES) and profit margin, to stay focused on what drives success.
- Improve your (local) seo
- Develop content strategy
Optimize your optimization / look where to focus and improve
- Build a KPI deck to track your progress, keep it simple, do not track more than 10 items
- Track customer satisfaction (NPS/CES scores, which are an indicator of business success)
- Track profit margin (which is an indicator of business success)
Improving your business doesn’t require a complete overhaul—just a few focused, practical steps can create meaningful momentum. By choosing three key areas to work on this quarter, you’ll stay in control, make steady progress, and build a stronger foundation for growth.
Whether it’s tightening up operations, deepening customer insights, or sharpening your marketing and sales, each improvement compounds over time. Keep it simple, stay consistent, and don’t forget to celebrate the wins along the way.
Which one would you pick for your next quarter?