Brand protection is becoming more and more important for small business owners. With the current climate, it’s not hard to see why. There are so many things that could damage your reputation, that is out of your control, that you need to have some kind of plan to save your business from public harm. It requires you to have some kind of knowledge that will lead you in the most practical direction. You need to have things that you can actually utilize should a situation arise whereby you have to protect your business from several outside forces. These are just some of the things that you should be looking at.
Loss and liability
When you have suffered a loss due to the pandemic, should you take it lying down? So many business owners believe they should. It’s easy to understand why because, hey, the world is in lockdown so what on earth can you do right!? Well, that is a gracious approach but it’s not savvy. You need to have some kind of loss-prevention business insurance as Simply Business shows. You are protected against a certain amount of losses and liabilities to your clients or customers, should you take a fall in profits or revenue due to things being out of your control. The key is to show, it wasn’t your fault and then the business insurance will activate a strong lump package that will give you the cash you need to dig yourself out of a hole.
Employee actions
You never know when an employee is going to turn sour grapes and try to harm your business. It’s shocking how many times malicious or negligent actions cause small businesses to fail, all because an employee didn’t do something they should have. So if an employee leaves their machine open and unguarded, you can be hacked, and who’s going to pay for it? You are! The only way you can protect your business from internal disruption is to have procedures and policies in place that will prevent this kind of thing from happening. Firstly, always have managers acting like hawks, seeing who is and isn’t following protocol. Remind your employees of proper machine handling, such as not leaving your desk while logged in, not opening suspicious emails, (phishing), and not trusting anyone else to use your machine, not even other employees.
A revenue G.O.J
Having some kind of get out of jail free card is desirable for a small business. This should come out of your revenue. So put aside an ‘emergency fund’ which you can use to weather a storm. Maybe you haven’t taken in as much as you thought you would this financial quarter. Don’t worry, you can pay for inventory and employee salaries by using your fund which is set aside. The recommendation is to save about 3-5% of what you make in a year, every single year so you can make this fund.
You are the boss of your own business empire, so don’t expect anyone to hold your hand. You should make prudent decisions to implement these solutions so you stay protected at all times.