Marcus Richards
Startups are often strapped for cash, with every pound being carefully weighed up before being spent. It’s common for entrepreneurs to invest their savings into their business, which means that they’re careful when it comes to splashing the cash. One of the ways in which startups ensure they’re keeping their overheads down and maximising their product margins is by ensuring that the services they need to access are as cheap as possible. This article is about how you can find those cheap services, securing bargain rates for a service that helps you generate revenue and profits.
Shop Around
The key tip here is always to get a good idea of the service industry you’re looking to engage with before you part with your cash. Take at least a day to research the businesses that you could partner with, sending out emails or calling sales staff to ask about the kinds of rates you should expect from them. Sometimes, you’ll secure a better deal by playing these companies off against one another, mentioning that you’ve seen a better rate elsewhere.
Scale
Some startups appear too small to potential partners to be offered a favourable rate. In this case, you might find that you’re paying through the nose for an essential service when you know that larger businesses will be enjoying better rates due to the volume of their orders or sales. If this is the case, you should find a firm that grades its rates by the scale of your sales. That’ll mean that, as soon as your business takes off, you’ll enjoy lower rates, and your overheads will shrink for you to enjoy a larger profit margin on your business sales.
Engage Assistance
Instead of shopping around on your own and finding out about key, essential services via the internet, you can also use brokers and other third parties to help you secure the most favourable rates for a service. The likes of iCompario will help you compare everything from fuel cards for your drivers to a telecoms service that will help you get in touch with your customers better. They take the research labour out of your hands and deliver the best deals so that you can instead focus back on your startup and all the other responsibilities that you have as a business owner.
Negotiation
There are other services that you can negotiate with. You’ll be surprised at the number of firms that are willing to pick up the phone to keep you as a customer. You might have found this with previous insurance deals, mobile contracts, or even utility providers – they will offer reductions if you threaten to leave. This is the case for several business services, seeing as it’s often better for them to keep you on their books than it is to see you leave. Always be prepared to enter these negotiations to reduce your overheads across the board.
There you have it: four ways in which the leaders of startups can reduce the cost of essential services to their businesses.
