RTA Business Asks Whether You Should Pay Your Staff a Living Wage

RTA Business asks whether you should be paying your staff a living wage if you want to attract the best talent and sell your business for a tidy profit.

RTA Business: We Secure the Best Deal for the Sale of Your Company

When you want to reap the benefits of all your hard work by selling your business, and walk away with a tidy profit, RTA Business Consultants is here to help. We use our teams experience and skill to ensure you walk away with the best possible deal for the sale of your business.

Our experience has taught us that attracting a potential buyer is nowhere near as easy as just showing them that you’re making money. You need to show them that when they take on your company, they have everything they need to make a sustained profit.

Skilled Workers Want More Money

A company is nothing without its staff. If you don’t attract the right workers with the right skills, you’ll never advance beyond your initial business model, and never make enough profit to make your business truly lucrative. Furthermore, if you’ve got sub-par staff, a buyer will notice, and it will undoubtedly turn them off.

So how do you attract the best talent? To answer this question you need to ask yourself what kind of jobs attract quality staff. The answer; jobs that pay. If someone is skilled and they know it, they’re not going to go for the first position they find, they’re going to wait until they can get the most money for their services. That’s just human nature.

What is a Living Wage?

Naturally, this is why staff in managerial positions receive the big bucks. But at RTA Business, we would argue that you need to take this philosophy and apply it to every single worker, by paying them a living wage.

A living wage, according to the Living Wage Commission, can be defined as: "an hourly rate of income calculated according to a basic cost of living in the UK and defined as the minimum amount of money needed to enjoy a basic, but socially acceptable standard of living."

RTA Business Concludes: You Should Pay Low Level Workers a Living Wage

Basically, it’s paying someone enough to give them a decent quality of life, and we would argue that you should pay low level workers a living wage to make yourself competitive. There are so many low level positions out there, that workers are spoiled the choice. Providing a living wage will make you stand out, giving you the edge you need to attract the talent that’ll take your business to the next level. 

OECD Revises UK Growth Forecast

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has revised its forecast for UK economic growth this year, upping the figure to account for a strengthening financial situation. At RTA Business, we recognise that this puts you in a stronger position when you decide it’s time to sell your business.

Various reports have suggested that business leader confidence is stronger than ever this year, due to national economic recovery and expectations that growth will return to pre-recession levels by this summer. This latest report is set to further persuade business leaders that now is the time to buy your business.

The OECD Forecast

This week the OECD released its latest forecast for UK growth, in what was an upward revision of previous estimates. In November, the Paris-based organisation claimed that in 2014 the UK economy would grow by 2.4%. Now they’re suggesting that the country’s economy will expand by 3.2%. This contrasts with an OECD average national estimate of 2.2%.

There are several factors that led to this revision of OECD growth estimates and each individually and collectively suggests an economy in full-fledged recovery. This month the services sector, which has dominated in recent quarters, rose for the 16^th straight month, sterling rose to a five and a half year peak against the dollar, and economic growth rates have continued to impress.

It’s important to note here that UK growth has outstripped forecasts for not only the US and China but every country in the G7.  Furthermore, global growth is expected to measure 3.4%.

RTA Business Comments

These figures suggest one thing - that it could be the right time to sell your business, and here’s why. First, the fact that the UK economy is set to expand this year, means that buyers should have more capital and when they have more capital coming in, they tend to want to spend that to create more – what  better way to do so than to buy your business?

Secondly, these figures should boost buyer confidence in the strength of the UK economy, meaning they’ll be surer that they’ll be able to profit from your business after they’ve bought it. Finally, these figures suggest that UK companies are in a stronger position than their foreign rivals, which further boosts business leader confidence.

At RTA Business we realise that these numbers indicate one thing- you are in a particularly strong position to sell right now.

The Benefits of a Profit Boost!

Sometimes in selling your business, milestones mean everything. When you announce major profit gains, it can make your business look so much more attractive to a potential buyer and this week RTA Business Consultants outline why.

It’s an obvious conclusion to reach isn’t it? The more profit you are making, the stronger your business, the more opportunity there is for growth. Even then, there are levels of degree when it comes to how influential profit margins are with potential buyers.

The Differing Benefits of Profit

There are two types of profit boost- gradual and spontaneous. Both have value in any strategy to attract a buyer to your business. A gradual rise in profit margins suggests a long term business model that is perfectly positioned to make money sustainably. This is an attractive to a buyer because it shows them that purchasing your company will provide them with a secure opportunity to grow their own venture.

The benefits of gradual profit rises are obvious, however the benefits of spontaneous profit boosts are not to be ignored either. A company will see a spike in profit levels usually after the introduction of a new product or service that has diversified their business.

There are benefits to this type of profit rise too, and it all relies on timing. Timing is a key issue – when is the right time to sell your business? If you put it on the market just after a profit spike, it shows buyers that now is the perfect time to buy your business and capitalise on your heightened profit capability.

LG Electronics: A Case Study

We can see how this plays out in the case of LG Electronics. The technology company recently reported a profit jump of more than a staggering 300%! Consequently net profit at LG Electronics measured 93 billion Korean Won in the first quarter of 2014. It stood at 22 billion Won the previous quarter.

Notably, this profit boost came at a time of great change for the electronics firm, as strong demand for its smartphones and TV’s were responsible for sales. Plans to expand its product range and introduce its new G3 smartphone later this year are set to keep profits high.

It’s important to remember that because of this news, LG shares rose 2.9% to 71,000 Won in Seoul this week. We see a direct correlation – a bump in profits made the company much more valuable in the blink of an eye.

If this exploration of profit margins should remind you of anything, it’s that timing is everything when you are looking to sell your company. At RTA Business we always suggest waiting for the time you can make the most money from selling your business.

How Can You Effectively Handle Customer Complaints?

Customers with a grudge are like a nightmare you can’t wake up from when you’re looking to sell off your business. They’re there, always looking to discredit you, and it makes it that much harder to find a buyer. How can you effectively handle customer complaints so that the problem doesn't snowball?

The customer complaint is such a delicate balancing act. If you’re too lax with them, if you don’t address their concerns, they can get angry and angry customers tend to take to social media accounts and blogging sites to vent said anger. If a potential buyer sees that, you can forget selling them your business.

However if you’re too attentive to the customer then it can be just a harmful to your business model. The customer can be too demanding and that uses up valuable time and resources that you could use to increase your profitability in other areas. So how can you avoid either conclusion?

Customer Care: A Balancing Act

It really is a balancing act and there are some steps you can take so that customer complaints don’t hit your ability to sell your business. Start by training up your staff. Let them know what to expect from customer complaints and how you would like to handle it. Run some workshops so they can get a feel for the experience.

It’s also important that you empower your staff. It’s all a self-confidence game and you need to think of it like you would parenting. Kids don’t respect weak parents who let them get their own way – they also don’t respect parents who have to shout to claw back their authority. Complainers work in the same way. Empower your staff so that they deal with customer complaints calmly and collectedly.

The next point to make is clarity. You've always got ask customers to clarify the points they are making. Mistakes are most often made when the staff member and the customer get their wires cross, and this sets the customer off. It’s such an easy problem to address as well, just encourage your staff to ask for clarification on anything they are unsure about.

The final way to effectively handle customer complaints is to make sure that your staff know how to speak to customers. Here are some tips to pass on to your staff so that they minimise the risk of offending customers:

• Be Polite: Be polite at all times, nothing makes a customer angry like an impolite staff member; it makes it look as though you don’t care about their complaint
• Be Respectful: Your staff are representing you, they are professionals and they need to act as professionals. Using slang term, address customers by nicknames, that sort of thing, implies that your staff neither respect the customer or the company they work for. It makes you look unprofessional.
• Be Nice: It may seem insignificant, but it really isn't. Warmth attracts warmth. If your member of staff is nice to talk to, if they’re open and professionally friendly, the customer is a lot more likely to feel as though they can behave in a cooperative manner to address the problem at hand.