Andrea McGeachin
- Mar 5

How to beat the Budget as an SME

Budget day is 6th March this year, heralded as always by the usual predictions and panic in the media. Hopefully there will be some good news in there for you and your SME but it’s worth remembering that no amount of worrying will change what the Chancellor announces. It’s all too easy to focus on the negatives around budget time, such as inflation and interest rates. However, while you can’t change what’s in the budget, you can manage the way you respond, model a positive reaction for your employees and make a few tweaks to help your business adapt to budget changes.

Here are a few things you can do as the owner of an SME, that will bring positives, regardless of what’s inside the red box on Budget Day.

1. Manage your costs

You’ll be surprised at how much you can save without making major cutbacks. Go through your outgoings and check for any payments for services, subscriptions and other things your business no longer needs, and cancel them. Then look at the products and services you still use and spend an hour researching whether there’s now a cheaper option - things like buildings insurance can often be easily switched to a cheaper provider.

2. Work smarter by using tech well

Technology can help your SME in all sorts of ways. Use AI to chat to your customers while you sleep, get to know your current clients better and find new leads to chase, too. Search out programs that will save you ‘human hours’ by organising you and taking some of the strain, such as Monday.com to help with project management, CRM, marketing and product development. There’s also plenty of tech to help with contract negotiation, processing and management, such as Trakti. Have a look around to find the apps and programs that will help you most.

3. Be your own business’s cheerleader

Mark those brand anniversaries and use them as a chance to shout about your achievements and future plans. Make sure you’re using social media well, not only to disseminate information about your business, but also to develop and grow a community and start conversations with potential customers.

4. Look after your most important asset

(That’s people in case that wasn’t clear). Your team is the most valuable part of your business and are usually the asset least affected by changes brought about by the budget. If your people are looked after and happy they’ll continue to pay dividends. Offering flexibility and the chance to work in whichever ways suit them best will not only make them more productive but also more likely to stay with you. The cost of recruitment can be astronomical and it’s so easy to get it wrong; it makes sense to spend the time and the money on retaining the people you have, rather than having to recruit more regularly.

5. Know when to get some help in

As an SME there are times when it’s worth paying a little out in order to get a lot of help back. Here are a few positive changes you can make for your business post-budget that would benefit from a professional touch:

Employee surveys - it’s almost always a good idea to ask for feedback from your employees but if it’s not done properly, you can miss out on important information, and if it’s done really badly you could create bad feeling among your workforce, meaning it would have been better to have done nothing at all. Get the experts in to help you do the survey and then analyse the results and advise on next stages.
At a crossroads for your business - if you’re launching a new business or developing it in a big way, some temporary consultancy can really help, saving you money on hiring a marketing team and providing a bit of support and expertise just when your business needs it most.
Networking with other SMEs - yes there’s a lot you can do yourself but it’s a big, wide world out there and it’s impossible to be everywhere you want to be at once. Find an organisation that can help you pinpoint exactly the sort of contacts you want to make and then help you develop relationships that will be of mutual benefit.