The truth is out there and it is not pretty. The Wall Street Journal on September 2, 2009 stated that the volumes of small business loans are down 38% from last year. But note that the WSJ of Nov. 4, 2008 stated that the loan volumes of SBA-backed loans was off in October 2008 by 50% from the year before! Put simply, businesses are not getting the funding that they need to survive.
commercials from a major bank telling business people the virtues of using their credit cards to get money for their businesses. Yet banks have recently acknowledged that they have cut off credit across the board to many previously desirable consumers. The have also seriously reduced many lines available often without advanced notification.
Besides that, even if small business still have credit cards available, today’s interest rates are often approximately at a 20% level. The banks themselves however, are borrowing money from the government at almost interest free rates.
Finally, Federal Reserve figures state that where banks never sit on excess reserves, this year they are sitting on about $800 billion. Before Sept. 2008, they retained such reserves at next to $0 amounts. This is money that they are not loaning out to help the economy and our government is allowing it. Furthermore, according to Market Watch of Sept. 5, 2009, the biggest banks still consider themselves overleveraged to the tune of nine trillion dollars. So do not expect institutional easement of loan restrictions to occur anytime soon.
So where can your business get funding to survive, or grow?
There are basically three types of business lenders: accounts receivable and factoring; asset based lending; and leasing.
The current Fall season is typically the second busiest period of the year for most businesses (Christmas season being the first). But as the August 4th WSJ indicated, many businesses are hard pressed to provide even normal inventory due to tighter credit. Additionally, CIT Group’s recent problems have seriously hampered many businesses that have depended on them.
As to asset-based lenders, even so-called “normal” sources have reverted to being “hard money” type lenders in terms of both interest rates and conditions offered. Leasing can be problematical in this economy, too. A fabric printer recently told of one that requested a 54% interest rate!
If instead of borrowing in such a market, you decide to find an equity partner, you should know that the market there has become just as tough. The summer started with the June 5th Wall Street Journal article saying that the venture capital market to small firms has not been hit so bad since the dot.com bubble had burst. Worse, this is after a previous year where the number of active venture capital firms had fallen 13%.
So again, what is a firm to do in such a marketplace? The answer is to not try to reinvent the wheel, but to hire a company at reasonable cost that specializes in finding funding sources custom tailored to specific situations.
One thought to end on - if you want to believe Washington that the recession is over and we have turned a corner, please remember those immortal words of Dr. Julius Klein, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce in a speech he gave on June 9, 1931 where he said that “The depression has ended… In July, up we go.” The following year, 1932, is generally considered the worst in the Depression.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Ten Tips to Help Create More Time in Your Day
Time management seems to be an issue in almost everyone's lives as there never seems to be enough time in the day to complete all of the day to day tasks. Whether you are a stay at home parent, a work at home parent or you work outside of the home, I am sure that you could use a few more hours in your day.
Here are several time management tips that will help you to use those few precious hours that you do have wisely;
1. Get organized! I can't stress this enough. This is the first thing that absolutely needs to be done to improve your time management skills. Think about all of the time that is wasted looking for things; looking for papers, phone numbers, supplies.....your desk top.
Use the first 15 minutes of your morning to organize your work area.
Go over your "To Do" list and organize the things needed to accomplish them.
2. Identify your most productive time.
You may be a morning person or an evening person. I do all of my most difficult tasks when I am fresh in the morning.
Use your child's nap time or one hour of "TV time" for your kids to do your most difficult tasks.
. Make your "To Do" list the night before.
Know what you will accomplish the next day. That way, you start out with a goal in mind first thing in the morning rather than wandering around aimlessly.
Divide your "To Do" list into several page; one list for things to do tomorrow, this week, and one for things to do this month. As you accomplish these goals, cross them off. I write my monthly goals on my calendar.
4. Find more time in the day. Need an extra hour in the day? Get up an hour early and have your first cup of coffee or tea sitting at the computer going through your e-mails, answering your e-mails and posting to forums. I call these my "day wasters".
5. Schedule it and stick with it. Write one thing that you will accomplish on each day of the week on your calendar. For instance, I file every Monday, do my on-line banking every Wednesday, update my web site on Friday.
6. Avoid the big "day wasters".
Forums, TV, surfing the web, and talking on the telephone are all huge "day waters" if not used properly. These are all great things, when used in moderation, but can become very addicting and you can seriously lose hours and hours of your day with all of them.
Limit your "day wasters" to the morning hour of your day. This is a huge time management tip!
7. Household chores and house cleaning.
Clean one thing every day. Clean the kitchen one day, vacuum one day, clean the bathrooms one day..... Wash one load of cloths every day.
Load the washer the night before. Start the load of cloths washing as you head to the coffee pot first thing in the morning. Dry the load while you are doing your other household chores, then hang and put it away. One load is so much more manageable than three!
Make your bed and do the dishes before you "go to work". Tidy the night before so that you wake up to a neat house and are ready to start working.
8. Do double duty.
Do you sit in the carpool line for half an hour? Read your longer e-mails, or newsletters that you have printed out from your computer. Read your mail that you saved for this time.
Do you have a small child? Try to schedule time for work and time for play. I work most of the morning, fix lunch and then we head outside. We play for a while and then I sit outside while our daughter swings or rides her bike and use this time to read, study or draft ideas for my newsletter, jewelry or website.
Have your smaller children do their daily reading while you are cooking. I have my 1st grade daughter sit on the kitchen counter and read to me while I am cooking. I can hear her read, and can help her with any words that she is having problems with.
Have your child do their homework while you are cleaning up the dinner dishes. This way you are already in the kitchen and can help if your child needs it.
9. Learn to "Just Say No!" I have run into the problem of people (hubby is my biggest diversion!) assuming that since I am a stay at home mom, I don't do anything all day but read or sit on the couch with my bag of potato chips and watch TV. I am often asked to run errands, watch someone's kids or volunteer. If I have a full week I simply tell them that my week is overbooked as it is and I can not do it.
10. Avoid interruptions.
Let the answering machine pick up your phone calls.
Do your call backs while you are sitting outside with your kids or sitting in your car in the carpool line. Double duty!
Turn e-mail off. Only check your e-mail in the morning, at lunch and at the end of your day. E-mail is a major interruption.
If you are trying to work at home, explain to family and friends that you have work to do and will not be available between the hours of 8-4 but would love to hear from them after that. You choose your hours.
By following a few of these simple time management suggestions, you should have another hour or two of time in your day to run your business or to just spend it enjoying your family.
Here are several time management tips that will help you to use those few precious hours that you do have wisely;
1. Get organized! I can't stress this enough. This is the first thing that absolutely needs to be done to improve your time management skills. Think about all of the time that is wasted looking for things; looking for papers, phone numbers, supplies.....your desk top.
Use the first 15 minutes of your morning to organize your work area.
Go over your "To Do" list and organize the things needed to accomplish them.
2. Identify your most productive time.
You may be a morning person or an evening person. I do all of my most difficult tasks when I am fresh in the morning.
Use your child's nap time or one hour of "TV time" for your kids to do your most difficult tasks.
. Make your "To Do" list the night before.
Know what you will accomplish the next day. That way, you start out with a goal in mind first thing in the morning rather than wandering around aimlessly.
Divide your "To Do" list into several page; one list for things to do tomorrow, this week, and one for things to do this month. As you accomplish these goals, cross them off. I write my monthly goals on my calendar.
4. Find more time in the day. Need an extra hour in the day? Get up an hour early and have your first cup of coffee or tea sitting at the computer going through your e-mails, answering your e-mails and posting to forums. I call these my "day wasters".
5. Schedule it and stick with it. Write one thing that you will accomplish on each day of the week on your calendar. For instance, I file every Monday, do my on-line banking every Wednesday, update my web site on Friday.
6. Avoid the big "day wasters".
Forums, TV, surfing the web, and talking on the telephone are all huge "day waters" if not used properly. These are all great things, when used in moderation, but can become very addicting and you can seriously lose hours and hours of your day with all of them.
Limit your "day wasters" to the morning hour of your day. This is a huge time management tip!
7. Household chores and house cleaning.
Clean one thing every day. Clean the kitchen one day, vacuum one day, clean the bathrooms one day..... Wash one load of cloths every day.
Load the washer the night before. Start the load of cloths washing as you head to the coffee pot first thing in the morning. Dry the load while you are doing your other household chores, then hang and put it away. One load is so much more manageable than three!
Make your bed and do the dishes before you "go to work". Tidy the night before so that you wake up to a neat house and are ready to start working.
8. Do double duty.
Do you sit in the carpool line for half an hour? Read your longer e-mails, or newsletters that you have printed out from your computer. Read your mail that you saved for this time.
Do you have a small child? Try to schedule time for work and time for play. I work most of the morning, fix lunch and then we head outside. We play for a while and then I sit outside while our daughter swings or rides her bike and use this time to read, study or draft ideas for my newsletter, jewelry or website.
Have your smaller children do their daily reading while you are cooking. I have my 1st grade daughter sit on the kitchen counter and read to me while I am cooking. I can hear her read, and can help her with any words that she is having problems with.
Have your child do their homework while you are cleaning up the dinner dishes. This way you are already in the kitchen and can help if your child needs it.
9. Learn to "Just Say No!" I have run into the problem of people (hubby is my biggest diversion!) assuming that since I am a stay at home mom, I don't do anything all day but read or sit on the couch with my bag of potato chips and watch TV. I am often asked to run errands, watch someone's kids or volunteer. If I have a full week I simply tell them that my week is overbooked as it is and I can not do it.
10. Avoid interruptions.
Let the answering machine pick up your phone calls.
Do your call backs while you are sitting outside with your kids or sitting in your car in the carpool line. Double duty!
Turn e-mail off. Only check your e-mail in the morning, at lunch and at the end of your day. E-mail is a major interruption.
If you are trying to work at home, explain to family and friends that you have work to do and will not be available between the hours of 8-4 but would love to hear from them after that. You choose your hours.
By following a few of these simple time management suggestions, you should have another hour or two of time in your day to run your business or to just spend it enjoying your family.
Minimizing Your Risk Exposure
We go about our days in life and business expecting things to go as planned. And, often times, they do…with some variations, of course. But, for the most part, if we plan well and have the right rituals and processes in place, things usually go along fairly close to plan.
What throws us off course in life and business is when things just don’t go as planned. In life, it’s usually something very joyous like finding out you’re going to have a baby, or tragic like finding out your father just died of a heart attack. Those events can bring us to our knees, literally.
In business, it’s different. Tragic events like that happen to you and your employees, but they don’t stop ‘business’ from happening. In business, it’s events like your largest customer pulling the plug on a major project or your server crashing and you just realized you have no recent backup of your critical data or you’re the main floor of your store front just flooded during a major storm. Ouch!
Those types of events can bring our business to its knees…figuratively speaking. What can we do about these situations? What can we do to manage our risks and implement strategies for risk avoidance?
Identifying Your Risks
Without first identifying the risks to your business or your current projects you will never know what to do to avoid them. After all, you can’t avoid what you don’t even acknowledge exists.
The first step is to brainstorm with your team, your staff, your employees - whatever you call those that make your business run. Do whatever you can at the beginning of a big project to identify what might happen and what the potential impact to your business may be. And if you don’t have projects, then stop now and perform the task of identifying potential risks overall for your business at this point in time with your staff. It’s not a bad idea to involve some of your largest customers. They’ll be involved, too, if something happens that shuts you down for awhile and it’s highly likely that they’ll bring a different perspective than you to the table and think of risks that never crossed your mind.
Prioritize Your Risks
Next, take the list you’ve created and prioritize the risks. It’s usually best to come up with a combined ranking of “likeliness to occur” and “impact to your business.” How you do this and how elaborate your ranking system is depends on your industry and your business, but the idea is to come up with a list to be analyzed by you and your staff as to which risks your going to tackle at this point. You want to come to an understanding of which risks are the ones that need addressed with a plan to mitigate should they occur or to incorporate a risk avoidance plan for now to help ensure they don’t occur at all.
Risk Avoidance and Risk Mitigation
Once you have your ranked list – let’s say you have identified 50 risks – your then need to decide where your risk tolerance threshold is. This is the line you draw that decides where you want to address the risks and where you’re going to deem them not likely enough or critical enough to spend effort on. Consider it like buying car insurance – you make a decision on the size of your deductible based on a certain comfort level you have. You aren’t likely to go with the lowest deductible, but if your cars are fairly new, you’re not likely to go with the highest deductible either…you’ll probably choose something in between.
It’s the same with your risk list. Let’s say you identify 15 risks that you are going to actively address at this point. Now, you work with your staff to come up with a detailed plan on how you will either:
Mitigate the risk should the risk actually occur. Risk mitigation means that you come up with a plan to lessen the blow to your business operations should the risk event actually happen. For example, you start performing nightly backups so in the event of a server crash, the most you could lose would be 24 hours of data – back to the last backup.
Or…
Avoid the risk so that it doesn’t occur. Risk avoidance involves coming up with processes that will make it much less likely for the risk to happen and affect your business. An example of this would be implementing fair hiring practices and training your staff on discrimination issues so that your business is much less likely to ever be in a position to be sued by a current, former, or potential employee.
Summary
I’m of the strong opinion that risk avoidance is the best approach. Why even realize the risk if there are processes and practices that you can put in place now to completely avoid any potential impact? But that’s not always an option. The key here is to be aware of the major risks your business or project can face, document them, develop action plans, and be ready to act should they occur. You’ll be helping to ensure the long-term viability of your business when you take these actions.
What throws us off course in life and business is when things just don’t go as planned. In life, it’s usually something very joyous like finding out you’re going to have a baby, or tragic like finding out your father just died of a heart attack. Those events can bring us to our knees, literally.
In business, it’s different. Tragic events like that happen to you and your employees, but they don’t stop ‘business’ from happening. In business, it’s events like your largest customer pulling the plug on a major project or your server crashing and you just realized you have no recent backup of your critical data or you’re the main floor of your store front just flooded during a major storm. Ouch!
Those types of events can bring our business to its knees…figuratively speaking. What can we do about these situations? What can we do to manage our risks and implement strategies for risk avoidance?
Identifying Your Risks
Without first identifying the risks to your business or your current projects you will never know what to do to avoid them. After all, you can’t avoid what you don’t even acknowledge exists.
The first step is to brainstorm with your team, your staff, your employees - whatever you call those that make your business run. Do whatever you can at the beginning of a big project to identify what might happen and what the potential impact to your business may be. And if you don’t have projects, then stop now and perform the task of identifying potential risks overall for your business at this point in time with your staff. It’s not a bad idea to involve some of your largest customers. They’ll be involved, too, if something happens that shuts you down for awhile and it’s highly likely that they’ll bring a different perspective than you to the table and think of risks that never crossed your mind.
Prioritize Your Risks
Next, take the list you’ve created and prioritize the risks. It’s usually best to come up with a combined ranking of “likeliness to occur” and “impact to your business.” How you do this and how elaborate your ranking system is depends on your industry and your business, but the idea is to come up with a list to be analyzed by you and your staff as to which risks your going to tackle at this point. You want to come to an understanding of which risks are the ones that need addressed with a plan to mitigate should they occur or to incorporate a risk avoidance plan for now to help ensure they don’t occur at all.
Risk Avoidance and Risk Mitigation
Once you have your ranked list – let’s say you have identified 50 risks – your then need to decide where your risk tolerance threshold is. This is the line you draw that decides where you want to address the risks and where you’re going to deem them not likely enough or critical enough to spend effort on. Consider it like buying car insurance – you make a decision on the size of your deductible based on a certain comfort level you have. You aren’t likely to go with the lowest deductible, but if your cars are fairly new, you’re not likely to go with the highest deductible either…you’ll probably choose something in between.
It’s the same with your risk list. Let’s say you identify 15 risks that you are going to actively address at this point. Now, you work with your staff to come up with a detailed plan on how you will either:
Mitigate the risk should the risk actually occur. Risk mitigation means that you come up with a plan to lessen the blow to your business operations should the risk event actually happen. For example, you start performing nightly backups so in the event of a server crash, the most you could lose would be 24 hours of data – back to the last backup.
Or…
Avoid the risk so that it doesn’t occur. Risk avoidance involves coming up with processes that will make it much less likely for the risk to happen and affect your business. An example of this would be implementing fair hiring practices and training your staff on discrimination issues so that your business is much less likely to ever be in a position to be sued by a current, former, or potential employee.
Summary
I’m of the strong opinion that risk avoidance is the best approach. Why even realize the risk if there are processes and practices that you can put in place now to completely avoid any potential impact? But that’s not always an option. The key here is to be aware of the major risks your business or project can face, document them, develop action plans, and be ready to act should they occur. You’ll be helping to ensure the long-term viability of your business when you take these actions.
Four Ways to Guarantee Your Customers Will Always Love You
In this time of economic crisis that is seeing anywhere from 10-25% vacancy in store fronts across the nation depending upon the geographic region, we as small business operators want to do everything we can to retain our current customers. Growing is nice, but in this economy, simply focusing on retention is a big enough chore. What can you – the small business owner – do to ensure that you don’t lose your customer base and that your head is still above water when the economy turns around?Let’s look at four areas or actions to focus on: Innovate, Communicate, Propagate, and Necessitate.
Innovate
Never just stand still. When you’re a small business owner, maintaining the status quo means you’re content with failing. If you have an interest in building your business long-term, then you must find new niches to get into. Find new needs that you can fill with your capabilities and the offerings of your company. Advertise in new and innovative ways in order to draw new customers and make existing customers aware of your other capabilities. If you look static, then you’re likely to find yourself out of business in five years. And in this economy, it could be much, much sooner.
Communicate
In business, communication is key. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your existing customers, the new customers you just got onboard, or the customers you’re hoping to reach in the near future. Communicate like there’s no tomorrow. Those automated phone calls we get from Gap and Gymboree about upcoming sales can be annoying, yes, but they draw people in…they do work.
Reach out to your existing customer base in new ways…email, phone, flyers…whatever you need to do to remind them that you’re still around and can still meet their needs. Over the past year, I’ve found myself often wondering if a certain store was still in business before making the drive over. Don’t let that be you…make sure they know you’re still open to serve their needs.
And look for new ways to ask what their needs are. You may be doing ‘x’ for your current customers. But they may have ‘y’ and ‘z’ needs that you could also be filling that are logical extensions of some services or products you already offer. If you can grab that new business from them, then you’ve made yourself even more essential to them and you’ve taken that business away from a potential competitor.
Propagate
Propagate means to spread and promote. Much like the effective communication mentioned above, you must spread and promote your business in new and efficient ways. Get in print with the local newspaper, do an interview as an ‘expert’ in your field, do free guest blogging on well-known industry websites, and be sure to have a good corporate website of your own that you can sell yourself with and link to all these new ways that you’re promoting your business.
Necessitate
Continue to find ways to make it so that your customers’ needs necessitate that they come to you and only you. Do what you do now very well and engrain your business in their business. Make it so that they could not imagine performing their business without your services because you do it so well for a good price and you give the perception that you’ll always be there for them. As we’ve already mentioned, as you look for new ways to offer them services and new ways to meet some of their other, related needs, you’ll just be deepening that relationship with those customers and making your company even more essential to them.
Summary
The main concept here is basically the same as any worker would want to do in this type of job market. Look for ways to make yourself so essential to your customer (or employer for the ‘worker’ example) that there’s no way they’d fire you or stop using your services. You’ve become too critical to their needs for them to think about proceeding without you or to even consider going with someone else. At that point, you’ve likely solidified your company’s ongoing existence – at least for the next few years to come.
Innovate
Never just stand still. When you’re a small business owner, maintaining the status quo means you’re content with failing. If you have an interest in building your business long-term, then you must find new niches to get into. Find new needs that you can fill with your capabilities and the offerings of your company. Advertise in new and innovative ways in order to draw new customers and make existing customers aware of your other capabilities. If you look static, then you’re likely to find yourself out of business in five years. And in this economy, it could be much, much sooner.
Communicate
In business, communication is key. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your existing customers, the new customers you just got onboard, or the customers you’re hoping to reach in the near future. Communicate like there’s no tomorrow. Those automated phone calls we get from Gap and Gymboree about upcoming sales can be annoying, yes, but they draw people in…they do work.
Reach out to your existing customer base in new ways…email, phone, flyers…whatever you need to do to remind them that you’re still around and can still meet their needs. Over the past year, I’ve found myself often wondering if a certain store was still in business before making the drive over. Don’t let that be you…make sure they know you’re still open to serve their needs.
And look for new ways to ask what their needs are. You may be doing ‘x’ for your current customers. But they may have ‘y’ and ‘z’ needs that you could also be filling that are logical extensions of some services or products you already offer. If you can grab that new business from them, then you’ve made yourself even more essential to them and you’ve taken that business away from a potential competitor.
Propagate
Propagate means to spread and promote. Much like the effective communication mentioned above, you must spread and promote your business in new and efficient ways. Get in print with the local newspaper, do an interview as an ‘expert’ in your field, do free guest blogging on well-known industry websites, and be sure to have a good corporate website of your own that you can sell yourself with and link to all these new ways that you’re promoting your business.
Necessitate
Continue to find ways to make it so that your customers’ needs necessitate that they come to you and only you. Do what you do now very well and engrain your business in their business. Make it so that they could not imagine performing their business without your services because you do it so well for a good price and you give the perception that you’ll always be there for them. As we’ve already mentioned, as you look for new ways to offer them services and new ways to meet some of their other, related needs, you’ll just be deepening that relationship with those customers and making your company even more essential to them.
Summary
The main concept here is basically the same as any worker would want to do in this type of job market. Look for ways to make yourself so essential to your customer (or employer for the ‘worker’ example) that there’s no way they’d fire you or stop using your services. You’ve become too critical to their needs for them to think about proceeding without you or to even consider going with someone else. At that point, you’ve likely solidified your company’s ongoing existence – at least for the next few years to come.
Improve Cash Flow
As new business owners quickly discover, there can be a considerable amount of time between when you incur expenses (i.e., buy inventory or office supplies) and the time you get paid from customers for the products or services you sell. That time lag can wreak havoc on your cash flow and your ability to pay your bills on time. Unless you provide a service that you get paid for in full ahead of time, there is no way to completely avoid a time lag between purchases and completed sales, there are ways to minimize cash flow problems. Here are seven:
1. Pay vendors with a credit card. If you pay a vendor 30 days after you make a purchase, and you have 20 days before you have to pay the credit card bill to avoid interest charges, the total time between when you made the purchase and when you actually pay for it stretches to 50 days. (That gives you more time to sell inventory or collect from your customers.)
2. If you don't accept credit cards from customers now, consider doing so. Yes, you'll pay a credit card processing fee on each transaction, (often 2 to 3 % percent of the sale for online and mail order sales) and possibly a per-transaction fee and a small monthly fee) but you'll get your cash faster. And, that can let you pay your bills on time, saving you more in interest fees you'd have to pay on loans and credit cards than you'll lose in credit card processing fees.
3. If you usually pay cash up front for goods and services, ask your suppliers and service providers to bill you. Doing so will help even out cash flow by giving you more time to sell the merchandise or collect from your customers before paying your bills.
4. Get invoices out more quickly. The sooner you send customers invoices, the sooner you're likely to be paid. If possible, time the receipt of your invoice to coincide with when the customer will receive shipped merchandise.
5. Send invoices in email instead of traditional mail. The invoice will arrive almost immediately, and the person you submit the invoice to can forward it on instantaneously to the accounts payables department. Result: You're likely to get paid sooner. Plus you'll save on postage. One caveat: check with the customer first to be sure they'll accept an emailed invoice. You may also want to ask the customer to confirm when they get emailed invoices from you. That way you'll know the email didn't wind up in a junk mail folder.
6. Avoid late paying customers. If you have customers who habitually pay late, ask for cash upfront (or for payment by credit cardt). For new customers with orders of a significant size, run a credit check. If the credit check shows the potential customer is a credit risk, ask for payment up front.
7. Keep less inventory in stock. Do some items sit in stock for months? Do you ever have to throw out inventory because it becomes outdated? Analyze your needs and try to order only what you'll use up in a short time. While it may save a bit on shipping or get a discount by ordering 500 green 7/8" widgets at one time, if you only sell 20 in a month, you'll have cash you could be using for other things tied up in inventory that won't sell for years.
1. Pay vendors with a credit card. If you pay a vendor 30 days after you make a purchase, and you have 20 days before you have to pay the credit card bill to avoid interest charges, the total time between when you made the purchase and when you actually pay for it stretches to 50 days. (That gives you more time to sell inventory or collect from your customers.)
2. If you don't accept credit cards from customers now, consider doing so. Yes, you'll pay a credit card processing fee on each transaction, (often 2 to 3 % percent of the sale for online and mail order sales) and possibly a per-transaction fee and a small monthly fee) but you'll get your cash faster. And, that can let you pay your bills on time, saving you more in interest fees you'd have to pay on loans and credit cards than you'll lose in credit card processing fees.
3. If you usually pay cash up front for goods and services, ask your suppliers and service providers to bill you. Doing so will help even out cash flow by giving you more time to sell the merchandise or collect from your customers before paying your bills.
4. Get invoices out more quickly. The sooner you send customers invoices, the sooner you're likely to be paid. If possible, time the receipt of your invoice to coincide with when the customer will receive shipped merchandise.
5. Send invoices in email instead of traditional mail. The invoice will arrive almost immediately, and the person you submit the invoice to can forward it on instantaneously to the accounts payables department. Result: You're likely to get paid sooner. Plus you'll save on postage. One caveat: check with the customer first to be sure they'll accept an emailed invoice. You may also want to ask the customer to confirm when they get emailed invoices from you. That way you'll know the email didn't wind up in a junk mail folder.
6. Avoid late paying customers. If you have customers who habitually pay late, ask for cash upfront (or for payment by credit cardt). For new customers with orders of a significant size, run a credit check. If the credit check shows the potential customer is a credit risk, ask for payment up front.
7. Keep less inventory in stock. Do some items sit in stock for months? Do you ever have to throw out inventory because it becomes outdated? Analyze your needs and try to order only what you'll use up in a short time. While it may save a bit on shipping or get a discount by ordering 500 green 7/8" widgets at one time, if you only sell 20 in a month, you'll have cash you could be using for other things tied up in inventory that won't sell for years.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Coming soon
All about money making business, home business, playing with forex, adsense and all others...best tips, advises, all what you need, to start earning money from home.
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