Leo Thomas asked:




Cash flow is king in the world of the small business and unless you are particularly keen on using expensive forms of credit it is probably a good idea to adopt good working practices right from the start to keep cash flowing.

Be aware and forewarned. Only by keeping completely on top of your available cash situation will you be able to deal with any potential problems before they get out of hand. You will probably have included a cash flow forecast in your original business plan, don’t waste this, update it weekly and don’t ignore systems that can make this process easier; look at accounting software that incorporates a reporting tool as this will allow you to access the relevant figures at the touch of a button. It is however pointless having instant access to great information if you fail to respond to what it tells you. Look for looming cash flow issues and address them early. Market Effectively. One potential reason for poor cash flow could be stagnating sales. Go back to your original marketing plan and revise your strategy. If you don’t reach your customers, existing and new, things are likely to grind to a halt. Easy Payment. Once you have reached the customers and convinced them to order, make it as easy as possible for them to part with their cash. User-friendly systems like telephone and internet ordering are a must and if there is a way to pay accept it; card payments, direct debit, standing order. Make things as easy as possible for people to give your business what it is owed. Credit Control. When customers don’t pay you will need an efficient strategy in place to recover debts as quickly as possible if you don’t want to end-up in a cash flow crisis, but one of the best ways to avoid the situation of bad debtors is to run credit checks before extending credit to anyone. Supplier Management. Use suppliers with whom you’ve negotiated advantageous payment terms where possible and ensure prompt delivery, if every link in the cash flow chain is not working smoothly problems can and will arise. Production Efficiency. Even if your customers all pay on time and your supplier is happy to wait for payment for months, cash flow issues will surface if you don’t get paid at all because you haven’t delivered. Assess the quality of your product regularly and maintain stock quantities sufficiently.

So, king or not, cash flow is something that can easily be managed and certainly doesn’t have to be a worry. If you take care to put the right measures in place early there is no reason at all that your small business can’t have great cash flow.

Leo Thomas asked:




Although you’ll no doubt have done a lot of solid preparation before going into business and no one with any sense starts a new venture lightly, there are one or two very obvious points that so often get forgotten as to have become cliches; one would think then that there would be little need to point them out, but disturbingly small business start-ups are still leaving the sensible side of their brains at home when they launch into the business world: with this in mind here are probably the five most often forgotten essentials to remember right from the start.

1. Call in the professionals. An accountant should not be an afterthought for your business. Certainly in the first few years of trading they’ll not only take action to save money later, but an accountant for a small business should be one of its main business advisors. The help and advice given now could save you a lot of money long term.

2. Plan for success. When the banks and other investors asked you for that business plan, you probably lost sleep over getting it just right, so, although looking at it now seems a horrible reminder of all that stress, why waste it. You worked hard on its content so use it. Update it regularly and often and it will act as a guide to keep you moving in the right direction.

3. This little business went to market. Marketing isn’t always the first thing on the list of ‘must dos’ when a small business starts up, but it certainly should be. Even the basics often get neglected. Competitor analysis for instance, do you know who your competitors are and what they are doing to compete with you? Will they respond to your appearance on the scene? What about your customers, what do you understand about their habits? Budgeting for marketing and starting before you open your doors is the only way a small business will survive.

4. Profit from the rest. New businesses run-up bills even before they start trading and when they do start to trade it is important to remember that your turnover it totally different from your profit, far too many new businesses confuse the money coming in with the money that’s left once the very many bills and overheads have been settled. If you do need to put money into the business it should always be to increase your profit rather than the turnover and knowing the difference between the two is so much more than a lesson in semantics.

5. Get technical. If a website was not the first thing you started to plan once the business looked set to begin then it should have been the second. There is absolutely no way that a small business in the 21st century can expect to survive without a web presence, but it is not enough to simply have a website, any business looking to succeed needs a competitively placed site that is visible to its customers. If SEO is something that you’ll need to Google then get an internet marketing firm on board to help.

Ingrid Cliff asked:




No-one likes to fail. In these past few months I have watched as a few otherwise great businesses have folded. But what could have been done to turn the business around from disaster?

What does the owner really want?

This is the hardest part – if the owner is ambivalent at best about the business, they are not sure if they really want to be there, then no business intervention will work as well as it could.

The first step is to help the owner be totally clear on what they want to do. Do they want to sell the business, stay in the business or just close up and walk away?

This is much harder than it sounds. I have heard business owners say “of course I want to stay in business” but their actions then promptly derail all of their good work.

Until the owner is honest about what they truly want, can own their emotional response about it and put things into action, the business will continue to fail. (Remember – no decision is a decision to fail. Then they can blame anyone else except their own approach).

Vision and direction

If the business owner truly wants to remain, the business then needs a clear direction and vision to head towards. Without this clear vision, then there will be wasted effort and double handling.

Business basics

Go back to the basics and do a review of the building blocks of your business.

o Competition analysis: Go back and review what your competition is doing well and not so well.

o Suppliers: Do you have the best suppliers with the best trading terms? If not – change them.

o Employees: Do you have the right people, with the right skills doing the right thing at the right time for the right pay? What are their ideas for improving the business?

o Customers: What do your customers think about your business? Ask for feedback and act on the results.

o Money: How is your cash flow? Do you need to improve your outstanding debtors’ processes and trading terms? Can you reduce overheads and expenses?

o Marketing: Are you tracking your ROI on your marketing? Is it working? What do you need to do to improve it further?

o Alliances: Are your alliance relationships working? Do you need to source new alliances?

o Communication: Are your communication lines with employees and customers clear, effective and regular. What messages are you communicating?

o Systems and processes: Are your systems and processes documented, regular and implemented first time every time or are you wasting time reinventing the wheel every day?

o Time management: Are you investing your time on time wasters or profit builders? Do you do what matters on time every time for your customers and employees?

Turning a failing business around is possible – you just need to be willing to take the hard look at what got you there in the first place and then act on it before it gets out of hand.

Ingrid Cliff asked:




Many small businesses use competitions and lucky door prizes as a way of generating leads or building their data base. But if done incorrectly you will end up losing customers and could even find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

So how do you run lucky door prizes or competitions that are legal and get you brilliant results?
Top 10 Tips for competitions

1. Work out your intent. You need to know why you are running the competition in the first place. Is it to qualify leads, get email addresses for your database, get a new marketing slogan, and get feedback on your product or some other purpose? Start with the end in mind. When you know why you are running the competition you will adjust the prizes, competition form and process to best match your needs.

2. You need an entry box. A lot of people use clear bowls or fishbowls for people to put their cards into. These don’t keep the details private so could breach privacy regulations in some locations. The best option is a solid sided cardboard entry box. You can buy a gift box and cut out a hole or buy a blank entry box from a cardboard box manufacturer. You can of course get one purpose designed and built for you.

For online competitions I suggest setting up a separate email account just for each competition to keep your entries separate.

3. Somewhere to lean on to complete the forms. People need somewhere to lean on to fill in the forms. If the table you use is too low or you force people to sit down to complete the forms, many people won’t bother entering. Make sure your table is the right height for people to lean on (and no handing out clipboards with forms isn’t the solution. Many people are juggling bags and kids so can’t juggle a clipboard as well). Being comfortable also works for online competitions. If your form is tricky to complete you can expect people to click away rather than stay.

4. Make it obvious. Your competition needs to be located at the front of your trade stand or your office. It needs to be clearly and obviously signed so people can find it and are encouraged to enter. Put a banner on your website letting passing traffic know about your competition and where they can find you to enter.

5. Tell people about it. Tell your regular clients about your competition as well as your new clients. You could also tell some of the major competition sites – where the site collated competitions and lets their members know so they can enter them (my personal favourite of these is Luv2win).

6. Make it worth their while. Giving away a low value item is not likely to generate much interest in your competition. Make the offer enticing with high perceived value.

7. Protect their privacy. You need to make it very clear how you will handle their personal details. Will you pass on their information to other people? Will you contact them to send them marketing material? You need to tell people what you will do with their information. Give them an opt-out box for them to tick if they don’t want to receive any further information from you (and respect that tick in the box if you don’t want to fall foul of Spam Laws and Do Not Call Registers).

8. Sort out your legals. Many locations have strong rules around the operation of gaming including Lucky Door Prizes.

In Queensland the Office of Gaming Regulation Inspectors check every stand of almost every expo or tradeshow for compliance. You need to download the Guidelines for Promotional Games and comply with items such as retention of entries for 5 years, the order of drawing prizes, written terms and conditions which must include things such as:

a. the name of the person running the promotion
b. Eligibility requirements for players
c. Description and retail value of each prize
d. Closing and drawing dates
e. Order the prizes will be drawn
f. How winners will be notified
g. Whether the results will be published and where
h. What will happen if the winner is not present at the draw
i. Any elimination rounds

It almost goes without saying that of you run a competition you must honour your commitments and actually award the prizes (unless you get no entries at all). Running a competition and not awarding the prizes can see you before the courts.

9. Follow up promptly. If you are using the competition to generate leads or create a data base then follow up on all entries within 14 days of close of the competition. You may want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) to convert the entries or business cards into a database for you. Pre-book your VA so they have time to do your data-entry when it arrives. When following up remind the person where you got their details.

10. Trumpet the winners. If you can get their consent, get photos of the winners that you can use in your marketing and promote the details of the winners to your mailing list and local media. Most people love the spotlight (and other people love to know the inside of other people’s lives). Good news stories are great for business.

If you follow these top 10 tips you will improve the response to your competitions and lucky door prizes and get more “bang for your competition buck.”

Ben Pate asked:




Starting your own business is one of the most intimidating decisions that a lot of people face. Finding a location, taking out a loan, finding suppliers: the to-do list seems to go on forever. When creating your business plan, remembering details is very important. One of these key details is your account payable. A lot of people dream about starting their own business, but the careful planning involved is crucial before you can start living your dream. Armed with a little courage and a good business plan, you can be successful in creating your new business.

An account payable is used to describe all the money you owe to your suppliers. Your account payable, or “payables,” gets increasingly more intricate as your business continues to grow, and often accountants are hired to manage it. “Account payable” is also a term used to describe the people who handle the money you owe. This is a very important position and should always be on the top of your priority list.If you are running an coffee shop, you will probably order sugar and cream in large quantities. Your shipment will get delivered, and you will receive an invoice. This invoice will be transferred to your account payable, showing up as money that you owe to be paid around 30 days later.

Even something as small as an account payable audit can dramatically help your business. Sometimes your money is sent the wrong way, whether it’s from a duplicate charge or a refund that never went through. A growing business has lots of possibility for error, and a account payable audit can help you figure out exactly where your money is being sent. By figuring out where your business is losing money, you can make changes to make your business both more efficient and more profitable.

An account payable audit firm’s job is to go through everything and anything that involved the money you spend. This includes bank statements, paychecks, and tax information. They look for anything that can be attributed to error. Once they pinpoint the error, they suggest ways to fix it as well as offering advice as to how you can make your business more efficient all together.

Being prompt with paying your bills is necessary for a small business that wants to grow. Payments that are on-time will help foster business relationships and improves your business’ credit. Having strong inter-business relationships helps your business grow and succeed. Good business credit encourages banks to loan you money if you need it and can also have an effect on your reputation as a new business.