Category: Scaling Up Your Solo Business

We spend a lot of time at work. For many people they spend more time with their colleagues than they do with their family and friends. In these circumstances, it is only natural that as the working relationship evolves, the environment develops in such a way that people can find opportunities to let off steam by laughing and joking with each other.

Many employers actively encourage employees to find ways to make their work fun because, lets face it, a happy employee is more productive and none of us want to spend the day with a lot of miserable people.

What happens when you ask for directions? You interrupt someone, stopping them from going about their business, yet people are rarely rude. This is because of the way we ask. We will normally say, ‘Excuse Me’ in a slightly deferential way. We continue, ‘I wonder if you can help me? Could you tell me where Bromley Place is?’

When economic conditions are hard, leading a sales force can seem like the most difficult job in the world. One of the main ingredients to achieving outstanding results is to ensure the team is motivated. The key to motivation is recognition. Ultimately, everyone wants to be appreciated and their hard work acknowledged.

With the recession predicted to last for the whole of 2009, many of us will come back to the office in the New Year, with some trepidation. However, with the right mechanisms in place, it will still be possible to find the opportunities that are out there and prosper.

Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that are shared by successful businesspeople. You can place a tick beside each characteristic that you feel that you possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don’t have all of these characteristics, don’t fret. Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.

In spite of the economic slowdown online shopping is still thriving, with more people taking advantage of the cheaper prices available on the net and shopping in the comfort of their own home.

However, internet expert WebTrends is warning ecommerce sites that they must provide a seamless online experience, or they could face missing out on a significant piece of the action, as internet shopping gets increasingly competitive .

In this current climate, hiring new permanent senior level staff to run projects might be considered a major risk and financially unfeasible for small businesses. But, to remain competitive, companies cannot afford to put plans on hold, put their head in the sand and hope the upturn isn’t too far away, while the competition steals a march.

10 tips to save on insurance premiums

With money getting tighter and costs increasing, all businesses are looking to make savings wherever they can. Insurance brokers also have overheads and many may not be too keen to highlight things that will reduce their commission earnings.

I have recently read a number of articles on the problem of absenteeism and was struck by how most of them completely ignored the causes of the problem, and instead focused solely on the measures organisations were taking to ensure that persistent offenders are deterred from taking time off.

We all think of typical sales people as being great communicators. We say that they have ‘the gift of the gab’. But what if you are not a born sales person but regularly need to find new clients? Business development expert Richard White discusses one of the areas that can make a big difference on results – how we communicate with our prospects and clients.

In times of Change, people feel much more secure with strong and clear leadership, but they need considered action and decisions from their leaders. The trouble is, with the pace of business today, the pressure has never been higher and consequently there is always a temptation to act just for the sakes of moving things off the pending pile and appearing decisive.

Change specialist Richard Derwent Cooke suggests that sometimes, the best way forward is infact to stand still for a moment a lend some quality time to a spot of good old fashioned conversation.

Many are wary of upsetting key customers by chasing slow or overdue debts. But as a frequent surprise to many suppliers, buyers often report privately that a failure to chase agreed debts is not seen as a relationship-building exercise, but as weak management. A contractual debt owed is a contractual debt to be paid!

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we have stressed the importance of ‘starting off on the right foot’ contractually, and ‘keeping your eye on the ball’ financially.

Of course, some organisations have no shame in delaying payments to their creditors, until pushed really hard.

Whether you really want to trade with such bad payers is entirely up to you, but here are some more handy tips that might help however things might go wrong.

Part 2: Keeping your eye on the ball

Getting your Terms and Conditions right and checking customers’ credit status are vital. (See Part 1 of this series). What else can you do to ensure prompt payment?

Monitor your Aged Debtors and set Customer Credit-Limits

You will probably already review your debtors at least monthly, to keep an eye on defaulters. Most financial software packages readily provide this data phased by sums due over successive months. Ignore it at your peril.

The monthly ‘Total Outstanding‘ figure per client is also critical. Your credit checks on each customer should also produce credit limits and you need to have really good reasons to allow these to be exceeded. (Banks, Factors and Debt-Insurers can be laughably conservative in guiding you here, but don’t ignore their advice without excellent reason.)