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Getting your business sale ready

Getting Your Business Ready For SaleSelling a business can be a complex and time consuming process. When the time comes to sell your business there’s a lot you can do that will increase its perceived value to prospective purchasers. You will also be much better prepared to discuss the sale with prospective purchasers and their advisers.Be sure that you have a clearly defined reason for wanting to sell your business that you can articulate to others. Have you considered the options to selling y...

Get Your Business Ready For Sale

Selling a business can be a complex and time consuming process. When the time comes to sell your business there’s a lot you can do that will increase its perceived value to prospective purchasers.  You will also be much better prepared to discuss the sale with prospective purchasers and their advisers.Be sure that you have a clearly defined reason for wanting to sell your business that you can articulate to others. Have you considered the options to selling your business? If you’re sell...

Discounting Is Dangerous

Offering a discount in the heat of negotiations may seem like a good idea at the time but thoughtless discounting is an easy way to lose money fast.Before you succumb to the temptation to win new business by offering a discount take a moment to consider these ten problems associated with discounting.1.    Discounting eats away profit margins!2.   Negotiating a discount focuses the customer’s attention on your price. If your only competitive advantage is price you are i...

Cash Management Creates Choices

Managing cash is one of the most important tasks for any business owner and even if it’s not as glamorous as sales and marketing it is the job that makes sure the bills keep getting paid on time.  The cash position of a business at any time is easy to determine if you know just three figures – the cash in the bank, the cash that’s going to be received by the business, and the cash that has to be paid out. It sounds simple, and it is, yet it’s  amazing how many business own...

Acquiring And Managing Leads

The process of gaining new customers can be summed up in two steps - ‘getting leads’ and ‘converting leads to customers’. Although the first step is the responsibility of marketing and the second is the responsibility of the sales function, the two have to work together to optimise their effectiveness.Generating the leads themselves is always the first task of any successful marketing exercise. Leads can be purchased, as in buying a mailing list of prospects, but gaining your own isn’t...

Develop The Art Of Being Small

Being small in business isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, small businesses have a lot of advantages over their larger competitors. Small business collectively is the world’s biggest business. Small businesses have perfected the arts of travelling light, living frugally and being able to quickly change direction. Recognising the specialised nature of small business can help you appreciate and use some of the advantages you enjoy. The CEO is multifunctional The decision making powers of ...

Don’t Hire Problems

One of management’s key responsibilities is selecting the right people to perform the functions needed by the business to operate productively. Hiring the wrong person can affect your business for years. Businesses have even been found legally liable for damages to property and injury to customers as a result of employee incompetence because they failed to uncover the candidate’s depth of ignorance at the time of hiring.Whether you’re about to hire your first team member or you’ve alread...

Strategies to Reduce Costs

The business depends on its cash flow to pay its bills. Cash flow can fluctuate greatly in smaller enterprises and there are often times when payments have to be made selectively. This is a strategy to serve as a general guide for paying bills at any time; it is especially useful for times when extra consideration has to be given to which bills are paid and which are delayed. Prioritise every bill that comes in when it comes in. Maintain a register of all bills that shows their priority ranking,...

Measuring Customer Service

The focus of every business today, from corner shops to IT multinationals, is on providing customer service. The driving theory says that keeping customers happy is the key to customer retention; and customer retention is the key to profitability.And these days if a business doesn’t please its customers it won’t be long before they go somewhere else – there are plenty of places to go.To remain competitive every business needs to examine just how it’s handling the fundamentals of customer...