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Look Good to Lenders

Look Good To LendersBusinesses borrow money for a number of reasons. Additional capital may be needed to increase production capacity or to open a new retail outlet. It might be necessary to borrow to expand overseas or to upgrade the business’ IT facilities.Whatever the reason, borrowing money involves the need to favourably impress the lenders you are approaching for finance. There’s never a guarantee that they will support your proposal, but there are some preliminary steps you can take t...

Write a Business Plan With Investor Appeal

Every business should have a business plan in place that it works to and compares its performance against. These are usually functional plans that have the intention of serving as a guide to management, but may not be the best plan for impressing potential sources of funding for the business. Businesses often need to borrow money or attract investment capital, and when doing so need a business plan that’s both realistic and will demonstrate to those not involved in the enterprise that the busi...

Outsource To A Virtual Assistant

Many small businesses have already discovered the benefits of outsourcing certain functions of their organisations. Tasks including accounting and payroll are often handled by external providers more efficiently and economically than if kept in-house.As long as a business retains its core competencies internally there are few functions that can’t now be strategically outsourced, thanks to a new kind of entrepreneur known as a Virtual Assistant, or ‘VA’.  VAs are independent businesspe...

Ten Questions You Should Be Able To Answer ‘Yes’ To

Ten Questions You Should Be Able To Answer ‘Yes’ ToThis is a list of questions that every business manager should be able to answer with an unqualified ‘yes’. They largely relate to the fundamental need of identifying and understanding your competition, and if you find yourself giving a ‘no’ answer to any of them it means you could be short of valuable information that would provide you with a competitive advantage.1.     Do you know who your competitors are? Do y...

Got Employee Issues? Document Your Case

Documentation of your employees’ performance and their conduct at work is becoming one of the most important tasks of management. It requires attention to detail that’s time consuming but it can save your company thousands of dollars if an employee relationship goes sour and you need to justify disciplinary action or even termination of their employment.Take a typical case of an employee whose performance is substandard. You will usually have a discussion with them in which you outline their...

Late client payment can really cost you

Many companies are carrying customer accounts that are still outstanding after 60 or even 90 days. Sometimes this is acceptable if that’s the arrangement they’ve made with the customer and planned for in their budgeting. But when an outstanding account gets beyond reason you may have to bring in external agents to help collect the debt.Debt collection experts have identified four ‘triggers’, apart from lateness, that are definite indicators that the time has come to call in the professio...

Don’t Freeze Making Cold Calls

Cold calling is a widely used method of prospecting for new customers. Any business owner with a telephone knows that two or three times a day someone they have never met will contact their company with some kind of proposal like seeking an opportunity to quote against an existing supplier.It’s not easy to make cold calls and those who have the job of making them often feel uncomfortable about their assignment. But there are ways to ‘warm up’ to the task so that you will feel more relaxed ...

Developing Your Team Members’ Basic Skills

Employers that provide their team with training are making a commitment to better customer service and to being more competitive in the marketplace as well as encouraging a reduced team turnover rate. Few businesses are incapable of providing some sort of in-house training to improve skill levels and the improvements in performance that result makes it a highly cost effective investment.A typical small business’ basic skills training programme can incorporate on-the-job instruction of individu...

Don’t Let Others Waste Your Time

Most business owners find there’s never enough time in the day. Your time is valuable and the demands of your business usually dictate how you spend it. The last thing you can afford is to have your time wasted by others.Time-wasters are people who take up your time in such a way that it distracts you from running your business. You’re unable to manage because you have to spend your time dealing with people who just don’t seem to understand that you have more important things to do.Busines...