Could a good spring cleaning boost your business?

It doesn’t matter whether it is springtime or autumn where you live – the best thing that you can do to improve your business right now is a bit of spring cleaning.

By this of course, I mean reinvigorate some of the housekeeping issues that you may have  overlooked in recent times. Over the last few years you may have found it  possible to get away with a few loose ends and haphazard processes, but not any  more.  The tough economic times have changed all of that.  It’s time to get serious about tightening up your systems and securing your future.  Here are my Top 10 Tips to improve your results:

1. Have a plan
Position your business for the year ahead. Decide on your  strategy, set your goals and work on your tactics. Put these together in a one  or two page business plan. Uncertain times call for certain actions.

2. Forecast your cash flows
Maintain a cash flow forecast so you can use  it as an early warning system. The sooner you get an indication that your cash  is tightening the more time you will have up your sleeve to take action.

3. Collect your debtors more quickly
On average how long do your debtors  take to pay you? Aim to reduce this by at least 10 days – if your annual revenue  is $1 million you could save yourself $3,000

4. Reintroduce credit checks
Have you got a bit lazy about running credit  checks? Reintroduce them.

5. Monitor your customers debtor history
Are any of your customers  starting to take more credit than usual? Keep a close eye on them. They could be  feeling the squeeze so be careful about extending too much credit.

6. Evaluate your customers
Do you know who your best and worse customers  are? How much profit are you making from each customer? If you don’t know, now  is the right time to set up systems to track this and….

7. Cull your bottom customers
Harsh as it may sound, concentrate on your  best customers. Lavish them with attention. If you have unprofitable customers,  cull them. You have no room for passengers.

8. Trim your product range
If you are carrying a wide range of stock trim  it. Do this by calculating which of you stock lines are your worst performers;  sell those lines quickly to release some cash. Reduce your overall investment in  stock.

9. Look at your processes
Mistakes are costly so take a look at your  processes. What can you tighten up or do differently to lower the chance of  errors?

10. Have a budget
Having a budget isn’t about cutting costs, it is about  managing costs. So budget your expenditure for the year and track your actual  costs closely. If you see costs starting to climb take steps to reduce your non  essential expenditure.

So in the face of rising interest rates and a global economic downturn the  best thing that you can do to improve your business is to tighten up your belt and the system in your operation.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5442279

4 solid strategies to stand out and attract more free media exposure

Media outlets constantly search for stories and people who will captivate the attention of their audiences. What this means for you and your organization is that today is the best time to reach out and earn your share of the millions in free publicity that is available every single day.

How do you impress the media and stick out in a sea of wannabes?

First and foremost, don’t waste their valuable time. Virtually, every media outlet is operating with fewer staff than they had last year. This means that they still have the same pressing deadlines and space to fill but they don’t have enough staff to do it.

If you want your pitch to stand out amongst the thousands that hit their inbox today – it has to be memorable, relevant and thorough.

Here are my TOP 4 Tips to guarantee you attract attention no matter what product or service you are selling.

1. Be Newsworthy.  You can never hope to “make the news” if you have no idea what is going on in the news.  The media is not interested in your product or service.  What they are interested in are celebrities, politicians, sports stars, scandals, natural disasters and other headline news.  If you want to be featured, you need to make what you do relevant in the context of what is happening today in the news. Tie what you do to someone or something that is newsworthy and you will become the go-to-expert for top shows, magazines and newspapers.

2. Tailor Your Story.  If you don’t read a particular publication or follow a show, chances are that it will be almost impossible for you to hit the target with the editor or producer. They get thousands of pitches every day – if it doesn’t fit squarely within what they do, they will simply toss it in the garbage. It is better to send out 2 custom pitches a day that are carefully crafted than 100 generic emails or faxes that are too broad to appeal to anyone.

3. Create your own news. The other day I got a call from a national news organization who read my pitch that 1/3 of the population suffers from insomnia. They immediately wanted to interview me. Now, insomnia has been around since the beginning of time. Why did it become a pressing national news story on Tuesday at 9am in Melbourne? 1/3 of the general population is a lot of people. If something affects a lot of people, it becomes newsworthy. The trick to garnering media attention is to take some aspect of what you do and make it tangible and real (as a problem) to the lives of many.

4. Follow the story and add to it.  If you watch carefully you will notice that the media tends to follow a hot story for an extended period of time. Take for example Claire Werbeloff, the chick-chick-boom girl, who became a Youtube sensation around the world for lying about  the events leading up to a Kings Cross murder. Even though she had no talent, connection to the crime or evidence, we were forced to endure more than 4 weeks of national coverage on her (not the crime).  She eventually went on to be featured in Ralph magazine and was offered work with Channel 9.  To emulate this you need to track the pulse of hot news stories and be on the lookout for opportunities to enhance the coverage by contributing insights and expert commentary. When it comes to breaking news, the media is on the look-out for related subjects which add to the story or new angles that are fresh and captivating.

Media outlets capture eyeballs with news and they are not in the business of selling your products or services. By following the news and becoming newsworthy, you will increase your chances exponentially of being picked up and featured.

The good news is that media outlets are constantly searching for stories and  people who will capture and captivate the attention of their audiences. What  this means for you and your organization is that right now (TODAY) is the best  time for you to reach out and earn some of the millions of dollars of free  publicity that is available every day.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3142180

If you’ve got an extra $1000 burning a whole in your back pocket and you are looking for a great place to invest it, you might want to consider having a closer look at these 5 successful Australian businesses who are doing exceptionally well despite the economic downturn.

Knowing exactly where you stand financially – i.e. your cash position – means that you don’t have to wonder “do I have enough money to cover my rent and wages this month?”  The health and vitality of your business are dependent upon your ability to cover all tax obligations, payments to suppliers and operational expenses as they come due in your business.

Unfortunately, knowing where you stand is not as simple as looking at your bank balance or your net profit.  Your bank account merely shows your cash on hand but it will never tell you what your cash flow is or (more importantly) HOW to improve it.

Cash and cash flow are not the same thing.  Cash flow is about the movement of cash in and out of your business as it operates over a period of time.

This distinction is crucial to your success – if your company is profitable on paper yet it maintains a negative cash flow for an extended period of time, eventually it will go under.

But what does this mean for you and your business?

Essentially it means that, “cash flow is King”.  You cannot afford to run your business by simply printing and looking at your Income or Profit and Loss statement each month. Being able to calculate and monitor your cash flow position regularly is critical to your company’s health and survival.  You can have the most brilliant product or service but if you don’t have positive cash flow, your business will eventually go under.

If you want to learn more about this topic “Finding the Point in business” – improving both your profitability and cash flow, I recommend that you check out Chapter 1 of Financial Foreplay®.

What if I told you that YOU are you’re own worst enemy? Would you be offended  or would you smile and agree, because you know it’s true. It’s true for ALL of  us.

You can tell a lot about a business person by the way they spend their time.  We all spend our time in various ways. Many business owners and senior  executives tell me that there is not enough time in the day to get everything  done. Personally, I have a belief that there is always enough time in the day to  do all of the things that are WORTH doing. The key is to identify what is worth  your while.

Sometimes activity can be a kind of anesthesia for the pain of not achieving  the results you want and deserve. Action is always better than procrastination.  However, more activity is not always better than less.

What about ‘make busy’ activities? If you’ve ever spent your day stuck in  back-to-back meetings, answering routine questions from your team, responding to  emails, troubleshooting, emptying the in-tray or tidying the office, you know  exactly what I mean by ‘make busy’.

It is easy to spend large amounts of time on ‘make busy’ activities. In fact  it is possible to spend ALL your time on these activities, creating the  magnificent illusion that you are hard at work, simply because you feel flat  out. You are working hard but you have very little (in financial results) to  show for it. Your day is full of tasks and you get home exhausted – so you must  have put in a hard day’s work, right?

Unfortunately, these habitual and ‘make busy’ activities can keep you trapped  where you already are – just simply maintaining, not growing. By filling your  days with these tasks, you are in effect avoiding the very activities that you  know will really move your business or career forward and produce tangible  results – what we might call ‘productive activities’. These activities rarely  happen automatically. They require focused attention. And, all too often, they  get relegated to ‘tomorrow’ or ‘sometime soon’.

A great many business owners and senior executives, while they like to think  of themselves as entrepreneurial, would rather do anything other than face the  thought of ”productive activities”. They probably have these things on their  ‘to do’ lists, but after another day of busyness, they just say to themselves –  again “It’s OK, I was really busy. The business planning review will have to  wait for tomorrow.”

The problem is this – and believe me, I have seen it played out many, many  times: if you are waiting for the right or best time to do these critical  ‘productive activities’, that time will simply never come. Tomorrow there will  be more ‘busy work’ to do, and your unproductive habits will fill the rest of  the day, and the cycle will start all over again.

Today is a new day – the past is over and has no relevance to today or your  future. Successful people are not without problems or challenges. Successful  people simply refuse to carry the SAME dilemmas or hurdles for months (or years)  on end. They seek solutions, face impediments, overcome obstacles and move on.  They make time to focus on ‘productive activities’. They rise above the ‘noise’  of busyness, create ways to focus their mind on the things that really matter  right now, and get on with the job. They set specific goals and they monitor and  take action based on the financial trends in their business. They don’t try to  do ‘everything’, they focus only on the very things that will give them the most  leveraged and positive result. They rarely blame external circumstances when  things go wrong and they take responsibility every day for what they choose to  spend their time on.

Success is achieved with less not more – and it’s actually easier than you  think. Working like a dog to avoid dealing with problems and keeping yourself  immersed in ‘busy work’ – now THAT IS HARD WORK! Why would you choose to do THAT  when you could simply take a step back and choose to do the 1-2 things that you  know would move your business forward right now?

Isn’t it time to start taking it easy? It worked for The Eagles in the ’70s  and it can work for you in your business (or career) right now!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4936506