Astronomical Profits By Learning To Use Your Own Business DataWritten by Syd Stewart
Many business owners or managers don’t know whether they are many a profit or not and whether they are growing or contracting until their accountant does sums at year-end. It could be too late then. Maybe they believe it will never happen to them--the business might fail. 70% of businesses fail within first five years.They manage by intuition or gut feel. They think that is being a great manager. The irony is that it takes a little amount of time to quantify what’s going on, but they are reluctant or not convinced enough of value to spend time or money doing this. The benefit of knowing how your business is performing, is astronomically beneficial. Without this knowledge, you are trying to navigate your way through business swamps and mountains to a profit without any map or compass. All it takes is a few hours clerical work per week. The kids can even do it—it is not high tech stuff! Spend money and do it. For example, just count up number of sales made, sales leads received per week or month for each product. Plot them in a simple graph with time. Look for trends. Is graph rising or falling? How do you do this cost effectively? The answer is use a simple spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel. If you don’t know how to use a spreadsheet—get along to a night class or employ someone a few hours each week.
| | The Language Of BusinessWritten by Maria Marsala, Business Growth Specialist
There are certain concepts that successful business owners create, and then refine, over and over again. Does your business have a mission statement? Have you defined strategies and objectives of your business? What if a lender asks about your ROI?Successful business people talk to each other in these terms. (If you're curious, skip ahead to end of this article and read other concepts that you need to define to increase your chances for business success.) If you're not familiar with these concepts, brush up on "language" of business. Spending your energy defining and applying these concepts to your business can build a strong, solid foundation. Plan on spending some time crafting these terms as they relate to you and your business. The language of business provides a handy framework for review, but there is so much more to each of concepts than its dictionary definition. In order for concepts to be effective, it's necessary to internalize and use them daily. And keep in mind how not using these principles in your business may cause problems later on. Consider these events: --The dot.com, Enron, and WorldCom fiascos are excellent examples of what can happen when businesses forget about basics. Some folks decided they were smarter than more than a hundred years of proven-to-work business concepts. --Established business owners who are stuck. To date, I have not worked with an established business that is able to provide me with a basic business plan-vision, mission, objectives, strategies, etc. Some companies did create a plan for funding purposes but haven't looked at it for years and years. If you're running your business properly, you're looking at your business and marketing plan at least once a week.
|
