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In today’s economy we are seeing so many people being put out of work only to find that the company still ends up going bankrupt. Why is this? A big reason is because often times no matter how many employees are let go, the costs that the company has still ends up being more than what their profits are. Here are some creative ways where you can start cutting costs rather than cutting your employees.

• Enlist the help of everyone who work’s for you to come up with areas where you can cut costs to equal up to or at least close to the amount that you need to cut. In the end you may still end up having to let a few people go, but it will be a smaller number then it was before the brainstorming took place.
• Think about firing some of your costly customers. American Express cut out 2.7 million accounts because they had no balance or were inactive, this means the company was spending money to keep up these accounts even though they weren’t making money off of them, as stated on Bnet.com.
• Take a look at some of the resources and products that your company uses, are some of them extremely costly to your company? Is there another product that does the same job but costs less? If so, try cutting out the extravagant lifestyle of certain products and down size to a cheaper version.

Go for cheaper tech. If your shop needs a tech upgrade but you can’t afford it, consider the cloud. Increasingly, businesses are finding they can do almost all of their computing with free or cheap services that store your data on remote servers — that is, in the cloud. Moreover, there is so much good free software nowadays, including office suites with word processing and spreadsheet software, that this is often a no-brainer.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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In business it can become very difficult over the years to continuously manage your cash flow. Often times as business owners we get into a groove of letting things slide here and there, letting customers slide here and there, and before we know it our cash flow is much less than what we would like it to be. Look below for some great tips on how to manage your cash flow better.

• Include payment due dates on all of your invoices.
• Accept partial payments if the entire balance can not be made.
• Make sure to get all of your invoices out on time.
• When you receive the payments make sure you deposit them right away.
• Include discounts as well as penalties.
• Review your expenses at least every 6 months to see if you still need them all.

By keeping up on the above mentioned areas, you should be able to see better cash flow coming into your company within a few months provided you keep at it, recently stated on Capital Solutions Bancorp.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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We all know how prominent business debt is becoming in this economy. Granted we are seeing some relief here and there, but no where near enough yet. Below are two awesome ways your business can cut it’s debt and stay above water!

Be realistic on staffing. Although the last thing most business owners want to do is lay off employees, be realistic when you evaluate your staffing needs. You might be able to offer reduced hours or job sharing, or even cut back on benefits if it means employees can keep their jobs. But if you must eliminate positions, the first to go should be those who don’t contribute to the bottom line. Stated on Chron.com.

Your business could probably use a well thought out budget. Get out all of those monthly bills and expenses and look for several areas where you could tweak things around a little and improve your costs. Do you really need the highest quality of technology, vendors, supplies and more at this particular juncture? You may be leasing some equipment that is not really used all that often, or maybe some supply companies that charge twice the amount of someone else.

If you’re a company that provides several company vehicles, consider cutting down the number of people that you give this luxury to. Also take a look at the money you have coming in, it may be time to do some follow-up calls and letters to your past due clients.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Cosmic Kitty

Many marketers are not in favor of discounting, in fact many of them hate it and do not recommend it. If you still insist on discounting, they do have some ground rules for discounting properly that I have to agree with. Look below to see some basic rules for discounting recently posted on Business Week.

Discount for a short period of time. It is said to be almost like a drug, it gets addicting to not only the customers looking for the discounts but to those of you who are looking for the increase in people rolling through your door. So be careful not to discount for too long or too often.

Do some creative discounting. Rather than hanging a 40% off sign on your products, just mark the overall price down by 40%. Hanging those less than attractive signs off of your products can make them look sad and desperate to be sold. While just marking down the overall price of the product may decrease the long term equity on the brand, it will be less damaging than the 40% sign.

Discount credibly. Handled carefully, discounting can be used to achieve specific business objectives without compromising your brand’s overall value perception. The key is to make the rationale behind the discount credible (and obvious) to consumers, so they don’t perceive it as an act of desperation.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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Many business owners are looking for ways to grow their profits every year. They keep hoping there will be easier ways to see their profits go up on their charts, but sadly many of them don’t know of any easy ways to help their profits grow. Below are some tips on growing your profits easily, located recently on Entrepreneur.com.

Your number of leads on customers you contact and those who contact you regarding your business are an important key factor in your profits. The amount of those people who actually make a purchase in your store are another important key factor. Figuring out your conversion rate is rather simple. Say 4 people out of 10 purchase something in your store that day, your conversion rate would be 4 out of 10 people or 40% for the day.

Average number of transactions: The number of purchases the average customer will make over the course of a year. Again, it can be an estimate. This number will probably be larger in a retail setting than in companies that operate in a professional services industry.

Increasing the profit margin for your store is another great way to grow your profits for the year. Your profit margin is simply the percentage of each transaction that is just profit. So if you sold a sweater for $100 and your profit from that sale was $25 dollars, then your profit margin would be 25%. Many get intimidated by handling all of these numbers but with a quick course in finances, profits, and sale margin’s you will better understand what you are looking at on a daily basis.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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Now is the time to create a credit policy to keep your existing customers, get paid, and stay in business. This policy should include clearly outlined procedures and actions for when someone can’t pay so you can immediately take steps to help your customer and protect your business. Recently stated on Entrepreneur.com.

Begin starting your credit policy by looking at your reports. See who already owes money, how much, and how far past due on their bill they really are. Start making some phone calls, commit to say 5 phone calls per day or more if your prefer. This will begin the process of getting back the money that is owed to you. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone else charge until you check their credit. This ensures that you will know who will be able to make a later payment, who will not, and who is just attempting to get free items.

Put out a written or typed up statement in your store of what your credit policy is, how much they are allowed to charge, how long until their payment in full is due by, and so on. This lets them know as soon as they walk in the door where you stand on credit and what you will not let them get away with.

Once a customer becomes past due, this is the time to start getting on them. Start off by sending them a friendly reminder regarding their balance. Next, maybe give them a phone call when you know they will be home. If that doesn’t work you can always pay them a personal visit if need be. Or as the final result you could always notify them that they will be sent to a collection agency if the balance is not paid.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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Many business owners during rough economic times think it’s best to lower prices in order to keep their existing customers and stay a float in the economy. There are a few problems however with lowering your prices. It can be more costly for your company to lower it’s prices compared to the profits you will make.

Always remember that when lowering your prices that it will be very difficult to raise them again in the future due to your clients being use to low prices and not wanting to pay more at a later date whether the times are good again or not.

Before you decide to lower your prices, think about the message you are conveying to your customers and clients. First, reducing your prices makes you look in desperate need of business. And when you look desperate, your customers will lose confidence in you and your business. People want to do business with successful companies – ones they will be being around next week. Stated on Open Forum.

Customers actually don’t mind paying for quality products and services, so try convincing the point of view that your products and or services offered are that of highest quality, something that will work timely and last for quite a long time.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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Starting an online business can have many headaches and stresses as you have to take control of so many things such as inventory, customer service, payments, orders and more.

You can remove at least one headache if you implement a simple and functional payment solution. There are a range of companies and platforms that allow your customers to send you payments via credit cards, bank transfers, or echecks.

Amazon Payments is very similar to that of Pay Pal. They are a little smaller than Pay Pal but they have more advantages that appeal to the customers. Customers can go through check out using their Amazon account so they don’t have to input any of their credit card information.

Yahoo Merchant Solutions is another great payment platform you could go with. They accept the traditional credit and debit card payments, but they also team up with Pay Pal to offer a wider range of payment options for your customers.

Authorize.net is the worlds largest gateway payment platform that you could choose for accepting echecks and credit card payments. The payments are accepted right on your website so that the customer does not have to leave your site to make their payment, recently listed on Open Forum.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Mr. T in DC

Everyone is always excited when they obtain a 401k plan that often times they don’t review their plan to even see what it offers and what it doesn’t offer. This is important stuff here, you can’t just file it away under the good category without taking a look at it. What you think is awesome may just be mediocre.

Your 401k plan should have a large menu in the aspect that it offers several different choices on investment opportunities so that your not stuck with just one. Your plan should also have low hidden fees. Recently it was discovered that some small businesses were charging well over 3% of what you put into your 401k plan, your fees should be kept to a bare minimum as stated on Forbes.com.

Believe it or not, one of the largest barriers to getting employees set up with a 401(k) is the set-up itself. Automatic enrollment increases participation dramatically. Look for providers that offer automatic set-up for new employees, as well automatic deduction and re-balancing of funds.

Think about a matching program for the 401k plan participants. This not only increases those who sign up and invest but it is tax deductible for you as well. You of course may not be able to match dollar for dollar with them, but even matching a small percentage is incentive for them and still tax deductible for you.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

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We have all heard all of the rumors and statements going around about all of the billion’s of dollars that is being offered to businesses around the country as part of the stimulus package. Most of us however don’t either know where to locate them or even what part of the funds we qualify for. Entrepreneur.com recently posted an article on steps to take to get to your piece of the stimulus money.

First of all you have to figure out where your business fits in. What type of services or products do you provide? From there you’ll have a better idea of what part of the stimulus package pertains to your business.

Next you will have to decide what level of government you are wanting to sell to in order to obtain your stimulus money. Do you want to stay local, or do you feel you can make it big with the state and federal government sectors?

Identify the procurement people involved, and if possible, the program managers. These are people you need to meet. Like other markets, the government is a relationship market–it helps to know the people you are doing business with.

Visit Recovery.org, a site that lists state by state where and how the money will be spent as well as when the money will be paid out. After you have taken all of the initial steps, go back and do them all over again. Take a look at what you have already done and be sure that you have picked all the right moves and sectors that will work for your business and ensure that you get your part of the stimulus money.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.