Categories
Operations

Business Finance Article – How to Evaluate Your Business & Improve Your Bottom Line During a Recession

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Article Contributed by Tony Massaro
Do you really have a handle on the things that cost your business money? Are you as prepared as you need to be to handle incidents? Do you know how to improve your bottom line in this tight economy?
Projections for the rest of 2009 are not good. Job shops aren’t getting orders and they’re failing to hit their production run projections. Schedules are being pushed off a couple of months.
So, how should you spend the rest of the year if you want to remain profitable? As tax partner at Porte Brown LLC, an Elk Grove Village accounting firm that serves privately held businesses, I suggest you:
– Thoroughly review your business processes
– Become willing to reinvent the business
– Get aware of Lean Manufacturing principles, even if yours is a service business
Why You Need to Evaluate Your Business Now
The processes and structures that worked before may not work now in this new economy. You may need to develop new processes or adapt existing ones to meet your immediate needs. For example, your business may benefit from:
– Regular management or employee meetings to report on the status of business activities.
– Tracking systems to ensure that customer requests are received, assigned and fulfilled. Now is the time to improve customer service and increase customer loyalty.
– Quality control processes to ensure that the same high level of customer satisfaction is maintained.
– Incorporating budgeting procedures to ensure that costs are controlled, properly allocated, and charged back to the client, if appropriate.
– A defined process for monitoring receivables and collecting on accounts that become past due.
How to Effectively Evaluate You Business
When you evaluate your business, you want to avoid becoming part of the problem. You want to look out for self-fulfilling prophecies. I’ve seen it thousands of times with my clients –When it’s all gloom and doom, people start pulling back. This automatically leads to even more gloom and doom.
Here’s what you should do instead…
1. Take a fine-tooth comb to your business and make sure your processes are right. Put all of your processes into a flowchart. Look at everything you make. How can you do it better? Can one person do two machines?
2. Look at your industry’s best practices including: lean manufacturing, accounting and marketing. This is the time to align your business processes so your operation is more effective and more profitable. If you follow this tip, you will minimize waste and reduce inventory.
3. Get a handle on which operations are making you the most profits. If you have three different products, or services, put the costs and profits down on paper so you can see them. Allocate sales costs, labor, overhead and other items and then determine which services or products are profitable.
Ultimately, the review may mean you reinvent your business. And, don’t be afraid of reinventing your business.
Why You Shouldn’t Fear Reinventing Your Business
America has reinvented itself several times. You, as a business owner or executive, must do the same thing. You need to evaluate what your business does and reinvent it so you can compete during this down economy.
A review inevitably means decisions. Often, those decisions will involve people. I’m a big advocate of reacting fast. If you feel overstaffed and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, then somebody has to go – as distasteful as it is.
You often can build back up with temporary help. Temps are good because you can send them home when business tails off again.
What You Should NEVER Cut
When you’re evaluating your business and making necessary changes, there is ONE thing you should not change. Do NOT cut your marketing budget. Cutting marketing and advertising is the wrong thing to do when times slow. You’re already concerned about the lack of new customers. So, if you cut your marketing budget, how do you expect to get more new customers into your sales funnel?
Instead, you should be looking at your business processes and systems. Find out how you can run your business more efficiently and more effectively.
By following these tips you can increase your bottom line, even during the recession. And, if you need help – don’t be afraid to ask the experts!
About the Author
Tony Massaro, CPA and Partner of Porte Brown LLC, helps small to medium sized business owners evaluate their business and improve their bottom lines even in a slowing economy. To discover how you can remain profitable simply by reviewing your business processes and analyzing how you can manage a more effective and efficient business go to: http://www.portebrown.com

Categories
People & Relationships

Conflicts in the Workplace: Top 10 Workplace Dysfunctions – And How to TERMINATE Them

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Article Contributed by Roxanne Emmerich
The dysfunctional workplace is a killer. Untreated it will kill off your customer base, your profits, and your joy for living as surely as anything.
As managers, leaders and top executives within your organization you’ve got to kill the conflicts in your workplace first before dysfunction takes hold.
The Top Ten Workplace Conflicts That Disrupt Organizations – and the Cure for Each
No. 1: No teamwork
The best managers lead a team – not just a group of individual employees. If you have employees at odds and you show no desire to fix it then you are leading your organization to a disaster.
So, make sure that the most direct supervisor meets with those involved in a workplace conflict to learn what it will take to resolve it and to secure a firm commitment to do so. Don’t forget to spell out immediate consequences in the event of failure.
No. 2: Saying one thing and meaning another.
If you have an employee with a pattern of saying, “But what I meant was…”, call them on it. Requiring the offender to have all communications checked for clarity for a period of time usually nips this in the bud fast.
No. 3: Giving lip service to new ideas then undercutting them in private.
You’ll want to enlist everyone’s help in keeping this workplace conflict out. Make it clear that dissenting opinions are welcomed during decision making, but that once a decision is made, undercutting will not be tolerated.
No. 4: Defensiveness at reasonable suggestions.
As a manager, it is your responsibility to let your team know that you consider a willingness to improve to be one of the hallmarks of a person with a bright future in your company. Defensiveness should be viewed as what it is – an unwillingness to improve one’s self.
No. 5: Attraction to chaos.
Pot stirring is a violation of principles and a threat to productivity. Counterbalance the pleasure they get from drama with a greater measure of negative consequences.
No. 6: Not following through on commitments.
Let your team know that they are expected to acknowledge errors and make a commitment to clean up every last bit of the resulting mess.
No. 7: Deflecting blame.
Deflecting blame equals deflecting responsibility. Make it clear that the only acceptable behavior is acceptance of responsibility and (as above) quick work to clean up the mess.
No. 8: People pretending like they “never got the memo.”
If there was no breakdown in the actual system, make it clear that the employee is responsible for consistently accessing internal communications like memos and emails so that he is never again “out of the loop.”
No. 9: Refusing to deal with conflict directly.
Conflict resolution is an essential part of a manager’s job. Performance reviews can and should count disruptive interpersonal conflicts against managers on whose watch they occur.
No. 10: Gossiping and backstabbing.
Once you establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person’s back, give your people permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. And make it clear that giving or receiving gossip is not acceptable.
You may have noticed a refrain coming back again and again in this advice: Make it clear. Once you’ve made the determination to purge your workplace of dysfunctional behavior, your greatest ally and most powerful tool will be clarity. Follow the advice in this article and in my new book “Thank God It’s Monday” and you will terminate all workplace conflicts and improve your organization’s productivity.
About the Author
Roxanne Emmerich is renowned for her ability to transform “ho hum” workplaces into massive results-oriented “bring-it-on” environments. To discover how you can ignite the passion of your employees, catapult performance to new levels, and boost employee morale of your company, subscribe to the Thank God It’s Monday™ e-zine at http://www.ThankGoditsMonday.com

Categories
People & Relationships

The Top Ten Workplace Conflicts That Disrupt Organizations—and the Cure for Each

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The dysfunctional workplace is a killer. Untreated it will kill off your customer base, your profits, and your joy for living as surely as anything.
As managers, leaders and top executives within your organization you’ve got to kill the conflicts in your workplace first before dysfunction takes hold.
The Top Ten Workplace Conflicts That Disrupt Organizations—and the Cure for Each
No. 1: No teamwork
The best managers lead a team – not just a group of individual employees. If you have employees at odds and you show no desire to fix it then you are leading your organization to a disaster.
So, make sure that the most direct supervisor meets with those involved in a workplace conflict to learn what it will take to resolve it and to secure a firm commitment to do so. Don’t forget to spell out immediate consequences in the event of failure.
No. 2: Saying one thing and meaning another.
If you have an employee with a pattern of saying, “But what I meant was…”, call them on it. Requiring the offender to have all communications checked for clarity for a period of time usually nips this in the bud fast.
No. 3: Giving lip service to new ideas then undercutting them in private.
You’ll want to enlist everyone’s help in keeping this workplace conflict out. Make it clear that dissenting opinions are welcomed during decision making, but that once a decision is made, undercutting will not be tolerated.
No. 4: Defensiveness at reasonable suggestions.
As a manager, it is your responsibility to let your team know that you consider a willingness to improve to be one of the hallmarks of a person with a bright future in your company. Defensiveness should be viewed as what it is—an unwillingness to improve one’s self.
No. 5: Attraction to chaos.
Pot stirring is a violation of principles and a threat to productivity. Counterbalance the pleasure they get from drama with a greater measure of negative consequences.
No. 6: Not following through on commitments.
Let your team know that they are expected to acknowledge errors and make a commitment to clean up every last bit of the resulting mess.
No. 7: Deflecting blame.
Deflecting blame equals deflecting responsibility. Make it clear that the only acceptable behavior is acceptance of responsibility and (as above) quick work to clean up the mess.
No. 8: People pretending like they “never got the memo.”
If there was no breakdown in the actual system, make it clear that the employee is responsible for consistently accessing internal communications like memos and emails so that he is never again “out of the loop.”
No. 9: Refusing to deal with conflict directly.
Conflict resolution is an essential part of a manager’s job. Performance reviews can and should count disruptive interpersonal conflicts against managers on whose watch they occur.
No. 10: Gossiping and backstabbing.
Once you establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person’s back, give your people permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. And make it clear that giving or receiving gossip is not acceptable.
You may have noticed a refrain coming back again and again in this advice: Make it clear. Once you’ve made the determination to purge your workplace of dysfunctional behavior, your greatest ally and most powerful tool will be clarity. Follow the advice in this article and in my new book “Thank God It’s Monday” and you will terminate all workplace conflicts and improve your organization’s productivity.
About the Author:
Roxanne Emmerich is renowned for her ability to transform “ho hum” workplaces into massive results-oriented “bring-it-on” environments. To discover how you can ignite the passion of your employees, catapult performance to new levels, and boost employee morale of your company, subscribe to the Thank God It’s Monday™ e-zine at www.ThankGoditsMonday.com

Categories
Communication Skills

Communication With Your Virtual Assistant is Essential

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Pulling together a virtual team is vital to the success of any solo professional, but even more important is maintaining regular communication with your team. If you were all sitting together in a office environment, communication wouldn’t be such a big issue – you could just walk over and chat to your assistant. But working virtually you have to set aside that time on a regular basis to talk and update one another.

This is true for all of your team members, not just your virtual assistant, but your web designer, your graphic designer, your bookkeeper, or any other team member you have on board.

My clients are long-term regular clients, who are looking to develop a partnership with their virtual assistant. I maintain that communication by recommending that we have a weekly telephone call. I schedule it in as one of the first jobs I do when we start working together. We have our phone call on the same day/time each week, so it becomes second nature.

Some weeks we may only have a quick two-minute check-in call; other weeks it may last for an hour. The purpose of our call is:

– to get to know one another
– to keep each other up-to-date on work
– to discuss any issues that have arose during the week that need our attention
– to plan future projects

How we conduct our phone calls is just as important as the phone call itself, and to make the best possible use of our time on the call I draw up an agenda. We work through it just as if we were holding an in-person meeting. I type up the notes afterwards and send them to my client. The notes then form the basis for our workload during the week, and are updated to produce the Agenda for next weeks’ call.

Communication is so important in a virtual relationship that you do need a regular communication system in place.

Having used this method of communicating with my clients for several years I’ve found it to be one of the best ways of staying in touch.
As well as being able to discuss issues relating to their business we can get to know one another too – essential for any virtual team!
By following this simple system not only do my clients get the best possible value of my time, but they are able to grow their businesses too!

Categories
People & Relationships

Top 10 Conference Networking Tips

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About.com Entrepreneurs by Scott Allen: One of the main reasons that people site for attending a conference is the networking opportunities. Yet they often leave the event feeling they made few or no connections. Here are 10 Tips to help you get the most out of connecting with others at a conference:
1. Have a plan. Know in advance whom you want to meet (directly or the type of people), which speakers you want to hear, and what tradeshow booths you want to visit.
2. Set appointments in advance. If you know that there will be people in attendance whom you know that you would like to see, call or email a few weeks in advance to schedule a time to meet for coffee, a meal, or a drink.
3. Do not focus on meeting the celebrity speakers. Place you focus on meeting other people in attendance at the event. It is the other attendees who you are most likely to bond with and create real long lasting mutually beneficial friendships.
4. Talk to the people sitting next to you. Once you have said something as simple as “hello”, it will be easier to talk with them later in the week if you see them again.
5. Ask questions of people you meet. People are more interested in themselves than they are in you, so ask them questions to help them get to talking.
6. Put your technology away. Do not run to your phone, BlackBerry, or laptop at every break. Utilize the time on breaks to converse with others.
7. Do not automatically send a LinkedIn or Facebook request. Best is to ask people if they would welcome such a link at this time. Be respectful of the fact that they might use social networking differently than you do.
8. Read their stuff. Many people are active bloggers, twitterers, authors, etc… If people create the written word, seek out their work and read it. It is a great way to get to know people by reading their stuff, but they will also be honored when you tell them that you read their blog or follow them on Twitter.
9. Introduce others. When you meet cool people, be the conduit who connects them with others who might be beneficial to them.
10. Follow up. If you meet interesting people and you never follow up, it makes no difference. Own the follow up after you meet people and send them an email (or better yet, a handwritten note) telling them how much you enjoyed talking with them, and plan for future discussions.
About the Author:
Scott Allen is a 20-year veteran technology entrepreneur, executive, and consultant. His latest venture, Link to Your World, LLC, is a full-service consulting firm that helps Global 2000 companies transform virtual relationships into real business. He is co-author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online and The Emergence of The Relationship Economy and a popular speaker on how entrepreneurs and professionals can use social media and social networking to grow their business.