Small Business Today

Microsoft Excel Time Saver

smallbusinessestoday — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:01:52 +0000

What business doesn’t use Microsoft Excel? Here’s a great Excel timesaver….

How to Build a Better Access Form

smallbusinessestoday — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:54:00 +0000

MS Access is surprisingly prevalent in small businesses, even some that are custom facing as kiosks. Here are 10 ways to build a better Access Form.

Sick of weekly status reports!

smallbusinessestoday — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:44:29 +0000

I once spent about two weeks with managers and peers negotiating status reports. What format, when should they be due, what sort of detail, can we use different fonts, etc. I wish we had this tool for weekly status reports at the time…

Positive News about the Economy

smallbusinessestoday — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:26:26 +0000

It seems like every day the news is littered with dismal tidings about the economy. You have to be a (realistic) optimist as a small business owner. Great blog here:

http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/

Microsoft scraps Office Accounting product

smallbusinessestoday — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:20:03 +0000

After four years, Microsoft has decided to kill it’s Office Accounting product. Apparently it only garnered 1.3% of the market. I know I’ve tried the product. It was all right, but didn’t quite have the flexibility we needed. Here’s an article from CNET on it:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10387177-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Eliminating Products or Services in Your Small Business

Microsoft has thousands of employees and billions in revenue. Killing a product is surprisingly difficult, even for a large company. They certainly still generated revenue from it, but ultimately decided it didn’t add to their profitability.

The same should hold true for a small business. Even if you make $1000/month on a particular product or service, if it is a small percent of your overall revenue, it’s important to ask yourself: If I had the X hours a month I spend on supporting/maintaining this product or service to do other things, could I make even more money? As a small business, you have a limited capacity, and how you allocate that capacity is critical. Would spending 5% more on marketing or advertising result in 200% more revenue than what that little product or service is bringing you? It’s a critical question. You may find that eliminating a product or service from your portfolio is the best thing for your business. Instead of $1000/month from the product, you could see that same amount of time spent on a more profitable effort results in $5000 or $50,000 more a month.

Do the Uncomfortable

smallbusinessestoday — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:28:58 +0000

Depending on the survey or source, there are millions to tens of millions of small businesses in the US. Of course that depends on whether you count each Avon sales rep (and the like in other business segments) individually, or businesses with more than one employee, etc. Which ones succeed? There are naturally many, many dynamics to that answer. But one characteristic that helps push a small business owner forward is to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Hidden Potential for Success

You probably started, or are thinking of starting, your small business because you know how to (insert your talent here). You might know how to sell very well. You might be a great craftsman/woman. You might have the most incredible widget idea on the planet. But unless you are a superhero (and few of us are), there will be a few areas of running a small business that are intimidating and well outside your comfort area. And in many cases, what is uncomfortable and foreign to you will be the hidden key to your success.

Do the difficult things first

If you have been operating your business for some time, and have an existing customer base, you’ve obviously got something going for you. Even still, look to the areas you have the greatest difficulty with. The aspects of your daily work you spend little time on, or ignore altogether. Some will be appropriately sidelined, because they bring little value. But there are those tasks you intuitively know you need to attend to, but always find other (probably more comfortable and known) activities to focus on. Perhaps you’re great talking to customers, but don’t spend time on advertising. Or you are a fantastic sales person, advertise well, but don’t like to spend time looking at the nitty-gritty details of your finances and sales performance. Whatever it might be, it’s likely that your key to more growth and success isn’t staying with what you know best, but expanding into foreign territory where you lack experience and talent. It is in those places that you are likely to find growth opportunities.

Example: Several customers of our small business software company have created fantastic products or services, they have customers, but specifically neglect marketing and business strategy in lieu of what they are more comfortable with, building their products/services. So what they have is a hidden gem, a golden egg, but no one knows it exists. We are now in an information-on-demand society, which means unless you are actively working to get your products/services in front of your prospective customers, you’re business is missing growth opportunity.

Expertise on the Cheap

So where you do learn how to sell? How to advertise? How to create a services model that keeps customers coming back? How to keep customers happy? Whatever your discomfort-area may be, rest assured you can find college course material online without paying a cent. Here’s an example: do a Google search for “manage inventory filetype:ppt site:.edu” and you’ll see a host of college-level Power Point presentations on how to best manage inventory.

Good luck!