The first major sign of trouble on the horizon is poor cash flow. Either the business owner doesn’t have and execute a marketing strategy that works (more on that in a bit) or it is because the people who owe the business owner do not pay their bills on time. Everyone, it seems, is trying to hang onto someone else’s money for some strange reason. One business owner confided to me that a large organization he did business with paid him more than 90 days after he sent the invoice in for approval and payment. In the meantime, he had to pay all of the bills for his company and his family.
The sense of urgency at the large company, apparently, was non-existent. The individuals who open the mail, process the invoices and cut checks aren’t concerned with the “problems” of the small business providing the products and services to their organization. Why should they? An employee of a large company gets a paycheck week in and week out, along with vacations, paid sick days, paid holidays and a lot of fringe benefits. Since they don’t work for a small business, it is unlikely they have ever had to deal with cash flow issues.
The business owner, on the other hand, lives and dies by the daily balance in their company checkbook. That figure determines whether or not they can hire more people, add inventory and improve the selection of goods and services, upgrade their offices and equipment, and serve their customers and clients better.
The Santa Clarita Valley (where I have now lived for 18 years) is home to nearly 11,000 businesses, and the vast majority of them are small. I am not going to recite the numbers, but there is a very good chance that if you are reading this, one of your neighbors is employed by a small business located in your town. You can help that neighbor, you can help your neighborhood, and you can help your city and every one who lives there by simply paying the bills that you owe to small businesses on time. If you can’t pay, then don’t ignore the bill—call the business and make some type of arrangement to take care of the obligation you have created.
If by chance you are someone in a large organization who does business with small organizations, and you have anything at all to do with the check processing system, please take the time this next week to see what can be done to reduce the time it takes to get a check cut to the businesses that provide services and products to your organization. Remember that your neighbor, the small business owner, doesn’t get a paycheck each and every time payroll is cut. They get what is leftover, after everyone else gets paid. In other words, they get paid when the check from your organization arrives in their mailbox. That vital difference may mean keeping the doors open and people on the payroll.
Another small business storm cloud that seems to be crop up as regularly as a summer thunderstorm over the San Gabriels is lack of a marketing strategy. For the life of me, I cannot understand how a business owner can run a business by sitting down and waiting for customers or clients to “find them.” Then analogy would be similar to trying to find a specific sentence on specific page on a specific web site on the Internet, only without a search engine. Yes, you could do it, but it would take a long while. In the meantime, the business will go out of business, the facility covered in dust and cobwebs.
If your business is not where you want it to be in the greatest of all economies, then something is wrong—very wrong—with how you do business. Your marketing, or lack of it, may be the culprit.
Marketing isn’t a science, and it isn’t an art. It’s a blend of both. It is also a set of skills that can and must be learned if one is to have a business that is successful. Learning can be painful but it is also definitely profitable (see last week’s column).
One can learn marketing by reading. There are thousands of books on the subject, and many of them are available for free at your local public library. Start reading today—the library is open on Sundays! While you are there, pick up a video tape on any number of subjects related to getting and keeping customers: sales, marketing, customer service, and so on. You can also pick up audio tapes to listen to when you drive, or during slow times during the business day.
Brian Tracy is a great author with many wonderful books to choose from. His books have been converted into tapes and CDs so there is no excuse not to read or listen. Harvey Mckay has authored many books on the process of gaining and keeping customers. Jay Conrad Levinson has written a series of books on “Guerrilla Marketing” which are inexpensive and timeless in the information that is provided. If you can’t put to use something from these three authors, then you should close up your business and get a job working for someone else!
The one way out of a period of poor cash flow and slow sales is to generate more revenue, from better customers and clients. There are going to be periods of rough weather and turbulence in every business and life. How you choose to deal with those times will determine your ultimate business success. Will you turn on the radar and scan the horizon to avoid bad weather, or will you fly into it without knowing the duration or intensity of the storm? Only you can decide.
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