When is a Good Time to Increase Your Payroll?

November 3, 2011


This blog post was created by Bert Deorhoff, CPA, who specializes in small business bookkeeping in Jefferson City.
If you are running a small business, then you are making a lot of big decisions daily. As your business grows, you will need to start thinking about increasing your payroll and hiring new employees.
The first thing you need to do is start planning. You will have to do quite a bit of number crunching in terms of how another employee will affect monthly, quarterly and yearly expenses.
Ask yourself, “Do I have enough work to justify hiring another person? Am I meeting the needs of my customers?”
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Filed Under: Employees, Management Tagged With: ,

How to Measure the Success of Onboarding Process

October 23, 2011

Organizations invest a lot in their workforce, and it’s no surprise that they expect to see a return on their investments (ROI). But as business leaders look for the best ways to maximize the ROI of their workforce, the onboarding process is often overlooked. For many, the onboarding experience is reduced to a mere checklist of tasks to be completed and forms to be submitted. The fact that such organizations fail to understand, though, is that an employees that experience a smoother onboarding process will be more connected to the organization, better trained and, thus, quicker to produce.

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Framework for Deciding What NOT to do

September 28, 2011


In the previous post we highlighted that the most difficult decisions you will ever make are the ones where you decide NOT to move forward. By focusing your resources and energy on narrowly you can achieve number of benefits and get higher return on your investment of time, money or effort. We mentioned how Apple has succeeded to become the most valuable company in the U.S. by applying this principle, while GM had floundered by spreading resources over multiple brands with lot of overlaps.
You should use this approach in decision making every step of the way. If you take a step back and think about the decision in terms of cost vs. benefit of the current choice and evaluate it against alternatives you can improve the odds of making the right choice. You can use this principle in number of different areas as shown below.
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Practical Ideas for Customer Suggestions to Improve Sales

September 18, 2011


In the earlier post we mentioned that if you are not applying customer suggestion tactics in the small business you are losing about 25% of current sales. We also showed best practices to work with when implementing customer suggestion plan. The key to making customers to like your suggestions is to do it in a way such that they do not feel as if they are being forced into buying something they do not want to.
In this post we will show practical ideas that are based on the best practices to implement in your small business. We have seen many of these ideas implemented at number of businesses with great results. I am sure you will be able to enjoy similar sales growth after you implement some of these ideas.
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Best Practices in Customer Suggestions to Improve Sales

September 14, 2011


In the previous post we mentioned that if you are not applying customer suggestion tactics in the small business you are missing out on 25% of current sales. These days customers receive suggestions from businesses and other customers from all kinds of businesses. However, you have to be careful about not turning off customers with your overly aggressive tactics. Customers do like receiving suggestions from their friends and businesses, but they do not want to be bombarded with them every step of the way.
The key to making customers to like your suggestions is to do it in a way such that the customers do not feel as if they are being forced into buying something they do not want to. There are certain things you should keep in mind when working on your customer suggestion plan as described below.
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Find Trouble Spots in your Business from Warning Signs

August 28, 2011

In the previous post we looked at 5 warning signs that tell you if your business is headed for trouble. These signs serve as early warning system that can help you identify and remediate problems before they become too serious.
Looking for a warning sign is just the first step in fixing things and making them better. Once you have received the red sign you need to interpret it, find the underlying causes and correct them – all before your business reaches the point of no return and forces you to close it or sell at a loss. It helps to have a business degree online to get a better understanding of these warning signs.
In general, you will find two types of problems that would cause the businesses to sputter. The first has to do with general market and economic conditions, which you may not have much control over. The second type of problems has to do with your specific business. These issues are the result of how you run your business and are totally under your control. As a business owner your goal should be to uncover issues specific to your business as quickly as possible and take appropriate actions to correct them now rather than waiting till the last minute.
In this post we will show you what could be the underlying causes for the 5 warning signs mentioned in the previous post. The next post will focus on actions you can take to correct them.
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15 Simple Cost Reduction Techniques for Small Business Owners

August 21, 2011


In the previous post we showed a systematic approach you can use to reduce cost in small business while still keeping your foundation intact allowing you to take advantage of the upturn in economy when it happens. We suggested that you should take surgical knife approach to cost reduction as opposed to using machete.
By applying this approach your business may come up with tactics that will be different from some other type of business. You have to tailor the systematic approach to your business and situation. However, there are common tactics that can be employed by almost all types of businesses. Below we describe those techniques categorized by stages in the cost reduction approach.
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How to Grow your Business without Spending a Fortune

July 27, 2011


The great recession of the last 2-3 years has made many small business owners skittish about spending money even if it can help them improve sales in the future. Many of the small business owners are hunkering down to survive till the sky is cleared. They are happy with maintaining current sales and making reasonable profit. While we agree that these are difficult times for all small business owners, you should not have to sacrifice long-term benefits at the expense of short-term survival.
We believe, there are ways to satisfy both the needs of conserving cash and growing your business at the same time. The key is to utilize low-cost marketing techniques to improve sales combined with flexible operations to control cost. We have covered several of these techniques in previous posts. Below we summarize them for your convenience.
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Small Business Lessons from $100,000 Salt and Pepper Shaker

July 24, 2011


I am reading this fascinating book “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, who used to be a professor in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. The book is a compilation of his thoughts and experiences he delivered as a last lecture to the students after he found out that he had a terminal pancreatic cancer with only few months to live. It describes many of his experiences in life – from childhood to the end. I highly recommend this book for summer reading.
One of the interesting incidents he describes occurred during their family visit to Disney World when he was a 12 year old. In that he and his sister buy a salt and pepper shaker for $10 for their father with all of their pocket money. However, before they can give it to him he drops it on the ground and breaks it. Very disappointed, they go back to the store with little or no hope of getting a replacement. To their amazement and disbelief, however, the store employee happily gives them the replacement without any charge even though he explains that it was all his fault and Disney had nothing to do with it.
When his father hears the story he becomes a devoted fan of Disney. He continues to take not only his kids, but people from his volunteer group to Disneyland for many years, spending approximately $100,000 according to his estimate.
There are two important lessons to be learned for small business owners from this incident. First has to do with customer service and the other with employees.
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5 Additional Personality Traits Small Business Owners Need

July 10, 2011


In the previous post we discussed 5 personality traits small business owners must have to succeed in small business. To recap, they are – risk taker, decision maker, organized, delegator and responsible. Those who do not have these qualities should think long and hard about getting into small business or at least find a way to mitigate them.
We think there are 5 additional qualities small business owners need to become successful. In the following we describe what those qualities are and why they are important.
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