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BUSINESS OWNER ESSENTIALS -THE 5 BIGGEST CHALLENGES FOR TODAY'S BUSINESS OWNER

by Guest Author Andy Warren

Copyright 2006 Andy Warren

Some of these challenges have been around since business began and others are new ones that are being faced as technology and the marketplace evolves. As a business owner, you need to be sure that you are handling each of these effectively and looking out for where they might destroy your business.

1. Cashflow Management

This is the number one essential for all businesses, no matter what stage they are at. Even the most successful businesses can fail if they take their eye off the ball on cash. Your cashflow is the difference between how fast money comes into your business from your customers and how fast you pay it out to your staff, your suppliers and the tax man.

Many business owners don’t realise that their cashflow can be at most risk when they are growing fast or taking on big orders. This happens because, in most businesses, products and raw materials have to be bought and paid for before they can be provided to customers and billed. This is also similar for services, where your employees and contractors have to be paid at the end of the month but the client may not be billed until the following month or when a job is completed. And they may not pay you until some time after that.

In periods of high growth your costs can go up and out of the door long before the cash from the increased sales comes in. And suddenly you find you have a cash crisis on your hands.

2. Your staff

Your employees can make or break your business. When you choose the right ones they can massively add to the value of your business. When you get the wrong ones they can be a drain on your time, your money and they can hold back your business.

The usual mistakes made include recruiting people who are not as smart as you so that they make you look good; Hiring too fast and firing too slowly; Not investing in training and development for your staff; Not listening to what they’re telling you; Not taking up proper references when recruiting; Not adopting good, consistent and fair HR policies within the company.

Many business owners find that employee issues are the number one drain on their time and attention. And often the issues don't get resolved and lead to litigation and expensive legal bills.

The first key is to recruit high quality people, who are smarter than you, who are motivated to build and grow your business and who come with a good track record. Also, always take up references and carefully check CVs or Resumés for any gaps or inconsistencies.

The next key is to treat your staff fairly and reward them for good work. Whatever you measure and reward will get done more, so consider this carefully. Create clear and consistent policies for employee development and training and make sure you allow good time for one-to-one reviews where the discussion is allowed to be open and frank.

And above all, keep the lines of communication open and clear and trust them.

3. Getting Noticed in a Crowded Market

You may have a great product or service but unless your potential customers know what you provide you’ll never have a great business. You need to get out into the market and deliver your message to the people you want as customers.

The challenge comes with the fact that today people receive an average of 3,000 marketing messages a day. And they’ve become immune to many of them. Your job is to be able to cut through all those messages and stand out enough to get noticed by your customer.

The best way to achieve this is by focussing on a niche. This way you can target your marketing with a laser focus to match your desired customers directly. And when you specifically target your prospects with a message that is tailored to them and their needs, they’re far more likely to take notice and listen.

The standard reaction to this is to worry that by focussing on one niche you could miss out on other customers. The reality is that the scatter gun approach that throws your message out to anyone and everyone is extremely hit and miss in its results. And it rarely works now because the message becomes so generic that no-one believes it applies to them. Remember, you can always select another niche once you’ve worked the first one. So you can eventually get to all of your potential market in a far more effective and targeted way.

4. Poor planning

It’s said that when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. This means that without a clear plan and objective you can get distracted and diverted all over the place and never achieve what you really want for your business.

When businesses fail to plan they find themselves losing money, losing staff, losing momentum, losing customers and losing business.

Without a plan, you won’t know whether you’re on the right track and you’ll have no guide as to whether you need to go faster or approach the business in a different way. Stumbling through simply doesn’t cut it for a good business.

Making plans allows you to prepare for more eventualities. It allows you to foresee potential problems and avoid crises. It actually gives you more flexibility because you can flex around your plan and revise it as you go. It also makes it easier to make decisions because you have something to judge the outcome against. You’re able to assess whether taking a specific decision takes you further along your plan or moves you away from it.

5. Neglecting customers

The final challenge that is faced by every business in this supposedly service oriented world is neglecting customers.

After all the uphill struggle of finding a prospect, telling them about your product or service and closing a sale, are you just going to let them go? Many businesses do. They are so focussed on making new sales that they forget that the best source of additional sales and new business referrals comes from their existing customer base.

They also forget that when you neglect a customer and lose them, they will tell others. And as a customer with experience they will be believed and that can knock a significant hole in all your marketing efforts.

It costs significantly more to find and sell to a new customer than it does to keep and sell more to an existing customer. Make sure you get your customers' contact details, look after them and keep building and strengthening the relationship. The first sale should be just the beginning.

And a happy, satisfied customer can do more to market your business than almost anything else.
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About the author: Andy Warren is a qualified chartered accountant, entrepreneur and coach with business experience at director levels in blue chip companies, SMEs and start-ups. Andy is also a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and has trained with Anthony Robbins in the US in behavioural sciences and life skills. He has extensive knowledge, skills and experience in the field of coaching and developing human behaviour.

You can visit http://www.yourexitstrategist.com for more information, support and guidance and to find someone who you can trust.

Article Source courtesy of http://www.upublish.info/ezineready.php
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Business Opportunities

PART IX: - ECONOMICS ABOUT A SMALL-SCALE OPERATION TO SMOKING TILAPIA AND CATFISH

Based on preliminaries available here, one has the following table that summarizes the operation's economics:

Items	US$
INVESTMENTS
Total investment	81,000
OPERATING COSTS
Operating Expenses: to producing 352 metric tons of smoked tilapia and 397 metric tons of smoked catfish and 60 kg of wastes (dried bowels and blood, crushed scales that could be used for animal feed formulation) including 10 workers salaries and wages.	950,000
PRODUCTION COSTS
397 metric tons of smoked catfish (weighting each each 298 gram. in average (click here for more about the weight of the fresh fish.) That is 1,332,214 smoked catfish per year for 475,000 US$ production costs. That gives a production cost per fish equals to .360 US$ or per kg. of smoked catfish =	1.208
352 metric tons of smoked tilapia (weighting each each 128 gram. in average (click here for more about the weight of the fresh fish.) That is 2,750,000 smoked tilapia per year for 475,000 US$ production costs. That gives a production cost per fish equals to .172 US$ or per kg. of smoked tilapia =	1.349
GENERATED REVENUES
Catfish: 397,000 x 1,812* US$ =	719,396
Tilapia: 352,000 x 1,889* US$ =	665,000
Total =	1,384,396
GROSS PROFIT
GROSS PROFIT	434,396

Fifty percent profit margin had been applied to catfish's cost of production and forty percent to tilapia's one having in mind taxes and other levies that the company would have to pay.

The operation is profit oriented. There is a huge market throughout Africa as most of the time, about 80% of fish harvest is consumed fresh and only the remaining 20% is processed to smoked product by villages' women using craft-made smoking methods. This is a small business opportunity that would boost fresh fish breeding. It is a true "economic catalyst" that would yield all its profit-making potential to an African entrepreneur only if it is well planned as here briefly exposed.

MORE ON FISH FARMING

1- How to Start and Manage a Fish Farming Business by Jerre G. Lewis 2- Integrated Fish Farming by Workshop on Integrated Fish Farming 3- Catfish farming handbook by Jerry Mack Johnson 4- Commercial Catfish Farming by Jasper S. Lee 5- Cage Culture Of Tilapia In Rural Farm Ponds An article from: Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science [HTML] (Digital - January 1, 2000) 6- Backyard Fish Farming by Paul Bryant

7- Intensive Fish Farming by Jonathan Shepherd, Niall Bromage 8- Second International Symposium on Tilapia in Aquaculture: by Thai International Symposium on Tilapia in Aquaculture 1987 Bangkok, et al (Hardcover - January 1990) 9- Tilapia Culture by Abdel-fattah M. El-sayed, A. F. M. Sayed (Hardcover - February 2006) 10- Tilapias: Biology and Exploitation by M.C.M Beveridge (Editor), B. McAndrew (Editor)

Control Your Desktop

PROTECT YOUR CONVERSATIONS OVER THE NET WITH ZFONE

Voice Over The Net - known as Voice Over Internet Protocol - VoIP - is becoming increasingly popular (see our previous delivery on the matter and scroll down to Freebie Section below.)

However, speaking over the net is shouting in the public even if one has the false impression to be safe in front of the computer. It is even more easier for Big Brothers to listen to a particular target. They need just to place the right listening device on your IP address or (with the agreement of your service provider) directly on your node. And that is. They are in your office or in your room with you, listening to everything you are saying to your correspondent without you noticing anything.

You can go on the offensive and secure your phone's exchanges over the net. Phil Zimmermann, the famous maker of Pretty Good Privacy - PGP the international acclaimed email and document encryption tool - is back with new brand software to encrypting phones conversations over the net. The software, Zfone, had just been released on May 21, 2006 for windows in beta form and should be used in conjunction with any standard smartphone such as SjPhone.

Who else than the master himself can explain to you Zfone's usage and capabilities to put eavesdroppers at bay. Login to Phil website to review Zfone specifications and download the client not to be fooled again by Big Brothers of the world.

Freebie Of The Month

VOICE OVER THE NET BUSTER

In a previous delivery Voice Over the Net - technically known as Voice Over Internet Protocol - VoIP - had been briefly exposed and a VoIP client (SjPhone) that makes it easy to configure several VOIP providers on the go had been introduced to you

Since said introduction a new provider enters the market with aggressive marketing proposing FREE access to some destinations' landlines phones and even to mobile phones.

The company name: VOIP BUSTER. Indeed, it is a true competition's buster, with a marketing based on aggressive pricing. Not only they allow "give away?" free calls to some landlines phones as above explained but rates are also so low to non-free destinations that several competitors would be feeling the heat! However,

When you register to VOIP BUSTER, you could ask for a free Inbound phone line. Though that offer seemed limited for the time being it is also a blow to competitors, which normally request payment for such a facility.

VOIP BUSTER offers the possibility to configure a client such as SJphone with the username and password used to register with VoIP Buster and utilizing the following configuration' strings to initialize your account: STUN: stun.voipbuster.com; DOMAIN NAME: voipbuster.com; SIP PROXY: sip.voipbuster.com

Click here to register with VOIP BUSTER.