NebulaBiz Cash Advance Melbourne Fl: September 2017

Friday, September 29, 2017

The other day some Boy Scouts (actually they were Cub Scouts, the younger kids ages 7 to 10, who are just getting started in the organization) came to my house selling Boy Scout popcorn as part of their annual fundraiser. Most of the time, Boy Scouts don’t do much in the way of professional “sales pitches.” They tend to just show up at the door in their scout uniforms and with their popcorn brochure, and they ask if you want to buy—and usually it works!

Most people like to support kids, and they tend to buy the popcorn, even if the kids are kind of disinterested in giving them an elaborate sales presentation. But I’m a professional salesperson, so I was a bit more of a “tough audience” for these kids; I wanted to see if they would actually use some real business-style sales skills.

And to my surprise, they did! The Boy Scouts at my door introduced themselves by name and asked, “Do you like popcorn?”

“Well, yes I do!” I replied.

“What is your favorite kind of popcorn?” they asked.

“I like caramel corn and cheddar corn,” I said.

“Well you’re in luck. We are selling BOTH of those kinds of popcorn to raise money for Boy Scouts! Would you like to order some of your favorite popcorn right now? You don’t have to pay any money today.”

And at that point, I was totally sold! I was going to buy some popcorn anyway, but these kids really did a nice job of illustrating some essential lessons about sales:

First, start a conversation

Almost everyone loves supporting kids’ fundraisers for organizations like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but in real-world sales situations, people aren’t always interested to talk with you. You need to start a conversation and engage your prospects first, before you try to close the sale.

The kids at my door did a nice job of this; they opened the dialogue not by just asking, “Do you want to buy popcorn?” Instead they asked, “Do you like popcorn?” And this quickly led to a broader conversation.

The goal of that first contact with a sales prospect is not to “sell,” it’s to start a conversation. Then the sales opportunity will grow from there.

Qualify your leads with open-ended questions

The second question of the Boy Scouts was open-ended: “What kind of popcorn do you like?” That’s important—because it gave the conversation more room to breathe. They had already established that I like popcorn, but then they needed to find out more about my underlying needs—did I like caramel corn, cheese popcorn, or what?

This is a valuable lesson for any sales situation: Don’t ask “yes or no” questions that allow your prospect to shut down the conversation. Instead, ask open-ended questions that will help you probe deeper into the prospect’s situation and uncover their unstated needs. And with every step of the conversation, you are building trust and building a relationship.

Ask for the sale!

One of the classic lines you’ll learn in sales training is that the thing most salespeople forget to ask for is also the simplest: ASK FOR THE SALE. These Boy Scouts did that well, and they also added some valuable information, that I didn’t have to pay any money today. They very concisely offered me my favorite flavors of popcorn, with no money down! How could I say no to that offer??

You can learn a lot from these Boy Scouts to apply to your small business sales process. First, start a conversation. Then, qualify your prospects with open-ended questions to learn more about what they need. Finally, be sure to ask for the sale, and make it easy for your customers to say yes!

Whether you’re selling popcorn door-to-door, or selling straightforward B2B solutions, some principles of selling remain the same.

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7 Ways to Effectively Scale and Grow Your Online Business

A common trait that you’ll find among many online business owners is that they’re never quite satisfied with the status quo, no matter what level of success they’ve achieved. Whether it’s called ambition or the entrepreneurial spirit, these business owners are constantly looking for ways to take their businesses to the next level. But doing so is dependent on whether or not their business model can scale.

The good news is that scaling an online business is much easier than trying to grow a more traditional brick-and-mortar operation; you don’t need to scout additional storefronts or worry about finding more physical space. The business is mostly virtual, so there is, quite literally, an infinite level of potential. So what are ways to achieve this kind of growth?

1. Expand your global options

When many entrepreneurs first start out, they only focus their efforts on one geographic region for the sake of simplicity. Some may only sell their products in the U.S. so they don’t have to deal with accepting different currencies, or having to figure out how to handle shipping and taxes.

Selling to the global market is actually a lot easier than you might think when you leverage e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce. The platform currently supports e-commerce shops in over 150 countries, and allows your store to display in almost any language and accept payments in almost every currency.

Your online store can integrate with PayPal, Stripe, and other gateways, with no transaction fees. You can ship internationally through integrations with many providers around the world, and the built-in calculator helps you make sure your pricing structures take territory-specific taxes and shipping fees into account.

2. Automate your manual processes

You can scale your production and you can scale your campaigns, but the one thing that you cannot scale is your time. No matter how you slice it, there are only 24 hours in a day, and only seven days in a week. There’s no sense in wasting your time doing tasks that can be done automatically.

Utilize tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to automate much of your social media management. The RSS feed on your blog can be automatically syndicated to Facebook and Twitter with ease, and similar tools exist to invoice reminders to your customers, for example. Look at where you are wasting time, and then figure out how an automated tool can give you more time that you can devote to growing your business instead.

3. Grow your content team

When you first start a blog, chances are you’ll be the only one doing the writing. And that’s fine in the beginning when you’re working to establish your brand or to solidify your reputation as an expert in your niche or industry. But as time goes on, you may want to ramp up your content production, and won’t be able to because you simply don’t have the time.

This is when you should think about outsourcing. Marketplaces like Freelancer.com and Fiverr are accessible and convenient, but they may not provide you with the long-term solution that you really need. Take the time to seek out people who you are eager to see their writing on your site for years to come.

4. Upgrade your hosting plan

Good news! Your online business is growing at a rapid rate. Bad news! Your hosting plan can no longer handle the kind of bandwidth and control that you need to keep moving forward. As affordable and as easy shared hosting plans may be, they may not be adequate as your needs continue to grow and your business continues to scale.

If you don’t feel like you’re quite ready to invest in dedicated hosting, but you want to have a greater sense of control, then VPS (virtual private server) web hosting could be a great step up. PC Magazine has put together a good guide comparing some top VPS web hosts. This also may be the time to look into setting up a CDN (content delivery network) as well.

5. Pursue media exposure more actively

To scale your online business, you will need to explore new markets and reach out to new people who can potentially become new readers, subscribers, and customers. There are many ways you can do this, including writing guest posts and sending out press releases.

One service that you might also consider is Help a Reporter Out, also known in many circles simply as HARO. Over 50,000 journalists and bloggers are constantly looking for expert sources for their varied content. When you add yourself to the HARO database, you may have writers reaching out to you for your comment or opinion. This could land you invaluable media coverage that you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get.

6. Identify your bottlenecks

How you plan to scale your online business will obviously depend on the current status of your business. Maybe you’ve already gotten yourself a strong team of professionals on your side: content creators, a marketing team, a production team, someone handling logistics, and so on.

A big problem that you may face is with so many moving parts it can be difficult to identify the inefficiencies in the system. The pace at which your business can operate will be dictated by the slowest “cog” in the machine. You can work toward identifying any bottlenecks by leveraging project management software like Basecamp or Trello.

Some solutions use what is known as a Kanban board. This workflow visualization technique aims to progress tasks from left to right, limiting the number of items that can exist in a column. When you see things start to pile up, you’ll know where things are moving at their slowest.

7. Recognize the Pareto principle

The Pareto principle states that 80% of output is generated by 20% of input. This is definitely true when it comes to business, and may mean that in order for your business to grow, you may have to make some cuts.

Let’s say you have 10 products that you sell through your online store. A couple of them may be real superstars, bringing in the majority of your revenue. But at some point, you’ll need to take a look at those remaining eight items and get rid of the underperformers. Doing this will free up resources so you can either focus more of your marketing efforts on the two superstar products, or develop potentially awesome replacements that will hopefully perform better.

And continue to focus on what is working and discard what isn’t—remember, this cycle never ends and it’s a mindset you’ll need to reapply over and over again.

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When Technology Goes Too Far: How Not to Treat Your Customers

How hard should it be to order pizza? “Not very,” you’re thinking. After all, you’ve probably done it a thousand times. But sometimes, it can be harder than you expect. Consider the experience a friend of mine had last week.

My friend is a musician and was in the middle of a recording session that began to run long. The guys were getting hungry, but not wanting to totally interrupt the flow of their recording, they decided not to go out for lunch. Instead, they chose the fastest, easiest possible solution: order pizza.

None of them were familiar with the area around the recording studio, so my friend grabbed his phone and looked up the closest pizza place. He called to order a large cheese pizza, only to be told he’d have to place his order online — they didn’t take phone orders. No problem, right? He quickly went to the website on his phone, only to find that he couldn’t order a pizza without setting up an account, creating a password, etc. etc.

He didn’t want to go through all that trouble for a one-time pizza order, so he gave up on that restaurant and dialed the next one that came up in his search results. At this pizza place, he couldn’t order over the phone or on the store website—he had to go through the Uber Eats app. My friend doesn’t have an Uber account (he prefers Lyft) and didn’t really want to create one because he has issues with Uber’s management practices. “Are you sure you can’t just take my order over the phone?” he said. “It’s just one cheese pizza delivery.” But the restaurant refused.

In case I haven’t made it clear, my friend is not some fuddy-duddy with a flip phone. On the contrary: He’s a millennial who’s always got the newest tech gadget in hand, and last week I saw him get as excited as a kid on Christmas morning whenever he got a chance to use Apple Pay in a taxicab. Normally, he prefers to order pizza delivery online—but in this situation, he just wanted to place an order, hand the delivery person a $20 bill,and get the transaction done as quickly as possible.

Is more technology better technology?

There’s a lesson here for small business owners: More technology is not necessarily better technology. In general, I’m a big believer in small businesses adopting the latest technology. It can give you an incredible edge over small business competitors and even put you on a more level playing field with the big guys. But tech for tech’s sake has always been, and continues to be, a big mistake.

At some point in the future, we may all be able to place pizza orders just by thinking hard and blinking our eyes three times. But for now, a substantial percentage of the population still prefers to do it the way it’s always been done. If those pizza restaurants were frustrating for a tech-savvy millennial, how would a senior who only uses his computer for email feel about it? Yes, your business does need to adapt to changing times and stay one step ahead of what customers are going to want in the future. But that doesn’t mean you can leave other customers completely behind.

This is a challenge for small business owners, I admit. Right now, you have to deal with multiple ways of interacting with customers, making transactions and getting paid. You might deal with one customer on the phone and another by live chat. You may sell products to college kids who never carry cash, and retirees who never leave the house without a wallet full of crisp $100 bills. But unless you want to market your business as only being for one type of customer, you’ve got to make it work.

Be a customer-first business

Technology enables your business to do things entrepreneurs couldn’t have dreamed of 20 years ago. But while you can get as techy as you want with your internal systems and solutions, it’s important to keep the customer-facing technology of your business in tune with what your customers want. Today, that means offering plenty of options.

Different customers prefer different ways of shopping, buying and getting customer assistance. Not only that, but as my story exemplifies, the same customer may prefer different things at different times. It’s your job to keep them all satisfied—or lose them as customers. The choice is yours.

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5 Steps to Overcome Self-Doubt and Build a Successful Business

By Sreeram Sreenivasan

Entrepreneurs can be prone to doubt. Is my business idea good? Will my marketing strategy be successful? Is my company on the right track? Am I hiring the right person?

And unless they do something about it, self-doubt can quickly turn into a habit, stopping them from making any decisions and taking any actions, which can adversely affect their businesses.

Trust me; I know. I wasted an entire year before I launched my first business, wondering if it was the right idea. Then I wasted another year building it, going back and forth with product development and design decisions. Eventually, I realized the greatest threat to my business was my self-doubt. Once I dealt with it, I was able to grow my business and move faster.

It’s essential to overcome self-doubt to ensure that you don’t lose track of your goals, and to be more productive. Here are five tips you can use to destroy any self-doubt that occurs while starting or running a business.

1. Don’t worry about what others think

Being an entrepreneur involves meeting with a lot of people: employees, vendors, clients, partners, colleagues, mentors, not to mention your friends and family. If you keep thinking about what each one of them thinks about you and how to please them, you’ll run out of time to do anything else.

Avoid trying to compare yourself (or your business) with other entrepreneurs or businesses in your industry. You’ll only end up making unrealistic comparisons and doubt your abilities, feeling anxious and exhausted. Instead, try to learn from successes of others and apply their lessons to your business. What did they do well? What challenges did they face? How did they overcome them? Can I use those methods to grow my business?

In fact, you can even proactively reach out to others, and who knows, end up collaborating, instead of competing, with them.

2. Set short-term goals

Although it’s essential to have long-term goals for your business, it’s equally important to set short-term ones, attainable goals. Otherwise, you will be doubting yourself when your big goals aren’t realized immediately.

By achieving smaller goals, you’ll be able to stay motivated and continue moving in the right direction. Also, create short-term goals that are tied to your long-term objectives. For example, if your long-term goal is to double your sales next year, then aim to grow sales by 7 to 8% every month. Now that doesn’t sound too overwhelming, does it?

3. Think about your past successes

Every business has its good days and bad days. When things just aren’t working out, that’s when most people start doubting themselves. Couple that with doubts from others, and your life can go into a death spiral.

Take a pause and step back. Think about all the things you’ve accomplished thus far. Remind yourself of the things that you have done right and your recent accomplishments. In fact, it’s a good idea to take a few minutes every day to remember your achievements, and to view your world in a positive way. Think about the day when your business didn’t even exist. If you have come so far, you can definitely go further.

4. Surround yourself with the right people

A man is known by the company he keeps, and it’s even more true for entrepreneurs.

Associate with people who have positive outlooks towards life and will encourage you to continue your venture. Avoid people who are pessimistic about you and your business. It’s one thing to say, “You need to do . . . to grow your business,” and another to say, “I don’t see how your business will grow this way”.

You can even join a mastermind group to exchange ideas, or hire a business coach whom you trust.

5. Acknowledge that you’re not alone

It’s important to remember that you are not the only one who has self-doubts. Everyone doubts themselves. Even John Lennon said, “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”

The key is to acknowledge that we all make mistakes while running a business; it’s not an exact science. No matter how talented or hardworking you are, you will make mistakes. And at such times, it’s important to look for solutions, instead of obsessing over problems. Successful people learn from mistakes and change themselves quickly.

Also, if you make a mistake, admit it immediately and don’t try to cover it up. It will help you build your professional reputation as well as gain credibility. And if you make a mistake, learn from it and figure out a way to prevent it from happening again. Finally, move on and just let it go.

Self-doubt is like a paralysis of the mind, that will keep you from realizing what you’re truly capable of doing. You can’t be successful by standing still—so keep going. As long as you’re focused and persistent, you will be successful.

As Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

About the Author

Post by: Sreeram Sreenivasan

For more than eight years, Sreeram Sreenivasan has worked with various Fortune 500 companies in areas of business intelligence, and sales and marketing strategies. He regularly writes at Fedingo about a wide range of business growth topics. He’s also the Founder & CEO of Ubiq BI, a cloud-based BI Platform for SMBs and Enterprises.

Company: Ubiq Business Intelligence
Website: www.fedingo.com

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Lessons in Career Disruption—5 Tips for Moving From a Corporate Job to a Startup

By Keith Crerar

Everyone remembers the first day at a new job. Mine was in March 2015. After spending close to a decade working for a publicly traded company, at age 40 I decided to move to a startup at age 40—about the same time other guys are locked in midlife crisis and buying motorcycles.

Having been well-entrenched in buttoned-up corporate culture, I arrived for my first day at TradeRev’s Toronto headquarters in my best dress shirt, a nice tie, and a fitted suit . . . and I’ll never forget what happened next. As soon as I walked through the doors, a young web developer in a t-shirt and jeans asked me if I was someone’s father. (Needless to say, not the greeting I was expecting!)

In the past two years, I have since learned many more differences between corporate and startup life. So, in hopes of helping others avoid the culture shock that comes with career upheaval, here are five things that anyone transitioning from a corporate environment to a startup should bear in mind:

1. You have to believe in what you do

To survive at a startup, you have to hustle. There will be many late nights, working weekends, and personal sacrifices you’ll have to prepare your family for. That’s why, before joining any new company, you must be absolutely certain you believe in your founder’s vision.

In my current role, I really believe in what I do, helping bring real-time car auction technology to dealers’ mobile phones. You’ll also need to bring that same passion to your new position. If you don’t, you’ll never hustle hard enough. You just won’t.

2. You must be ready to embrace chaos

Ask yourself, how do you perform under pressure? Because, make no mistake, things are going to go sideways at a startup and you’ll need to stay flexible and keep an open mind in the face of chaos. When you’re building something new and disrupting an entire industry, you’re going to have some hiccups. There will be bugs and all kinds of unforeseen setbacks, but if you can keep your cool as a leader, you can help your team stay calm.

3. You have to be willing to learn

I went from heading up a team of 800 to managing a team of 50, and am now more hands-on than ever before. At a startup, you don’t direct the troops, you are the troops. And, to thrive in this life, you have to be able to move outside your comfort zone and take on new, unfamiliar roles on a daily basis.

At my old job, the sales team that spoke with customers was far removed from the product development team. But, now I’m in those development meetings. I’m learning about coding and product roadmaps, working with engineers, and I am part of big decisions to adding new features to our mobile app. It’s exciting.

4. You need to keep your ear to the ground

When you’re at a large organization, leadership can quickly become disconnected from the people who are directly talking to the customers. However, when you’re small, you have the chance to connect with employees and customers on the ground floor—and you need to capitalize on those opportunities every chance you get.

The objective of every startup is to grow its customer base; growth only comes with great customer service, so your boots need to be on the ground. You have to put yourself in position to hear unfiltered customer feedback firsthand.

5. You will have the opportunity to shape company culture

Coming from a structured corporate environment I had to learn that nothing ever has to be a certain way. As long as everyone is working together towards a common goal, it doesn’t matter how you look, how you dress, or who you are. All that matters is the job gets done, you have fun, and you take care of each other.

While the culture at most corporate work spaces is largely set in stone, at my company, I have a real opportunity to shape how our employees work and play. This means taking the time to say good morning to everyone, blaring my iTunes through the office to motivate the team for an upcoming launch, and helping present custom-made, company-branded Chuck Taylors to employees on their one-year anniversaries.

These are the things that make the long hours worth it. Over the past two years, I’ve learned that if you can create a workplace that people enjoy being a part of and get satisfaction from, coming to work each day becomes much more than picking up a paycheck.

While corporate life may have been more comfortable, I wouldn’t trade my experience at a startup for the world. I mean, having the chance to disrupt an entire industry? That’s definitely something worth disrupting your life for.

About the Author

Post by: Keith Crerar

After landing his first position with ADESA in 2009, Keith Crerar rapidly rose the ranks until in 2016, he realized there was a connectivity gap in the industry; a gap that only technology could fill. In his current role, he’s helping lead the charge at TradeRev, a startup that’s reinventing the automotive resale space. By bringing real-time car auction technology right to dealers’ mobile phones, TradeRev is helping dealers build trust with their customers and sell more cars in half the time

Company: TradeRev
Website: www.traderev.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn.

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7 Ways to Effectively Scale and Grow Your Online Business

1. Expand your global options

2. Automate your manual processes

3. Grow your content team

4. Upgrade your hosting plan

5. Pursue media exposure more actively

6. Identify your bottlenecks

7. Recognize the Pareto principle

And continue to focus on what is working and discard what isn’t—remember, this cycle never ends and it’s a mindset you’ll need to reapply over and over again.

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Thursday, September 28, 2017

3 Real-World Sales Lessons From Boy Scouts Selling Popcorn

And to my surprise, they did! The Boy Scouts at my door introduced themselves by name and asked, “Do you like popcorn?”

“Well, yes I do!” I replied.

“What is your favorite kind of popcorn?” they asked.

“I like caramel corn and cheddar corn,” I said.

And at that point, I was totally sold! I was going to buy some popcorn anyway, but these kids really did a nice job of illustrating some essential lessons about sales:

First, start a conversation

The goal of that first contact with a sales prospect is not to “sell,” it’s to start a conversation. Then the sales opportunity will grow from there.

Qualify your leads with open-ended questions

Ask for the sale!

Whether you’re selling popcorn door-to-door, or selling straightforward B2B solutions, some principles of selling remain the same.

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5 Old-School Values That Can Empower Young Entrepreneurs

National Grandparents Day, a day to honor the beloved parents of our parents, is recognized on the first Sunday of September after Labor Day each year. Annually, the special day reminds us to cherish and celebrate how our grandmas and grandpas have enriched our lives.

Beyond the treasured childhood memories of hugs, storytelling, and holiday traditions, our grandparents have given us other lifelong gifts. They have demonstrated exemplary qualities that—if we’ve paid attention to and have emulated them—empower us to be better business owners.

Traditional virtues that never go out of style

Grandparents embody some characteristics that we should embrace in our professional as well as personal lives. Those that I’ve found to play a significant role in overcoming the challenges of starting and running a business include:

Fortitude

Finding courage in the face of adversity doesn’t always come easily. I’ve learned this from watching my grandparents navigate some of life’s most pressing issues. They faced things like illness, financial woes, and emotional distress with grit and resolve. The saying, “When times get tough, the tough get going” is a mantra my grandparents lived by.

The lesson: Realize difficult circumstances will happen in business; if you want to succeed, you need to find the strength to ride out the storm.

Resilience

Along with the fortitude to survive tough times, my grandparents showed the determination to bounce back from setbacks. They demonstrated the importance of learning from hardships and using their experiences to become more resourceful and capable of handling whatever challenges came their way.

The lesson: Every setback is an opportunity to come back stronger than before. Don’t wallow in your failures; learn from them and use them to your advantage.

Patience

“Good things come to those who wait.” My grandparents believed this and showed an exceptional degree of patience when teaching us grandkids a craft, or waiting for our episodes of teen angst to subside. They never expected instantaneous results; they understood that positive change takes time.

The lesson: Success does not happen overnight. Accept that it requires working through a process.

Focus

My grandparents never let distractions get in their way. When taking on a task, they always gave it their full attention until it got done. To them, if it was worth doing, it was worth doing right.

The lesson: Multitasking dilutes how effectively you can do any one thing. Instead, give each task uninterrupted focus before moving on to the next.

Perseverance

This trait represents the culmination of all the others. My grandparents were always steadfast in staying the course, no matter what difficulties they faced. This required fortitude, resilience, patience, and focus, combined with keeping the end goal in mind at all times.

The lesson: As Stephen R. Covey writes in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, begin with the end in mind. And don’t lose sight of that desired end. Success requires vision and the will to continually work toward what you want to achieve.

Honoring our grandparents’ legacy

While only one day each year has been officially set aside as National Grandparents Day, I would argue that every day should be one to treasure our grandparents’ impact on our lives. By leading by example, they have shown us the power of hard work and strength of character.

Don’t we owe it to them to embrace and purposefully use the tried and true old-school values they’ve demonstrated? What better way to honor their legacy?

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How to Collect Money From Slow-Paying Customers

For many small and midsized companies, collecting cash on a timely basis from customers is one of the greatest challenges they face. It is often a delicate balance between maintaining good customer relationships while letting the customer know that your business success and continuity is dependent upon getting paid in a timely fashion.

Online businesses have an advantage over traditional businesses in that payment is almost always received via credit card, PayPal, or other electronic payment methods before delivery of the goods or services.

Unless your business is one that can become a completely digital business, there are several steps you can take to significantly increase the amount and speed of customer payments while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction. In essence, by embracing newly developed technologies and strategies in customer “order to cash” processes, your business can emulate the payment efficiencies of web-based businesses.

The high cost of a bad system

Companies that bill customers for goods or services when or after the good is delivered or the service performed need to have great follow-up systems for cash collection. Poor cash-collection systems can result in:

High order-taking error rates. Did the salesperson provide the proper terms and payment agreements in the sales ordering document?
High order-fulfillment error rates. Did the production and fulfillment people get the order right?
High DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) rates. Is the customer using you as a “bank,” delaying payment so they can pay their other vendors first?
High cost of dispute resolutions. Do you know to effectively play the good cop/bad cop role when it comes to collecting cash from a customer?
Inefficient/ineffective collection processes. How much are you writing off on receivables that could be collected with a little creativity, or a call to the client from senior management rather than your billing department?

The result of a poor billing and collection system is long-term losses due to customers patronizing better managed companies for their products or services. If the customer thinks that your process for billing and collection is poor, they will generally have a poor impression about your entire organization.

Addressing slow-paying customers

Let’s assume that your billing and collection systems and processes are just fine but you still have too many slow-paying customers.

Where do you start? Here are some thoughts:

Start by looking at how to streamline internal processes and make it easier for customers to work with you. Is it easy to do business with your company? Is every contract negotiation a painful event for both parties?
Know and understand your current and prospective customers and the cash flow traits of their own businesses to help reduce non-payment risk and tailor your collections strategies. For example, if you are a subcontractor working for a general contractor, that general contractor might not get paid until certain milestones are achieved. At the same time, that general contractor has to consider that you have employees to pay every two weeks.
Communication—both between departments and with your customers—is the key to efficiency and visibility into cash flows. Move from emails to real-time data and information sharing (e.g., using a service such as Dropbox).

Strategies to collect cash

Consider what it’s like doing business with your company from the customer’s perspective. Is your company as efficient at handling their business as it should be? Consider the following:

Implementing or expanding automation of the Order-to-Cash (O2C) cycle. Quote/ O2C normally refers to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) process in which you take customer sales orders via different sales channels (e.g., email, online, sales staff, fax, or by some other electronic means); fulfill the order, including shipping and logistics; generate an customer invoice; and then collect payment.
Standardize your procedures for product or service quotation and order management.
Integrate order entry, credit, billing, and collections.
Investigate benefits of event management and automated alerts.
Centralize customer risk information in a single location.

Embrace technology

Much of the consumer sector has moved from paper checks to electronic bill pay and this trend will only continue. However, many businesses have been slow to embrace electronic payment processes. Your company should be able to accelerate customer payments by incorporating technology into your vendor-payment and customer-collection processes.

Event management (triggers and alerts). Are you sending out new customer shipments when you have not been paid for the last shipment? The right system would “trigger” an alert, which would allow you to use the potential shipment as leverage to collect the old receivable.
Electronic interfaces to banks and customers. If you are not requesting your customer to pay via ACH versus a check, you are likely affecting your cash flow by almost an additional week.
Web-based and electronic sales order management applications. These are very effective as they can be used to require payment before order fulfillment.
Credit-management solution. Do you know the creditworthiness of your client? Do you adjust credit terms based on the customer’s history of paying you and others?
Electronic invoice presentation and payment solution. Are you still sending out paper bills to customers, which adds additional days of delay in getting paid?

There are many other technology-based systems that can be purchased inexpensively that would improve your business processes, accelerate cash collections, and improve customer services:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS-APO)
Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Procurement (Business Commerce & Cash Management)
Extended Warehouse Management (ETE execution tools)

Many businesses (and their bankers) find that businesses “grow themselves into the ground.” The faster you grow, the more money a business needs to invest in people and inventory. If you are not collecting money from your customers quickly and efficiently, you will find yourself with a successful business in terms of sales but a very unsuccessful business from a cash-flow perspective.

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Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Paying Bills Is a Grind for 43% of Americans, CFPB Finds

5 Old-School Values That Can Empower Young Entrepreneurs

Traditional virtues that never go out of style

Fortitude

The lesson: Realize difficult circumstances will happen in business; if you want to succeed, you need to find the strength to ride out the storm.

Resilience

The lesson: Every setback is an opportunity to come back stronger than before. Don’t wallow in your failures; learn from them and use them to your advantage.

Patience

The lesson: Success does not happen overnight. Accept that it requires working through a process.

Focus

My grandparents never let distractions get in their way. When taking on a task, they always gave it their full attention until it got done. To them, if it was worth doing, it was worth doing right.

The lesson: Multitasking dilutes how effectively you can do any one thing. Instead, give each task uninterrupted focus before moving on to the next.

Perseverance

Honoring our grandparents’ legacy

Don’t we owe it to them to embrace and purposefully use the tried and true old-school values they’ve demonstrated? What better way to honor their legacy?

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How to Collect Money From Slow-Paying Customers

The high cost of a bad system

High order-taking error rates. Did the salesperson provide the proper terms and payment agreements in the sales ordering document?
High order-fulfillment error rates. Did the production and fulfillment people get the order right?
High DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) rates. Is the customer using you as a “bank,” delaying payment so they can pay their other vendors first?
High cost of dispute resolutions. Do you know to effectively play the good cop/bad cop role when it comes to collecting cash from a customer?
Inefficient/ineffective collection processes. How much are you writing off on receivables that could be collected with a little creativity, or a call to the client from senior management rather than your billing department?

Addressing slow-paying customers

Let’s assume that your billing and collection systems and processes are just fine but you still have too many slow-paying customers.

Where do you start? Here are some thoughts:

Start by looking at how to streamline internal processes and make it easier for customers to work with you. Is it easy to do business with your company? Is every contract negotiation a painful event for both parties?
Know and understand your current and prospective customers and the cash flow traits of their own businesses to help reduce non-payment risk and tailor your collections strategies. For example, if you are a subcontractor working for a general contractor, that general contractor might not get paid until certain milestones are achieved. At the same time, that general contractor has to consider that you have employees to pay every two weeks.
Communication—both between departments and with your customers—is the key to efficiency and visibility into cash flows. Move from emails to real-time data and information sharing (e.g., using a service such as Dropbox).

Strategies to collect cash

Consider what it’s like doing business with your company from the customer’s perspective. Is your company as efficient at handling their business as it should be? Consider the following:

Implementing or expanding automation of the Order-to-Cash (O2C) cycle. Quote/ O2C normally refers to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) process in which you take customer sales orders via different sales channels (e.g., email, online, sales staff, fax, or by some other electronic means); fulfill the order, including shipping and logistics; generate an customer invoice; and then collect payment.
Standardize your procedures for product or service quotation and order management.
Integrate order entry, credit, billing, and collections.
Investigate benefits of event management and automated alerts.
Centralize customer risk information in a single location.

Embrace technology

Event management (triggers and alerts). Are you sending out new customer shipments when you have not been paid for the last shipment? The right system would “trigger” an alert, which would allow you to use the potential shipment as leverage to collect the old receivable.
Electronic interfaces to banks and customers. If you are not requesting your customer to pay via ACH versus a check, you are likely affecting your cash flow by almost an additional week.
Web-based and electronic sales order management applications. These are very effective as they can be used to require payment before order fulfillment.
Credit-management solution. Do you know the creditworthiness of your client? Do you adjust credit terms based on the customer’s history of paying you and others?
Electronic invoice presentation and payment solution. Are you still sending out paper bills to customers, which adds additional days of delay in getting paid?

There are many other technology-based systems that can be purchased inexpensively that would improve your business processes, accelerate cash collections, and improve customer services:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS-APO)
Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Procurement (Business Commerce & Cash Management)
Extended Warehouse Management (ETE execution tools)

The post How to Collect Money From Slow-Paying Customers appeared first on AllBusiness.com

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Tuesday, September 26, 2017

How to Lower Your Energy Bill

Energy bill too high? It might be time to consider the physics behind your energy use. The scientific attributes of heat and energy mean particular appliances and factors affect your utility bills disproportionately. If this all sounds like high school science class, don’t fall asleep; this lesson can save you money. The Energy Department estimates that the typical family spends around...

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Downgrade to New Airline Cards Could Save Money — and Your Score

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Monday, September 25, 2017

What to Buy (and Skip) in October

Mortgage Rates Monday: Prices Rising Faster Than Rates

Need a New Appliance? Learn, Compare — Then Ask for a Deal

Friday, September 22, 2017

Millennials: How Much Are You Really Spending?

Flood Insurance Claim Denied? Don’t Panic; Appeal

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Ask Brianna: How Can I Budget When My Rent Is So High?

Could Your Business Survive the Next Hurricane Harvey?

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria are the latest natural disasters to grab headlines and wring hearts, but have you stopped to think about how your small business would deal with a similar crisis? From earthquakes and tornadoes to fires and floods, natural disasters can put your small business out of commission—and even out of business permanently.

Even a small-scale event, like an electrical short in your building that ignites a fire, can pose a threat to your business’s survival. Since September is National Preparedness Month, I thought it’s a good time to share some tips to help you develop your own business disaster plan.

Step 1. Pinpoint potential risks

What natural disasters are most likely to strike in your area? What natural or man-made disasters would have the most drastic effect on your business?

Step 2. Imagine impacts

How would each of the above disasters affect your business? For instance, would it keep your employees from getting to work, prevent you from accessing key documents, or delay shipments of inventory? What would be the trickle-down effects—for example, if you can’t get new inventory, would you still be able to make sales?

Step 3. Plan your response

Starting with the most likely disasters and those that would have the biggest effect on your business, develop plans for how you would continue operating even if that disaster occurred. For example, if your business is in a region subject to flooding, you’d want to digitize important business data so you don’t lose information to flooded file cabinets. Focus first on core functions of your business, such as the ability to serve customers, get paid, and pay your suppliers.

Step 4. Prepare your technology

Even if the disaster doesn’t directly strike your business, a natural disaster nearby could keep employees from getting to work for days or even weeks. Implementing cloud-based software solutions that your employees can access wherever they are can help keep your business running despite disaster. You can also benefit from web-based videoconferencing tools so you can hold meetings from multiple locations. In addition to storing key information in the cloud, make sure your employees have the tech tools they need to work from home if necessary.

Step 5. Protect your people

If a disaster strikes while you and your team are in the office, the safety of employees should be your first priority. Create plans for exiting the building and practice them. Develop an emergency org chart that identifies who is responsible for what step, such as making sure everyone is out of the building or calling the fire department. Is there a chance you and your employees could be stuck in the building for days? It’s a good idea to maintain emergency water, food, flashlights, batteries, backup chargers, and hand-crank radios just in case.

Step 6. Update your business insurance

Your insurance agent can work with you to help pinpoint risks and make sure that you’re adequately insured for the most likely ones. For example, many victims of Hurricane Harvey are only now discovering, to their dismay, that their insurance did not include coverage for floods. If you need special coverage, such as for earthquakes or floods, the time to find out is before disaster strikes. Then be sure you have digital copies of your insurance documents stored in the cloud and backup copies at home so you can access them to file claims after an emergency strikes.

Step 7. Communicate quickly

In a disaster, you’ll need to communicate with your employees, customers, and vendors fast. As part of your emergency plan, either create a “phone tree” (or text tree) and task certain employees with alerting others what’s going on, or use group texting or calls to do so. Maintain updated lists of contact information for your staff, customers, and suppliers. That way, you’ll be ready in case you need to let all your employees know “Don’t come to the office this morning; it’s flooded.”

While planning for disaster may seem daunting, you’re not alone. The SBA has information and resources to help you develop a disaster plan for your business. SCORE has a wide range of business disaster planning resources, too, including checklists and workshops on everything from hurricanes to earthquakes.

(Disclosure: SCORE is a client of my company.)

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How to Join a Deluge of Insurance Claims for Flooded Cars

8 Proven Time Management Tips From 12 Top Business Execs

By Georgi Todorov

Time management is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Countless books and gurus are advising you what to do. And there are even apps to push and prod you in the right direction.

But which methods really work? These eight tips are tried and tested by some of the nation’s top business execs.

1. Plan your work the night before

Brian Tracy, Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, is a renowned speaker and best-selling author on self-development, leadership, and time management. One of Tracy’s top tips to having a productive day is to plan your work the night before. “By writing down your goals before you go to sleep, you will think about the things you need to do and mentally prepare yourself to do them before you even wake up the next morning,” he says.

Write down your list of tasks and sort them by priority. This will help you get tasks completed quicker, plus you’ll feel empowered when you’ve completed them.

2. Wake up earlier

According to research, the most productive time of day for most people is often early morning. If you’re a morning person, then consider waking up earlier to start work. This can often be a quiet time of day when you can complete a lot of tasks without interruptions. Jeff Immelt the former CEO of GE, and Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, are known early risers.

Pro tip: Rather than shocking your body into sudden 5 a.m. starts, ease yourself in gently by setting your alarm clock 20 minutes earlier one day at a time.

3. Assign email time

When it comes to managing emails, top executives have found it best to set aside a dedicated time slot to work through their inbox.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, has a system he calls, Yesterbox. Rather than dealing with each email as it arrives, he lets them stack up in his inbox. Then the next morning, before handling anything else, he works his way through the previous day’s emails and clears his inbox. This way he doesn’t get interrupted throughout the day.

Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist of Canva, offers a more dramatic method: “Every time a close friend or relative dies, throw away your inbox in their honor and spend time with your family. You’ll be amazed that not answering most email has no negative effect.”

4. Learn to say “no”

Learning to say “No,” in a polite way, of course, can be a huge time-saver. Most of us are naturally inclined to say “yes” to requests, but if you say yes too often, you may find yourself overwhelmed with appointments and meetings that are preventing you from completing more important tasks.

In 1982, Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., published In Search of Excellence and suddenly found themselves having to respond to a lot of requests. Peters had to change his mindset so he could survive. He says that today, “I’m damn good at saying no.”

5. Leave work on time

Keeping a healthy work-life balance is important if you want to avoid burnout. Knowing when to call it a day and switch off is something that Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has practiced all through her career. There will always be things to work on, but most of them will still be there in the morning. As Sandberg says: “You can only do so much.”

6. Do one thing at a time—don’t multitask

If you still believe in the myth of multitasking, then it’s time to move on. Multitasking isn’t impossible, but only 2% of the population can pass this online multitasking test. In fact, studies have found that multitasking reduces your productivity by 40%. Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, advises that you identify one key priority to accomplish every day, and begin your day with that important task.

7. Tune out

So how do you avoid interruptions and focus on one thing at a time? In the book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About T ime Management by Kevin Kruse, Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of the productivity app Asana and Facebook, advises picking one day a week where you and your team can focus on getting projects completed without any interruptions like meetings. He says, “At Asana, we have No Meeting Wednesdays established to encourage flow and productivity across the company.”

On a practical day-to-day note, then try switching off your phone, close your email, and put a Do Not Disturb sign on your office door. Koel Thomae, the co-founder of Noosa Yoghurt, told CNBC, “When I have a big project or when I need to get something done—and done well—I shut down my email, I turn off my phone, and I put on some of my favorite music. I just dig in and get it done”

8. Delegate tasks

When you try to do everything yourself or micromanage your staff, you’ll find yourself wasting a lot of time and energy. SevOne CEO Jack Sweeney recalls how he found it difficult to trust anybody when he became a first-time CEO. Even if he delegated tasks to others, he kept interfering in the process, rather than evaluating their work afterward. He says, “Now, I stay out of my team’s way and let them do their jobs, advising them before and after they’ve worked at accomplishing a task, versus throughout the entire process.”

Bill Smith, the founder and CEO of Shipt, told CNBC, “Hiring a fantastic executive assistant is crucial. It may be difficult at first, but let this person manage straightforward, time-consuming tasks.”

Learn to focus on your most important tasks and delegate other tasks elsewhere.

Time for action

Reading these tips won’t help you manage your time, but if you want to improve your productivity, then start applying these tips.

About the Author

Post by: Georgi Todorov

Georgi Todorov is a digital marketer. He recently started his own blog about digital marketing DigitalNovas. His passion is to help beginners to start and grow a successful online business. Hit him up on Linkedin or Twitter @GeorgiTodorovBG anytime.

Company: DigitalNovas
Website: www.digitalnovas.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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Thursday, September 21, 2017

The SEC Hack: What Investors Need to Know

8 Proven Time Management Tips From 12 Top Business Execs

By Georgi Todorov

Time management is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Countless books and gurus are advising you what to do. And there are even apps to push and prod you in the right direction.

But which methods really work? These eight tips are tried and tested by some of the nation’s top business execs.

1. Plan your work the night before

Write down your list of tasks and sort them by priority. This will help you get tasks completed quicker, plus you’ll feel empowered when you’ve completed them.

2. Wake up earlier

Pro tip: Rather than shocking your body into sudden 5 a.m. starts, ease yourself in gently by setting your alarm clock 20 minutes earlier one day at a time.

3. Assign email time

When it comes to managing emails, top executives have found it best to set aside a dedicated time slot to work through their inbox.

4. Learn to say “no”

5. Leave work on time

6. Do one thing at a time—don’t multitask

7. Tune out

8. Delegate tasks

Learn to focus on your most important tasks and delegate other tasks elsewhere.

Time for action

Reading these tips won’t help you manage your time, but if you want to improve your productivity, then start applying these tips.

About the Author

Post by: Georgi Todorov

Company: DigitalNovas
Website: www.digitalnovas.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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Paint-and-sip shops, many of them franchise operations, continue to spread as more and more people seek diversions in experiences rather than in buying things.

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When Litigation Threatens Innovation in the Cloud, Businesses Innovate Around the Law

By Eric Shumsky and Mel Bostwick

Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time in the cloud recently. If you’ve checked your Gmail account, saved a document to Dropbox, messaged your colleagues on Slack, streamed a Spotify playlist, or watched the latest Netflix show, you’re there. The data for those services—your emails, your playlists, your movie preferences—are being stored remotely in the cloud.

Cloud computing has become pervasive in just about every business sector. Many of today’s most successful “unicorns”—big names like Uber and Pinterest and Stripe—were born in the cloud. Companies rely on cloud computing for everything from coordinating their internal operations to managing complex inventory and supply-chain logistics. And companies are directing their resources accordingly, with cloud spending set to top $100 billion this year and keep growing from there.

But where innovation and investment lead, litigation follows. As counsel to companies that provide and consume cloud services, we’ve witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. We’re already defending against lawsuits targeting cloud-computing services. And the numbers bear out what we’re seeing.

An increase in “sue-happy” patent trolls

Patent litigation over cloud technology is increasing. A recent Patent Risk Digest study showed that patent trolls (or “non-practicing entities,” if you prefer the politer term) targeted cloud storage applications more heavily in 2016. It’s easy to see why.

For nearly two centuries, every new technology that involves multiple components has been a target for patent litigation. Many interlocking pieces means many potentially relevant patents and lots of people to sue. Thus the nineteenth-century “Sewing Machine War”—a battle between industry leaders who sued and countersued based on the thicket of patents covering needles, spools, and shuttles—presaged the modern “Smartphone Wars.”

And technologies involving a network (like the cloud) have been particularly attractive targets. It was true of the internet, the telegraph and the telephone, and railroads.

So predictably, patent trolls have been snapping up cloud-related patents, getting ready to go on the attack. And other companies that actually make something, but haven’t transitioned to the cloud and can’t compete effectively in the marketplace, seem poised to turn to litigation too.

What’s been interesting to observe, though, is the response from the cloud-computing industry. Typically, companies faced with patent litigation threats have looked to the law for solutions—and they’ve achieved some success.

Cloud-computing industry responds

The Supreme Court has made it easier to kill patents as “obvious,” and limited what inventors can patent by expanding the definition of “abstract ideas” that can’t be patented. The Federal Circuit has tightened the standards for proving damages, and the Supreme Court made it harder for plaintiffs to get an injunction—an order prohibiting someone from infringing—which took away powerful leverage from plaintiffs. Patent-reform proposals also are kicking around again, as they always seem to be.

But cloud-computing companies are sending the message that these legal changes are lumberingly slow as a tool to protect fast-paced business innovation. And even more striking is who’s sending that signal: major industry players like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, which are some of the same companies that have taken the lead in pushing for legal changes.

In the face of the threat to their latest key technology, the leading cloud-computing companies have sought to innovate—not just in their product offerings, but in helping customers deal with the litigation risk. They’ve done that by including defensive tools against patent litigation in their cloud-computing service itself. When you buy a cloud-based product, some companies now offer litigation protection along with it. For instance, each of these companies will indemnify a customer that is sued for patent infringement because it used the cloud service.

But the protections can go beyond that. Microsoft has put together a pool of 10,000 Microsoft patents available for customers of its cloud-computing service, Azure, to defend themselves. An Azure customer that’s sued for a service operating on the Azure platform can “pick” one of those 10,000 Microsoft patents and use it to fight back against the plaintiff.

Additionally, Microsoft guarantees its customers that if it sells its patents to non-practicing entities, the customer automatically will receive a license to use those patents: a built-in protection against subsequently being sued. Google has advocated a similar industry practice through a network to which it belongs.

Creating a culture of innovation over litigation

And more ambitious still, some companies are trying to create an environment in which suing isn’t the norm. Many of these defensive weapons aren’t available to just anyone; they’re only available to customers who agree not to assert their own patents against fellow customers on the network. Customers of Microsoft Azure can’t assert against other Azure customers without losing access to the 10,000-patent portfolio described above. And because many companies use multiple cloud platforms to run their business, these incentives not to sue effectively spill over across cloud providers.

This cultural goal isn’t just a sideshow. Microsoft president Brad Smith has said that the company is trying to shape a cloud-computing industry where developers can focus on coding, and businesses can focus on their customers, instead of worrying about getting sued. In short, the big guys want an industry where the norm is innovation rather than litigation.

This approach looks very different from how lawyers and courts have acted. From a lawyerly perspective, what do you do when patent trolls attack internet-based patents? Work to limit the money they can get, and their ability to shut you down.

But here, companies are looking around the corner, and they’re doing it as a matter of business, not law. They’re working to protect their customers from outside attacks and to build a community where those customers will avoid litigation.

There’s no question we’ll keep talking about the latest legal developments; that’s what lawyers do. But for companies trying to do business down in the trenches, these may not be the most important headlines to watch. Instead, companies choosing among cloud services providers would do well to ask: What are they doing to protect you from the patent threat?

About the Authors

Post by: Eric Shumsky and Mel Bostwick

Eric Shumsky is an appellate litigator at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he represents clients in high-stakes intellectual property appeals across the country. Eric has served as appellate counsel to numerous leading companies, including AT&T, Carnegie Mellon University, Del Monte, DIRECTV, DISH Network, Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline, LG Electronics, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Norfolk Southern, and Synopsys.

Mel Bostwick is an appellate litigator at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where she represents clients in high-stakes appeals, with a particular emphasis on patent appeals before the Federal Circuit. At Orrick and at a previous firm, Mel has served as appellate counsel to leading companies such as Apple, Dow AgroSciences, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, and Facebook.

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