Technology Toolkit

When economic hard-times hit, one measure more than any other separates the business survivors from those that fall by the way – cash-flow.

In boom times, many business owners naturally turn their focus to measurements like sales and profit, but when things slow down it is cash-flow that is the key test of business health.

The good news is that there is plenty business owners can do to turn a cash-flow trickle into a flood.

Here are 10 best tips for boosting cash-flow.

Put together a good cash-flow forecast

A cash-flow forecast is a key diagnostic tool for the health of a business. Without one, getting your business’s cash-flow right is almost impossible.

Many businesses operating without a cash-flow forecast don’t even realise their margins are coming under pressure.

Small business owners in particular often shy away from putting together a forecast because they find it hard to gauge the affect different factors will have on cash-flow – events like the introduction of a new product line, marketing venture or extra staff member can have an uncertain impact.

Communicate from day one

Once you understand how cash moves through your business , you can start taking action to increase cash-flow.

In the current economic and credit climate, there is one key challenge most business owners are likely to face in bringing more cash in the door: getting customers to pay on time.

Constant communication as the crucial first step to improving debtor days.

Communication with clients has to start from day one, with new clients receiving a notice clearly setting out how long they have to pay bills – and the consequences if they don’t.

Check the credentials of new customers

New customers are great, but new customers that actually pay are even better. The problem is, it can be difficult to tell one from the other until it is too late

New customers are great, but new customers that actually pay are even better. The problem is, it can be difficult to tell one from the other until it is too late

Give your customers a reason to pay

Reminders and checks may get the debtors paying in good times, but when things are tight a little something more will often be necessary to bring in the cash.

A tool many cash-flow advisors believe is effective, if costly, is the discount for early payment.

If a discount doesn’t make financial sense, consider offering other benefits for prompt payment such as a higher level of post-purchase service or priority access to new stock.

You can also make paying your bills less painful for your clients by allowing them to pay in instalments, helping them smooth out their cash-flow and giving you some increased security.

Spend more time ensuring your big clients pay

Small businesses that rely heavily on dealing with a few, big clients, often find themselves in a bind when it comes to cash-flow – desperate to be paid, but petrified of losing a key customer.

Managing big clients requires a careful approach, with plenty of care and attention backed by a firm commitment to being paid.

Encourage staff to bring in the cash

Many businesses reward staff for boosting sales. During a downturn, cash-flow management is arguably more important, so why not give staff a real incentive to help make it happen?

This can mean introducing a performance-based component for accounts receivable staff, but often improving cash-flow requires an organisation-wide effort.

It can often be worthwhile to direct at least a portion of your sales team’s commission structure towards ensuring the customers they sell to actually pay.

Debtor finance can help in a tight spot

There are a range of finance options available to businesses that can provide an immediate boost to cash-flow – at a price.

Be disciplined

If sweet-talking, phone calls, or discounts don’t get your debtors to start paying, they need to know that you won’t be afraid to bring the in big guns.

If you can’t be disciplined, outsource to someone who can

Business owners are notoriously time poor. Many just can’t devote enough time to debtor management, or regret the sacrifice required to other parts of the business if they do.

For businesses that want to beef up their debtor management, but don’t want to build an in-house accounts receivable capacity, outsourcing can be an option.

The key test of whether outsourcing will work for a business is how it fits into the bottom line, with the cost of the service balanced against the prospect of improved payment rates and the convenience of somebody else managing your debts.

Don’t grow yourself out of business

Cash-flow management may become imperative during economic downtimes, but periods of rapid growth can present equally difficult cash-flow challenges.

We see as many businesses go broke through expanding as contracting, because they don’t understand how to balance growth with things like capital investment as their company grows.

How do you become the employer that everyone wants to work for?

Employees now expect a lot more from employers – it\’s no longer \’just a job\’. But can they be fussy in hard times?

An employer of choice is an organisation that cares for individual employees and is concerned about their careers and wellbeing. Increasingly, businesses are creating a \”brand\” that attracts the best staff through strong recruitment strategies. They work out how to retain and develop their people and they provide flexible work options that consider an employee\’s life outside of the office.

A successful organisation is one that can attract and keep the best staff. It doesn\’t matter whether it is a tough time or not – this should still be the focus of every business. The best way to do this is:

• Create a culture of pride

• Promote yourself as an employer of choice

• Recruit the best people

• Provide development opportunities

• Offer flexible work arrangements

• Be family friendly

Consider these questions alongside what your business is doing…

What makes your organisation stand out and would you call it an employer of choice? Think about what aspects of your business contribute to it being considered an employer of choice, and what detracts and needs improving. Most people will immediately know what is not working.

Consider the recruitment strategies – how do you find the best people to work for you? A \”cultural fit\” is important. But what did your business do to establish this in the recruitment phases? How can the recruitment process ensure that successful staff will fit with the ethos of the organisation?

Employees should be continually learning and developing – but what opportunities are provided in your business? How are the training and development needs of staff met within your organisation? What additional initiatives could be developed to ensure employees are continually being developed? What opportunities does your business provide for leadership development?

Are the working hours made flexible, such that they meet the needs of both the individual and the organization, without resentment?

Is your business a family-friendly environment – how do you manage when a staff member\’s family is sick? Do you offer carer\’s leave? How do you know this would not be abused? How could initiatives be implemented within your organisation to ensure it is flexible and family-friendly?

Do you have a culture of pride? What\’s the evidence? How can a culture of pride in an organisation be developed and maintained?

What does your organisation do to improve its retention of good employees?

And if you are looking for a job, what attributes would you look for in a new employer? Make your list and rank them…

• Treat me as an individual

• Care about my needs

• Provide options for growing

• Respect for community and environment

• Career path

• Training and development

• Mentoring

• Coaching

• Unique opportunities

• Flexible hours

• Good pay/bonuses

• Security

• Travel

• Leadership

When employers truly care, employees are passionate about their work, they perform at their best and often surpass expectations.

Search Engine Optimization Industry is earning billions of dollars by optimizing the sites using the powerful and effective strategies. Throughout the world almost every top company is using the SEO and has also turned successful in their online business. The reality is web owners who have understood the power and efficiency of search engine optimization is doing well in search engines with higher ranks. At the same time the online business that has not used the SEO strategy has disappeared from the search engine results page. The webmasters should know the basics and effects of SEO before optimizing their website because SEO is massive process which contains lots of tricks and techniques.

In the SEO chain, keyword research comes as a first link. A website that aims to optimize its site should do keyword research with the tools available in the internet. The keyword should not be selected on a random basis. Since the keyword targets the search engine spider and the user, the content should be derived using the right keyword. The keyword research can analyze the best keyword for your site, give the status of the particular keyword in the search engines and assist you to know how the other websites that uses the particular keyword is doing in the internet. After choosing the keyword, it should be allowed for test run. Insert your researched keyword in the search engine box and find out what is the position of your site in the search results. If you have chosen the right keyword then your website is sure to appear at the top of the results page.

Next importance is given to your website content. The content has also lot to do in your search engine ranking. The search engine spider shows interest in visiting sites that offers good information to the audience. The content if created with right SEO technique will drive organic traffic to your site. Apart from your own site, you can also create backlinks through forum sites, social bookmarking sites, blogs etc.

If you are looking for less expensive SEO technique, then it is none other than the article writing. Posting original and creative articles in the article submission directories drive good traffic to your site. This is one of the effective ways of backlinking also. If your website promotes restaurants in USA, you should create articles on top restaurants of all the major cities of USA and post it in your site. This valuable information will attract many visitors to your site thus increasing your site ranking in search engines.

Blog posting or blogging is another effective and easy SEO to implement. Always prefer the blogs that has link with your business. For example, a doctor should choose the blogs that post contents on various diseases, treatments and medicines. So, visitors who visit that particular blog will click the link left below to visit your site. People look for new information through blogs. So, visit the blogs in regular intervals to update the information.

The above discussed SEO topics are only fundamentals. There are also some advanced SEO strategies which includes Video Marketing, Press Releases etc. which are mostly used by big organizations.

Search Engine Optimization Works great for websites that consistently and continuously monitors the websites and tweak the sites according to the algorithm changes. SEO network benefits the sites that use it wisely and in an organic way. The websites spamming with keywords or contents will not appear in the results page and the visitor will not show interest to visit spammy sites. There are set of techniques in SEO like keyword, content, meta tags, title tags, backlinking etc. which has to be effectively implemented to obtain targeted results. It is accepted that SEO techniques cannot be implemented on a single day and also you will not get immediate results. But, if you want your site always at the top of the results page this would work great.

SEO techniques not only favor big concerns and flourishing businesses. Even a small businessman can use this technique and get visibility to his site even if his business was dull in the past days. Only a set of SEO strategies and fine tuning is necessary for your site to make it visible to the search engine robot. Since, SEO involves several difficult tasks it is better to hire a SEO professional to get your site optimized. They can study, implement, change, test and achieve the results after going through many tough times.

Best content for potential visitors

The logic in SEO is that a website that attracts more people will do good sales and top the search engine results. This is also practically true. If you optimize your content with SEO, then you can trap both the user and the search engine spider. The search engine spiders never look at your background color or any other modern design. It searches for the quality content and the website that provides SEO content will be given priority. So, you should create the content adding good and useful information. The websites that create organic SEO content is visited by more customers and thus the sales target is easily achieved through best content.

Quality Backlinks

Backlinking SEO concept is very much essential to invite more visitors to sell your product. Choose the best sites, forums or social networking sites to create links. Never miss to add the keyword in the anchor text which improves your search engine ranking.

Choose the right domain name

Try to choose the domain name that depicts your business or services. Suppose if you own an online store that sells computers, you can obtain the domain name as computersonline or something like this. Since “computer” seems to be your keyword, search engine spider gives importance to your domain name also.

Site Maps necessity

Every webmaster should create the site map for his site as search engines give importance to this aspect also.

No overstuffing of keywords

Always keep the content organic and avoid overstuffing keywords in the content. Content that is not well written according to the SEO guidelines will be ignored by the search engines.

Above all there are many other small things like meta description, header tags, keyword included title etc. which also has to be given priority while optimizing the site. Search engines have allocated points for each and every small technique and the sites that use this concept correctly will hit the top of the search engine.

Every person enters the online business with the intention to make huge money. Many of them think that a person who owns a website can easily sell his product through internet which is not true. The hardships in online business can be experienced only when you enter this web world. There are lots of competitors ready to spend any amount on improving their site. When thousands of websites are selling the same product only top ten websites will get the sales. So, to make your online business a successful one, you should generate good traffic and aim at higher rank in the search engines. So, how to boost traffic to your site? Read the following article to know some effective SEO tips.

Offline SEO tips

1] Add your domain name in your business card along with the address and other details. Through friends, relatives, colleagues and through your business partner your business card may reach thousands of people. People who need your service or product will visit your domain giving traffic to your site.

2] Traditional newspaper advertisement is always powerful. Especially, when you offer any special discounts or a product is newly introduced in the market you should inform the audience through an advertisement. Never fail to include your URL at the bottom of the advertisement along with your company address, fax, e-mail id etc. Since newspaper reading habit is there in almost every home, your website and product will reach them quickly. These offers and discounts will attract them to purchase your product.

3] Shopping malls, theaters, theme parks, beaches are the places overcrowded at the weekends. Choose such places and distribute pamphlets describing your business.

4] Brochures are the cheap and easy of exposing your business to the users. Keep the brochure in the leading newspapers which will be automatically circulated to the users. So, brochures help you to avoid door to door campaigning.

5] Your business can be reached easily to multiple local audiences through banners.

6] Invite the audience to any of your business events and offer freebies to expose your product to them.

Effective online SEO tips for terrific traffic

1] Optimize your site user friendly. Your site should allow the search engine spider to visit all the web pages.

2] Create backlinks through popular blogs, forum sites, social networking sites etc. Choose article submission directories and submit quality articles. All these things if implemented together will drive good traffic to your site.

3] Blog posts are effective when you provide useful information to the audience. Also visit the blog regularly and carryon the updating work.

4] Exchange URL with the sites that is doing good business and create backlinks through such sites.

5] Join Forums and answer the queries put up by the customers. You will get a chance to leave your URL in forum sites.

6] Use social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace and post your profile in those sites. When loading your profile you will be given opportunity to add your domain link also.

All the above offline and online tips to boost traffic has been already tried by many business people who are successfully doing business now.