There are two ways to get better payment terms from your suppliers - make sure you know what the pricing is and negotiate the payment terms last, without warning. Most businesses do not expect small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses to negotiate payment terms, so you have the element of surprise on your side - and it makes you look more professional.

Firstly there is the extended payment term, of 60, 90 and 180 days - see if your supplier will allow any of those terms. Even if they only give you 60 days, you can always go back after 3-4 month using this payment terms in which you have shown to be trustworthy. If it is declined and only 30 days are offered - because you have no history - then this is the perfect scenario of our second method.

Early payment discounts of 2% if you pay within 7 days. This is like a 24% p.a. discount on the invoice value, not a bad way to compensate for the overdraft interest charges from your bank.

Surly you supplier is interested in your business, and is not going to decline both offers - you win either way - if they decline, then look for a new supplier. Because you are not only helping yourself with your cash-flow, but theirs too.

The first post in this mini series is related to this issue of cash-flow and so will be many that follow. Cash-flow is the central and most critical management objective for every small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business.

T o perform this small business health-check, ask your self the following questions:

• Do I have a written plan and cash-flow forecast for my business? As I said before, without it it is like driving with your eyes shut.
• Am I efficient in achieving those aims? We often allow non-core issues and irrelevant stuff to “steal” our time, or we are so overwhelmed by work that we do not have the time to stand back and look at our small business - take the time and make those decisions.
• Do you have a feel how my small business works financially? If not, you must be feeling uncomfortable most of the time, again take the time and feel better about your small business.
• When did I plan and monitor my cash-flow last? You need to do this at least once a week or if something happens that is not in the plan. Check your cash-flow each time before you make a bigger purchase or hire staff which is not in the plan, you will quiet easily see if you can afford to do it or not.
• How much reserves does my business have? The best peace of mind is when your small business has substantial reserves, do you have any or are you at least planning to get a 2-3 month reserve buffer?
• Have I re-negociated my terms with my suppliers? What if your suppliers gave you 60 or even 90 days payment terms - put that in your cash-flow and smile, it’s instant reserve. You need to pay your suppliers on time, only then will they trust you enough to give you the extra long payment terms.
• Am I chasing my clients for payment adequately? Do you know the average number of days you clients need to pay you? Give incentives - 2 % off if you pay within 7 days - try and keep your average well below 30 days. If you have not enough time to do credit control outsource it.
• Do I need my overdraft? If you get better payment terms fro your suppliers and do a better job at credit control, you may not need your overdraft anymore, which will save you a lot of money. Don’t cancel your overdraft, but make sure you only pay for it when and if you use it - shop around. On those terms you should get an overdraft, even if you do not need it, so if something unexpected happens you got the cash-flow reserve.

The importance of your cash-flow situation can not be overestimated, as long as you can pay your bills you are in business - as the saying goes: Cash Is King!

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

I have decided to write a little mini series on why small business and personal businesses, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, fail and how to find out if your small business is in danger, too.

In this first part, I would like to talk about fixed costs in small business. To perform a basic small business fixed cost health check, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I know where all the money is going every month? You should know where all your money is going at all times - if you don not know, it is important that you find out.
• How comfortable am I with the current level of costs? Are you able to generate reserves in your small business, or is your business just making ends meet.
• Are large parts of the costs for non-core business tasks and do I get value for my money? No matter how well your business is doing, you should never waste money - so if you can outsource do it, it will make you small business more focused and far more resilient and efficient.
• Do I have a cash-flow forecast for my business? Having no cash-flow plan is like driving with your eyes closed - cash-flow planning is easy, and you will have a better feeling about your small business.
• Are there any spending issues with business partners or colleagues? Are other people spending your money (?) and you can not control them - deal with it, sort it or get rid of them even if they are partners in the business, find a way or get help.
• Am I in control of my spending or have I abdicated this function to someone else? Even if you have staff - outsourced of employed - doing your bookkeeping and organize the payments for you, you need to make the decisions of when your suppliers get paid, so you can control your cash-flow.

There are many more questions you could ask yourself, here I just wanted to get you going. If you have any more issues or are uncomfortable with any of your costs and answers to the above questions, then you should get some professional advice.

Running out of money is the reason most small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, fail - not controlling your fixed costs is one of the main reasons for this.

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

A few years back we used to have a product called GlobalOffice - it was targeted at foreign small businesses who wanted to export product or just support their customers in local markets. We learned that our customers just used our OnlineOffice and made arrangements for the “Live” services themselves - and this has been the way ever since we withdrew GlobalOffice to focus on our “core” business to provide a Small Business Infrastructure - SBI.

Small Biz Labs have a post today about Laurel Delaneey’s Global Small Business Blog and one of her recent posts, some of the data is quite interesting:

• Only about 4% of US companies are exporters and the US has the lowest level of exports as a % of GNP of the G7 countries - roughly 10%. The highest is Germany at almost 45% and the 2nd lowest is Japan at a bit over 15%
• SME’s (defined as less than 500 employees) accounted for 29% of US export value in 2005.
• While the number of exporting businesses in the US grew rapidly in 90’s, it has stayed relatively flat since 2000. In 2005 there were roughly 239,000 exporting companies, 97% of which are SMEs.
• 58% of exporting companies traded in only one export market.

Localization, local red-tape and the often horrendous cost associated with exporting make it difficult for small business to work in foreign markets. I believe these barriers are slowly disappearing, not only with the help of technology, but with the understanding of technology.

Globelization 3.0 as I call it - I have written about it before - will enable very small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, to take full advantage of global markets for products and services. Even personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants can now use social networking communities to develop international virtual project teams or at least be part of at least one or more.

In ten years time these numbers will be very different - as it will no longer matter, if your customer is next door or half way around the globe. For some this is a reality already - have you thought about this when planning your start-up business?

As part of a bootstrapping exercise or a business start-up phase, working from home is a great way to work, so I thought of some points to consider when setting up your office, small business or personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants at home:

1. Cost - you will save a lot of money and be very eco-friendly when you decide not to rent an office, this saving can be used in other areas of your business, like marketing, better web-site or better IT.
2. Family - I suspect that many of you work from home because of your family, it allows you to be around when your kids come home from school or look after relatives, while still earning a living.
3. Commuting - again a very eco-friendly approach and saves money and time. This time can be spend on real business activities. It certainly will enhance your work/life balance and make your small business or start-up more cost efficient form day one.
4. Freedom - this may especially appeal to you if you like to work at odd hours, it will suit your lifestyle. Dress as you like it, so you will be more comfortable.
5. Healthy - if you work in an office and one of you gets ill, soon all the others are down too - not if you work from home.
6. Teamwork - chances are you need to work with other people, use online technology to collaborate with your colleagues and other team workers - they too may work from home.
7. Domestic Life - you’ll be around when the plumber finally turns up or other trades people. You can enjoy your local life more - by having a social network in your village rather than at work - this could be the return of the local community.
8. Small Business Infrastructure - use online technology to keep your data and work safe at all times without that you have to do anything, build your own virtual Small Business Team to timeshare professionals like yourself. Outsource to make your business more professional and scalable.
9. Meetings - even bigger businesses use coffee shops to meet - they often have WiFi - so can you. Make sure you plan them well, so you can be efficient with your time.
10. Eco-Friendly - you will only heat your home, no other workplace needs to be heated or air-conditioned, your energy efficiency goes up, no travel to work - so you reduce your carbon footprint enormously just by working from home.

You will need some pretty good reasons to go to an office and work. Especially for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, you need to ask yourself if you can afford to miss out on all the above opportunities for your work and for your life?

I work from home over 90% of the time and only go to the office for meetings and I love every minute of this. I use social network communities like linkedIn to build my professional network, utilizing our online office, skype and other tools to communicate and work worldwide.

More and more of my friends work from home so we have nice “pub-lunches” locally, no traveling, less stress and a much better work/life balance - how is your work/life balance?

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category and as always please add to my list with your comments, tell us what works for you.

If you have a group of people working with you - in your office or from home, employed or outsourced - does that mean you have a team? Well that depends how you work together.

Small Businesses need to be build a team, a Small Business Team. A team is defined as a group of people who co-operate in such a manner that it achieves more than the sum total of the individuals achieve each, they are united around a common goal and are accountable to the team for their actions.

Examples of teams are:

• Work Teams
• Sales Teams
• Customer Service Teams
• Virtual Teams

I would suggest that small business owners need to form teams around their small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, too. This will achieve scalability, higher efficiency, more professionalism, in other words to grow your business with less growing pains, like struggling cash-flow, excessive financial and administrative overheads and much more.

In fact keeping business failure at bay, may very well depend on your ability to form these teams, in your office or virtually.

In a modern business context we also call these teams Small Business Communities or Small Business Networks. Even a small business may have different types of networks - as indicated above - you can have your office team, while your small office team member for sales may also belong to a external sales network (team).

As you can see we live not only technologically in a networked world - we live in a world of teams, communities and people networks. The benefits especially for small business and even more business start-up, can not be over emphasized - teams perform functions so important for small business success:

• achieve better work results than individuals,
• are ultimately more scalable and flexible than larger organisations,
• offer a wider range of services and products than individuals,
• offer the opportunity of “brain-storming”,
• motivate each other,
• develop more skills and confidence
• show more commitment to each other.

Whatever you do, employ new staff, hire a consultant, work with an accountant, think my-team, think my-community and think my-network - because you are building your Small Business Team. Do it even before you open your door for business, during the business start-up phase.

So, back to my question for you: Do you work with a Group of people or do you have your own Small Business Team?

Small may be beautiful - but often you will have to appear bigger than your really are, to get that next contract. Here are some pointers to help you to look bigger, more professional and efficient:

1. Business address - “19, Rose Gardens” may not be the best small business address, a PO Box number is not really the way to instill confidence either - use a business address service, which will forward all mail to you.
2. Phone answering - have your phone answered, no matter what, use a virtual assistant or an answering service. Not answering your phone will cost you business - big time, trust me - probably the biggest mistake small business make in terms of appearance.
3. Conference rooms - use good meeting rooms in high quality business centers. They may be able to offer some of the other services for you as well, like an business address and call answering.
4. Online presence - absolute minimum is a good website, best with a blog and if appropriate online-shop. If you are not online you are not in business. Have your own domain, to use for your email, don’t use hotmail or gmail, etc. that is what your kids do.
5. Outsource - use timesharing techniques for professionals, there are virtual assistants which offer hundreds of services at an professional level, hire them as you need them. If you work with one virtual assistant they have usually a network of expertise around them, that creates a one stop shop for professional skills for you.
6. Be proactive - use Key Account Management Techniques to deal with your customers, remember the 80/20 rule.
7. Branding - even if you outsource insist on your own branding, it builds your brand and is less confusing for your customers.
8. Share technology and facilities - see if you can find other businesses that let you share equipment, storage, office and anything else you can think of.
9. Think big - the way you talk about your business, products and services will tell others a lot about you and your business. Remember, anything is possible if you want it bad enough.
10. Say “YES” - work out how to do it later. Your small business is probably more efficient and flexible that your big competitors - use that to your advantage.

Remember your new slogan - “Whatever they can do, I can do better!” or my slogan “What the hell, let’s do it.”

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category and as always please add to my list with your comments, tell us what works for you.

Starting, owning and growing a small business calls for many skills sets to be used by the owner, financial planning, people management, having a vision and development of a strategy, operational skills, technical, sales and marketing skills. They are all equally important - so lets have a look at marketing.

What is marketing? A fundamental marketing concept is Customer Value Proposition (CVP) - to succeed with your small business your must:

• Offer the right product or service
• To your targeted clients and customers
• At the right price
• Creating the perception of value
• In a profitable manner

Consider these points when developing your marketing plan - a CVP should be part of your strategic plan and be inline with your efficiency efforts for your small business.

If you have more than one customer/client segments your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, is active in than you need to have more than one CVP, but most of the time small business will focus on one customer group and develop into a niche:

the newspaper shop - to provide newspapers and a small selection of consumer goods in a local (convenient) community with convenient opening hours and a good customer service (friendly) which can demand a slightly higher price

or

the online business - to provide a complete range of products within a market segment, which is available to purchase 24 hrs a day, every day at the lowest possible price with fast delivery using user-friendly online shopping technology

Create your own CVP - Customer Value Proposition for your own small business - again it will help you to focus on what is important (core) and what can be outsourced (non-core). Maybe you can share your CVP with us here?

When I talk here on my blog about outsourcing, bootstrapping or in my company to my fellow directors about more profit, sales, customers and all that with less time, then I’m really talking about improving business efficiency.

I even often misleadingly use the word “grow”, when I really mean efficiency. I’m not one of these people who thinks, that every business wants to grow in size - no, in profit, turnover and efficiency - YES! In todays networked world it is possible to “grow” your business virtually and increase your efficiency at the same time - rather than “grow” your fixed cost structure and decrease efficiency.

Here I just want to talk about which steps one might take to a more efficient small business:

1. look at you business critically and understand what your core business is
2. focus on your core business and objectives, do not waste time with non-core activities - outsource those
3. re-evaluate work processes, remove non-value-add activities, work out how to do that
4. re-evaluate your outsourced activities, are you getting a professional and efficient service
5. check your clients perception of your small business, ask for feedback

The drive for efficiency is an continuous effort in every business, not only small and start-up businesses, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses. It is this kind of thinking that will determine success or failure of your small business venture.

How efficient is your business - to think about that is a much more fascinating way to spend some “free and quiet time”, than watching television - it’s more exciting and rewarding too.

Dennis has a great new story this morning ( at 03:10 am ?) about “Sandhill Talks SaaS 2.0″. He also comments on my feelings toward SaaS. And he is quite right to say:

I’m pretty sure Stefan Topfer, CEO at Winweb would agree. His company’s offering sees accounting as a utility that underpins the business but which of itself is of little intrinsic value other than a necessary means of achieving compliance. Instead, he’s creating an infrastructure to support early stage business.

I am looking at this from a different perspective. All I care about is “client mortality”, the advantages of the SaaS model are enormous, but can be improved upon.

How do most small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses start? You have an idea, then what? As if it is not enough to deal with your idea you need to worry about all kinds of admin functions to run any kind of business. That is were WinWeb comes in, we are trying to provide:

• A on-demand, online IT infrastructure (SaaS), that will enable to set you up to run your small business with in minutes, at a very low cost, so you can “try” your business idea for a month, a year, whatever. You do not need a bank loan or quit your job (in some cases, you will have to) to find out if your idea is worth it. If it is not, then you go back to the drawing board and try again later. No problem since you have no contract with us that logs you in with us.
• But most importantly of all, we use our SaaS model to have you not only work with colleagues anywhere @ anytime in real time, but also with your accountant. Now here is the thing, most of us when we started our small business did not know the first thing about accounting, financial planning, and when and when NOT (that’ll be me then) to buy that BMW 530i. Your accountant, if it’s a good one, will not only tell you but explain it to you, so you grow from someone with an idea to a “business” someone with an idea.
• The same is true for other “Virtual Assistants“: Call answering, bookkeeping, typing, credit control, etc. There are so many dedicated professional people out there, mainly working from home. There is no way you could hope, as a small business, to employ even one of these skill sets full-time, unless they are important to the core business. With our SaaS model you can time-share these specialists at a very low hourly rate.

The combination of the SaaS model with our Live! services provides a low cost, well looked after (accountant), and very versatile business infrastructure that does lower new business mortality rates and lowers barrier for business start-up.

BTW, I read a great post the “Entrepreneurship Gap” yesterday. Here you can find some ideas about starting up in business that I like.

Accounting, Bookkeeping, Business Development, Business Infrastructure, Business Start Up, CPAs, Finance, On-demand, Outsourcing, SaaS, sme-blog, Software as a Service, Virtual Assitants, Web Technology, WinWeb