Business

Selling your business can be difficult, a long process and be emotional. There are steps you can take to help smooth the process and there are certain external professionals you should consider consulting with.

The first thing you probably want to know is how much money will I get. A quick way to ballpark the price of the business is three times cash flow after all expenses and taxes. If your business nets you $100,000 per year, a good starting price for the business is to sell for $300,000. Everything is relative however.

It is important for an employer to attract and keep employees. Employee retention is focused on keeping those good employees. Employees can be lured away to another company with offers of better salary or benefits. It is important to stay connected with employees and to allow open communication and that they feel respected and valued not only from management but also from their fellow employees.

Scheduling staff can be difficult and time consuming. There is just so much to think about. Labor laws, absences, vacation time and seniority to name a few. Employee wages can account for a majority of the costs to run a business so it is important to optimize it as best as possible.

If you are in the business of selling products, you most likely will carry some sort of inventory. Inventory management it crucial to cost savings and running an efficient business. One of the worst things that can happen is continually wasting inventory, it is just cash out the door.

Inventory can be one of the biggest expenses for a company. The goal is to use up 100% of inventory.

For small business owners every dollar must count. Large companies can afford large marketing budgets. There are many methods you can use to stretch that small budget.

When using any marketing method it is important to try to engage customers and track your marketing efforts. Digital marketing including social media marketing are among the low cost effective methods that a small business can use.

Cold calling can be stressful and you can receive lots of rejection. It can feel defeating and unproductive. With enough practice, it can be an effective marketing strategy. Many sales people fear cold calling this can only mean that if you do it and well you can reap greater rewards. A phone call is a much richer medium than an email or mail that is easy to delete or toss in the trash. Most people are too polite to just hang up and if you use the right words, you just might get their attention.

Good customer service makes the difference between growing your customer base or not. You cannot afford to lose customers from a bad experience. What can you do to ensure excellent customer service?

Know your customers

Develop a strong relationship with customers. Ask for feedback and show you are listening. Keep an open dialogue.

A change initiative may face many possibilities of resistance, among the greatest possible resistor is sabotage. Sabotage, occurs when someone tries to make the change fail on purpose and it happens more often than you think.

In any change initiative there can be many stakeholders involved. The change agent must perform a stakeholder analysis to determine all those who have a stake in the initiative and what their level of power toward the impact of the project. The change agent must be aware of the motivations of each of the stakeholders. The knowledge of each stakeholder’s interest in the project, as well as the power they can provide. The key stakeholders are those with great power and interest as they can change the initiative on a whim.