What Two Questions Should You Be Asking About Your Business?

As a business coach, I talk to a lot of business owners. Every small business owner asks questions like:

     - How can my business make more money?

     - How can my business increase sales?

     - How can my business improve cash flow?

These are good questions.

To really make progress with your business, though, you need to go deeper. You need to ask questions that get right at the roots of your business problems.

You need to ask the two questions discussed in my video.

How Can You Achieve More Consistent Operational Performance?

To achieve more consistent operational performance, ask yourself some questions about your business. For example:

• Are you consistently keeping your promises to customers?
•  Are your shipments reliably going out on time?
• When a customer calls, does someone always answer the phone within three rings (or whatever standard you’ve set)?
• Are customer requests all handled the same way, regardless of which employee handles the request?
• Do customers always want to talk directly to you because they know you’re the only person who can handle things to their satisfaction?
• Are you hearing more and more customer complaints as time goes by?
• Do your employees do everything to your satisfaction?

If employees can’t perform consistently, it puts the owner between a rock and a hard place. The owner doesn’t have time to do everything himself. But since he’s the only one who can do things right, he feels compelled to try.

Sooner or later, the owner in this situation runs out of gas.

In my video, I talk about how you can avoid this situation.

What 3 Things Can The Real Time Business Cycle Do For Your Business?

You get 3 great benefits by implementing the Real Time Business Cycle solution through the right accounting firm.

The first great benefit is excellent bookkeeping.

The second benefit is a paperless office solution.

The third benefit is gaining complete control of your business.

Your business profits will increase. Your stress will decrease.

My video tells the whole story.

How Can You Stop Having Problems With Your Vendors?

Many clients are bothered by problems with their vendors.

I tell clients that sometimes vendor problems are not their fault. Your vendor may have failed to deliver the product you bought. Or the product may have failed to meet specifications. Or the price might not be what you had agreed to pay.

When this is the case, you have every right to withhold payment until they fulfill their promises to you. You might even need to take them to court.

You’ll need to have the right documents, though, to prove your case. This means you need to eliminate paperwork chaos.

Usually, though, problems with vendors happen because your business is having major problems with cash flow.

In the video, I talk about 7 ideas for quickly improving cash flow. I also take a deeper look at how you can solve the root problems of your business.

How Can The Real Time Business Cycle Eliminate Paperwork Chaos?

In most small businesses, paperwork chaos is a major problem.

Everything that happens in your business creates a piece of paper within 30 seconds. Someone calls and you reach for a message pad or an order form. A sale is made and an invoice or receipt has to be created.

Managing all this physical paper -- filing it, trying to retrieve it when needed – is a major time waster.

But the Real Time Business Cycle solution provides an outsourced team of people to manage your paperwork. You can inexpensively install this solution in 24 hours without buying expensive equipment and software.

You’ll save huge chunks of time. And you’ll quickly find the documents you need, when you need them. They’ll always be in the right place.

In the video, I talk about how the Real Time Business Cycle solution works.

How Can You Get The Bank Loans Your Business Needs?

As a business coach, I’m often asked about bank loans. Specifically, clients want to know how they can make sure they’re able to get bank loans when they need to.

It helps to put yourself in the shoes of your banker.

In my video, I talk about the three things your banker will want to see before making a loan.

I also talk about three things the top earning businesses do differently. If you start doing these three things, you'll fix most of your business problems.

And you'll be able to easily get the bank loans your business needs to grow.

How Can The Real Time Business Cycle Solve Your Bookkeeping Problems?

In most small businesses, bookkeeping is a major problem.

The owner assumes he needs to keep bookkeeping in-house, but doesn’t want to pay much usually $15 or less

So the bookkeeper hired is usually able to do only about 75% to 80% of what needs to be done, leaving a competence gap.

The owner wastes a lot of time fighting bookkeeping battles. And the owner still never gets the timely, accurate financial information needed to make profitable business decisions.

With current network technology and cloud computing, though, you can go paperless and completely outsource bookkeeping and accounting!

By outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting, you free huge chunks of time and get the accurate information you need to run your business.

In this video, I talk about how the Real Time Business Cycle solution works to help you in your business.

How Can You Improve Cash Flow?

In hard times, cash flow can be a big problem.

In the video below, I talk about 7 ideas for quickly improving cash flow.

One idea I talk about is getting control of your accounts receivable. For this, you need top notch paperwork and bookkeeping systems.

More details are provided in the video.

How Can Outsourcing Eliminate Paperwork Chaos?

In most small businesses, paperwork chaos is a major problem.

Everything that happens in your business creates a piece of paper within 30 seconds. Someone calls and you reach for a message pad or an order form. A sale is made and an invoice or receipt has to be created.

Managing all this physical paper -- filing it, trying to retrieve it when needed – is a major time waster.

But with new network technology and cloud computing, you can inexpensively install a paperless office system. And you can do it in 24 hours without buying expensive equipment and software. 

In my video, I talk about how you can do this and the impact it will have on your business results.

Going paperless is a key step toward fixing your business problems.

How Can You Make Sure Your Business Survives Hard Times?

Many clients ask me how they can make sure their business survives hard times.

I tell clients that top earning small businesses see hard times as an opportunity.

Because many of their competitors are stuck, these top earning owners gain market share. They do it by taking customers away from other businesses.

For details on how to get unstuck and survive hard times, watch my video.

How Does Paperwork Chaos Hurt Your Business Results?

Paperwork chaos hurts business results in three ways.

First, fighting the paperwork monster uses big chunks of the owner’s valuable time, seriously hurting productivity. Lacking time, the owner never gets around to working on strategy, analysis, and systems.

Second, paperwork chaos directly impacts the bookkeeping system. Bookkeeping is based on an orderly flow of paper. So long as the paperwork in the business is in a state of chaos, you can’t get control of the books.

Third, paperwork chaos hurts the business by affecting relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners such as banks.

In the video below, I provide more details on these three problems. I also provide information about how a business can fix its business problems by going paperless.

How Can Your Business Increase Sales?

This is a key question – because for most businesses, the quickest way to make more money is to do a better job of selling and marketing.

In my video, I make five suggestions that can provide fast help with your selling.

To start solving the root problems that prevent you from selling more, though, look at the large gap between the typical small business and the top earning small business.

Unlike the top earning businesses, the typical small business owner wastes big chunks of time fighting paperwork chaos and bookkeeping hassles.

Find out how you can eliminate these time wasters with outsourced bookkeeping and paperless office systems.

 

Why Is Paperwork Chaos So Bad In Most Small Businesses?

Everything that happens in your business creates a piece of paper within 30 seconds. Someone calls and you reach for a message pad or an order form. A sale is made and an invoice or receipt has to be created.

With so much paper flying around, and so much other business to take care of, it’s hard to process all this paper and ultimately file it to the proper location. Any one piece of paper may have to be handled by several different people as they perform the tasks related to that piece of paper.

If you need to find a particular document, your first task is to figure out whose desk it’s at now.

Managing all this physical paper -- filing it, trying to retrieve it when needed – is a major time waster.

In my video below, you'll learn why paperwork chaos is so bad in most small businesses. You'll also learn about solutions to this problem.

How Can You Make Your Business More Valuable?

Many clients want to know how they can make their businesses more valuable when the time comes to sell.

I tell them to look at the gap between the typical small business and the top earning small businesses.

Top earning small businesses net over $365,000 a year. They do it consistently. And they do it whether the owner is present or not.

Because profits are consistent, the business will sell for a multiple of profit.

Very few businesses, though, generate this kind of income. And if the owner has to put in heroic efforts to achieve the profits, potential buyers will know it.

So -- here is the simple but incomplete answer to making your business more valuable – build a business that consistently makes high profits and does it without the direct involvement of the owner in the daily operations.

The video goes into more detail about how you can increase the value of your business by outsourcing your bookkeeping and going paperless.

How Can Outsourcing Solve Your Bookkeeping Problems?

Most small business owners don’t realize how many problems their in-house bookkeeping is causing.

In most small businesses, though, bookkeeping is a major problem.

The owner assumes he needs to keep bookkeeping in-house, but doesn’t want to pay much.

So the bookkeeper hired is usually able to do only about 75% to 80% of what needs to be done, leaving a competence gap.

The owner wastes a lot of time fighting bookkeeping battles. And the owner still never gets the timely, accurate financial information needed to make profitable business decisions.

To learn more about how and why in-house bookkeeping creates big problems for most small businesses, watch the video below. You'll also learn how to fix these problems.