Business bookkeeping using Quickbooks

A business owner who pays attention to the books, and even learns bookkeeping, has more control over the finances than an owner who delegates the task and then doesn't ask the bookkeeper for details.

Learning bookkeeping in a program like Quickbooks can help a business owner ask intelligent questions.

Knowing bookkeeping basics gives an owner a greater financial understanding of expenses, income and profitability. It serves in making strategic decisions.

Click here to inquire on Quickbooks and applicable discounts.

So where are bookkeepers found? Certainly through a local chamber of commerce and business networking groups.

Hiring a bookkeeper?

Ask if they have certification from an organization like the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers http://www.aipb.org. There are 30,000 members. The mission of the organization is "to keep bookkeepers up to date on changes in bookkeeping, accounting and tax; answer bookkeepers' everyday bookkeeping and accounting questions; and certify bookkeepers who meet high, national standards."

There's also the National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers, www.napcb.org, that has a mission "to protect the public interest by helping to ensure that only qualified individuals provide public bookkeeping services and assure the public that members are trusted and competent bookkeepers."

The NACPB has billing rates at $ 60 per hour and up.

Bookkeeping is a strategic expense for any business at any stage. For most small businesses, a bookkeeper is normally needed three hours to five hours weekly once records are in order.

A business owner who takes the time to learn Quickbooks basics can get records in order and then hand the operation over to a qualified bookkeeper.

Business Priorities: Sales Appointments and Final Proposals

Check your business priorities to determine your overall business strengths and weaknesses. The previous post focused on leads. Let's talk about appointments.

Leads

Appointments

Sales Appts and Final Proposals
The number of sales appointments you go on per month, or need to go on per month, will vary greatly depending on your business and your function. If you're a salesman then the sales appointment, proposal and asking for the order is an everyday task. In the home improvement industry, you've got to ask for the order when you're with the customer so you often eliminate the proposal stage as a separate stage.

If you're a consultant then the challenge is juggling sales appointments with the projects you're working on. How many sales appointments should you go on each month? It depends on how much money you need to earn and how large your current client base is.

Let's try to arrive at a simple formula you can adapt. For this scenario, let's say you're running or helping with a small company and you get to determine the company's projected income for the year, and ultimately, the income you need to take home.

You want the company to earn "x" dollars per year. Let's say $500,000. Is that from one product or one service or is it a combination of small orders and large orders.

Then ask yourself, "what's your current average order size?" Is it $10,000 to do a complete web site, for example. Or if you're a restaurant, is your average tab about $15 - $20?

Project in the next 6 months to 12 months, how many "average" size orders do you see maintaining? Do you have repeat business or a solid client base? If so, count on that income and then subtract it from the $500,000 total.

So let's say you want to make $500,000, and let's say you have a current customer base of $300,000. So now you need enough sales to generate $200,000 more. You might even want to be conservative and count on losing 10% of the $300,000 through attrition or unfavorable circumstances.

If your average order is $10,000 and you need to earn $200,000 you need 20 sales.

How many sales appointments do you need to make 20 sales? It depends on how strong a referral base you have and how well you close sales. If you're closing percentage is 20% then you'll need 100 sales appointments spread over the course of a year. So that's about 9 per month or 2 per week.

Go back one step and ask "how many leads do you need to generate 100 appointments?"

Tailor the number to fit your specific situation, and use the total number of monthly sales appointments you need to prioritize your schedule.

Proposals Accepted
Projects underway
Projects Completed
Invoices Sent (Billings)Invoices Collected

Check Your Business Priorities: Appointments

Check your business priorities to determine your overall business strenghts and weaknesses. The previous post focused on leads. Let's talk about appointments.

Leads

Appts
Social appointments
Networking appointments
Prospective client appointments

I believe there are 3 types of business appointments that aren't sales appointments. Social appointments can be meeting someone simply to say hi over coffee, play golf, etc. No business is expected. But these can also lead to networking for prospective clients and customers.

Networking appointments may be chamber of commerce luncheons, your business networking group or any group where you're seeking to network for the purpose of a lead.

I knew a mortgage broker named Roy who reversed the networking process. He would make it a point to sit down with a business owner and learn about their business, then he would make a deliberate effort to network the owner with a customer. He was a match-maker. And he often never asked for networking contacts himself. This was a "soft" marketing approach for him.

I asked him why he did this and his reply was simple. He didn't make home loans every day so rather than sit around and try to continually pass out his cards he truly wanted to learn about others and help them. But he knew this also kept his name and business in front of others.

Prospective client appointments, that meeting right before the proposal or sales appointment, is what we strive to put on our calendars. However, if you're coming in cold then you almost have to go through the "get to know you" stage. The more effectively you can network and the wider your social network then prospective client appointments are more warm.

Don't use this as the time to sell yourself. Just like Roy the mortgage broker asked about others and their needs, this is your chance to learn about the needs of your prospective client. Ask them questions, lots of relevant questions since people generally like to talk about themselves. This is also the first step in the sales process.

Sales Appts and Final Proposals

Proposals Accepted

Projects underway

Projects Completed

Invoices Sent (Billings)

Invoices Collected

How Small Businesses can Promote Each Other

Here's an idea I've had for a few years to reduce marketing costs for small businesses. It's based on actual discussions. Perhaps you can adapt it.

There's a hair stylist who has upscale clientele.

About 6 blocks away there's a spa who has similar clientele.

Another several blocks is a coffee roasting company. They, also, would attract a similar clientele.

Their challenge: limited marketing budget and limited time to promote their own businesses.

Solutions: Share costs on creating postcards, business cards and more to cross promote.

Here's how it could work.

Offline
Customer A gets hair styled in the salon and she's given a thank-you note with the contact information of all 3 companies. Presenting the note at either of the other two businesses allows her to have a discount if she uses the spa or buys coffee.

The other 2 businesses provide the same card at their location for their customers.

They target several zip codes, purchase a mailing list and mail out the card once a month for the next 6 months.

Online
The 3 companies either do or don't have their own individual web sites. It doesn't matter if 2 do, and the other doesn't.

They pay to have a simple 1 - 3 page site created with a picture from their businesses and links to their current site or a promotional coupon that can be printed off for use.

They create a blog together and each agrees to post 3 - 5 times per month and they hire a writer to handle the other posts.

A sample budget for this combined effort could be:

1,000 postcards for $75 or less.

A 1 - 3 page site for $500 to $1,500 depending on features.

A blog created for $500 to $1,500 depending on features.

Each company only has to spend less than $1,000 to share a promotional effort.

How would you improve on this scenario and what other types of businesses could cooperate together?

Business Innovation: Sharing Resources

Organizational consultant Ray Rood, a former trustee at Azusa Pacific University, told me about a business network where he was once involved.

There were several small companies who shared the costs of infrastructure, promoted each other's businesses and used each other's services. The network grew to a dozen or more companies at its peak.

There was one person who administered the network and he was the key to its success in staying together, according to Ray, who told me this a few years ago.

I believe he said the business network stayed together for more than 7 years. The reason it didn't last longer was the one who administered decided to step down and no one wanted to replace him.

This was an innovation at its time and it seems this blueprint of shared resources should be able to work well again in today's environment. I'll try to do research and see what specifics can be learned and applied.

I'm currently writing and managing projects for a web development firm which has decided to stay small yet work with a few outside contractors. Corporate clients are the focus and those of us have other projects we want to launch and clientele to serve.

How well can companies of fewer than 10 employees network together to:

share in marketing costs?
share in offering benefits to employees?
share other services like payroll and tax advice or preparation?
pay to use each other's services?
and work with each other to access corporate clients?

I'd like to know what's allowed or if such networks exist successfully.

Here's a quick overview on how a network might function.

Let's say there are 7 autonomous companies who have some of their own marketing collateral, bookkeeping and client base. But they get together and select activities they can pursue:

Building a web site together - it could be simple yet link to their own individual sites and they in turn link their own sites to each.

Direct mail campaigns together - a nicely designed postcard or letter could go to various target clients and state a "family of services."

Hiring outside consultants - they could have a once every two months session for tax advice, marketing strategies

Retirement planning - I don't know the limitations on this but perhaps have one planner who can advise on their portfolios and maybe reduce commission costs

Using a contracted consultant for HR, organizing the separate offices, writing, etc., rather than feeling alone.

Certainly, there are pitfalls but why not explore a structure to let small business owners do what they do successfully and try to leverage their relationships.

In my next post, I'll outline an idea I've had for some time on how complementary businesses can promote each other.

How to "Grow a Business" using the 7Ps of Marketing

"Grow your business" with these business ideas using at least a few of the 7Ps of marketing.

Coffee roasting company Jameson Brown is only a few months old but business owners large and small can learn valuable lessons.

Planning - the two partners and their families spent 15 months planning and preparing before opening their doors.

People - Niche market - the coffee industry is dominated by major brands. They sell to people who love freshly roasted coffee bought from around the globe.

Product - their coffee is "customized" during the roasting process by personally watching the grinding process in action as demonstrated on the video. In their shop, a former machine fabricating shop, they made the strategic decision to only sell coffee in a comfortable setting. They're not selling pastries or smoothies. They believe there's a demand for a quality roasted cup of coffee.

Price - their coffee is competitively priced with local shops, yet their product is high quality.

Promotion - they haven't chosen one specific promotional strategy yet, except for Word of Mouth - which is the most effective form of marketing and advertising.

Place - they're selling to a local retail population in Pasadena, California, Internet customers and selling wholesale to pastry shops and restaurants.

Partners - their vendor is a buyer who can service a small company. They've not yet chosen promotional partners.

"The good news," said partner David Ross, "is we can feel the momentum building. We have regulars who come in everyday."

"Our goal," said Ryan Hamlin, "is keeping our focus on coffee."

Ask Yourself:

Planning: Am I giving myself enough time to launch a new business, new product line or new service? Marketing efforts alone can take up to 6 months to build momentum.

People: Do I know all I need to know about my primary client or customer? Can I learn any new information that will give me a competitive edge?

Product: How does my product benefit my target customer?

Price: If I price my service or product high, how easy or difficult is to convey the value? If I price too low, does it cheapen what I offer? Am I offering a premium service or "cookie cutter" service?

Promotion: how will I generate needed Word of Mouth advertising?

Place: How many people in my local geographic location know I exist?

Partners: How can I improve my relationship with my vendors or current customers to gain new business or better serve existing customers and clients?

Business Tips: How to Get Started

Choose a niche market to get started as a small business.

Starbucks is a great brand name dominating the retail coffee industry. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is another major competitor.

But two men in Southern California decided they enjoyed roasting coffee and they knew people around Pasadena, California wanted an independent coffee roaster. David Ross and Ryan Hamlin roasted coffee as a hobby and turned it into a new business called Jameson Brown.

Jameson Brown isn't competing against Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf or other major companies. They're finding customers who want hand roasted coffee where the temperature is carefully controlled. Their niche market is retail customers who want a friendly atmosphere, local pastry shops and restaurants in Pasadena, California, and customers on the Internet.

I stopped by their location and watched the roasting process in action.

How to Start a Business: Plan, plan and plan

Starting a business requires a business plan. Sounds logical, but so many small business owners, or would-be owners, rush headlong into opening up their shop, buying in to a MLM structure or getting an e-commerce site built and launched.

Here's an helpful article found on Entrepreneur.com.

Coffee roaster Jameson Brown opened up a few months ago after many months of talking and planning. They told me how they went about planning.

"We had been friends for many years," said David Ross. He and his business partner Ryan Hamlin shared a love of coffee.

"We spent 6 months talking," said Ryan. "But we were roasting during this time and our friends liked the taste. Our issue was how to approach starting our business. We decided to go slow and go small."

As they discussed their idea, they saw it taking shape.

"You want to make sure we were saying the same thing about our business idea," said David.

"We spent a lot of time asking 'who is our customer?' and deciding the standards or quality we wanted for our coffee," Ryan mentioned.

The two business partners spent another 9 months looking for a commercial building where they could roast and have customers walk in. It also took time to handle zoning issues.

Their location is clean, well-lit and has a nice appealing brick fireplace.

However, it was a former machine fabrication shop so it took their families lots of work to scrub it down and convert it to a coffee roasting location.

They have walk-in retail customers, distribute wholesale to restaurants and coffee shops, and they have a Jameson Brown website for Internet customers. Surf on by and click on their site to learn more.

Fox TV Back To You - and Coffee?

Back to You is a new comedy series starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton scheduled to air on the FOX network in September.

An excellent article in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, July 22, raised the question if Back to You, about a news team in Pittsburgh, will be a hit because reality shows, cable and even the Internet have TV audiences fragmented. The article raised the point that the star quality of Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton would have made the show a sure success 10 years ago.

Television comedies are caught in a changing business climate. But change in any industry can also mean opportunity. The coffee industry is one example.

Two friends, Ryan Hamlin and David Ross, recently launched the coffee roasting company Jameson Brown in Pasadena, California and I enjoyed speaking to them about their new business venture.

Forget Starbucks or the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf companies. The two men personally had a love for coffee as a beverage and as a hobby.

"We started home roasting and it opened up a new world of taste," Ryan told me. "I thought 'I'd love to retire and roast and blend for people."

Ryan and David discussed their idea and after friends gave them positive feedback on the quality of their roasted coffee, they decided to find their niche market for quality roasted beans from around the world.

In my next post, you'll find out how long it took them to plan before opening their doors.

Business Marketing Tips

Growing a Business takes marketing: consistent and constant marketing.

Here are basic business marketing tips for small business owners and professionals:

1 Elevator speech - be able to state your business in 20 seconds or less.
Can you clearly say what you offer to prospective clients or customers?

2 Thank you cards - send out thank you cards, birthday cards, anniversary cards, and more
Select your top 20% - 30% of your customer base and mail to them.
Include up to 3 business cards to remind them to give you referrals.

3 Cross-promote - offer coupons to your customers or clients for businesses where the type
of customer you serve also shops.
Ex. A hair salon could offer coupons to a spa and the spa could
return the favor.

4 Have a barbeque - Law firms, car dealers, office supply stores and so many more could
have a Saturday morning - afternoon cook-out and give away free hot
dogs, sodas, chips . . . or have a health food fair in a strategic location.

5 Develop a pitch book - gather testimonials and pictures of clients and customers. Hire a scrap
booker if you don't have the time. Place them neatly in a binder in a style
that represents your industry and the clientele you reach.

Here's a free idea for airline executives: have passenger testimonials in your in-flight magazine and on your web site. More on this in another post.

6 Stick to a consistent marketing plan - ex. Every Tues night, you'll call "x" number of prospective customers to ask for appointments and call "x" number of current or past customers to thank them for their business.

7 Have a customer review your product or service - hand out the reviews at chamber of commerce meetings or post it online. Just like bloggers review each other's blogs.

Peer reviews are highly trusted according to a report on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. 60% of online buyers trust peer reviews in a study published by Visa and Yahoo! Canada.

Do you have marketing ideas that have worked for you that you would like to share?

Business, Marketing, Standing Out

Circuit City or Best Buy . . . Target or Wal Mart . . . Apple or Microsoft . . . my blog or a stay-at-home-mom's blog who's got amazing traffic.

How do businesses stand out and make themselves different so shoppers know which one they're going to visit?

Survey yourself: which ones do you shop and why? Price? Experience?

Starbucks Coffee, for example, hasn't had me buy one of their drinks for months. Nothing against Starbucks, but their coffee is priced higher than Pronto's Donuts just down the street from me. And I like the taste of Pronto's better.

We often worry about large corporations running the small businesses out of town. But there's room to compete, provided your differences are clear and if the customer or client clearly sees benefits to what you offer.

I believe blogs are that way. I'm reading a book Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright who describes how businesses of all sizes, especially large ones, can really understand their customers better by using blogs.

For those of us who are bloggers, we really do need to know how we are different than all the other blogs around us. I've read blogs are being created at the rate of 100,000 per day by some estimates. But how many will last? And how many will stand out?

I'm asking myself these questions:

Why am I here?
What do I hope to accomplish?
Why will a reader visit and will that reader want to return?

My niche is providing interviews with people who have real-life experience and tips in business, money issues, real estate, and even health and tech from time-to-time.

I want to move more into video clips of my interviews posted on this site to bring the personality of the one being interviewed to the front for the visitor.

A blog is a product, it's a service, it's a community.

The more clear your purpose and your measure of success, the more satisfied you'll be as a blogger.

(And I should substitute the "I" for the other pronouns used in the previous sentence.)

Apple iPhone: Motorola, Cingular, Whatever

Businesses have to market really hard to get my attention when it comes to new technology. Odd. I have a master's degree in communication management from USC. I consider myself a "marketer," too.

So why did it take me ignoring post after post on the iPhone before I visited Apple's iPhone Web site?

And, finally, what took me to the site?

Ah-ha! The answer to this one question will answer both.

Answer: I really don't need the iPhone at this point. I spend more time trying to focus on my sales during the day and my content for this blog. Am I focused? How can I improve it graphically? What do I need to drive more traffic to this site?

Do my dogs need water in their dish? And then I yell to my wife and tell the kids to be quiet!

So you see, I don't see the iPhone as relevant for my life - at this point. I have other concerns and I'm not an "early adopter" of new technology. I'm thrilled I've taught myself how to create basic html hyperlinks on the web. My current cell phone is working - sorta, kinda - and I'm not going to camp out like the people in New York waiting for the iphone in order to spend my hard-earned dollars with Apple.

At least not right now.

So this is also a lesson for businesses of all sizes.

Marketing takes work. Building a business is not a short-term proposition.

A few notes from people I've interviewed during the past few weeks.

Real estate agent Juanita Cobb of Keller Williams spends hours a day calling people who are in foreclosure to see if she can help them sell before they have to auction off;

Brian and Kristina of Actor Track have been building a business for six years and they still haven't covered much of their niche market of actors and performers.

And Apple is rolling out a product to good and not-so-good reviews (critics get so jealous, don't they).

And my blog is only a few weeks old since I've tweaked its focus. I'd rest on my laurels, but I don't have any at this stage!

Improve, evaluate, create, improve, evaluate, create . . . it's a cycle that requires a lifetime of dedication for multinational corporations and the home-based business.

Computer Repair, Customer Care

A brand is a business' promise. You and I experience this through price, quality and customer care or how the business stays in touch with us either during or after a sale.

Businesses who can offer low pricing, quality service and top-notch customer care are unusual. You often can't get all three - especially if the price of a service is low.

Ava Snow of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, writes about a tech company that has helped her battle computer viruses:


There are many different companies in my area which provide virus removal services, but the only one I have found to be worthwhile is Computer Renaissance.

They're fast with any service you need. They also kept in touch with me during the process of repairing my computer. This gave me an idea of exactly what was wrong with my computer and it let me know the progress they were making.

Most of the other computer repair services I've used in the past didn't keep in touch with me and I was the one who had to contact them for an update.

I really thought I had gotten lucky with great services, but I learned later that my friends and family had similar, positive experiences. This is why I would recommend them to anyone and why I will use them again.


Do you have a business you would like to note does the right thing? If so, drop me an email and we will try to post what they do well so others can learn some "best practices."

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Marketing your business requires consistency and persistence. The goal is developing a core of satisfied and trusted customers or clients who assist you in word-of-mouth referrals - the most powerful and trusted source of advertising and marketing.

I interviewed Kristina Hughes and Brian Vermeire who turned a Christmas gift, an organizational tool for their acting auditions, in to a thriving business known as HoldenLog that focuses on a narrow market that includes: actors, models, and live performers.

Today, their product line includes software known as ActorTrack.

Here's a summary of how Kristina and Brian promoted their business:

#1 In early 2001, they used the tool themselves and friends saw them and started asking about it. During that time, one friend was helping them think about a software application for the organizational journal.

#2 They launched a Web site in September 2001.

#3 They began a newsletter which today has 20,000 active subscribers with readers internationally: Canada, Australia, the U.K. plus Singapore and Japan.

#4 In 2005, they began hosting free industry seminars.

#5 They now have 100 commission-based field reps promoting their product line.

#6 They regularly attend industry trade shows held around the country.

Their efforts weren't without obstacles. Kristina told me they would have up to 100 people rsvp for a seminar and then it would rain and only 15 would show. Now, remember, "rain" in Los Angeles can mean steady drizzle.

Today, approaching 7 years, they're now forecasting with plans 5 years out and more.

They remain clear on the purpose of their product.

"Our books and software," said Brian, "helps performers track their Return on Investment."