“OK, so you say I need to tweet my activities, connected with my Facebook people, blog daily, upload plenty of photos and videos, search for connections on LinkedIN, create a MySpace page, and send out eMails inviting all my friends and family; but I’m curious, when am I suppose to work?”

If you are feeling a little over-whelmed, then you are not alone.  The best way to address this delimma (too many places to post and not enough time to write) is to go back to the root reason WHY we use social networking.

Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact bases.  These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. (Source: Wikipedia).  While I don’t have any new ideas on how to lengthen your day, I do have a suggestion on a tool to help optimize the time you spend.

I recently found a new application that helps bring all these social communication outlets together.  Flock, is made by the same folks who built Firefox.  Available for both the MAC and PC platforms, Flock allows you to check your Facebook friends, send a tweet and blog–all from the same window.

Hope this help!  Oh yes.  the best part–Flock is FREE.

Ed Bejarana
Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Small business owners can end up paying a high price for neglecting to pay attention to their company’s finances. The typical scenario is the busy business person who turns the banking and accounting over to a bookkeeper, and then fails to keep an eye on what’s going on. After a while they begin to notice that no matter how hard they work, the company never seems to have enough cash. The reason of course is that their trusted bookkeeper is not so trustworthy.

The financial fraud statistics are grim. There are estimates that employee theft is growing at 15% per year and that as many as 40% of small companies are victims of embezzlement.  Estimates suggest that one third of bankruptcies and 20% of business failures are the result of employee theft.

Prevention is not difficult. Taking a few simple steps not only pays off in terms of protecting your assets, but it also does your employees a favor by removing opportunities to steal that might be a temptation to them.  Here a few ways to cut the risks of financial fraud and embezzlement in your company.

A key step is the hiring process. When hiring accounting and bookkeeping personnel it is critical to know as much as possible about them before you hand them the keys to the treasury. This should include checking references and talking with old employers. A comprehensive background check is also an excellent, cost effective way to protect your company.

A second easy step is to require your bookkeeper to take a vacation periodically. Often issues come to light when an embezzler is not on hand to intercept incriminating documents or smooth over other discrepancies.

The most important step is to segregate responsibilities. Don’t allow the same person who makes deposits to also record the transactions in the accounting records, and reconcile the bank account. Lack of segregation increases the possibility of fraud and the likelihood of honest accounting errors and omissions will not be detected.

Finally business owners need to look at the financial data of their company periodically. At a minimum they should review monthly bank statements, scan check registers, and look over a profit or loss statement. If they see something that is unexpected or unusual, they should follow up with some questions and analysis.

Stephen Ashby CPA

The Billups Company CPA’s Inc.

www.billupscpa.com

Do You Follow Up With Your Customers?
Do You Even Know Who Your Customers Are?

There is not a business alive that can succeed without sales. That is how revenue is driven. I don’t care what your business is. You have a product, or service, and your success is driven by how well you deliver that product or service to your clients or prospects. Do you know who your customers are?  How do you follow up with them?

It doesn’t matter if you are in a traditional sales oriented business like car or insurance sales, a retail shop like a Beauty Salon or Book Store, a professional like a CPA or Attorney, a Realtor or Mortgage Broker, you cannot exist without customers. How do you follow up with your customers?

You also cannot exist without the assistance of other, third party companies. There are others who provide essential services to you as you do your job. Some of these are essential to your success, others provide services upon which you rely upon. Do you know who your key partners are? How do you follow up with these key people?

Even within a large corporation or government entity, there are people without whom your job would not exist. The payroll department is reliant upon every other employee. Without them their job would not be necessary. The Insurance claims analyst has an external client (the policy holder), and many internal customers (all of the other employees whom he or she works with on the policy or claim). Do you know who your customers are? How do you follow up with them?

My point is that every one of our jobs is reliant upon the assistance of others. Whether it’s the end customer who uses our product or service and pays the bill, or the various co-workers or vendors who help us do our job in order to satisfy the end customer. Our success is tied to how we respond to others and how they respond to us.

I’m a mortgage broker as well as a referral marketing coach. I have an end customer, the homeowner who is looking to purchase or refinance. But in order to do my job, I am reliant upon a variety or internal co-workers, a wholesale lender with who knows how many people influencing my loan, an appraiser, possibly a Realtor, inspector, Title & Escrow company, and possibly verification of income, rent, assets and who knows what else…

While it’s easy to say I have 1 customer, there are a lot of people reliant on me and that I am reliant on to get the deal done.

Here is how I followup with my customers and key partners.

I have found that it is always better to be proactive and nice in order to get new clients and loans through the system. This takes more time, but the payoff is worth it. It also helps to have a system to spread that honey.

I use a combination of high tech and low tech services to bring in new business and facilitate the work flow on existing business.

Here are a few:

• In Person: Usually best for cementing relationships, but most time consuming. You also need to be concerned about your appearance and that of your meeting place.

• Telephone: Also very good as long as you are a good listener and can convey your thoughts. I use my office phone, iPhone and RingCentral for fax and 800#.

• Internet: Great for attracting new clients and transferring information easily and effortlessly. I have several websites that allow prospects to find me, easily leave information for me to get back in touch with them. I use facebook, ActiveRain and twitter, as well as others sites to attract new clients and make my work easier. In fact, my mortgage and Referral Marketing businesses could not exist without the Internet.

• Email: I have a love hate relationship with email. I need it, but about 50% of what I get is SPAM. Chalk it up to my success on google… I have also found limited success using email to draw in new clients. It is to easy to leave a bogus email address or for a well intended email to end up in the SPAM folder. Trust me, it happens.

• E-Newsletters: I send out several e-newsletters and know that they work, but they also can easily end up in the SPAM folder or wear out their welcome.

• Personal Greeting Cards: Everybody loves a personal greeting card. We are bombarded with email, junk mail, bills… But when we get a personal letter or greeting card, we get excited. I use SendOutCards to easily, and cost effectively send personal greeting cards. It takes a couple of minutes to create the card, push send and it’s printed at our factory, delivered to the Post Office and within a few days delivered to the mail box. I can even send a gift.

How do you followup with your clients? Do you know who your clients and key partners are?

What I suggest is to take a good look at your business or job.

• Identify where your revenue comes from. Who are your clients who bring you money or what were you hired to do?

• Identify the different steps involved in providing that service or attracting new revenue sources.

• Identify who else is involved in the process of assisting you in meeting the needs of that revenue source.

• Identify the steps where communication is best served and the method best for the situation. This should involve a variety of resources including personal visits, telephone, Internet, e-newsletters and personal Greeting Cards.

• Setup a plan and put it into action. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just intentional.

Larry

NiceTouchMarketing

Time management, everybody has an idea, but few do it well.  So, how is that you manage your time, er, life?  David Beardsley, in April/May 1998 published an article titled “Don’t Manage Time, Manage Yourself.”  He writes about David Allen’s cure. Allen, who was 52 at the time was teaching people how to get unstuck.  His firm conducted seminars and one-on-one coaching sessions throughout the US. 

Allen asks, “Why do we feel so overwhelmed?”  We clutter our minds with what we think we should do, what we could do and find there is always more to do than there is   time to do it.  He goes on to say that most of the stress that we fee doesn’t come from having too much to do—it comes from not keeping agreements we have made with ourselves.  When we tell ourselves we ought to do something and then don’t do it, we experience self-doubt and frustration. 

Bear in mind that productivity is about completion.  Thus to obtain the control over our life/time, we need to identify all those incompletions in our lives, from the mundane to the most pressing responsibilities and as Allen say, “…isolate the simplest next step to complete them.”

However simple this may sound it is evident that most people don’t do it.  Allen says that we think too much about doing it and too little time actually performing the deed.   So, your assignment if you wish to accept it is to identify those incompletions and do them.  Watch what happens to your time.

Coach              http://www.coach-charles.com

Good Morning All,

What networking group do you belong to?  (Chamber of Commerce, Leads Groups, etc.)  Also, how can people get in touch with your organization to get involved?

When we drive we take it for granted that our car dashboard is set up to tell us most of the important things we need to know to have a safe trip and arrive at our planned destination. When you look down at your car’s dashboard, you can quickly determine how the vehicle is functioning and receive alerts when something’s not working properly. You would likely be able to get to work or to the mall if your dashboard wasn’t working, but imagine how much more difficult and uncomfortable it would be. When I was in college I had a truck with a broken speedometer. Since I didn’t know exactly how fast I was really going, I managed to rack up a couple of speeding tickets and I also got honked at more than once for going too slowly! 

I think we all agree that driving with a useful dashboard just makes sense. If it makes so much sense to drive with a dashboard, then wouldn’t it also make sense to help drive your business with a “financial dashboard”  that gives you concise and timely information about your business? Don’t get me wrong, a financial dashboard does not replace a good set of financial statements and other detailed reports. However, a properly designed financial dashboard will summarize this data into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Dashboards are essentially snapshots comprised of charts and tables of your company’s KPIs such as sales reports (daily, monthly, year-to-date), cash on hand, operating cash flow, profitability, profit margin, back orders, inventory levels, days sales outstanding, etc.

Often times when I look at a company’s financial reports, what I find is that income statements run on for two or three pages listing nearly every account in the general ledger. Balance sheets and cash flow statements are also generally not well designed. As a result, business owners are frustrated that they get too much data and not enough information. Think about the KPIs that are vital for your business. Next, have your staff develop a financial dashboard that includes all of these KPIs so that you can quickly see how your business is performing and where you need to focus your attention to help grow your company and improve profitability.

 If you think your company would benefit from a financial dashboard you should obtain the services of a professional Chief Finanancial Officer. As financial  experts your CFO consultant can help you structure a dashboard that will meet your needs.

Scott Spangenberg, MBA

Partner

B2B CFO®.

 www.b2bcfo.com/partners/scotts/

Business plans are usually associated with start-up companies raising capital from investors and lenders, but they can also contribute significantly to the success of established businesses. Here are three ways periodic business planning can help create business success.

Business planning forces the manager to set goals and objectives and it establishes a benchmark for measuring performance. A quote often attributed to W. Edward Deming is, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. A business plan creates the capability to measure business performance and to isolate issues which require management attention to insure objectives are achieved.

Business planning forces the owner to define, or at least think about, the company’s reason for being. A good business plan is driven by a vision, which is a conception of the company’s future. A vision expresses the company’s reason for existence, its core values, and the aspirations of the managers for what the company can become. The plan is an expression of the vision and is built on purpose and aspirations, guided by values.

Finally, business planning forces the manager to formally confront reality. One of the keys of a good business plan is a detailed assessment of the business environment in which a company operates. There are several models to guide this. SWOT analysis is one in which the planner considers the strengths and weaknesses of the company, the opportunities it has available, and threats it faces. Another is Michael Porter’s “Five Competitive Forces” model that considers the characteristics of the company’s market and its relationship with suppliers, customers, and competitors. The goal in these types of analysis is to gain a clear understanding of the situation the company faces enabling an appropriate strategic response that creates a profitable competitive advantage and leads to the fulfillment of the company’s vision.

The concept here is that planning provides a tool for aligning the organization with the vision of the owner or manager by defining an appropriate strategy for success and by providing a means to evaluate and control performance.

Stephen Ashby CPA

The Billups Company CPA’s Inc.

www.billupscpa.com

Time management.  Is there such a thing?  I mean can time be managed?  Thousands would say it is so.  But can we really handle time like a commodity?  A hundred sixty eight hours in a week, and we think this is like money in the bank, each day issuing us 24 hours to manage, at 60 minutes an hour.  How are you doing?  Is it working? 

Well, here’s my opinion for what it is worth.  No, time cannot be managed.  We all get 168 a week, for everything we have to do.  First we have no way of getting a hand on time, as time is really intangible.  Saving time is an oxymoron.  If you save time where do you keep it.  Secondly, we don’t actually do anything to time, rather we do things that we feel are important, and call it “time management.”  What it is in reality is the management of ourselves.  We manage our behavior and actions in some fashion and if we do it well we say we have managed our time.

This shift in our understanding  will increase our efficiency and effectiveness and we will recognize that it wasn’t time we managed, but ourselves.

“There can’t be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.”  —Henry Kissinger

Here’s to you gaining control of your life.

Coach

http://cli.gs/XWAbqr

Does your networking group have an upcoming meeting that might benefit others? How about your business, are you hosting an event for the local community in the near future?

Now you can publish that information here on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com

Creating an event posting helps you promote your event and build search engine links to your website!

Creating an event posting is EASY!

1. Click on “Creat Article”
2. Enter your event details as if you are writing an article.  Including links, photos (compressed) and location details.
3. Scroll down to “Event Editor”  (See picture below)
4. Click Publish!

Your event announcement will not show up in the blog posting, but will appear as a calendar entry.  When visitors hoover over a date, or visit the calendar, they will see a link to your event posting.

What is business blogging?  A conversation.

If your business is struggling with the current economic conditions, then you are probably looking for ways to find more customers.  You probably know cold calling is an effective marketing strategy, but you also know with cold calls come LOTS of rejection.  Think of business blogging as a version of cold calling where the person receiving the message never hangs up in anger.

I originally started help my customers setup their own blog site, but found the work load of writing daily to be too great for most people.  So Bear and I started this blog/ business help site.

You are welcome to register for membership (it is FREE here on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com).  Write your article, that uses strong keywords to build a connection between you and your prospective customer or articles that help other business people.  In either case, people reading your words will want to learn more about you and your business.  Also, the search engines will see the links in your article to your business website and the robot (spiders) will follow the link to your site.

In today’s market place Internet visibility is a necessity.  Your website alone will not be as effective as your website along with business blogging in this web site.

For more information about how to use blogging in your business, post a request for help here online and eMail Bear or me.

Happy Blogging,

Ed Bejarana
Zenith Exhibits, Inc.