Up Cash Creek Without a Paddle.

Even when business is good there’s still a change of running out of cash flow. You have to always be prepared for a slow in sales or a surge in expenses. One of the keys to balancing your cash flow is to get your clients to pay on time. This can seem like a nightmare, but is absolutely essential to a successful business.

Here are some tips to speed up the payment process:

·       Always send invoices on time and adjust your records for potential audits.

·       Learn how the client processes payments on their side and find out precisely where to send invoices.

·       Find out who’s in charge of processing orders and payment, so you know who to contact if needed.

·       Have a follow-up procedure in place, just in case.

·       As a last resort, call your contact to ask questions.

·       Always make sure your invoices are correct before sending them out.

You also need to make sure your cash flow is protected. You can do this by:

·       Always know which accounts need paid and when.

·       Negotiate with your suppliers for the lowest cost possible.

·       Have a bank contingency plan in place.

·       Build your own inventor network.

These are all great ways to protect the cash flow of your business and prepare for fish transitions and slow sales. These last few lessons are all about finding and catching your big fish clients. These clients are essential to your success and your need to take the time to work through each of these steps carefully and correctly for the best success.  If you need more help in these areas, just contact me and we will help you with business and the transformation of your business.

How Did Starbucks Build A Multimillion Dollar Empire Using A Basic Commodity?

You can buy a cup of coffee at 7-11, Quik-Trip, Dunkin Donuts and even McDonalds. and buy it for $3.50 less than you can at Starbucks. So WHY are so many people Starbuck junkies?

Why is every airline bankrupt or nearing bankruptcy, and yet Southwest has made a profit every quarter but one since it started flying its planes in 1971? How did Apple come back from the dead and resurrect itself so it now sits at the top of the communications world?

What you need to know.

Starbuck's didn't just happen to get "lucky." This was a very carefully planned and crafted assault that was years in the making. In most cases, when you sell a basic commodity such as coffee, you're forcing yourself into a market that competes on nothing but price.

Well, that's what everyone else was indeed doing. 7-11, Quik-Trip, Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds were locked in battle to see who could offer the cheapest cup of coffee. In fact, most of them were providing it at cost as a way to entice customers to come in more frequently. They figured they could make up the lost profit with additional sales.

Starbucks looked at this and said "these guys are all fighting over who can offer a 50 cent cup of coffee. I wonder how we can get these same people to buy our coffee. and pay us $4 a cup in the process?"

Why you need to know this.

Obviously, they were successful. So how did they do it? In a word. "INNOVATION!"
If you want your business to grow and flourish, then you must stop competing on price. You have to find out specifically what your customers "want" from your business, and then innovate your business to not only give them what they want, but do so in a way that can only be described as "extraordinary."

Customers don't go to Starbucks to pay $4 for a cup of coffee. They pay $4 for the "experience" they enjoy at Starbucks. Starbucks innovated their stores to give their customers what they "wanted." Customers don't want to buy their coffee from a clerk. They want to buy it from a "barista." They don't want to buy coffee from a convenience store or a fast food restaurant. They want to buy their coffee from a specialty coffee establishment where the barista knows them by name and knows what they want to drink without them having to ask for it. In short. they want an "experience," and they're willing to pay $4 a cup to get it.

The cost to you if you fail to act.

* Do you know exactly how to find that "sweet spot" that your competition knows nothing about?
* Do you know how to use that "sweet spot" to instantly attract new clients whenever you want?
* Would you like to finally understand how to separate your business from all of your competition?
* Would you be interested in positioning your business for market dominance?

You can learn to do this for your business. IF you can discover specifically what your customers want. and create an experience that compliments what they want.
For more information, check out my new Marketing University, get as much information as you want and take a test drive on our system.To take a Test Drive on our system visit http://marketingandsalesuniversity.com/guidedtour

Kensel Tracy is the Marketing Coach and owner of Marketing and Sales University, a resource for small and medium sized businesses that want more information on marketing.

Referral Marketing and Online Marketing are Growing Leaps and Bounds

As a business and marketing coach you are always reinventing the way you do business. Such is the case with my new website www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com and Stratejis Marketing Solutions.

As a marketing coach clients were always asking for more of something. More business, more time, more revenues. Its important for business owners to continue to reinvent their business even if they think they are on the right track.

Today's consumer has no brand loyalty and its important for a biz owner to understand what it takes to continue to build and market. The younger generation thinks that social media is going to be the next big saving grace for marketing. However its important to consider some of the traditional things you once did in marketing to continue move projects forward.

For example networking is all about building relationships. That's why we are rolling Business Over Breakfast clubs out all across Canada and the United States, to build relationships.

www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com was set up as a simple way for small business owners to get more information for less than $1200 per year. A simple process with a wealth of knowledge. Gives the small business owner an opportunity to grow and prosper on their own terms as well as pick up pointers that they can discuss with their coach or internally to get the ball rolling. Nobody wants to pay huge marketing fees just to get an education in marketing with limited returns.

Stratejis Marketing Solutions is my pet project. Having run a marketing company for a number of years I wanted to get back in the war and develop a few projects as a creative outlet for me personally and my clients. Nothing I like better than discussing creative concepts, graphic design, advertising and marketing and then implementing programs like having a marketing company now provides services to clients that want more. They want to design the ultimate ad, direct mail, website, learn more about social marketing and then having a dedicated approach to executing a program or a strategy.

On many of these projects I have partnered with my good friend Jason Harper his up and coming visual communications shop called Strongevine Visual Communications located in Ottawa. Jason's view is that marketing is a visual medium and that websites, brochures, logo designs and great business cards are still the basis of every company's marketing strategy and I agree with him.

So remember, when someone comes up to you and your company and thinks that you should have a new Twitter Account and Facebook page yada yada, you need more social media, agree with them and add it to your marketing inventory.

Get online and get social, but also insure that your image and what you are saying to customers is also up date and as matter fact focus in more on knowing who your customers are. Make sure all your marketing and communications tools are all up to date and all are entirely flexible so that you gather all the customers you need.

Remember customers are still about having relationships and getting referrals from people that know, trust and believe in you.

A business club like www.bobclubs.com, marketing efforts and social media combined will help you grow your business and will help it grow and prosper over time all the time.

Canada Is Rebounding While the U.S. Falters

It’s the dog days of summer and I was reviewing the difference in attitudes in between Canada and the U.S. in business. The Canadian market is holding its own. I recently tried to do a joint-venture partnership with a company in the U.S.

I was surprised that the people I was trying to work with were negative and down on the economy in the U.S. and I was also surprised how fragile they were in taking risks. As a business person who has consistently worked throughout North America for the past 30 years I was surprised that Americans were sounding like Canadians in the 70’s and Canadians were sounding like Americans in the 80’s. Canada is on the rebound and there are a number of reasons.

Canada's economy has consistently outperformed that of the United States since the beginning of the financial crisis. And while it's showing signs of slowing down, Canada's pending decline will be far shallower than that of the United States, and its rebound more dynamic.

Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 6.1% in the first quarter of the year - the highest rate of growth among developed nations - and the country is expected to lead Group Seven (G7) nations in economic growth for at least the next two years; why ? Well there are many reasons.

Canada’s banking system is sound, banks stayed out of the mortgage business and while granting credit made it flexible for Canadians to get into the mortgage business but did not get that involved in the sub-prime game. Canadians look at the word market and not just at their own market. This has allowed them to make huge gains in Far East, North and South America and Europe. The country has bountiful resources including: lumber, oil, raw materials, water and land, much of it undeveloped.

Canada’s economy is moving into a service-based economy more that it’s been in the past. Health Care, education, knowledge and a highly educated work force also have an impact. Compared to the U.S. corporate interests have less influence over government policy and we have far less government debt.

The Canadian economy grew at a 2.0% annualized pace in the second quarter of 2010, shy of the 2.5% gain expected by forecasters. The increase was slower than in the previous two quarters in large part due to a 3.0 percentage point (ppt) net export drag. Inventory rebuilding and increasing domestic demand offset the weight from trade. The first-quarter growth rate was revised to show a 5.8% annualized gain from 6.1% previously.

Both consumer spending and business fixed investment rose in the second quarter although consumption slowed to a 2.6% annualized pace from the strong 4.3% rise recorded in the first quarter. Investment spending posted a healthy 9.1% annualized gain with spending on machinery and equipment rising by a solid 29.7% annualized pace. Residential investment slowed in the quarter, rising 1.2% although this followed two quarters of very strong increases. Spending on non-residential structures eked out a mild 1.0% increase, contrary to expectations for another decline.

Gains in these areas contributed to decent growth in the final domestic demand of 3.5% building on three quarters of very strong gains. The contribution from inventories was smaller than expected in the second quarter, adding 1.8 ppt and matching the first-quarter's revised contribution. The rise in domestic demand in recent quarters suggests that this inventory rebuilding in large part was desired.

The strength in domestic spending also contributed to imports rising at a rapid 16.4%annualized pace. Export growth was milder at 6.0% resulting in net exports subtracting 3.0 ppt in the quarter. Our expectation was that this component would cut 3.8 ppt off the quarterly growth rate.
While the overall growth rate disappointed forecasters, this report confirms that domestic conditions in the economy remained strong.
Let’s hope our friends to the south will start spending money, investing in real assets and remember that they are still one of strongest countries and economies in the world.

You just need to get Americans to start thinking like Canadians – for years we had to do it the hard way and with 1/10th of the population of the U.S. it should be easier for the U.S. to rebound. As good neighbours I hope things will improve for our southern cousins soon. We are beside you in Afghanistan, terrorism and we will be behind you as well in helping your economy rebound.
Kensel Tracy is a business coach and Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz in Chelsea, Quebec Canada.

IBM Figures Interactive Advertising Formats will Grow

I recently read this press release from IBM. The following information was provided. IBM Global Business Services unveiled its new report, "The End of Advertising as We Know It," forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50.

To examine the factors influencing advertising and explore future scenarios, IBM surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives globally. The IBM report shows increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked.

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising. To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

This gives marketeers even bigger challenges as the market is becoming even more diversified. Canadians now spend on average 14 hours per week on line. This is more time than is spent watching television. As the market changes so will advertisers. It will become more important for products to be even more consumer friendly as social networks will now dictate the next hot product. Traditional advertisers will need to work a lot harder in finding out who their audiences are and spending way more time developing customer loyalty. In the next few weeks we will talk about some of things you can do to successfully cultivate customers and find ways to sell is an every changing market.

Kensel J. Tracy is a a marketing coach and Senior Partner at the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. located in Chelsea, Quebec.