An insightful look at how you can put net profit income at theforefront of your small to mid-sized business Enable you to make changes that will create a profitable,sustainable business future, Six Steps to Creating Profitauthoritatively shows you how to maximize profit for your small tomid-sized, privately-held, service-based business. Shows how to avoid the business model where all income isdevoured by expenses, leaving a valuation that would not render anymeasurable sales revenue if the business should be sold Discusses how to create a company where actual profitgeneration is one of the primary goals Provides the steps necessary to create "true" profit Features coverage of rules of operation, visibility in themarketplace, marketing, cash flow, and management costs Demonstrating how measuring the results of change is vital andpart of the ultimate, ongoing, profit-based solution, Six Stepsto Creating Profit reveals how the before and after of eachoperational area is as important to evaluate as the intended changeitself.
This book will walk you step by step through the development of a profit plan for your business. This will help you increase your profits by up to 64%. It is a simple, practical, common sense strategy, but amazingly enough, only a small group of smart business owners uses it. In addition the book features the following: Checklist for watching your profit - a penny saved is a penny earned - simple ways to keep profit up and costs down. Planning and goal setting for business profitability - a wise man once said: "If you're not sure where you are going, you're liable to end up someplace else." Here are the tips and techniques that will help make sure you're always on the right track. How to reduce costs - a complete step-by-step organized program for cutting costs in your business. Clients of ours have achieved an average of 28% to 35% cost reduction with this technique, and you can too. Keep the money in your pocket with this one!. All these and much much more. My name is Meir Liraz and I'm the author of this book. According to Dun & Bradstreet, 90% of all business failures analyzed can be traced to poor management. This is backed up by my own experience. In my 31 years as a business coach and consultant to businesses, I've seen practically dozens of business owners fail and go under -- not because they weren't talented or smart enough -- but because they were trying to re-invent the wheel rather than rely on proven, tested methods that work. And that is where this book can help, it will teach you how to avoid the common traps and mistakes and do everything right the first time.
Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.
You don’t need to be a ‘numbers person’ to make your business profitable! With Planning a Profitable Business For Dummies, discover the secrets of financial success and how to generate above-average profits. Written especially for the Australian audience, Planning a Profitable Business For Dummies explains how to build a business with profit in mind, using smart pricing techniques and clear-eyed strategic planning. Whether you’re just getting started in business or still recovering from lockdown losses, this book points to where extra profits might lie. Flip through these pages to learn the importance of competitive positioning, smart pricing, and how best to secure an enduring advantage over your competitors. Reflect on how you can transition to becoming an entrepreneur, rather than just a business owner, and why this distinction is so important. Make a safe-and-sound transition into working for yourself by using proven business strategies Discover the fundamentals of financial projections, margins, and ratios — even if you aren’t a math whiz Secure finance for your business and manage your working capital wisely Identify savvy expense-saving ideas, and, when the time is right, sell your business for the highest price Business owners need straightforward, practical tips that ensure that extra edge of profitability. Find these tips inside Planning a Profitable Business For Dummies, and pave your path to financial success.
In this pathbreaking book, world-renowned Harvard Business School service firm experts James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard A. Schlesinger reveal that leading companies stay on top by managing the service profit chain. Why are a select few service firms better at what they do -- year in and year out -- than their competitors? For most senior managers, the profusion of anecdotal "service excellence" books fails to address this key question. Based on five years of painstaking research, the authors show how managers at American Express, Southwest Airlines, Banc One, Waste Management, USAA, MBNA, Intuit, British Airways, Taco Bell, Fairfield Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Merry Maids subsidiary of ServiceMaster employ a quantifiable set of relationships that directly links profit and growth to not only customer loyalty and satisfaction, but to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. The strongest relationships the authors discovered are those between (1) profit and customer loyalty; (2) employee loyalty and customer loyalty; and (3) employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are mutually reinforcing; that is, satisfied customers contribute to employee satisfaction and vice versa. Here, finally, is the foundation for a powerful strategic service vision, a model on which any manager can build more focused operations and marketing capabilities. For example, the authors demonstrate how, in Banc One's operating divisions, a direct relationship between customer loyalty measured by the "depth" of a relationship, the number of banking services a customer utilizes, and profitability led the bank to encourage existing customers to further extend the bank services they use. Taco Bell has found that their stores in the top quadrant of customer satisfaction ratings outperform their other stores on all measures. At American Express Travel Services, offices that ticket quickly and accurately are more profitable than those which don't. With hundreds of examples like these, the authors show how to manage the customer-employee "satisfaction mirror" and the customer value equation to achieve a "customer's eye view" of goods and services. They describe how companies in any service industry can (1) measure service profit chain relationships across operating units; (2) communicate the resulting self-appraisal; (3) develop a "balanced scorecard" of performance; (4) develop a recognitions and rewards system tied to established measures; (5) communicate results company-wide; (6) develop an internal "best practice" information exchange; and (7) improve overall service profit chain performance. What difference can service profit chain management make? A lot. Between 1986 and 1995, the common stock prices of the companies studied by the authors increased 147%, nearly twice as fast as the price of the stocks of their closest competitors. The proven success and high-yielding results from these high-achieving companies will make The Service Profit Chain required reading for senior, division, and business unit managers in all service companies, as well as for students of service management.
The goal of this book is to demonstrate to manufacturing, distributor, and service businesses that there are only seven critical business elements from which continuous improvement projects can be discovered, financially evaluated, and ranked before implementation. They are: Increase sales by increasing the percent of market coverage. Reduce expenses by reducing the percent of labor and non-labor expenses per sales dollar. Reduce lead times to reduce work-in-process inventory investment. Reduce setup costs to minimize product and component inventory investment. Maximize capital asset utilization percent. Minimize asset investment for invoice payment by controlling the collection period within the contracted time period. Maximize employee knowledge worker utilization by empowering them with financial and practical training related to these seven business elements. The information is uniquely organized so it can serve as a frequent reminder for both the experienced and inexperienced of the few principles and financially-based formulas that must be built into company culture if both customers and stockholders are to be satisfied. Project teams are shown how to discover and financially evaluate and rank a vast number of continuous improvement projects.
The carefully written, well-thought-out business plan fell out of fashion in the dot-com craze, but in the year following the technology stock market crash it has become apparent that this basic building block of business is an entrepreneur's best friend. Award-winning author and business planning expert Linda Pinson has updated the book that has helped over 1 million businesses get up and running. Both new and established businesses will benefit from "Anatomy of a Business Plan's mix of time-tested planning strategies and an entirely new chapter on marketing techniques.
The Conversion Equation is a no-nonsense guide for business owners to ensure their business gets more prospects, closes more sales, and makes more money immediately. Times have moved on, yet businesses haven’t changed their sales and marketing. Buyers are more knowledgeable and the traditional lead generation techniques of direct mail, exhibitions, telemarketing are no longer effective. The days of persuasion selling are gone while 61% of business owners say lead generation is their top challenge. Most businesses are doing marketing all wrong and wasting valuable time, spending hard-earned money, and using up limited energy on marketing that is not proven and does not work. In The Conversion Equation, best-selling author Dr. Terri Levine shares a proven process that has grown 8 multi-million-dollar businesses for her personally and has helped more than 6,000 business owners worldwide. She shows what is being done wrong in marketing and how to quickly shift to what works that is little known by almost all business owners. The Conversion Equation provides a process that can grow any business in any environment or situation. Terri teaches how to first have the right inner mindset, framework, and beliefs to generate qualified leads and have them close themselves. She combines her knowledge of human behavior and blends it with her Conversion Equation. The unique approach of this information is why her clients create more income fast.
Two top specialists in profitable growth and innovative customer-supplier relationships show companies of all sizes how to compete with the tech giants—by choosing and providing peerless value to the right customers for long-term success. Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive—and win—in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful, consumer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors. Written by Jonathan Byrnes, the legendary MIT-based expert on profits, pricing, and strategy, and John Wass, a key member of the team that made Staples a major national brand, Choose Your Customer shows managers how to: Identify the customers who are the most profitable—and focus on them. Provide services and experiences that can’t be replicated by the tech giants, no matter how much data they have, or how much automation they use. Support your chosen customers’ diverse and rapidly evolving needs to accelerate profitability and growth. These customer-driven strategies enable leaders to build a uniquely targeted business that the digital giants just can’t match. From unbeatable customer service to superior pricing and product selection, Choose Your Customer provides detailed and actionable advice on how to compete successfully with the big guys and how to increase profits as a result.
More than half of all businesses in the U.S. don’t make it to their fifth birthday, and nearly 70 percent are gone by year ten. How do businesses get into trouble? A hundred different ways. Poor cash flow, undercapitalization, lax financial controls, poor worker productivity, boneheaded mistakes, inefficient processes, failure to adapt, loss of enthusiasm . . . the list goes on and on. The fact is, many businesses that face life-threatening challenges, or are just stuck in the doldrums, can turn their fortunes around. And Jonathan Lack is the expert who can show you how. Lack is a turnaround specialist—the guy called in to reinvigorate a stalled company or revamp the poor practices that reduce sales and decimate profits. Once he’s done, the company is again on the road to growth and profitability. Plan to Turn Your Company Around in 90 Days is a pragmatic, step-by-step guide to helping your company not only survive but begin to grow again. Among other things, this book will teach you how to improve your company’s cash flow, how to better manage your payroll and employee productivity, and how to get better results from your marketing and sales efforts. Turn Your Company Around in 90 Days will help you develop a framework to create a strategic plan that will move your company in the right direction and breathe new life into tired or worn-out operations and products. Plan to Turn Your Company Around in 90 Days will immediately help your firm in the following areas: How to get to “cash flow positive” and then grow How to manage technology better How to manage your payroll and employee productivity How to improve marketing and increase sales How to restore profitability How to manage your board of directors and investors If you’re at all fearful that your company may not last the next couple of years, this book is for you. What you’ll learn How to manage and preserve cash How to reduce your expenses How to increase your margins How to increase employee productivity and improve operations How to assess the strength of your products and services How to increase sales and marketing efficiency How to create a strategic plan to turn your company around How to restore enthusiasm and become a desirable employer again Who this book is for This book is written for CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and CMOs of large companies, midcaps, and small businesses. It’s also for angel investors, board directors, private equity firms, and venture capitalists. It is intended to give readers the confidence that, by developing a basic plan, they can turn their company around and give it new life. Table of Contents How to Manage Cash Flow Better How to Manage Accounts Payable Better How to Manage Accounts Receivable Better How to Manage Employee Productivity Better How to Manage Technology, Facilities, and Manufacturing Better How to Manage Process Flows Better How to Better Understand Your Customers, Competitors, and Key Trends How to Develop a More Effective Marketing Strategy How to Develop a More Effective Sales Strategy How to Manage Investors and the Board of Directors Better How to Hire and Manage Your Turnaround Consultant How to Manage Yourself and Your Staff Better Sample Consulting Proposal
