Posts Tagged ‘advice’

You remember that girl you dated at school (if you’re a women reading this, it was the guy you dated) – the one you were not so nice to, the one who’s heart you broke.  Well, thanks to the internet she can now find you, track you down, see where you work, what you do, and what your thoughts are on last nights TV.   The Internet, and especially in social media, has made all of our lives transparent.

But you know what else?  That potential customer you have been talking to can also see it all.

I met a freelancer the other day that had a twitter account, and on his feed he was busy tearing holes into all the processes, procedures and systems his last customer used.  Now what do you think would happen if after attending a contracting job ‘interview’ or putting a proposal in front of a new prospect, that person googled him?  Do you think he would get the work?  This is why you need to double-think everything you put into the cloud.

One of my former lecturers once told me that reputations and trust take a lifetime to build, and a moment to destroy.   I would suggest in this internet and social connected world, it’s even faster than that.

When it comes to invoicing, there is a golden rule of business which says “Invoice as soon as possible”.  This clearly gets the bill in front of the customer as soon as possible, which in turn helps cash flow as we get the money into our bank accounts as soon as possible.   But, sometimes later payments or earlier payments are more prudent.

The three possibilities for invoicing are as follows:

Up Front Invoicing
This option is preferable for both large scale projects, and when we are dealing with a new client.   At the start of any project, agreeing as part of the terms of business, an initial up-front payment (say a 50% deposit) means we have money in the bank before work is started.  This reduces the risk that we get half way through the project and the customer cancels, goes bust or just does not pay.   It also has advantages for very big projects which may take several months in that we don’t have months of no cash coming in, which can lead to all kinds of famine/cash flow problems.   Clearly, sometimes asking for money up front can be difficult, but this option does reduce a lot of the payment risks for you.

At End of Work Invoicing
To be honest, this is my general method of invoicing – raising a full and complete invoice once the project has been completed, and including all the quoted work, expenses and other costs.  I normally select this method of invoicing because I am not so good at asking for the money upfront (a case of do as say, not as I do ), plus I balance this off by the fact I have a reasonable amount of cash in my company account, plus the customers I have been lucky to land have been bigger name companies.

Delayed Invoicing
The third and most surprising option available is to delay the invoicing of the customer.  Even once the project is complete and handed over, there may be some situations where you don’t produce an invoice for a few days or even a few weeks.  This option is really only advisable for really trusted customers, but it can have a cash flow benefit close to period or year ends.   When an invoice is for a large amount, delaying the creation of the invoice for a few weeks can push the payment into the next VAT quarter or next year end, which then delays when the VAT has to be repaid, or when the corporation tax appears on the profits.    I am currently sitting of 3 or 4 large invoices which I will be sending out at the end of January, once I have completed my year end accounts – thus delaying the payment of a few hundred pounds of corporation tax by 12 months or so.

One of the small business rules that was drilled into me by a number of former bosses (and small business owners themselves), was that no matter how well or bad things are going, no matter how busy you are, no matter how much money you do or don’t have… NEVER STOP MARKETING!  Today’s customers could walk away or go out of business, and the work you are doing now may be completed or dry up… then what????

Marketing is important, no matter if you are a one man band, a contractor or a fully fledged small business – you need to do some form of marketing to have tomorrow’s customers ready to order.  But being a small business means you don’t have a marketing department or the big bucks to carry out the marketing activities that other companies may carry out.

That is where this book (Small Business Powerful Marketing On A Shoestring Budget) comes in.  It is like having a marketing department of your own with tips and ideas – but in printed format.

This book will show how you can grow your business on a small budget with some incredibly simple but powerful tips and tools. Topics covered include all the common options including PR work, targeted direct mail, exhibitions, business networking, e-marketing, advertising and telephone cold calling. Plus, it includes some newer more interesting ideas that will help push your business to the next stage.

This is a great marketing book, as it covers a little of the theory of marketing, but then cracks on with the practical steps needed to win new customers.  It never assumes that you have either the time to spend on marketing, or the budget of a large company.   Every idea is quick, simple and relatively cheap.

The book is sectioned in such a way that as well as flowing really well if you read it cover to cover, it can also be read by just going to the sections that particularly interest you.

RECOMMENDED!

So it’s the new year (happy 2011 by the way).  Christmas is over, it’s the first day back to work, and I am sure like the rest of us, you are promising yourself you will cut back on amount of food and drink that you managed to consume over the past week or so.

So with a new year, comes new opportunities and new changes.   In case you haven’t remembered some of them, here is a list of 5 things worth doing before you get too bogged down with your busy small business work:

Change Copyright dates on software and web sites
Yep, it’s a new year.  Which means all the copyright years which appear at the bottom of your applications and web sites are now out of date.  Time to update them.

Update your UK VAT invoices to 20%
Here in the UK, today (4^th Jan) means that VAT has increased from 17.5% to 20%.  So now is the time to update your invoicing templates, software and accounts system.  Of course, many online accounts packages will have taken care of this for you.

Set the goals and plans for your company
You may have set a new years resolution for yourself, but what about your company.  Now is the perfect time to set some business plans and goals to drive your contracting, freelancing or small business forward.

Review your prices for the year to follow
When is the last time you reviewed your price structure for your products or services?  When did you last increase your prices?   Now is the time to work out if an increase is in order.

Purge dead contacts, and Touch base with old customers
One of my own new year day business tasks is to run through my phone/PC contacts list and delete those contacts I have not spoken with for years (chances are the contact details and now wrong).   For those that remain, I then take time to make contact again – either through a text, email, a call or making an appointment to visit them.  New budget time is just 3 months away (for most companies), so now is the perfect time to make contact and suggest ways that they can spend their money in 2011.

Over the last 2 or 3 years, there has been a massive change in what we (as information consumers and users) want.  It used to be the mantra that information was king, it was the power of business, it was the currency of control.  When in doubt, more information was good, more options, more control.  But now… now keeping it simple rocks.  The minimum is best.  Chunky is choice.

Take web sites – web sites used to be complex – lots of information, lots of options, lots of buttons, lots of things to read and to click.   But we as consumers have changed – we don’t like all the text, we don’t want all those options, all the confusing buttons with icons – we just don’t have the time.  Now, we want it chunky, we want large colourful buttons with the words of what they do (Login, Logout, Checkout, Register), not buttons with pictures of disks, or doors, or tills.  Web sites with small text and lots of options (like Amazon) are vanishing – replaced with groovy Ruby-on-Rails web apps with 4 or 5 words on the page and lots of pictures.

Skipping Ahead

Gartner research recently published a paper saying that the typical information consumer now reads less that 30% of words available to them in printed form, and less than 25% of words on a web site.  No doubt people will be skim reading this entry.  Which is why it’s important to have section headings in your text (like the one above) to pull skimmers back in.

Make it work for your business

So what does this mean for freelancers and small business owners?  Well, if you are in web or product design, the rule of thumb is now to make it all big, colourful, chunky with big buttons.  For those of us that work with text (proposals, quotes, specifications and the like), it’s important that to have everything read and understood, we need to boil the words down, reduce them, and just get to the point.

Yesterday I talked about sending quotations to customers in PDF format.  Following this blog post, I received a couple of emails asking for a suggestion on how to generate PDF documents without the need to purchase the rather expensive Adobe Acrobat writer software (which costs between $500 and $1,500 depending on your intended use).

I am a big fan of the Cute range of products (including CuteFTP).  One of their products is CutePDF, and is a FREE print to PDF driver for windows.   If you use an application that can print, installing CutePDF will allow you to print directly to PDF documents – it’s how I generate all my quotations, specifications, etc.

CutePDF does have a paid version with more functionality (add watermark, protect documents, merge PDF documents etc).  However, the free version provides all the functionality you need to generate good looking PDF documents.

Its Recommended, and its Free!!

If somebody asked you to define your ideal (or target) customer, could you do it?  Have you even given it any thought, or is it one of those business concepts which are there for the big boys, and you are really looking for anybody, anywhere, that has money to spend and needs your service or product?

The reason I ask, is that earlier in the year, I had to define my ideal customer – for a number of marketing activities, and it was a difficult exercise for me.   I provide IT database software services to companies with… well…. databases.   Should that not do?  Does that not cover it (I asked)?  Actually, no – it turns out that being vague is one of the worst answers.   Without defining the target, how could I hope to know my customers when they come along, or hope to get my message across to the right people.

Take for instance, the concept of location.  That’s a fairly easy one I guess for most people.   They will say that their target customer is say, in their own country, or if you are completely virtual -anywhere in the world.   But let’s think about this.  If it’s anywhere in the world, do you want to deal with people in countries that can’t speak English?  And what happens if it all goes wrong?  Do you really want to travel around the world to sort out a problem for a few hundred pounds of sale value?

So I started to get specific.  I realised that because 90% of the time I have to meet the customer at some time, I didn’t really want to travel to Scotland, or Wales, or Ireland, or even spend 7 hours travelling too far north for a prospect sales meeting.   So I worked out that for me, my ideal customer lived within 127 mile radius from my home office.   I know that sounds specific – and it is.  127 miles from me, is 2 miles off of the French coast, yet includes major UK cities – London, Bristol, Birmingham, Southampton etc.  127 miles can be travelled in a couple of hours.   If I said 130 miles, I would be getting prospects in Northern France, if I said 120 miles, I cut off half of Bristol and Birmingham.

Once I had this concept sorted, the rest fell into place.   Other categories which I then defined were:

• Language – English speaking
• Company Size – over 30 people, but less than 200 (don’t want to waste time on small SME’s with little budget, nor go for the bigger companies that the big consultancy companies target)
• Industry – Private sector or NHS (my services don’t work for charities, or government offices, etc)
• Turnover – from £100,000 up to £5m – again see the company size logic
• Type of person I need to speak to – IT manager, information manager, Development Manager, CEO or MD
• Working Hours – Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm (don’t want to be working for companies that only operate at weekends, or out of hours)
• Requirements – Must use databases such as SQL Server or Oracle, maybe smaller databases like access, Informix or DB2

I could go on, but suffice to say that by defining as many categories as I could, and then refining them down as much as possible, when my ideal customer appears I know them and know that I can work with them.

Now it could be argued that by creating restrictions (such as location) I am reducing the number of potential customers, but then do I really want to travel 600 miles to Scotland or Ireland to try and sell my services, when there is a person 40 miles from the prospect who has a better chance of the sale and less costs to service them?

Tomorrow, I will talk about how I used the above information for land £10,000’s of revenue for less than a £100 investment.

If you haven’t spend the time to define your ideal or target customer, take 10 minutes and define them now.  I promise, it’s worth the effort.

I have just returned from a wonderful 3 week holiday to Kenya.  It was great not only because of the wildlife, relaxation and the time away from small business hassles – it was also good because it gave me 3 weeks to reflect on my small business and where I wanted to grow.

During these 3 weeks, I found myself propped up in a bar in Nairobi, chatting with another business owner (also on holiday) who was doing very well for himself.   We got chatting about business (as you do) and I asked him the question I always ask other business owners – “what is the one tip you would give small business owners”.  Unlike other answers I have heard which talk about cash flow, or invoicing, or getting your USP sorted, this one had a different answer.  Which was…

Don’t be scared of the word NO!

Without repeating the entire conversation here, he went on to explain that without doubt, the biggest problem small business have is staying true to themselves, staying on target to their goals, and not being dragged into directions and projects that do not fit with that the company does.  Therefore (he explained), if you are not happy with a project, if a customer wants too much, if a work co-worker walks in and asks for help (interrupting you), if an employee pushes the bounds or you feel you are being pulled in the wrong direction, don’t be afraid to say “No”.   Many small businesses are just so grateful for the money or so scared of making the wrong move, they will agree to anything or at least try to turn it into an advantage for them, even though the right move was to just say no and walk away.

However, he said it was a bit more complex than this.   No (he said) was a harsh word – a brutal full stop of a word.  “No” can cause resentment, embarrassment, arguments and hostility.    So when using the No word, the other word to use is “Because”.

Because is the reason.  Because tells the story and keeps things friendly.  Because makes it a professional decision.

If a conversation went along the lines “Can you create a product for me?  No!”, it’s the end of the conversation.   But, if the answer is “No, because this is not what we do, but let me point you to somebody who can” – this sets your credibility and keeps the door open for doing what it is your company does best.

Potatoe
Dan Quayle – Trenton, New Jersey, USA – June 15, 1992

A quick one from me today, but a risky one!!!  I could be the kettle calling the pot black!

A week or so ago was sitting on the London Underground, reading a couple of advertisements (not much else to do on the tube).  I had to read both advertisements twice.  The first one was for an on-line dating agency and had as part of the text, “…we will find you perfect match…”.  Take your guess at what the missing word was from “a”, “your”, “no”, “somebody’s”.   The next advert was for a tech college, and had so many buzz words, extra long sentences and repeated words, it made no sense at all.  It included the phrase “We ensure that no matter if you are a QMC or HND, our MTEs will elevate your skill status beyond the average return for the SEE for the exam year”.   Catchy!!

Both ads must had been printed thousands of times, been placed in hundreds of tube trains and posters in tube stations.  It would have cost both companies thousands of pounds.  Yet the adverts were junk.

Now we all make mistakes.  I am sure that this blog is full of typos, grammatical errors, spelling errors and such.  But, and here is the point, this is not my revenue generating work.   Any specifications I produce, quotes I generate, emails I send get checked, double checked and if somebody else is available, gets a 2^nd opinion.   This not only helps check that I don’t have any obvious errors, but that it can be understood by somebody who does not speak the tech language I speak.

If somebody had run these adverts past somebody else, these basic errors would have been spotted, corrected and I am sure made more of an impact.

So who is checking your work?

Working on your small business can be a juggling act; unless your company has grown to include lots of staff to run different functions for you, we can easily find that we have to wear too many hats every day.   Marketing, accounts, legal, sales, and even the cleaner.  Oh, and don’t forget the work for customers and on products that can actually generate revenue.

With so much going on and to do, it’s far too easy to get in a mess of things to be done, and the priority of work .  That’s where a work management system can help.

One of the most well known and respected is Getting Things Done.  If you want to get organized but don’t know where to start Dave Allen’s book will give you the tools to ‘Get Things Done.’ The book recommends a set of principles, habits and a filing system which encompasses everything that you want to do from the mundane ‘I must get new tyres for the car’ to the important major projects at your small company. If you have a hectic lifestyle this system will remind you that your library books need renewing or that the car is due for its MOT as well as that you need to write the first draft of a report for a customer or you want to email a friend to ask if they would like to go to a concert. You can concentrate on making that phone call or writing that report without worrying about all those other things that you need/want to get done. His system even finds room for long term ‘dreams’ which are not possible at the moment such as learning a second language, writing a book or travelling to China.

So when I’m not at my desk making phone calls, writing letters, or reading emails I can relax knowing that everything is in my filing system, calendar or in-tray. If I need to go into town to pick up some milk a quick check in the appropriate file will remind me I’ve also got some dry cleaning to pick up or whatever else needs doing in town. Setting up the system takes time and effort but it works. Dave Allen recommends clearing two whole days to clear an office and your mind of clutter and put it into a system which reviewed regularly. I didn’t have two full clear days and did it over a couple of weeks but my home office has stayed tidy, organised and fully functional since and other areas of my home/life are being transformed.

This is a practical book with lots of useful ideas for increasing productivity in all areas of life and reducing stress but if you are prepared to implement the whole system it can be life changing.

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