Tips for Finding a New Business Location

The experience, expertise and knowledge behind Corporate Business Solutions allows us  to effectively help small and medium – size businesses access information needed for growth.  Business owners often must scout for new locations, whether they’re opening a second storefront, upgrading or downsizing.  For those of you looking to find a new business location, we have tips that may help you:

  1. The type of operation – Your location should be consistent with your particular style and image. For example, if your business is retailing, decide if you want a traditional store or if you prefer operating from a kiosk (or booth) in a mall or a cart that you can move to various locations.
  2. Business demographics – There are two important angles to the issue of demographics. First, consider who your customers are and how important their proximity to your location is. Then take a look at the community. If your customer base is local, does a sufficient percentage of that population match your customer profile to support your business? Does the community have a stable economic base that will provide a healthy environment for your business? Be cautious when considering communities that are largely dependent on a particular industry for their economy; a downturn could be bad for business.
  3. Foot traffic- For most retail businesses, foot traffic is extremely important. You don’t want to be tucked away in a corner where shoppers are likely to bypass you, and even the best retail areas have dead spots. By contrast, if your business requires confidentiality, you may not want to be located in a high-traffic area.
  4. Accessibility and parking – Consider how accessible the facility will be for everyone who’ll be using it—customers, employees, and suppliers. If you’re on a busy street, how easy is it for cars to get in and out of your parking lot?
  5. Proximity to other businesses and services – Take a look at what other businesses and services are in the vicinity from two key perspectives. First, see if you can benefit from nearby businesses—by the customer traffic they generate—because those companies and their employees could become your customers, or because it may be convenient and efficient for you to be their customer. Second, look at how they’ll enrich the quality of your company as a workplace.

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the business experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Implementing Small Business Information Systems

At Corporate Business Solutions , we have the expertise to help your small to medium – size business access the knowledge that is often needed to achieve success, including utilizing information systems.

We realize that information systems have a huge impact on how accounting is done and what reports are generated. Not only are accounting tasks performed at a high speed, they are also made easy to do for most businesses. Calculations are done automatically with fewer errors than manual accounting, greatly improving efficiency.

Spreadsheets – Excel and other spreadsheets are used regularly by professionals to analyze data and perform complex computations and modeling. Changing columns and rows and having calculations update automatically with the new information has drastically reduced time spent on grueling calculations.

Specialized Accounting Software – A trend in programming practices is to target certain industries and make entire programs customized for those industries. The result is entire systems made with tools specific to certain sectors, such as retail, non-profit or manufacturing. That makes computerized accounting fast to set up and use. Instead of waiting for a programmer to develop your software, you can buy one off the shelf that is about 90 percent good for your purposes and requires only minimal customization.

Risks- Information systems help with speed and accuracy, but there is still room for human error. If incorrect information is entered, the system may not catch it. Errors and fraud still happen in accounting and internal controls are needed to prevent or detect these risks. A computerized system should have secure access to avoid unauthorized use; management must review reconciliations to make sure they are reasonable and accurate; and payments should be made only on approved bills to avoid fraud and errors.

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the business experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Small Business Accounts Receivable

The professionals at Corporate Business Solutions recognize that accounts receivables are critical to maintaining and growing a business.  Therefore, we work with small and medium – size businesses throughout the country to help improve upon procedures for accounts receivables.

If you’re a business owner looking to reduce your delinquent accounts, we have tips that may help you:

  1. Get Organized – If you are going to excel at accounts receivable management, you have to start from the very beginning. Be diligent in every step of the process but, most importantly, in whom you extend credit to. Net terms aren’t for everyone. Start by setting up a professional credit application that gives you a chance to get as much info as you can on these customers. Use this info to vet them so you are making proper credit decisions.
  2. Use the Credit Limit –Start extending more moderate terms with customers and let them know they can work their way up to more flexible terms. Not only is this an incentive but it allows you to really get to know customers’ payment habits before you give them too much room to breathe. It’s without a doubt the best way in accounts receivable management to ensure a customer will practice proper payment behavior.
  3. Creatively Communicate – Technology has allowed the customer relationship management game to completely transform. CRM is actually one of the most, if not the most important part of accounts receivable management. If you have a strong and healthy relationship with a client, they are not going to want to risk that. Be creative in how you connect with clients. If you are on social media, be sure to follow them on every medium, constantly commenting on their updates and showing them that you are listening. Also take note of your customers’ special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, store openings, launches, etc. By doing this, you create an emotional connection between you and your customer, making it harder for them to take advantage of your relationship with them.
  4. Start Early –Create a system that allows you to remind customers when they have a payment around the corner. If it is a week before payment is due, and you still haven’t received the check, shoot the customer a friendly reminder email simply reiterating the due date and how you accept payment. Don’t make it harsh in anyway; they haven’t paid late yet!
  5. Don’t Wait –As soon as the payment is past due, get a reminder letter in the mail. However, don’t just use a generic letter. Be creative in your accounts receivable management and sculpt the letter’s language to be appropriate for the situation. If somebody is a chronic late-payer, you might want to up the severity, where if it’s someone’s first time offense, keep it friendly. Remember, the longer you wait to collect, the harder it is. Develop a system to quickly go after late payments as soon as the due date has passed.

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Improving Construction Bids

The professionals at Corporate Business Solutions utilize our knowledge, experience, technology, and an unrivaled commitment to providing client service to help bring about positive change in small to medium-size businesses.  Our business consultants have helped a number of contractor clients improve upon their bidding processes, which ultimately increases their bid to award ratios.

In the modern-day marketplace, many project owners are looking for more than just the lowest bidder.  Instead, they are analyzing price along with the reputation of the bidder. If you want to increase your chances of winning more profitable jobs, consider implementing some of these business tips:

  1. Marketing plan – Companies who invest in their futures make more money than those who don’t. Create an image, logo and marketing materials to build an impression of who you are, what you stand for and what you specialize in.
  2. Expertise, specialty or niche – Successful companies are known for being the best at something. Some are known for project types, difficult jobs, fast track or design-build. To be the best, your customer must know what you specialize in. Let them know and tell them again and again.
  3. Time and place is everything – Estimators are more than price givers. They are in the sales business and spend lots of time with their customers. To be at the right place at the right time, you must be in your customer’s office regularly.
  4. Expand your sales skills – To win great jobs takes professionalism, knowledge and confidence. Firms who are awarded more jobs are well trained in sales and presentation skills, and they show up at the project interview with their team rehearsed and ready to impress.
  5. Involved in industry and community- Successful companies are seen by everyone, everywhere. They are active in their industry associations and community organizations. They serve on boards of directors and give time and money to make things better.
  6. Technology – Industry leaders often use the latest tools, techniques and technology to stay ahead of and lead their customers. They show the future to their customers instead of complaining about changing.

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Loans for Small Business Owners

At Corporate Business Solutions , we have the expertise to help your small to medium – size business access the knowledge that is often needed to achieve success.  In today’s market, we realize that many business owners often seek out small business loans for assistance in growing their brand.  Although small business loans became extremely difficult to obtain after the recession of 2008, changes have recently been made in order to help improve the chances of business owners successfully securing much-needed business loans.

A great resource for business owners is the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA.) This organization offers a variety of small business loan programs for very specific purposes:

  • General Small Business Loans: 7(a) – The 7(a) Loan Program, SBA’s most common loan program, includes financial help for businesses with special requirements.
  • Microloan Program – SBA’s Microloan Program provides small, short-term loans to small business concerns and certain types of not-for-profit child-care centers.
  • Real Estate & Equipment Loans: CDC/504 – The CDC/504 Loan Program provides financing for major fixed assets such as equipment or real estate.
  • Disaster Loans- SBA provides low-interest disaster loans to businesses of all sizes, private non-profit organizations, homeowners, and renters. SBA disaster loans can be used to repair or replace the following items damaged or destroyed in a declared disaster: real estate, personal property, machinery and equipment, and inventory and business assets.
  • Loan Programs – From starting up or expanding your business to recovering from disasters, SBA loan programs are available to help your business succeed. You can explore various types of loans that may be available to help your business succeed. You can explore various types of loans that may be available to you, including: 7(a) loans, which are part of SBA’s most common program; real estate and equipment loans; disaster recovery and even exporting!

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the business experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

5 Tips to Grow Your Small Business

Corporate Business Solutions was formed by a group of business professionals who collectively have provided business analytical and consulting services to clients. Currently, the experts at Corporate Business Solutions use their expertise to help business owners create a path to success.

If you are looking to grow your business, here are general business tips that may be beneficial to you:

  1. Reduce and Redirect IT. Most businesses carry too much in their IT infrastructure. Often, IT costs can be reduces by up to 30% by investing in advancing technologies to work smarter. By embracing technology, small business owners can free up part of the budget for business growth.
  2. Offer Employees Freedom. Empowered employees are typically happier, loyal and motivated, which will help in your business growth. Today’s employers need to build environments to accommodate a healthy work-life balance. Telecommuting, work from home options and flexible hours are no longer ‘job perks’, they are now ‘expected’. Employees should be able to work and be managed effectively from anywhere as seamlessly as if they were in the office.
  3. Allow Collaborative Working. Enable employees, partners and vender’s across multiple locations to work together more effectively. Employees should be able to access, share and manage single versions of documents instantly from a single place, regardless of their location. Getting this right will transform the efficiency and creativity of your business and create even better partner, and customer working relationships.
  4. Support Customers. Consumers today often want information to solve their problems instantly. That’s why it’s important for businesses to engage with customers proactively across all available channels – from traditional phone and face-to-face discussion, to interactive websites, social networking and intelligent call handling. Businesses must be agile and sharp enough to deal with issues before the customer has a chance to even pick up the phone.
  5. Be Ready to Adapt. With the evolving trends in business, a small business owner must be able to swiftly adapt. This means listening to customers and be ready to participate in the new channels they are using.

To learn more about us and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the business consultants at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

 

Dare to explore.

Blogging Tips from Corporate Business Solutions

Corporate Business Solutions helps business owners implement marketing techniques that are critical in growing their business, and can help with the popular tactic of blogging. Blogging is a long-term, on-going marketing strategy that supplements and grounds other marketing campaigns over the life of a small business. It takes time to develop a reputation as an authority in your area of expertise and even longer to develop the loyal following that triggers purchasing. Visualize the arena in which you would like to establish your small business as a market leader and trusted authority; then brainstorm a variety of topics that would showcase that expertise.

These blogging tips can help small business owners improve their blogs:

  1.  Skip the sales approach – The surest way to develop trust and long-term loyalty is a selfless and generous approach that shows authentic interest and consideration for the needs of the reader. Focus on blog topics that help your audience in some specific, actionable way. Blogging is not an opportunity to sell yourself or make constant pitches to your customer base to drive sales. Blogging serves as a way to develop a personality and conversation with your market that allows them to explore their relationship with you without the pressure of purchasing.
  • Listen – Take time to consider what your audience is talking about in the social media arena. Aim to identify their needs because you want to help them, not because you want to sell to them.
  • Offer a useful solution – Once you have identified what your readers are asking for, develop a response that answers their question or solves their problems. Generously share tips and tricks, suggestions or experiences solely for the purpose of providing help.

2. Quality is key – Your small business blog is not an area in your marketing strategy where you can skimp. In a world where content is virtually endless, readers demand captivating, high quality content that consistently respects their expectation for purposeful writing.

  • High quality images – Many bloggers make the mistake of treating blog images as placeholders instead of storytellers. In the sea of available content, readers are visually drawn to the most captivating images. Use high resolution, appropriately composed images that highlight your writing and work collaboratively to deliver relevant information to your audience.
  • Proof –Be sure to implement editing and review processes and outsource writing if it is not a best fit within your team. Poor grammar and sentence structure can frustrate readers and send the wrong message about your attention to detail.
  • Useful topics – Regularly check your editorial calendar to be sure your topics are truly useful and relevant.

3. Engage your readers – Every blog post should have a very specific “call to action” for your reader. If your blog post is properly meeting a need to a question your audience is asking, the call to action should provide specific steps to achieving that resolution on their own. 

  • Submissions – Ask your audience to engage by submitting a story or image that relates to your blog post. Ask them a specific question that you’d like them to answer in the comments or take a poll. Bring them into the conversation.
  • How to’s – Readers are instantly drawn to a step-by-step guide to answering their question. Use images and numbered steps to clearly demonstrate how they can apply this newly learned skill with relative ease.
  • Resource links – Include related links that propel readers to similar content on your blog. Encourage them to read more than just one post by planting seeds to other resources on your website.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Get there first.

Common Business Mistakes to Avoid

At Corporate Business Solutions, we are committed to bringing the positive change that your business needs to have sustainable growth and profits.  This often means building relationships with customers, adding technological avenues and getting products quickly to market. Ultimately, we are committed to being the most impactful partner you will ever have.

Since small business owners often wear so many hats, mistakes can arise. However, mistakes in managing and operating a business can threaten the organization’s long-term viability. Consequently, it’s important to identify the organizational priorities never to overlook or neglect.

  1. Unclear Purpose– Every organization must articulate why it exists and what it’s striving to achieve. Owners must focus time and attention on developing a mission and vision.
  2. No Plan – Developing a strategy and having a plan to achieve objectives are critical to any organization’s success. Large or small, every business needs a plan.
  3. No Written Goals – The business must develop goals by writing them down and assigning accountability to someone for achieving them. Each goal should have an identified employee who is responsible for achieving it within a defined timeline.
  4. No Budget – It’s not uncommon for businesses to operate without a budget. However, this is a mistake. To ensure profitability, the owner must budget annually to continuously fund business strategies and goals while controlling costs.
  5. No Employee Accountability– Organizations that fail to hold employees accountable for job responsibilities and goal achievement are guilty of mismanaging resources. Employees who are paid wages or a salary without fulfilling job responsibilities are providing lesser value to the business.
  6. Not Anticipating Market Changes– The market changes quickly in every industry making it important to keep an eye on shifting trends in areas such as technology or customer requirements. Along with tracking changes, the owner has to include the responsibility of day -to-day operational tasks.
  7. Not Understanding Customers– Small businesses need to take the time to learn how customers use their products and services and to create systems and processes to meet those needs. It’s important to learn about the customer experience, which can be accomplished by simply asking them.
  8. Lack of Communication Successful organizations create structured processes to manage how information is shared with both employees and customers. Organizational transparency creates a business environment that employees enjoy and customers are drawn to.
  9. Not Always Looking for Ways to Improve– Continuous improvement are how businesses develop and enhance products and services by constantly looking for ways to improve how and what they do.
  10. Not Celebrating Successes – The burden of the daily grind keeps businesses from taking the time to stop and acknowledge how far they’ve come. Celebrating success along the way helps build strong teams and strengthen employee engagement.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Like your reflection.

Improving Productivity in the Small Business Workplace

The business professionals at Corporate Business Solutions help business leaders improve productivity in their workplace. Our experts recognize that productivity is a huge factor for business growth and expansion. In fact, between employee attrition and lost productivity, companies lose $350 billion every year. Facing that kind of loss, it’s no surprise that all-size companies look for ways to mitigate employee flight and increase worker efficiency.

Many business owners trust us to be their partners in improving productivity. Our business consultants solve the most intricate and unique challenges you are experiencing in the evolving marketplace.  While there are best practices that are applicable to all organizations, we understand that no two businesses are identical.

If you are a business owner or leader concerned on productivity, here is some data you may be interested in:

  • Worker Reliability: Employee attrition is costly; only 50 percent of hourly workers stay on the job for one year or longer.
  • Telecommuting Employees: Work-at-home employees stay at on the job 20 percent longer than employees with the shortest amount of time at a job. However, those work-at-home employees produce 1.6 percent less than their office-bound colleagues.
  • Rule Breakers: Do you prefer to hire employees who toe the line? The data says that employees who identify as rule-followers actually break the rules 67 percent more often than those who don’t make that claim.
  • Better Browsers: Workers who use Chrome or Firefox—instead of Internet Explorer—stay at their jobs longer, miss 15 percent fewer work days, and deliver higher customer satisfaction.
  • Social Employees Do It Better: Job performance is higher among employees who use three to four social networks compared to those who are less involved with social networks.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.

Like your reflection.

Tips for Hiring New Team Members

Corporate Business Solutions was formed by a group of business professionals who collectively have provided business analytical and consulting services to thousands of clients and have been involved in building some of the fastest growing analytical, management consulting and strategic tax planning firms for the owners of small and mid-size companies in business today.

We assist entrepreneurs in all aspects of their business, including hiring new employees.  If you are a business owner beginning your own hiring process, we have tips for you from our professionals:

  1. Focus on the candidate’s potential. Nothing is more important in a new hire than personality. While having the right skill set may seem essential, the fact is, skills can be acquired, but personalities cannot.
  2. Check social media profiles. Most employers do a background check, including a quick Google search on the candidate’s name, to see what is shown online. Today, we suggest looking at social media profiles to evaluate their online presence even further.
  3. Ask the right questions. In advance, determine questions that will help you decipher a candidate’s drive and ambition. This will help you understand how the person works, and whether or not your prospective employee will grow with your business.
  4. Let candidates ask questions. To help gauge whether your prospective candidate has the right personality for your particular job, it’s important to help that person understand the company’s work environment. Allowing prospective employees to interview you for a change will give you a chance to see what’s important to them.
  5. Don’t judge a book by its cover. It’s easy to write off candidates based on their appearance, but it’s more important that you consider how well they can do the job and if they’re a good fit in other ways. When interviewing, it is important to think outside the box. Candidates who fall outside the lines of your requirements may still be the perfect fit for your business.

To learn more and / or to schedule your complimentary appointment with the experts at Corporate Business Solutions, call us at 877-357-9366.