RELEASE THE FLOOD GATES GET THAT CASH FLOWING

1) Increase your sales! This one seems obvious. It is EXTREMELY important. But, increasing sales all by itself is often times not enough.

Solutions:

- Business/executive coaching for you.

- Sales coaching for you or your sales force.

- Upgrade your marketing plan.

2) Decrease your expenses. Cutting costs has an immediate impact on your bottom line. If you increase sales by $10K, it may generate a $2K increase to the bottom line (depending on your profit margin). But, if you cut $10K in expenses, it creates a $10K increase to the bottom line.

3) Require payment in advance. Depending on your industry you can get away with this. In fact, if you are the undisputed champ in your industry, you may be able to run your business very effectively this way and your customers will grow comfortable with it, because you're worth it to them, and they really have no other options since you have no real competition (if you are the undisputed champ and you have "monopolized" your market).

4) Track customer payment times. Some customers pay faster than others. Do more work for them and possibly less or no work for the ones that pay very slow.

5) Offer discounts or other incentives to customers to pay faster and/or penalties for customers that pay late.

6) Sell your accounts receivables to companies that buy them. There are people that will be happy to give you money now for money later. Of course they’ll take a percentage, but it may be well worth it for you.

7) Pre-sell R&D versions (beta versions) of your new product or service. Some people love to participate in “cutting-edge” ideas and would love to save money by paying in advance for some things.

8) Increase your price! Yes increasing your price can be risky, but often times it will work to your benefit. If you lose 2 or 3 customers, but the increased margins on your remaining customers covers that loss or more, then you are left in a situation where you can keep growing and have a larger buffer of positive cash flow.

9) Measure Your Cash Flow: There may be more than one way to do this, but the simplest is to track you income and how fast your getting paid as well as your expenses and how fast you are paying out (including payroll and everything). Then compare the two. Keep looking for ways to extend your pay out and decrease payment times to you. The closer you can get them to being the same number, the better.

10) Have a business line of credit. Most banks will easily give this to people with a decent credit score and 2 years in business.

11) Lease instead of buy. For equipment instead of buying you can lease and save the up-front cost. Plus there are tremendous tax advantages to leasing. You can even sell equipment you already own and lease it back.

12) Refinance your debts. You can refinance any of the loans you already have for better interest rates saving you money each month . If you own the building you use, you can refinance it and bring cash out to be put to better use. If your building is going to appreciate, it will do so no matter how much you owe on it.

RELEASE THE FLOOD GATES GET THAT CASH FLOWING - To learn more about this author, visit Christian Mickelsen's Website.

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