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A By-the-Numbers Approach to Determining Marketing Spend
Using a unit-cost strategy can help you get a handle on your marketing budget As mentioned in my last blog, it’s critical that companies decide upfront how much to spend on marketing in a given year. That’s tough for start-ups to do. But it’s a bit easier for established companies that use a unit-cost model.…
Why It's Essential to Determine An Annual Marketing Budget
What you need to know to make smart financial decisions on marketing costs Not long ago, I counseled officers of a fast-growing information technology firm on how to create a marketing budget. The company was generating tremendous margins, and its officers had a good grasp of their operating expenses. The hurdle confronting them was an…
How to Improve Your Financial Reports — and Thus Your Decision Making
Poorly structured financial reports stymie a company’s forward movement, but there exist steps CEOs can take to fix the problem. In my last blog, I noted some 80 percent of small and medium-sized companies are hamstrung by poor financial reporting. If you are the CEO of a company suffering from this problem, I urge you…
The Paralyzing Problems of Poor Financial Reporting
Misclassified expenses and un-segregated revenue streams result in poor financial reports that can halt a company’s progress in its tracks It’s hard to make informed decisions about a company’s future based on poorly- structured financial reports. Yet many small to mid-sized companies rely on reports beset with serious problems. No wonder these firms aren’t growing.…
The Best Approach to Performing Realistic Financial Projections
Now is the time to get started on financial projections for the coming year, and these are the fail-safe steps that will help you do just that. Remember the story I told in my last blog, the one about the CEO who doubled his sales as a result of projections? That CEO was focused on…
Financial Projections Are Crucial to Goal Setting
Projections can help CEOs chart a course from zero sales at the start of the year to the sales objective desired by year’s end Years ago, I sat down with a new client, and we chatted for hours. The topic: Whether I could help him determine if he would have sufficient inflow of cash to…
Top Tips for Tidying Your Balance Sheet
Follow these steps to ensure a clean balance sheet as the New Year dawns Last time, we talked about the importance of cleaning up your balance sheet at year’s end. Now let’s discuss how you’ll achieve that tidy balance sheet. While the steps needed to complete a year-end cleaning of a balance sheet aren’t terribly…
Advantages in Cleaning Up Your Balance Sheet at Year’s End
Buffing Balances Brings Benefits The passage from an old to a new year is the right time to focus on cleaning up your company’s balance sheet. Doing so can yield a broad variety of benefits. On the asset side of the balance sheet, the number one benefit is eliminating the “dead wood” of non-yielding assets. …
Cash Flow Management Woes Call for Expert Analysis
You can’t fix a problem you can’t see As discussed in my previous article, cash flow mismanagement is a common problem among small and mid-sized businesses. Many owners do not have the experience to precisely pinpoint where cash flow mismanagement has occurred, nor the background to develop plans designed to counter those cash flow issues.…
Cash Flow Mismanagement Can Drain a Company’s Lifeblood
Read on to learn the common ways cash flow is mismanaged — and what CEOs can do about it. An all-too-common source of trouble for small and mid-sized businesses is the failure to successfully manage cash flow. Cash flow is the lifeblood of a business, and if it’s not managed properly the company won’t survive…