The 2021 holiday sales season will give businesses a chance to continue their online migration from 2020 trends, with opportunities for more refinement and improvements.  The key is to bring as much as possible online and integrate all of your customer touch points into an omnichannel of positive experiences. Let’s take a look at some trends in retail that we can apply to many other industries. These trends will strengthen our businesses and position us…

If you grant credit to customers or take recurring credit card payments, the unexpected can happen: a customer fails to pay on time, the credit card expires, or the check bounces. What can a business owner do to spend as little time as possible on these items but get the cash collected?  Plenty.  Here are our ideas: Re-examine your credit policy Is there any way you can have credit customers pay up front? Perhaps you…

While Net Profit and your cash balance are probably the first two numbers you look at on your monthly Profit and Loss Statement, don’t stop there.  There are a lot more gems you can glean if you dig a little deeper and look through the following six lenses at your data. Automation Opportunities Look at your labor detail reports as well as professional and outsourcing expenses to see what areas might be ripe for automating. …

Many people have complained about the worker shortages this year. If you need additional workers in order to grow your business, here are some ideas for your consideration. Where to Look for Workers We may think of workers as only being employees, but there are a lot more options if you’re open-minded.  Here’s a list of places to find workers of all kinds: Recruiters Employment agencies Online job portals, such as Indeed, SimplyHired, and ZipRecruiter.…

If you’re a business owner who wants to continually find ways to increase your profitability, then you’ll want to learn about direct and indirect costs. Breaking out your expenses into direct and indirect categories can help you arrive at the most profitable volume of sales for your business. Direct Expenses Expenses that fall into the direct cost category are ones that relate directly to the items you sell. Here are some examples. If you have…