Developing your business
Advice and tips for improving your business.
This section contains a wealth of tips and advice for improving your business processes and increasing your top and bottom lines.
Branding
Business processes
- Benchmarking best practice
- Designing for profit
- Does your business pass the risk test?
- Get better deals from suppliers
- Is outsourcing the best strategy?
- Making the most of your company meetings
- Should you buy in or manufacture materials?
- Stock answers
- Ten reasons to benchmark your business
- When cutting costs is counterproductive
General
- 7 ways to protect your business against a downturn
- Could your business survive without you?
- Getting more from your business meetings
- Helping the environment - and your business
- Identifying and preventing fraud
- Leasing equipment
- Most common fraud risk factors
- Protecting against disaster
- Relocating your business
- Use corporate giving to improve your bottom line
- When you suspect employee fraud...
- Work and travel
- Working from home
Planning and strategy
- An introduction to strategic planning
- Avoiding traps in strategic planning
- Building strategic alliances
- Finding your market niche
- How to survive when times get tough
- Innovate to grow
- Make your planning meetings count
- No business is an island
- Pricing strategies
- Six reasons why business plans fail
- Six steps to an effective business plan
- Small is profitable
- Strategies for increasing revenue
- The right kind of growth
Business finance
- Can you cut your interest payments?
- Don't cut costs - manage them
- Negotiate credit card fees
- Obtaining better financial control
- Raising finance
- Reduce your utility bills
- Save money on office furniture and equipment
- Three steps to cheaper financing
- Track your leases
- Watch your margins when the good times roll
Exit planning
- Do you have a succession plan in place?
- Preparing your partnership
- Selling your business
- Selling a business - your questions answered
Management skills
- Break the management mould
- Effective time management
- Leadership checklist
- Presentation skills
- The art of negotiation
Managing your staff
- Bringing training in-house
- Conducting a successful interview
- Consulting your staff
- Employee incentives...that won't break the bank
- Getting the most out of staff appraisals
- Hiring winning sales staff
- How to keep your best staff
- Identify your star employees
- Keep a look-out for signs of stress
- Managing absence
- Opening the books can improve profitability
- Recruiting executives
- Recruiting the right staff
- The do's and don'ts of incentive schemes
- Your staff handbook
