Archive for October 2011
Business Coaching For Small Businesses
Coachingis the practice of supporting an individual or a client, through the process of achieving a specific professional or personal goal. The structure and methodologies of coaching are very numerous with one unifying feature, coaching approaches are predominantly facilitating in style, which is to say that the coach is mainly asking questions and challenging the coachee. A number of approaches are used within the coaching methodology. Coaching can be performed with individuals as well as groups. It can be performed in person, over the phone and online. The principles of coaching remain the same, no matter what field you’re in.
Here we are talking about the Small Business Coaching. It is very similar to Sports coaching. In sports, a coach motivate and pushes an athlete to achieve optimum performance, provides support when they are exhausted and teaches him to execute plays that their competition does not anticipate.
A Business Coach does many of the same things as a sports coach, but in a way that is focused on creating a successful business. His role is to coach business owners through support, accountability, guidance and encouragement.
Business Coaching helps owners of small and medium sized businesses with their marketing, sales, management, team building and so much more. And just like a sporting coach, the Business Coach will make you focus on the game or your goal.
Hiring a Coach is a big step for any business and should not be entered into lightly. By asking some questions you can find out if they would be a good fit with your business. First, you can find out about their background. Find out are they a specialist in this field or a generalist? Have they are able to handle any eventuality your business may face in future? Find out about their successes and failures. Also you can ask for references from other businesses they have worked with.
Small Business Coaching will help you achieve even more business success if you are just starting up in Business or running a small company. It can help you and your business achieves your full potential. Now coaching is easily available, very commercial, results focused and geared toward coaching for business growth.
The outcomes that clients most often attribute to their coaching are a higher level of self confidence and self awareness, a more balanced life, and smarter goal-setting and lower stress levels.
Every small or mid sized business encounters problems from time to time. Here are some most common problems that small business coaching can help you in
1. You spend your day fire-fighting rather than developing your business
2. You find it hard to motivate yourself or business partners
3. You need to generate more enquiries and new leads
4. Your sales team don’t perform as well as they should
5. It’s hard to recruit, retain and motivate good quality staff
6. Your business seems to break down when you’re not around
7. You are losing customers due to the competition and want them back
8. You think lots about business growth, but don’t know where to start etc.
The Accounting Equation: Explained
The foundation of most businesses is its grasp on certain accounting principles, such as keeping track of it profits gains and losses, as well as its assets and liabilities. Whether the structure of a business is a simple sole-proprietorship or a more complex corporation, certain accounting fundamentals need to be applied. One of which that will be discussed in this post is the Accounting Equation and its purpose.
The Accounting Equation – is the equation that displays both sides of a business’s finances, which can define double entry accounting as well as it shows the balance of its assets, owner’s equity, and the businesses liabilities. (Tracy, 2008, p. 343)
Below is the Accounting Equation in the three different forms it can be applied:
Assets = Owner’s Equity + Liabilities
Assets – Liabilities = Owner’s Equity
Owner’s equity + Liabilities = Assets
So how can the above equations be applied to a business’s financial statement? Okay, so let us say the liabilities of a company equals to 3.5 million and the owner’s equity is 2.5 million, than the Assets would be 6 million. Which than would look like this:
3.5 million (Liabilities) + 2.5 million (Owner’s Equity) = 6 million (Assets)
The above equation would be applied to the company’s balance sheet at the end of the accounting period as well as the accounting cycle. A company’s balance sheet is prepared at the end of an accounting period and features a summarized calculation of the company’s assets, liabilities and the owner’s equity. (Van Blokland & Knowles, 2008)
For example, we have a company whose name is Widget Inc and their accountant prepared a balance sheet for the end of 2008. The company’s assets include cash of .4 million, an inventory of .2 million, property value of .3 million and equipment worth .6 million. Widget, Inc.’s liabilities add up to .5 million, their accounts payable is .2 million and their accrued expense payable equals to .2 million. The owner’s equity is comprised of an invested capital of .5 million and .1 million of retained earnings for 2008. This would mean that the total in assets would be .5 million and the collaborated amount of liabilities and owner’s equity would equal to the same; meaning the books are balanced out. Please see the figure 1-1 below:
In the following post, I will describe and explain the accounting equation. In addition, this article will supply samples of statements as well as the main purposes for accountants to utilize this equation, when handling the books. Alternatively, this text will also mention the importance of using this accounting practice for business owners and executives.
Widget Inc.
Balance Sheet
as of December 31, 2008
(Dollar amounts in the millions)
Assets
Cash .4
Inventory .2
Property .3
Equipment .6
Total Assets .5
Liabilities
Liabilities .5
Accounts payable .2
Accrued Expense Payable .2
Owner’s Equity
Invested Capital .5
Retained earnings .1
Total Liabilities & Owner’s Equity .5
Above is an example of a balance sheet that has been calculated at the end of a financial period, how does the accountant figure out the numbers to populate the above sheet? From the beginning of the previous financial period or at the beginning of the business entirely, all receipts, and documentation on any and every transaction is recorded into a journal and then is finalized by being posted to a ledger. The way the transactions are recorded into the journals; usually there is more than one journal, each designated to a specific account. For example, if we had three journals one for the company’s liabilities, one for the company’s assets as well as for the owner’s equity and Widgets, Inc. made a ,500.00 payment for a shipment; at the same time they received a payment from a big account (,000.00). The three journals would look like they do in Figure 2-1:
Journal #1 Journal #2 Journal #3
Assets Liabilities Owner’s Equity
Shipment Received
(,500.00) ,500.00 (,500.00)
Customer’s Payment
,000.00 (,000.00) ,000.00
Total
,500.00 (,500.00) ,500.00
The above is also an example of double-entry accounting, which is when you document a transaction and its effects on the company’s finances, in the form of debits, and credits. (Tracy, 2008, p. 69) Throughout the course of the financial period should zero out, meaning records of the businesses financial events were thoroughly maintained as far as to the standards of GAAP or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
In conclusion, the accounting equation is a viable and fundamental tool to accounting practices, where when used to calculate expenses, and assets can give the company’s owner, owners, or executives the ability to keep track of the company’s as well as individual department’s finances. In addition, come the end of the financial period and say if the books did not balance, the accountant, auditors as well as financial members of the company would be able to back track to the necessary transaction. This could have easily been a data-entry mistake, or even reveal the source of fraud or any other king of money laundering taken place within the infinite levels of a company.
References
Tracy, J. A. (2008). 3: Bookkeeping and Accounting Systems. In J. Friedman (Ed.), Accounting for Dummies (4th ed., p. 69). Hoboken, NJ: Inc.-Wiley Publishing.
Tracy, J. A. (2008). Glossary: Slashing through the accounting jargon jungle. In J. Friedman (Ed.), Accounting for Dummies (4th ed., p. 343). Hoboken, NJ: Inc.-Wiley Publishing.
Van Blokland, PJ, & Knowles, B. (2008). A Beginner’s Guide to the Balance Sheet. Retrieved April 18, 2009, from University of Florida Web site: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE153
Huge Benefits of Business To Business Marketing
Business to business marketing has advantages over marketing to consumers that make marketing even easier. Business to business companies market their products and services to businesses rather than consumers in general. Some of the most successful businesses exclusively supply to other businesses. This is one of the most lucrative business models possible today, and it has proven to be especially profitable when the business is conducted online. If you’re considering going into business providing products or services, then you’ll want to look into operating a business to business company.
With online business to business operation and marketing, many of the expenses of running a traditional business are gone or greatly reduced. This positively affects all the other aspects of running the company. Less expense means less time spent managing the money going out, and more money for important things like business to business marketing and promotion. No company will succeed without an advertising and promotion budget. And as many large, worldwide corporations have shown, the more money spent advertising, the more people become familiar with the brand. That breaks down into more customers and more profit.
A company that does its business chiefly online won’t need the storefront that a traditional business does. And company that relies on business to business marketing wouldn’t benefit from a traditional storefront anyway. Since traditional customers won’t be coming in and out browsing goods or asking about services, the need for a traditional shop area is eliminated. This drops overhead costs dramatically. There’s no huge warehouse or building to pay heating, cooling and lighting bills on, and no need for insurance to protect customers.
There’s also no need to pay a staff to man such a store, which eliminates many of the expenses associated with being an employer. An online company that chiefly exists through business to business marketing may still have employees and some expense, but the lack of a storefront will greatly reduce the costs associated with managing employees.
Now, money that would have been spent on necessities like payroll and utilities can be better spent business to business marketing and increasing the customer base. The expense of promotion is also lessened with this business model because it’s so much easier to identify a target market. There’s not as much need to figure out exactly which consumer to market to as there would be with most consumer products.
With business to business marketing, what it is that you’re offering to business automatically identifies your target markets for you. If you’re selling general business products like paper or office supplies, then your market is large and wide open, and you’d do best finding a particular angle to market your products to each specific industry. But if you choose a product or service that’s very specialized, your marketing research is simplified a great deal.
The internet is great for b2b marketing because of its word-of-mouth properties. While many of your customers will find you thanks to your business to business marketing and promotion, many more will because of social networking.