3 Essential Tools for Starting and Maintaining a Small Business

written by: Ryan Hough; article published: year 2007, month 11;



In: Categories » Business » Small business and online » 3 Essential Tools for Starting and Maintaining a Small Business

We believe that there are 3 factors that drive the success of small businnesses.

1) Acquiring start-up capital
2) Finding customers
3) Accounting for, budgeting and controlling sales and expenses

The following resources will help your small businness achieve these success factors.

Acquiring Start-Up Capital

An adequate supply of capital is essential as many profitable businnesses fail because they don’t have enough cash to pay their employees and suppliers. But what is an adequate supply of capital? The only way to tell is by doing a significant amount of researhc on your potential market and formally documenting this in a businness plan. I’m sure you know that a businness plan is a very important document that is crucial to convincing your banker to lend you money.

There are two ways to obtain a businness plan.

1) Do it yourself by amending a businness plan template, or
2) Hire a professional to do it for you.

Obviously obtain 1) will be a great deal cheaper.

Our research led to a website that has over 60 high quality and free businness plan templates. We also found a directory that you can use to easily find a businness plan writer in your city – where ever you live in the world.

Finding Customers

Finding customers is a difficult and expensive task for service businness owners such as accountants, lawyers and plumbers. We believe that a cost effective marketing strategy for service businness owners is to simply give all their personal contacts a few businness cards.

Our researhc led to a few websites that have pre-designed businness card templates. We felt that the diversity and quality of these designs was outstanding. In addition, we found that you can obtain a significant saving by finding a printing service on the Internet. We found that you could get 2,000 full color businness cards for as little as US $150.

Accounting For, Budgeting and Controlling Revenue and Expenses

Accurate acccounting is very important for small businness owners. It’s essential that you have timely access to information that could make or break your businness. If stocks are running low – you need to know about it. If a large proportion of your debtors haven’t paid – you need to know about it. If you do not react to these situations quickly you may have a situation where you don’t have enough money to pay your employees – or worse still someone is stealing cash out the till.

Our researhc led to a website that compares and reviews top acccounting softwar for small businnesses. The cheapest softwar cost US $89.99 and the most expensive softwar cost US $1,499. It was interesting to note that the top 3 ranked websites were not the most expensive and cost between US $250 - US $300.

Hopefully you now have an idea of some of the tools that you can use to grow and maintain your small businness. If you would like to benefit from our researhc please visit our website. We do not charge for this researhc and offer the content freely on our website.

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