Get Disciplined with Invoicing

Slow invoicing is one of the biggest reasons why businesses fall short on cash; and why many business owners don’t treat invoicing as a priority compared to day-to-day activities of delivering their product or service. But, if you don’t invoice, you won’t get paid by your customers. For example, create discipline around your invoicing practices by setting aside 15–30 minutes on the same day and time each week to review and process your invoices and payments. Be sure to address invoices that need to be created and sent to customers; invoices that have been paid: invoices that are outstanding and when payments are expected, and also be sure to review customers who are past due on their invoices and need to be reminded to pay.

Review Your Expenses

Every business is different and has its own specific expenses at various stages of development. Take a look at all the expenses your business has on an ongoing basis. Evaluate which expenses are necessary for running your business right now, which expenses are related to investment in business development opportunities and which expenses are simply “nice to have.”. To improve cash flow in your business, you want to minimize the spending outside of the necessary expenses and make sure you are investing in business development activities that are yielding or expected to yield a reasonable return.

Pay Your Bills on Time

When cash flow seems thin, it’s common for business owners to start paying their bills late. But, by paying late, you’re just moving your cash problem to a future period. In addition, you may be hurting your business’ reputation with vendors. Just like your business, your vendors rely on timely payments from their customers to maintain healthy cash flow and do their work. As such, it’s important to pay your bills on time. But if it’s really not possible to pay your bill on time, communicate with your vendor about your cash flow situation, how you are working to improve cash flow, and when you expect to pay them. If you maintain good relationships with your vendors by paying on time, they are more likely to help you out when cash flow is light.

Have a Financing Option

Despite your best efforts to track and manage your cash flow, unexpected events will occur that can throw off your cash flow. These could be positive for your business, such as a customer asking you to fulfill a big order, or negative for your business, such as a commercial landlord raising your rent. When these events occur, you might need to rely on another source of cash for your business, such as personal savings, credit cards, friends and family, a business loan, or even venture capital. It’s typically more difficult to get financing when the event is occurring — many financial institutions hesitate to provide financing to business owners in time of distress and those that do often charge usurious rates and/or you may not be able to carve out the time to evaluate and enter into a reasonable financing arrangement. Having a backup financing option in place will provide a cushion for unexpected events.

Taking proactive steps in managing your business’ cash flow will help you improve operations, free up cash for investment in business development, and reduce your stress as a business owner.

The post Successfully Manage Your Startup’s Cashflow first appeared on Five23.

Customers not only become engaged through your brilliant product or idea, but also with your team. Your team is one of your strongest assets when selling or promoting your product and your passion as an entrepreneur. Taking the time to keep your team happy, connected and motivated will indeed help your startup achieve and maintain success.

Now answer this question: How many times have you preferred a company over another just because of how they make you feel?

If you answered “more than once” ─ it is enough ─ startups want returning customers rather than having one customer buying only once and then leave with a bad taste in their mouths. As you probably know people are there for the experience, i.e. not consciously thinking, so why not to use this fact to your advantage? Train your team regularly, value their skills, hire smart, challenge them to constantly innovate (who doesn’t like to be challenged!), and you will have your product or idea reaching many places at once.

Think of those times when you liked a product so much that you couldn’t stop talking about it. You talk about it at a party, at work, at the gym, you told your friends how great this product was for you that everyone should get one, because you have had a great experience with it. Probably the company who created that product never found out how enthusiastic you were about their product, but many of your friends remembered what you said and went ahead to try and test this new wonder. Does this sound familiar? This is exactly what your team is doing at this exact moment ─ talking about your idea, product, creation or innovation. Now, can you really control what people are saying about it? Most likely not, but if you spend as much time creating ambassadors in your team/for your company as you do working on your idea you are set for success.

Help your startup through your team; become successful through better practices; get quick wins setting your team up to win. Little, small or big wins keeps brains alert, alert to the next and quicker win. Training your ambassadors and boosting their motivation through clarity on what is expected, as well as communicating goals and objectives, providing tools, knowledge or skills will bring comfort to the entire team ─ thus building a sense of purpose and belonging.

Build a solid platform for your startup and your future customers. It’s never too late to start getting people on board.

Learn more about Five23 and how we can help your team.

The post How Teams Engage Future Customers first appeared on Five23.