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Improve Your Cash flow: Investment

by Robert McCallion and Alan Warner

Political spats over the years have shown that much depends on the definition of money spent; one person’s cost is another person’s investment and the impact of cuts is seen as different in each case.

There is similar confusion in business because there is no clear understanding of investment; a simple accounting definition is that investment is what is taken to the Balance Sheet as capital expenditure – usually a combination of property, plant, equipment and vehicles – and it is normal for companies to be praised for making such investments for the future.

But what about the investments in research, training, marketing and product development? These go to the Profit & Loss Account as costs yet it could be argued that such expenditures are just as much investments as the ‘harder’ expenditure on tangible assets.

The answer is to forget the accounting conventions when talking about investment and making decisions about how much and where to spend. The right definition in this context is that an investment is any expenditure which produces benefits beyond this year. And even more important, no investment should be made unless these benefits are shown to provide value that justifies the cost involved.


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Improve Your Cash Flow: Teach Yourself

Improve Your Cash Flow: Teach Yourself
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Basic Accounting: Balance sheets The purpose of the balance sheet is to set out the financial position of a business at a particular moment in time. It identifies the different forms in which the wealth of the business is held. The assets of the business are often listed first followed by the liabilities (i.e. financial obligations) of the business.
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Get to Grips With Book Keeping: Cash flow Cash flow is often described as the blood of business, due to its importance in ensuring commercial survival.
Get to Grips With Book Keeping: Book-keeping history From approximately 4000 BC , the growth of trade led to a need for record keeping in the Mesopotamian river valleys. Findings dating from about 3300 BC indicate that Sumerian temple officials used wet clay tablets to record stocks and transactions. For example, landowners would record the number of livestock placed under the care of farmers with special clay symbols.
Close More Sales: Keep price breakdown information to yourself In a selling situation, a professional buyer will ALWAYS push you for price breakdown information, and the more you give them, the more they’ll use it against you! That’s why you should always keep price breakdown information to yourself.
Get to Grips With Book Keeping: Ask for a referral with every customer you meet After every sales visit, regardless of the outcome, if you can acquire the habit of asking a simple question just before you leave, you will be able to maintain a constant flow of high quality sales leads.
Close More Sales: Confirm every sales appointment with a PS letter or email Have you ever gone to an appointment that you had originally made by telephone, only to find that when you get there, the prospect is unavailable because they had forgotten about it? If so, then you’ll already know how frustrating it is - not to mention a complete waste of your valuable time! That’s why it’s always a good idea to make a point of confirming every sales appointment by letter or email, straight away.
Close More Sales: Make good use of the customer’s name People enjoy hearing the sound of their own name because it is distinctly personal. Indeed, in an increasingly impersonal world, perhaps it’s true to say that, in business these days, using someone’s name, remembering it and getting it right is more important than ever before.
Close More Sales: Use the ‘try before you buy’ close In a face-to-face selling situation, it usually proves to be an irresistible offer to let your prospects ‘try before they buy’ and enjoy the benefits of your product during a free trial period. Providing your product lends itself to his idea, it’s a great way to reduce sales resistance, and give your product the chance to sell itself.
Close More Sales: Exercise your expertise power As an experienced professional salesperson, the chances are you know more about your industry, your market, your competitors and your products and services than just about any other person alive – and don’t forget, that includes your buyers! The fact is, you are an expert, and let’s make no mistake about it, during the course of a sale that expertise is a powerful persuasive force.
Close More Sales: Harness print power The fact that something is printed tends to enhance its believability. It has a kind of built-in authority that the spoken word or handwritten materials just cannot match.
Close More Sales: Pay unexpected attentions Giving ‘unexpected attentions’ is the simple idea of delighting your customers by sending them a little something from time to time – something that’s totally unexpected.
Close More Sales: Use pre-printed telephone inquiry pads There are a number of benefits to using telephone inquiry pads. Quite apart from ensuring that you always come across as highly professional whenever answering the telephone to a new prospective customer, over time it provides a source of information that is crucial to your ability to evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional activities.
Close More Sales: Explore the buyer’s personal interests Always go beyond just finding out what buyers need and want and try to uncover any underlying personal motivations too. In effect, the personal interests of the buyer often represent a ‘hidden agenda’ which is potentially the most powerful of all information for the salesperson.
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Get Started in Franchising: What is the best franchise? People ask me this question all the time but unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. The best I can hope to do is to tell you how it works in practice.
There is no such thing as ‘the best franchise’. If it would exist, everyone would invest in it, the market would become oversaturated and it wouldn’t stay the best franchise for very long. The human factor comes into play as well.
Get Started in Franchising: International franchises People go on holiday, see some exciting concept and want to take a franchise back home. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as straightforward as that. Franchisees are entitled to receive a business package that has been tried, tested and proven to work – in their market! Unless the foreign company has representation in your home country, granting you a franchise would be outright irresponsible.
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