Factoring Blog - For Small Businesses

Docstoc.com is a site where people can upload their business forms and templates for documents.  Then people like you come along and can download and use them.  In other words, it’s a community sharing site for business, legal, tech and financial documents.

• Pros: There is a wide variety of documents. I saw anti-spam policy documents; startup expense worksheets; website design consultation agreements; employment agreements; non-disclosure agreements; disaster recovery plans. You’ll find them in many popular formats, including Excel spreadsheets; Word documents; PDFs; PowerPoints.

• Cons: The quality is all over the place — it’s only as good as the person or company uploading it. And it’s always dangerous to take someone else’s legal documents and act like your own attorney. You know what they say: someone who represents himself or herself has a fool for a client.

Still, it’s worth checking out to see if you have any documents to upload and share.  If your document is marked with your company brand and has links to your website, it could be a way to spread the word.   

Just be careful about relying on the documents for anything where a lot of money is potentially at stake or there is a chance of getting sued if something goes wrong.

When the “Do Not Call” registry list was initially founded in 2003, consumers could list their personal phone numbers for a 5-year period.  After that, they would have to re-register in order to stay on the “Do Not Call” list.

As of September 2008, 150 million “Do Not Call” registrations by consumers were set to expire, leaving them open to telemarketer calls.

Humph!  Bad news for consumers, good news for telemarketers, that was.

Well, hold the phones.  Congress just passed legislation that stops the removal of consumer phone numbers from the list.  Essentially the legislation just continues the Do Not Call list and retains the numbers that were put on there.  In other words, telemarketers still won’t be able to call the numbers on the list.

So, if in your personal life you don’t want to be bothered by telemarketer calls during dinner, then you’re protected.

If you run a telemarketing firm, well you already know about the Do Not Call List.  You don’t need me to tell you anything about it.

Note: the List does not apply to B-to-B telemarketing calls, political and charity calls, and some other exceptions.

Go here for the Do Not Call Registry to register a phone number.

Mike Stevens over at AllBusiness.com has an interview with U.S. Presidential candidate Senator John McCain’s chief economic advisor that’s pretty interesting.

McCain’s advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, was asked what government could do to make it possible to keep jobs in America.   His response points out that businesses are going to do what makes financial sense.  If the costs are significantly lower offshore, then that’s where they’ll go.  He then goes on to point out that government can help reduce costs here in the United States:

The basic calculus is pretty straightforward. You look at what it will cost, what your productivity is here, and what it is there, and how you’ll net out. Business people have to do that arithmetic. But the government can do a lot on both sides of that equation. Cutting taxes and alleviating direct cost burdens and, more slowly, [enacting] health care reforms that take some of the cost pressure off, and education reforms that produce better workers in the U.S.

(Stevens said he asked all the candidates the same question and only McCain answered. So that’s why the focus on McCain.)

As long as the cost structure is lower for producing goods offshore, most businesses will make the cost effective decision.

What do you think? Is the right approach to lower taxes, reduce expensive government paperwork and do similar reforms? Will that make any difference to outsourcing?

The national median salary for a small business CEO is $233,500.  That’s with an average of about 90 employees in the company.  The information comes from a survey by Salary.com.

The US News and World Report adds this information about the survey:

• CEOs in finance, construction, and real estate tend to make even more than their peers. Small-biz owners in the rental and leasing industry, for example, brought in an average of $320,000 this year. (The average salary for their assistants? $46,100.)

• The more their companies earn, not surprisingly, the more CEOs take home. CEOs of businesses with $25 million to $35 million in revenue earned 113 percent of the national median salary (about $263,000). For owners with more than $50 million in revenue, the number jumped to 159 percent (about $371,000).

Of course, there are plenty of owners of small businesses who plow the profits back into the company and take out significantly less in salary. My guess is that more business owners plow their money back into the business, than take out large salaries — especially when the business is young or it is under 20 employees.

Whether yours is a technology business or you just use tech in your business, technology is crucial to running most businesses today.  If we were suddenly to have our technology disrupted or suspended, most businesses would come to a screeching standstill. 

PCWorld has an excellent rundown of how the U.S. Congress acted on key technology issues.  Among the highlights:

• Congress extended the moratorium on Internet taxes (a good thing). Of course, taxation is a tricky area. Your company may still be subject to taxes on certain transactions, so be sure to take your cue from your tax advisor.

• Patent reform did not happen (a bad thing). To date it’s mostly been large corporations that have gotten hit by claims from patent trolls, i.e., those who file broad patents purely for the purpose of suing. However, small businesses are starting to get ensnared and of course we all suffer when unnecessary litigation raises costs of doing business.

If you want to know more about how technology issues fared in Congress in 2007, read:  Congress Cools on Tech Issues in 2007. 

Are Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and high deductible plans right for everyone? 

According to Dawn Rivers Baker, Editor of the Microenterprise Journal, probably not.  HSAs and high deductible healthcare plans are good for those who are in reasonably good health.  But they are not good for those with chronic conditions with heavy needs to use their insurance.

Dawn joined me on my radio program this week.  We discussed the state of health care in the U.S., including escalating costs for small businesses, tax breaks, and the state of various bills proposed in Congress. 

When you consider how HSAs and high deductible plans work, it stands to reason that they are best for relatively healthy people.  After all, the money you put into an HSA is money you hope to not have to use for out-of-pocket or deductibles under your insurance policy.  For more reading on HSAs and high deductible health insurance policies (the two go hand in hand), read:  Is an HSA Right for You?

Barcodes have evolved into a useful tool for millions of businesses in a wide variety of industries. Barcode technology is faster and more accurate than entering information by hand on a keyboard — about 15 times faster and 10,000 times more accurate.

Barcodes are a sort of Morse code that uses bars and spaces to represent critical data about a product or document. Unfortunately, not all barcodes are the same, and there’s no universal business application.

If barcoding is something your business is considering you might want to check out this guide to Using Barcodes in Your Business

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According to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 91 million data records affecting nearly 10 million U.S. citizens have been exposed due to security breaches since February 2005.

Breaches occur from someone hacking into a database, a disgruntled employee stealing information, or sheer stupidity — as in a lost or misplaced disk or laptop.

Based on the public outcry, the U.S. Congress has proposed new laws to address general data privacy and security concerns, although none has yet been enacted.

However, 33 states, including New York, New Jersey and Conneticut, have passed data breach legislation within the past three years.

What does this mean for small businesses? In short, more compliace requirements.

Read more on Keeping Company Information Safe

If you want to succeed and grow, you must achieve high standards in four essential categories.

1) You must create excellent products and services.

2) You need terrific delivery systems to keep tack and get the products to your customers on time.

3) You have to attract and keep great staff with a winning service mindset.

4) You must build long-term customer relationships that endure and mature over time.

Then you need to answer these questions:

In each category, how good are you now, and how good do you plan to be?

What does it take to keep your customers happy, and keep them coming back for more?

Is it enough to be average? Just like all the others? Or do you need to reach higher? And if so, how high?

More on Improve Your Service - Standards

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For your consideration.

1 - Bring them back alive.
Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again.

2 - Systems, not smiles.
Saying please and thank you doesn’t insure you’ll do the job right the first time, every time. Only systems guareantee you that.

3 - Underpromise, overdeliver.
Customers expect you to keep your word. Exceed it.

4 - When the customer asks, the answer is always yes.
Period.

5 - Fire your inspectors and consumer relations department.
Every employee who deals with clients must have the authority to handle complaints.

6 - No complaints? Somethings wrong.
Encourage your customrs to tell you what you are doing wrong.

7 - Measure everything
Baseball teams do it. Football teams do it. Basketball teams do it. You should do it too.

8 - Salaries are unfair.
Pay people like partners.

9 - Your mother was right.
Show people respect. Be polite. It works.

10 - Japanese them.
Learn how the best really do it; make their systems your own. Then improve them.

Warning: These ten rules aren’t worth a damn…unless you make a profit. You have to make money to stay in business and provide good service.

More on the Ten Commandments of Customer Service

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