Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!
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Go With the Cash Flow |
| Running day-to-day operations is a constant juggling act. Drop the ball in one area and gravity will soon pull the rest down. Cash flow is one juggling act you have to execute flawlessly. Without rock solid cash flow management skills, you risk damaging your credit, losing credibility with your vendors, and maintaining the ability to have enough cash on hand to pay your bills. In an interview with Inc., author and former chief financial officer, Philip Campbell, said, “Despite the fact that cash is the lifeblood of a business — the fuel that keeps the engine running — most business owners don’t truly have a handle on their cash flow… poor cash-flow management is causing more business failures today than ever before.”
Try incorporating a few of these standard practices, be consistent about following them, and over time you will begin to see improvement in your checking account balance. First and foremost, always pay your bills on time. Late payment fees are not only outrageously expensive, the cumulative effect with further erode your cash flow. Late payment fees are also a red flag to your creditors. Red flags=lower credit scores. If you close a large deal, ask for a deposit up front to secure the agreement. It’s hard to resist a great buy, so why not offer discounts as an incentive to your vendors? A discount of 5% to 10% in exchange for payment upon receipt of goods or services, or on a net-15 rather than net-30 payment schedule, will get their attention. Last but not least, tap into the allure of major holidays (e.g. Christmas, New Years, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day) by hosting a sale.
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Make Importing Contacts A Breeze |
| Your customer contact list is the lifeblood of your business. If you maintain your contact list in an Excel or CSV file, by putting some effort into tidying up information prior to importing it into Insightly, you can make an already fast and easy process even faster.
In this instance, “tidy” means complete data, so make sure you include the following in your Excel or CSV file: First Name, Last Name, Title, Organization (Company) Phone Number, and Email Address. If your contact list is incomplete and does not map directly to the required fields, you will get a “no match” message. You will then need to select and fill in the missing fields manually or skip them altogether. On the upside, if there are any contact duplicates based on name, address, and phone number, Insightly will automatically skip those entries. There’s no bulk update feature in Insightly, so getting it right the first time will pay dividends.
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Don’t Feel the Burn |
| As a business owner your days rarely end at 5 pm. You’re the go-to person, the on duty problem solver who’s on call with little or no backup. While the rewards of being your own boss are huge, you’re also at greater risk of burn out–a state of being which the Merriam Webster dictionary defines as, “The condition of someone who has become very physically and emotionally tired after doing a difficult job for a long time.”
So, what can you do to keep yourself energized and ready for the next challenge? A good starting point is to educate yourself on the typical signs of burnout so you can recognize and address them before they get a foothold on you (or your employees). For instance, you might be having feelings of cynicism towards your work or a lack of motivation to get it done. You might also find yourself stuck in a constant state of anxiety, feeling as if you never have enough time to get things done. Burn out can even manifest physical symptoms such as excessive tiredness, headaches, or frequent stomach aches. If you begin to notice any of these signs, try incorporating a few changes to your routine:
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About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
