Tips to Help Your Business Survive

Avoiding deep amounts of debt and learning to survive the hard times is key to the success of your small business. Learning how to weather the storms that are sent your way will allow your business to emerge stronger and will help you to stay in business for many years. With another recession just around the corner and high inflation problems, many people are looking for different ways to help their small business survive. Here are some tips that you must implement if you want to survive:

1. Accurate bookkeeping - you have to know where your companies finances are if you want to be a success. You need to invest money into money markets and other things in order to earn interest and to have cash reserves. Having money to fall back on will prove well for you in the long run as you find that record keeping gives you the best chance at being successful. Banks aren't going to lend money when they are scared so you have to focus on using your own money to buy equipment and other things. Accurate bookkeeping helps you to know where you stand so you don't get into debt by purchasing things that you do not need.
2. Project your cash flow - customers are going to tighten their purse strings in the next few weeks and months so you need to focus on getting your cash flow projections. Knowing that the stock market is plummeting and the US Economy is in shambles you need to know what your customers are going to do. Keeping good records and projections for cash flow will help you to avoid spending when you do not have money.
3. Marketing - even though things are tight you need to keep marketing. Customers need to see that you are still in business and you need to remain aggressive and competitive. When they can see that you are still here and you want to help them, its much easier for your customers to buy your products and to trust your company.
4. Collections - get aggressive with your collection process and don't let people stand back and take advantage of you. Charge interest money if they aren't paying you on time. Make sure they are paying and enroll people in payment programs to get money coming in for your organization. You have to take care of your cash flow and this means getting your customers to pay. Try to limit the amount of credit you are offering to them so you don't end up with a huge accounts receivables to worry about.
5. Pay your vendors - keeping good relationships with your vendors will pay off for you. They are going to be as desperate as you are to make money and they will do things that can benefit your company like offering cheaper products to you or price matching competitors. You need to pay them and maintain good relationships if you want to stay in business. These are the companies that fuel you and help you to stay in business.
6. Pay your staff - the people that work for you need to be paid. While you may need to cut back on nice things like offering a Christmas bonus you do need to do what you can to keep them on staff and to always pay them on time. Nothing annoys an employee more than late paychecks or companies that fail to take care of the people that make the business run.

These tips can help your small business remain profitable and strong when times are tough and people are cutting back.