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Internet marketing(IM) and promotion has been ever in the news since the world’s major Internet portals have announced their expansion plans, into consumerism and increased acceptance of e-business. Be it ubiquitous Google or the upcoming scour, the search engines worldwide have witnessed a steady upsurge in searches all over the world about minute things from the best salt to buy to the complicated ones related to medical science and technological inventions. Be it a search on swine flu to valve and stunts replacing the awesome bypass surgeries to hunting material for wedding and other invitation cards, people today are not shying away from candidly committing that they are now depending on their online mentor, be it any search engine, portal or website.

With this mass acceptance, commercial and marketing geeks have well displayed their affection towards this cost effective and efficient media reach. Kudos to the excellent think-tank who have put their creative instincts at its best foot forward and harnessed the medium to the extent it deserves. The news glorifying the impact of the power of this medium has gained momentum due to certain specific moves by the leading corporate.

The most popular modes of IM are e-mail marketing, Website marketing through banners and scroll advertisements, search engine optimization techniques and Web casting. IM is on demand as it is the only medium which is visible to customers around the clock and calendar. Moreover, the latest updates can be made possible through Internet marketing strategies. It also serves as direct communication with customers, and helps companies to generate immediate orders. Out of the all, search engine marketing has been one of the most popular. The particular reason is that these search engines serve as a one place solution for all the users, wherever located worldwide. Thus IM and promotion is in the news for the many advantageous and lucrative offers it has to offer to the corporate world.

By: Lacey Lainne

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It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional accountant or a 7 year old kid, if you know how to save an allowance, or spend your money then you already knew how to practice an accounting principle. But technically speaking, accounting can be described as information which gives a report about one’s profit and loss statement or income statement periodically. There are two important points in income statement which you have to know, the sales revenue and the cost of goods sold expense. This article will discuss mostly about those two things and few other factors related to income statement.

The sales revenue is a line report which gives actual information regarding the companies’ sales profit. This could not only include cash inflows which are usually received from sales but could also include sales minus sales discounts, sales returns, and saving allowances. Companies need to be very consistent about where and when they record the sales, because for some businesses, the timing of recording sales revenue can be a major problem. For example, when the work is completed and sent to the client for approval? When the billing is completed? Or when the ad campaign is appear in public? These are all issues a company must decide on when reporting sales revenue.

The cost of goods sold expense (COGS) is an accounting term which describes the direct costs attribute to goods produced and sold by a business. There are three methods of reporting cost of goods sold expense. One is called “First In First Out” (FIFO), it means that the oldest inventory items are recorded as sold first. Another one is “Last In First Out” (LIFO), meaning that the most recently purchased items are recorded as sold first and the last is the average cost method. Cost of goods sold expense is usually comprised of a huge variable item list in an income statement; it includes material costs and overhead costs.

There are two methods to prepare and present an income statement. The first one is by using the ‘Single Step’ approach; this simple method will total all revenues and subtract expenses to find the bottom line. The second one is by using complex ‘Multi Step’ income statement; this method will take several steps to find the bottom line, starting with gross profit. Other items in an income statement include inventory write-downs. The business inventory should be regularly and carefully inspected to determine any losses due to theft, damage and deterioration. Bad debts are also an important component of the income statement. Bad debts are those owed to a business by customers who bought on credit but are not going to be paid.

By: Fikri Radiyan

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Business networking is something that has been around for donkey’s years and can be the most effective way of doing business as it works on the premise that people buy off people. This fact has gotten diluted to some degree in the context of a global boom. In the market conditions that we found ourselves over the last 10 years or so businesses have been growing every year as a result of a global boom, this meant that instead of having to fight for most of our business, revenues grew simply because there was more employment and people had more money in their pockets. As a business was growing so to were internal budgets which in turn meant more money being spent which also resulted in further growth. Unfortunately all this has changed; the global market is going through one of the worst recessions since the 1930s. What does this mean? First of all what it means is the way we have been doing business over the last 10 years has to change, every business will have to restructure to cope with a recession and then reorganize so that they survive in a more competitive environment. It is often said that survival is the new success.

Business networking is one of the key ways of how a business can operate differently in an ever changing environment. In lots of ways it just means going back to the old way of doing business, whereby we meet as many people as we can in order to raise our profile and to educate people on what we do. Word-of-mouth is by far the most powerful method of marketing and business networking is by far the best way to use the power of “word-of-mouth” marketing. There are lots of organizations out there to help you improve the way that you network because it takes work, it takes preparation and also helps if you do something for somebody without asking for anything in return. There are lots of organizations out there like BNI, 4N, BRX and Venture that will help you improve your networking abilities so that you can get more business.

As a result of the recession business networking groups has grown substantially as SME’s try to find new ways to do business in order to survive. The more people you meet more chance you have of doing business because in the current environment we all have to fight harder for less business. However once you know that and accept that you already have a better chance of surviving than most, business networking is a very effective way to get introduced to more people. One famous car sales man was asked how he was so successful and one of the things he said was that if you give me 1000 business cards I will be asking for more business cards in two months time, however if you give some of my colleagues 1000 business cards they will have 500 left at the end of the year. We are all good sales guys, it’s just that I meet more people and therefore I have a better chance of doing business.

By: Fergal J Tully

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Having great people skills is actually a survival tactic in your business career. You will surely be eaten alive by resentment and the lack of understanding if your survival skills are not up to par. In many situations dealing with people, if you cannot effectively communicate your point or understand the point being expressed, coming out alive is a low probability.

I agree with the saying, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Seeking to understand is humbling and opens your mind for new-unique information but you must also be assertive enough to communicate your own special details.

When both of the above are in place and equally balanced, harmony in human relations can be expected. This is mega important with regards to business networking. The following, are 5 crucial people skills to master;

1. Communicate your point clearly

Sometimes, the concepts and ideas that we have in our minds are much clearer to us than they seem when we begin to verbally express the same. We can often blurt out words which are not descriptive enough for our fellow man to decipher our point.

It is a good practice to think things over and choose our words carefully when expressing an important aspect. You will notice that this is done by many public speakers.

2. Listen closely

Listening, for most people, is considered a passive activity. However, it is absolutely necessary to listen effectively. Listening effectively entails taking mental notes and contributing to the conversation.

When you are an effective listener, the person speaking to you has no doubt that you were listening. Furthermore, this suggests that you were physically doing things to prove this; ie. nodding in agreement, asking questions, asking them to repeat themselves, etc.

3. Make sure you are interpreting correctly.

Have you ever felt insulted or offended by something a person said, only to find out later that you misinterpreted the statement?

This is very common among people and it is in everyone’s best interest to ask the necessary questions to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes this is hard because of an emotional reaction but if self-control is used, clarity can be obtained.

4. Show empathy

Showing empty is similar to being a good listener. It requires actions that normally seem to be passive. When you feel sorry for someone, it is a feeling but the other person will never know unless it is expressed through action. In business networking, it could be as simple as kind words and a solemn expression.

5. Be encouraging

Just like vitamins are needed to maintain good health, encouragement is needed to provide a high self-worth and motivation. When we are encouraged to do certain things, it pushes us to do more. With the proper encouragement a person can go farther and reach higher than they would have under their own steam.

By: J. H. Lee

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I read your column last week on factoring. I am looking at a short term loan with my bank but don’t really want to wait for months to secure the debt and go through endless contrived hoops. I saw from your column that you could borrow against invoices or even sell them off to raise money, so I thought a factoring loan might work for me. Any thoughts?

I think I mentioned that factoring might be a more expensive option. If the companies that owe you money are a good debt, why bother with factoring as you know you will definitely be paid. You could simply opt for a confidential invoice discounting arrangement where you effectively borrow against your book debt (those who owe you money). This will raise the capital quickly and if you decide you want to pay the loan off earlier you can do so at a much lower cost than the cost of repaying a factoring agreement, which will have greater operational and risk costs ‘factored’ into it.

Remember to go for confidential invoice discounting as opposed to ordinary invoice discounting, as with the latter your customers will know you have entered into this agreement, and would send out the wrong messages i.e. you might be in cash flow trouble.

You normally need a turnover of over £500,000 but many companies are more flexible than they used to be and are more focused on lending against quality with a good secure payback.

The company offering you the invoice discounting will typically review your sales ledger, the track record of your business and then offer you the ability to draw down up to 80% of unpaid invoices.

It’s a bit like a bank overdraft in many ways although the invoice discounter will normally require a debenture over your book debts.

You’ll pay normal interest payments and expect to pay a fee of c1% to set up. A business finance broker will be able to assess the invoice discount companies available and locate the best price for you.

Depending on how much you want to borrow another option to consider is a bridging loan. A bridging loan is normally a short term loan which is then secured on land or a property to bridge a financial gap. Examples of this are where you are selling one house and buying another but haven’t sold the first one. Because you need to move quickly bridging finance comes into its own due to the speed.

There are two types of bridging loans. A closed bridging loan is used when the sale of your house is guaranteed and an open is used when it is not. By leaving the bridging loan open you are able to keep the debt until the sale pulls through. Bridging loans can last from a day to a year but you would usually expect one to last for around three months.

Interest is charged monthly and is not cheap. Actually, it’s expensive. In this situation if your credit situation allowed it, you could raise sufficient capital against the invoices to create a deposit big enough to raise a normal mortgage against the second house which would be much cheaper than the cost of a bridging loan.

Expect to pay an arrangement fee of between 0.5% to 1.5% of the loan and a range of other fees such as contrived admin fees, solicitor’s fees, valuation fees and lender fees.

Normally however a bridging loan is used when people are wanting to move quickly, buy a property at auction for example or even buy a property that a normal lender wouldn’t consider i.e. a defective property. A builder might use a bridging loan then renovate and take care of any defective issues before remortgaging with a normal mainstream lender.

You might expect your normal banks to offer bridging but the niche and more flexible arrangements are normally off the high street but once again your business finance broker would be able to assist with that and find the most suitable price and offer.

Expect to be offered between 65% to 75% loan to value.

Don’t really consider a bridging loan unless you are pretty sure you will be repaying the debt, as I have seen businesses crippled in the past with monthly interest for a year only to be hit with an exit fee. As I said last week, there are many methods to raise the business finance you need so be sure to get independent advice from a broker.

By: Peter McGahan

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