Retro Book

Friction Favors The Defense Because An Attack Takes Time

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:01:50 +0000

One of the reasons the defensive form of warfare is so strong is the difficulty of launching a surprise attack.“In theory,” says Clausewitz, “surprise promises a great deal. In practice, it generally strikes fast by the friction of the whole machine.”In theory, the 1916 battle of the Somme was going to be a surprise attack. But after moving a million men into position and waiting a week for the artillery to do its job, the Allies were left with little surprise.The larger the operation, the less the surprise. A small company might be able to surprise a big company with a new product. But Ford is unlikely to pull any fast ones on General Motors. The friction of the whole machine gets in the way.When you look at case histories of leaders who were taken by surprise, you usually find they had ample warning. Leader gets overrun when they ignore those warnings or pooh-pooh the efforts of the competition.In Mein Kampf, a book that sold some 10 million copies Hitler told England and France exactly what he intended to do. A decade later he did it.An attacker in a military campaign not only tends to sacrifice surprise but also wastes time in bringing the forces into action. Because of logistics problems, it can be days or weeks before the full force of an attack is felt by a defender-time that can be enormously useful to the defense.On D day, only 156,115 troops were put ashore on the Normandy beaches in spite of a massive effort. Because of transportation and supply problems, it took several months to build up Allied strength to the millions of troops necessary to ensure success.In a marketing attack, transportation is usually not a problem. A company can deliver products to thousands of outlets in days.The bottleneck is communication. Getting a marketing message across to million of customer can take months or years. There is often plenty of time for the defender to blunt the attacker’s sales message by under cutting it in one form or another.But to take advantage of time, the defender has to remain alert to potential threats from any direction.

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Living A Financial Nightmare? Wake Up And Try Factoring

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:01:50 +0000

How does it feel to finance your customers for free? With money you’ve already earned? Being taken advantage of by your clients? Are you angry when 30 days turns into 45? 60? 90? Feel like pounding the desk because of lost opportunities? Or throwing up your hands and quitting? Are your sales people pissed because they have to make collections, too? Is that cutting down on your sales efforts? Causing you more agony? Hate making dunning phone calls? Is the business you loved not much fun anymore? NEED MORE MONEY? How many times have you said, “If only I had more money, I could…?” How much of your creative time is wasted looking for more cash? Trying to get invoices paid? Aren’t you frustrated always feeling behind the business curve? When your sales are up, why do you have less money in hand? Doesn’t your stomach tighten when you look at your bills? And know that you can’t keep current because your customer’s won’t? Whatever happened to the joy and excitement you felt when you first got into your business?CASH FLOW IS KINGCash is your lifeblood. Without cash, you can’t pay bills, expand, or even remain in operation. How does that make you feel? And giving your customers interest free loans is not helping, is it? Isn’t it strangling your movements and causing you a bundle in lost interest and increased costs? How about inflation losses waiting for your money? Doesn’t do much for your peace of mind, does it? Remember your last cash flow crunch? All that upset when the accounts receivable didn’t arrive? The big payment that was going to give you some room to move? And you didn’t know when or if it would happen? Helpless feeling, wasn’t it? Didn’t you feel a little lost? Stop Being a Cash Flow Victim Why keep on being a cash flow victim? Is it possible today for you to be in charge of your cash flow? Is it possible to get your money in 48 hours instead of 30 to 90 days? Your answer could be factoring, a powerful non-debt solution to cash flow problems.Why Not Factor? Why not factor your invoices, converting them to cash by selling them directly to a factor at a discount? New idea? Hardly! Retail stores routinely sell their bills of sale to Visa® or MasterCard®. Same deal. You’ve been involved in factoring for years, every time you whipped out a credit card! Same Rapid ServiceNow you can get the same rapid service for your wholesale business! You get an IMMEDIATE 70-90% advance of what’s owed you. That provides instant cash for your business so you can be in control again. It gives you a powerful competitive edge. Do you lose the rest? NO! When the factor collects the invoice, you get the remainder minus a pre-agreed fee, usually around 2 to 3% annually. Costly? CHEAP! For that, you get complete credit checking, A/R maintenance, bad debt insurance and professional collection services on your billings. What are those four things costing you now? The factor won’t tie up your hard assets. He doesn’t need your bank balances, business history, tax records or credit rating. Your customer’s credit is what counts, not yours. The factor just wants you to create more business and add sales. It’s a win-win situation! Benefits of Factoring When bank loans are not available, or your credit line is maxed out, it is a powerful source of immediate working capital. Get the feeling of money in your hand NOW! Not in 30 or 45 days. No more having your customers in control of YOUR cash or profits. No debt is created, improving your credit rating and your financial statement’s bottom line. How would that feel to you? How would your banker look at you? You also get bad debt insurance, since the factor assumes the liability for nonpayment of the invoice. What’s that worth to you? Sounding better all the time?Get the powerful feeling of putting ALL your attention on production, sales, marketing and customer service! Get OUT of the banking and collection business and back to what you do best! You wouldn’t have you or your staff paint the office. Why are you or they doing anything which does not directly drive your business forward???Will Factoring Work For You? Answer some questions for yourself: 1. Are you sometimes short of cash?2. Are your receivables above $50,000 monthly, with invoice size usually above $500? 3. Could more cash… - generate more sales? - increase production? - increase marketing? - allow you discounts and special offers? 4. If credit and collection chores were gone, could you put ALL your attention on production, marketing, sales and service?5. Would your costs be lowered? 6. Would you be fully back in your business? With higher profits? More control?7. Do these ideas excite you? Give you some hope? Make you enthusiastic? Bring back the feeling you had when you started your company? If your answer is YES!, change something! Factoring can potentially make the difference between success and failure in your business. Its not new. Factoring has been in existence for over 3000 years. Currently, tens of thousands of executives and companies have improved their lives with factoring. Do You Qualify for Factoring? Only you can provide that information. Call a factoring specialist today. When all it takes is a phone call to see if this is YOUR road to financial peace of mind, what’s stopping you?

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

How Do You Set Consulting Fees?

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:01:50 +0000

One of the most frequent questions I receive from those who are trying to start or grow their own consulting business is: “How and what do you charge clients for your consulting services?”The ways of billing clients are numerous. There are hourly rates, by-the-job fixed rates, contingency or performance arrangements, flat fee plus expenses, daily fee plus expenses, and many other methods of charging for your consulting services. Which one is best?Let us consider some ways of billing for your time.1. Hourly or Daily RateMany consultants charge by the hour or day. To establish an hourly or daily rate, they try to calculate the number of billable hours in a year. Many hours will be spent marketing and in administrative and other functions, so this time is not chargeable to the client. As well, vacation time, holidays, sick days, and so on, can not be directly billed to the client.Consultants, like other businesses, must charge enough to cover their overhead expenses and also earn a profit. If a consultant wants to earn twenty-five dollars per hour of working time, he (or she) might have to charge one hundred dollars per hour to the client. This assumes one half billable hours and fifty percent overhead and profit.Your hourly or daily rate may be limited by what your competition charges, especially if you have not positioned yourself as different from them.2. Fixed or Flat RateSome consultants charge by the job or a flat rate. For example, a tax consultant might charge three hundred dollars to prepare a tax return for you and your spouse, including an unaudited income statement for your business from information supplied by you. If the consultant takes only one hour to do this, he grosses three hundred dollars per hour. If, though, the tax consultant miscalculates the time required, he could take twenty hours to complete the job and make only fifteen dollars per hour.Of course, consultants can also make a profit on the labour of their employees or subcontractors.Many consultants claim to make more on a flat rate than on a hourly basis. Advantages include being able to give a quote to the client up front and less disputes on price (as the total bill was agreed upon in advance).To protect yourself on flat rate assignments, always limit the scope of your engagement to something that you can calculate easily.For example, if you are asked to give a quote for setting up a website for a business, you might break this project into smaller assignments.First, you could give a quote for preliminary research and recommendations. Estimate the time required to meet with the client, learn about his business and goals, develop strategies and a budget, and prepare recommendations on how to proceed. Then, give the client a quote (perhaps in the form of a one page letter agreement or proposal). Upon acceptance of the offer by the client in writing, you may proceed with this phase of the project.Some consultants collect one-half of their fee up front and half upon assignment completion for each phase of the consulting project.If the client doesn`t like your recommendations, at least you get paid for the work you did. Perhaps you can charge him to prepare alternative suggestions.If your website project was not broken into smaller steps or assignments, you could find that you spent way more time on the project than anticipated.Also, you might not find out until you present your bill for the whole project that your client won`t pay, either because he is not satisfied with the results or because he is unable or unwilling to pay.Breaking down a project into smaller assignments helps you estimate more accurately and limits your financial exposure.3. Contingency or Performance ArrangementsSometimes clients will ask you to become their partner. If you do, you are no longer an objective consultant.What if your client asks you to do management consulting for twenty-five percent of the net profits? Will there even be any profit by the time he writes off his car, home office, entertainment, travel, wages to self and family members, and other expenses?On the other hand, if you are a marketing consultant that is absolutely certain that you can increase a client`s sales, you may feel confident charging a fee based on the increased sales volume of the client. Are you sure your client will co-operate with you in the attaining of this goal?Some consultants charge a flat rate plus a percentage of ownership or profits for their services.Fees based on contingency or performance arrangements are risky. Most consultants are better off charging a fair price for their services and leaving the risk of the client`s business to the client.4. Value Based FeesSometimes consultants can justify fees based on their value to the client. For example, if you save a client one million dollars in taxes, your fee may be higher than normal to reflect the value of the services rendered.You might pay an accountant or lawyer a fee of fifteen hundred dollars based on time for certain tax related services. What would you be willing to pay to legally save an extra million dollars in taxes? Ten thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars, or more?Can you apply this information to your own consulting practice? Is there some particularly valuable service that you can render that would justify premium rates?However and whatever you charge, be sure that your fee is a good value for your client and also compensates you fairly.

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Future Of Offshore Outsourcing

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:01:50 +0000

Offshore Outsourcing provides the ability to hold skilled overseas staff at a small part of the laborcost which is exhilarating to several entrepreneurs. The vistas in which Offshoring can be utilizedespecially in: accounting, advertising, animation, Human Resource Management and Development, health care-related jobs, IT projects, financial investment and consultancy, legal services, and network security.The concept of Offshore Outsourcing is couple of centuries old when the colonial powers started taking raw materials from their respective colonies and then selling them after processing them into manufactured commodities. In 19th century the Britishers (and other imperialist/colonial powers), because of industrial revolution, rampaged the small-scale and cottage scale industries in India (and other respective colonies) by selling processed goods to the natives having a better quality. Now in 21st century the tables seem to have turned on the colonizers (or neo-colonizers). Taking advantage of the cheap labour in developing countries, many MNCs have set up subsidiaries in India and in other places (like China, Canada, South America, Africa, Israel, Ireland, Russia). In the past decade, US companies alone have invested $7 billion in their subsidiaries in India, picking a net saving of more than $26 billion. Telstra, an Australian telecom company, for instance, saved more than $75 million a year by outsourcing many jobs to Indian enterprises.Latest modifications in the way U.S. companies are using Offshore Outsourcing Industry have generated heated controversy, which is comprehensible considering that jobs are at hazard in an already tense economy. But whereas it may be human temperament to adhere to the status quo, the software industry will be better off in acclimatizing to these changes and allowing innovation to thrive. Detractors have fated offshore development as everything from shortsighted to un-American- but it may well conclude salvaging the U.S. software industry. For staying competitive in the global market, U.S. software companies must persist in driving innovation. Nevertheless, innovation today is being choked through deficient R&D budgets on the company side and an overspending menace on the customer side. Offshore development can help on both sides. In fact, as pointed out in a recent report by the US Chamber of Commerce, the main cause of increased unemployment in the US, Britain and other developed countries is the enhancement in productivity due to continuing advancements leading to massive unemployment; and, two, that it has not contributed to unemployment, as is sought to be made out. Here are the reasons:For a mature software company, expending on proper product innovation is much less than what you might think. It by and large accounts for less than 30 percent of the R&D budget. This small piece of the pie is being further clutched from two directions. First, overall R&D spending by public U.S. software companies is lessening. In fact, in 2002 it fell by 2 percent, after having consistently grown at 15 percent annually since 1998.Most of these cuts are captivating a bite out of new product development. Second, R&D budgets are being consumed by ever-increasing maintenance-related activities, such as bug-fixing, upgrades and minor enrichments. Maintenance agreements with a huge customer base mount up over the years mandate this support.With such restricted resources accessible, software companies can’t successfully produce real advance. Instead, many of finest and brightest are jammed down in what amounts to software maintenance tasks. The irony is that many of these developers would be happier with–and better suited for–truly pioneering work. But companies have painted themselves into a corner. This is where offshore development can facilitate.In most cases, a well-executed offshore development program can help release an added 20 percent of the R&D budget for new innovation while continuing to meet the maintenance obligations of mature companies.

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Strong Competitive Moves Should Always Be Blocked

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:01:50 +0000

Most companies have only one chance to win, but leaders have two. If a leader misses an opportunity to attack itself, the company can often recover by copying the competitive move. But the leader must move rapidly before the attacker gets established.Many leaders refuse to block because their egos get in the way. Even worse, they knock the competitor’s development until it’s too late to save the situation.Blocking works well for a leader because of the nature of the battleground. Remember, the war takes place inside the mind of the prospect. It takes time for an attacker to make an impression in the mind. Usually, there’s time enough for the leader to cover.The U.S. automobile industry illustrates this principle well. Says John DeLorean in the book on a Clear Day You Can See General Motors: “Even though ford was superior to General Motors in product innovation during the time. I was with GM and Chrysler surpassed it in technical innovation, neither firm made substantial cuts into GM’s half of the market.”“Gm had not produced a significant, major automotive innovation since the hydramatic automatic transmission (1939) and the hard-top body style (1949),” continues DeLorean, “Ford pioneered in practically every major new market while Chrysler produced the significant technical innovations, such as power steering, power brakes, electric windows and the alternator.”But who gets the credit for engineering excellence? General Motors, of course.It’s the flip side of the “truth will out” fallacy. The prospect also assumes that truth will out. Therefore, the prospect reasons that the market leader must have truth on its side, that is, the GM product is superior.There is also the psychological pressure that benefits the leader. In a famous experiment by Solomon Asch of the University of Pennsylvania, many people were willing to go against the evidence of their own senses in order to go along with the majority.When asked to match the length of a set of lines and confronted with a group that had been carefully briefed to give unanimously wrong answers, 37 percent of the subjects submitted to the misleading group opinion and also gave the wrong answers.The power of the majority was indicated by the typical reaction in the Asch experiment: “To me it seems I’m right, but my reason tells me I’m wrong, because I doubt that so many people could be wrong and I alone right.”The fact is, many people pay more attention to the opinion of others than they do to their own. If everyone else is laughing in the theater, you assume the movie is not funny. (That’s why they put the laugh tracks on the TV situation comedies.)Should a leader cover all bets or just the ones that are most likely to succeed? Obviously there’s no point in covering downright silly ideas, but who’s to judge? When the first Volkswagen Beetle arrived, it looked strange indeed. “The three most overrated things in America,” went a typical Detroit joke, “are Southern cooking, home sex, and foreign cars.”Many companies have lived to regret instant putdowns like this. So today the watchword is more likely to be: “Let’s monitor the situation and see what happens.”But that can be a dangerous tactic for a leader. Too often what happens too fast? All of a sudden, it’s too late to get into the new ball game.Currently, disposables represent about 40 percent of the razor blade market. If Gillette had waited and let Bic dominate this market segment, Gillette’s position would be much weaker today.It’s safer to over cover than to undercover. The stainless steel blade introduced by Wilkinson Sword never went anywhere, but Gillette covered anyway. The small cost was worth it. Call it insurance if you wish.

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Hello world!

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:50:51 +0000

Welcome to Actualblog.net. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!