When There’s Nothing Left to Do But Sell

Quen Ton, owner of a manicure shop White Daisy Nail Spa in San Francisco, Calif., took advantage of lowered rent prices during the recession to start the business after working for years in others’ shops. Even so, she has found the process of growing her business very challenging, is operating at a loss and surviving on her husband’s income. If business does not pick up by the holidays, she will have to sell.

So as a small business owner, how can you know when it’s time to sell? Well, here are a few signs: being too far behind in expenses to catch up; facing competitors that are way too far ahead of you in the marketplace; insurmountable conflicts between you and a business partner or business partners; the inability to manage unexpected business growth.

If you are seeing critical signs that point to selling your small business as the only viable option, the following four tips can help you navigate a sale…

3 Tips for Landing a Small Business Loan

Matthew and Marnie Brannon, co-owners of Midwest Fiat in Columbus, Ohio borrowed $110,000 earlier this year to help them expand the vintage Italian car parts and service shop they have run for five years. The process took six months of diligent work, but the Brannons learned some valuable lessons about what it takes for small business owners to beat the odds and get funding during a downturn.

Two of their most important tactics for securing a coveted business expansion loan included making their plight known by publicizing their loan search through the press and other outlets as they were struggling through the process. They also worked on building relationships with potential funders by using contacts within their business network with ties to the banking industry. Combining different tactics helped them eventually attract investors and fulfill their dream of expansion.

Small Business: Up Your Game When the Economy’s Down

As a small business owner, you will probably lose some business during the downturn, despite your best efforts, as client companies cut their budgets, shift strategy, or, sometimes, go away altogether.

Bernard Nneji, president of Sigma Works Group, a process-improvement agency, suggests a variety of reasons clients and investors say they have lost interest in a small business: the client contact has changed and decides to “fire” the business; budgets and timelines are no longer working for the client; the small business’ strategies and execution of strategies cease to be in line with the client’s mission or the client has outgrown the small business…

When Clients Get the Shaft

Jennifer D., the owner of a small, 10-year old management consulting company in New York City, knows the challenges of fizzling relationships with clients, vendors and investors all too well. She spent two years courting a small newspaper company and three years working with the firm—then, earlier this year, under mounting debt, the owner was forced to sell out to a larger operation.

Relationship building is incredibly important for small business owners and entrepreneurs. But the economic downturn has made it much harder to maintain connections when key contacts are forced to leave the companies. It’s a problem that won’t be going away soon—downsizings and restructurings are likely to continue over the next year. What do you do to ride out these relationship changes?…

Ditching the Overhead

Michael M., owner of a small electronics import business in northern New Jersey, has seen his profits drop as end users of technology products continue to pinch pennies and stores buy less from him to avoid over-stocking.

Michael now realizes that he needs to re-think spending on his large warehouse and office space and focus energy on marketing his services and products in a way that encourages both his direct clients and end users to spend. So, he has started to re-fashion his business to eliminate his need for warehouse and even office space, let him work from home and gets electronics directly to stores from manufacturers…

Small Businesses’ New Balancing Act

The financial turmoil of the last year threw a lot of things out of whack…and not just the overall economy. Small businesses are staring down a future that looks little like the past, with high employee health care and benefits costs, decreased cash flow and increased monthly expenses threatening business as usual.

Many small businesses may not make it. The Financial Times predicted in late 2008 that 62,000 companies would disappear in 2009, representing approximately three million people that would be out of a job by 2010. In 2008, 42,000 small businesses went under, up 20,000 from 2007…

Downturnaround Marketing Tip: Message Boards

According to Forrester Research, marketing budgets shrank 20% or more in the last year. Chances are, yours probably has, too. So, if you can’t spend the big bucks anymore, you might want to consider reaching potential clients through a much less expensive method: the online message board.

A message board is an online discussion area modeled after a traditional bulletin board, where like-minded users can join to talk about common issues and relay their own expertise on a variety of subjects. These forums can be found just about everywhere, and can provide fantastic public, free-of-charge marketing opportunities for business owners in a variety of industries…

The Message is the Money

Ask any successful business owner – little strategies make a big difference in tough times. One way to balance the need to keep and attract new clients without depleting your marketing budget is to fine-tune your approach to one important but very low-cost strategy: an e-mail marketing campaign.

The following three e-mail tips are fundamental tools in a long-term marketing budget strategy that will help save on other marketing expenses. Here’s how to get a bang out of those e-mail campaigns:

1. Choose a solid subject line. In my experience critiquing marketing pieces and campaigns for small business owners, I’ve seen those who get it right … and I’ve seen those who get it very, very wrong. What I’ve learned is that in order to get the best response rates, it’s important to treat the subject line of any e-mail intended for clients or potential clients like the headline of a major marketing campaign. To create a subject line that really resonates with clients and potential clients, it’s necessary to understand which problems plague them and how your services or products will address or even completely eliminate these problems. If you work with clients that are within a specific industry, you should also target this industry to give your subject line more weight; for example, if you are selling management consulting services to burgeoning musicians, you can write, “See What Our Management Services Do for Musicians Just Like You.” You don’t have to be a marketing guru (or even hire one!) to write effective e-mails. You just need to focus on the benefits you provide and not just talk about yourself or the features of your company or any products you sell…

Cash for Clunker Businesses

Like cars, many small businesses out there are clunkers—cash guzzling, severely damaged by the recession. Now, the government is looking to bail out these business owners, as it did for car owners. If you have a venture that’s a bit of a stinker, you might benefit from the America’s Recovery Capital program, or ARC, which offers up to $35,000 to save your business.

Just like Cash for Clunkers, which ended this week, ARC a deadline. But don’t sweat it too much. ARC is set to end either September 2010 or when its $235 million budget runs out, “whichever comes first,“ according to the Small Business Administration. But only about 1,000 ARC loans have been approved since mid June, new lending data released this month shows. That’s well below the 10,000 loans the SBA says its budget can support.

To reach that target, the agency will have to get far more lenders on board. Of more than 8,000 FDIC-backed banks out there, only 400 have made loans to small businesses under ARC—mostly in the nation‘s heartland. Just three of the agency’s top 10 small-business lenders, Wells Fargo, PNC Financial and Zions Bank, are administering the $35,000 interest-free loans to “viable” small businesses struggling with debts as a result of the downturn. (By “viable,” the SBA means businesses that were in good shape before the crash.)…

The Recession Will End… When Small Businesses Can Afford Health Care

Says who: 27 million small business owners

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s such a huge expense that I don’t know if we can continue doing 60 percent,” said Dan Verbeten, owner of Gardan Inc., a contract manufacturing company in Hortonville. “It’s the fourth-largest expense item.” (via BizJournals.com)

Why it might be false: Providing health benefits has been a growing expense, even before the recession took hold. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, health care costs for employers rose 10 percent in 2008 alone. Such costs are behind a disheartening trend: Just 59 percent of small business employers provided health benefits in 2007, down from 68 percent in 2000. But whatever health care’s crimes, it’s on its own track, separate from the forces that brought down the economy…