Cash Flow Management - Most businesses that go out of business have as a root cause that the directors are not able to manage cash flow effectively. The general advice is that all businesses should have at least 12 months of forward cash flow planning. This generally is not created by the owner but by the finance director or someone in that role. But understanding it and managing it is critical. Business Planning - Similar to cash flow planning, it is important to have a plan for how the business is going to grow and what resources are needed. This will include sales projections, increases in staff, marketing, stock, etc. This becomes the blueprint for how the business will grow. Management and Recruiting - Team building and team management are the essence of most businesses, as businesses are full of people. Recruiting and team building are skills that can be learned. Our experience is that few people are born with these skills, and many don’t like these areas as they don’t know what to do and think they should somehow have these skills naturally. But they are actually mostly learned skills with many techniques, processes and systems that can and should be studied. Marketing 101 - Lead generation and brand awareness are keys to most businesses. Many people fancy themselves as marketers, but that only goes so far. Things are moving so fast that what worked one day may be old news the next. The key is to plug into a mastermind group or marketing guru that is constantly staying up to date. As a director, it is also key to understand all of the different marketing opportunities and their expected result to know where to allocate time and money for the biggest return. However, as always, consistency is key in marketing and the right resources need to be allocated to enable this consistency.
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