Top 50 Questions For Business Owners

Nov 23
08:52

2010

Bella George Swann

Bella George Swann

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When we teach business owners how to build a virtual business by outsourcing everything the customer / client doesn't know that you do.

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When we teach business owners how to build a virtual business by outsourcing everything the customer / client doesn't know that you do. We start with this series of questions that lets us know if the owner has put any thought into building a turn-key cash cow operation.

Using a Document Management Service like Delegation Magic will make the implementation of these answers easy. But if you wish to be in the top 2% of income earners ($29,000 to $86,000 a month net income) everyone of these questions need to be on paper with clear specific answers.

Saying things like I want to grow the business or I want to be rich are not enough. You must have specifics such as I want to increase gross sales by 8% month after month for the next year. (More then doubling your business in 12 months)Here are the questions…

1. Do I want to make over $100,000 per year from this business?

2. Do I aspire to get below 4 days a week and 40 weeks a year of work?

3. Do I want the business to get to $1,000,000 in revenue so I can sell it for 1 times sales?

4. Do I want the business to get to $10,000,000 in revenue so I can sell for 20 times earnings?

5. How do we get OUT of this business?

6. How do I position ourselves to create liquid wealth rather then capital assets?

7. What do I want when I leave this business?

8. What jobs can I delegate so I'm free to get that goal accomplished?

9. What is working in my company?

10. What actually makes real profit and cash flow?

11. Using the 80/20 rule,Top 50 Questions For Business Owners Articles what are we doing that is more trouble then its worth?

12. What is my break even point for the month?

13. What products or services should we drop?

14. Which employees are making me money?

15. What employees should we drop?

16. What do we do that could be outsourced so we could allocate resources better?

17. How do I control my expenses on a daily basis?

18. What do I do to control my accounts receivable?

19. What is my cost per sales lead?

20. What is my cost per sale?

21. Who is our ideal customer?

22. How do we find more people that match that description?

23. How long do new customers stay with us?

24. What is the lifetime value of a customer?

25. What is the best source of sales leads based on that lifetime value of the customer?

26. Do our loss leaders make sense for our long term profit?

27. What is our plan for improving the conversion rate on leads to sales?

28. What is our plan for increasing repeat sales?

29. What is our plan for improving average order size?

30. What is our plan for increasing customer retention?

31. What is our weekly plan to contact 5 'whale' accounts so we can move to the big time?

32. What is our on-line marketing effort?

33. What do we sell that is a star, a cash cow and a pig? Why is that so critical?

34. What is our written process for accepting orders through fulfillment?

35. What is our written process for managing customer service calls and complaints?

36. What is our written plan for financing the future growth of this business?

37. What are the 3 ‘real' reasons customers buy from us and not the competition?

38. What do we specifically want to get done this year?

39. What are the 100 most important tasks in running this business?

40. Do we have a manual with specific instructions on how to do those 100 tasks?

41. Do we have written expectations for each of our team member?

42. Do we track the 5 critical numbers daily? (Sales, Profits, Payables, Receivables, Cash)

43. What are the small measurements that I can use to improve this business every week?

44. Do I have enough cash flow to meet obligations in the next 90 days?

45. What is my 'acid test' ratio?

46. What is my current ratio?

47. What is my accounts receivable turn over?

48. What is my inventory turn over?

49. What is my return on assets?

50. Should I sell all my hard assets and lease them back, or rent them?

51. Can I pass the cost of inventory management back to the vendors?

To get help we recommend you outsource your accounting to a local firm found on  www.cashcowaccounting.com. The top 100 small business accountants in America list their services on that site.