Is Your Money Percolating?
This is our second installment of cash management…let’s talk about tangible assets. When you look around your business, how much money do you see lying around? Learn to see you inventory as money sitting on shelves. You’ll begin to see where some of that necessary moolah is hiding out, and you’ll start thinking of ways to retrieve it into its proper form. That’s the money you need for paying bills and keeping your business percolating properly.
A quick perusal of my good friend’s plethora of too much information (Google’s search engine), revealed ten ways to turn inventory into cash. It begins with proper forecasting, There are several fancy and time-consuming formulas to analyze how much inventory you need for a specific sales season, but sales are so volatile right now, the old formulas may not work for you.
For example, typical formulas require you to figure sales over a year or month and divide it by the number of days in which you were in business. You could then multiply that number by the number of days you are in business for the next month and determine what amount of inventory you need to keep on hand. Sounds reasonable until you factor in the unknowns—things like rising gas prices and shipment variables. We’ve entered some uncharted waters, people. The old formulas may not work for you. Change your mindset!
Make your money move. Have you ever wandered through an antique mall with a hundred different vendors? It doesn’t take long to realize that some of these vendors love their stuff way too much. The prices fluctuate wildly between those who want to sell what they have, and those who think someone will love their stuff enough to pay top dollar for it. We once had to get a new car (don’t ask me why, because it’s a highly improbable story) and found it was cheaper to fly to Boston, enjoy a two-week vacation and buy it from a little dealer who specialized in turning over his inventory. In visiting with him, he told me he had been in business for twelve years with a dozen mega-lots surrounding him by selling cars for a reduced profit. He earned a living by his volume of sales, not by how large each one might be.
Compete with the big boys. Amazon is just too easy…so take a tip from Bezos and start offering free shipping for local customers In fact, beat Bezos at his own game, and offer free same day shipping for preferred or local customers and hire someone to run deliveries after school. Try it out for a month and see if it makes a difference. Trial and error is your new best friend.
Hire an influencer. Before you order new stock, have someone hype up your presence on Face Book, posting five or six times a day. One of those posts will feature your new line coming out next month. Or focus on a weekly blog featuring your new merchandise, full of pictures and forthcoming deals. The idea is to get your customers ready to buy before the merchandise hits the shelves.
Develop a strategy. When your merchandise languishes on a shelf, money is effectively napping right before your eyes. When your merchandise flies off the shelf, money is percolating. Percolate your money.