An entrepreneur's guide to offering trade credit, crafting a credit application, and evaluating a customer's credit-worthiness.

The basic spreadsheet and accounting programs you've relied on 'til now won't help your growing business eliminate decision-making bottlenecks, reduce IT costs, increase productivity, or improve the customer experience. To do all that requires an enterprise-wide, integrated software system. Learn how an integrated system can help take your business to the next level, and how to ensure you get the right system for you.

Existing strategy frameworks are designed for bigger firms with plentiful resources. They should not be liberally borrowed and advanced as solutions for SMEs, who face resource constraint. This very lack of resources impacts the competitive strategies that are feasible to SMEs. What’s more, the current literature in SME strategy fails to take into consideration potential competitive reactions from market incumbents in prescribing competitive strategies for SMEs. By ignoring competitive reactions, the literature therefore has no answers to questions about how bigger incumbent firms will respond when the market niches served by SMEs grow to a substantial size or become very lucrative. Nor does the current literature provide any strategic prescriptions for SMEs as to how they could compete successfully against bigger rivals who possess superior resources. [Hat tip to TheManager.org]

Too much money is worse than too little for most organizations. Until that day comes, the key to success for most organizations is bootstrapping. The term bootstrapping comes from the German legend of Baron von Munchhausen pulling himself out of the sea by pulling on his own bootstraps. That’s essentially what you’ll have to do, too.

Guy Kawasaki provides a list of ten things that every small business owner should do in the new year, though you will likely find the list applies to larger businesses as well.

You probably lend your customers more money than you realize. Have you checked lately?

Leasing new space is an event that can have major implications for any business. If a company leases space that ultimately turns out to be unsuitable for all its operations, or if the lease does not allow for expansion, the growth of the company can be unduly hindered. If too much space is leased, the company will end up wasting limited cash resources.

Lease documents can be sophisticated and complicated contracts. A great number of points beyond rent and square feet can directly and adversely affect a business tenant down the road. Conversely, a lease that provides a tenant with the right type of space and flexibility as the tenant's needs change can become an asset and provide a competitive advantage.

A prospective tenant might want to consider the following when entering into a lease.

Jay Abraham offers 21 principles to help businesses jump-start their sales and profits.

To many guerrilla marketers, technology is to be lauded because it has put them online -- giving them access to the speed of email, the power of fresh information, the warmth of closely connected people, and the marketing muscle of the World Wide Web. To others, technology is the hero because it allows them to flourish in a home-based business. This article examines 25 areas where technology adds potency to marketing.

Strategy formulation and implementation are critical elements of the small firm's process of adapting to a changing world. The CEO who hopes to adapt his/her small firm to a changing environment must focus on strategy formulation and implementation. This paper presents theories, concepts, and models that can be used to improve the process of formulating strategies, to determine the content of specific strategies and, to implement the selected strategy. [BNET Annotation]

Every business has a magic number. By employing his, our columnist didn't overstaff this year.

Knowledge is power, and knowledge of your company's value is the ultimate power tool. Here's what you need to calculate your own magic number.

Editor's Note: check out the online-only companion to this article, "Priced to Sell" at
http://www.inc.com/articles/2003/07/pricedtosellpkg.html

There's a lot that can go right and wrong in a business. A lot of it out of your control. But the extent of your personal financial liability for what goes wrong is one thing you can and should control.

Here Inc.com presents homegrown marketing ploys to jump-start sales, increase your customer base, and help get new products to market. Topics include:
- Acquiring Customers
- Product Sales
- Word of Mouth
- Partnerships
- Trade Shows
- More Original Approaches

Here's a quick primer of the various methodologies commonly used for valuing businesses (for purposes of imminent sale or otherwise).

"This guide is a checklist for the owner/manager of a business enterprise or for one contemplating going into business for the first time. The questions concentrate on areas you must consider seriously to determine if your idea represents a real business opportunity and if you can really know what you are getting into. You can use it to evaluate a completely new venture proposal or an apparent opportunity in your existing business."

By understanding what the Small Business Adminstration does and doesn't do, business owners can be in a better position to take advantage of this often misunderstood government program.

A look at the breakdown of women and minority owned businesses.

Do small companies really create the most jobs?

Are some small companies more equal than others?

What businesses are small companies really in -- and where are they scarce?

How many small businesses are there? Just a few more than there are ways to count them.

The use of electronic mail has grown exponentially in the last five years. When used properly, it is a very effective messaging and information medium. However, abuse of e-mail can be a significant risk to a company. Read about why an email policy is necessary and guidelines for establishing one.

The newest guide from Inc.com offers step-by-step instructions for publishing an email newsletter. This series of articles leads users through the process "from conceptualizing your newsletter to formatting it and delivering it to subscribers." Each of the articles also links to other articles from the Inc.com archives, thus creating an extensive manual for enewsletter creation. By the end of guide, users will have a clear understanding as to the steps they need to take in order to create a successful email newsletter. [Scout Report Annotation]

AllBusiness.com resources about trade shows. Includes a service to find trade shows, several How-To articles (including a Guerilla Guide), a couple of checklists, and some useful sample forms & agreements