Striving for Success as a Consultant

Once you start your consulting business, use the following ten strategies to help build success:

• Use the best stationary and business cards you can afford.

• Always think and act positively Enthusiasm and confidence show.

• Believe in yourself and trust others will want to buy the knowledge and skills you possess.

• Network through professional and trade groups to make sure you are well known in your field.

• Become more visible by writing a book, authoring articles in professional or trade publications or giving talks before important groups (look into lecturing at a local community or four-year college).

• Join local Chambers of Commerce and other professional, social, and business organizations where networking is possible.

• Keep your overhead low until you are established (if you need reliable help. get it from freelancers, graduate students, or moonlighters).

• Thoroughly document all business-related expenditures for no tax deductions that can be claimed without a receipt or other proof.

• Consider doing gratuitous consulting for organizations like ACE and SCORE -this can line up contacts and paid work.

• Submit your resume to employmentagencies that hire consultants, especially in high-tech fields.

STARTING AND OPERATING MANUFACTURING BUSINESSES

STRATEGIES FOR EXPANDING INTO MANUFACTURING

USE THE following start-up and operating strategies to help you expand into manufacturing.

Manufacturing Start-up Strategies

1) Amass considerable financial reserves.Start-up costs alone can present a formidable ob­stacle to any company interested in into manufac­turing. But to say that this is its only shortcoming would be misleading. In addition to start-up costs, operating costs can quickly bury even the most ambitious entrepreneur. The fact is most manufacturing operations will not show a profit until their second or third year of operation. It is thus essential, in addition to accumulating a generous amount of start-up capital, to also sock away a large reserve fund to help fi­nance your operating costs until whatever point in the future you become profitable.

2) Develop a carefully laid out expansion plan. When developing a plan for adding a manufacturing operation to your business, you will need to carefully consider all activities involved in turn­ing raw materials into finished prod­ucts. Specifically, this means you will need to answer the following five questions:

What basic manufacturing operations are needed to make your product?

What raw materials or components are needed to make your product and where will you get them from?

What equipment will be needed to perform the manufacturing operations needed to make your product?

What labor skills will you need to run the equipment?

How much space will you need to house the new equipment and employees, and store all the raw materials?

3) Develop a carefully thought out expansion budget. An expansion plan without a budget is next to use­less. The ramifications of available capital, cash flow, and perhaps more realistically the lack of capital and cash flow must be seriously consid­ered before any manufacturing plans can have real meaning. Essentially, your manufacturing budget must answer the all im­portant questions:

• How much will all the activities outlined in the expansion plan cost and how will you finance it?

4) Keep start-up and operating costs within your budget.

Below are four ways for you to reduce your initial start­up and operating costs:

· Assemble pre-fabricated parts. Instead of manufacturing every part of your product from scratch, buy the parts separately.

· Farm out as much work as you can.Use the talents brains and facilities of your suppliers and other manufacturers. For example, contract out the production of your new shampoo line to a manufacturer who already has the necessary mixing, bottling and packaging equipment. If you can't get access to a manufacturer, perhaps some of your suppliers can. Set them up so they can give you a completed project and even ship it for you to the required destination. This limits your need for Inventory and hiring extra people.

· Have your product made overseas.When a product is labor intensive, consider going to a part or the world where the labor force does not get paid as much as where you are. In this type of situation, nine times out of ten, lower labor costs mean lower products costs despite increased shipping costs. It all boils down to pure economics. However, although you can save money overseas you will also more likely encounter problems with quality, language, timing, labor trouble, shipping strikes, political upheaval, and all sorts of other unpredictable circumstances.

· Work on a royalty basis. If you've just invented a revolutionary new product and don't want to gel into the production or merchandising of your product whatsoever, consider turning production over to an established company on a royalty basis. The royalty rate for a new product is usually a small percentage of the net sales and is paid to you once every three months. This strategy is especially useful to independent inventors consultants or service providers who have no interest in the business side of innovation.

5) Obtain a competent evalua­tion for any new product or innovation before commit­ting valuable resources to its production. It is normal for inventors and manufacturers to like their own ideas. However, it is a mistake for them to become overly committed to their ideas in the early stages of the innovation process. Keep in mind that the cost of developing an idea into an in­vention filing a patent with the proper authorities, and in turn moving Into full scale production, will in­crease logarithmically as you progress from one stage to the next.

6) Set up a management control system. A man­agement control system ensures the right things are being done from day to day and week to week at your factory. Its purpose is to give you and your key people current information in time to correct deviations from approved poli­cies , procedures or practices. This system should give you ac­curate information on pro­duction, quality, sales, in­ventory in stock, collection of accounts receivables and disbursements. The simpler the system, the better.

7) Set up a quality control system.A quality control system asks the following funda­mental question:

'What needs to be done to see that the product is done right the first time?" Poorly made products will cause you to lose customers in a hurry. In addi­tion, when a product fails to perform adequately, orders are placed on hold, inventory starts piling up and returns start pouring. All this re­sults in serious cash flow problems.

8) Set up a sales & mar­keting department.Every manufacturing company needs a sales department in addition to their production depart­ment. In fact, think about starting your sales de­partment before the first product rolls off the assembly line. Sales are the lifeline of all companies.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 645