From Business.com

Own a small business and manage your own finances? The process can be daunting and complicated, but there are ways you can make it easier. READ MORE

From Entrepreneur

To succeed, a small business has to leverage every resource it has available. READ MORE

From Entrepreneur

It's a good time to reflect on your business' progress and plan how you want to grow your business in the new year. READ MORE

From Business 2 Community

What is it like starting and growing a business in a time of technological disruption, changing social conditions, and shifting economic priorities? Exciting, vital, dynamic, and thrilling, in one perspective. Others take a bleaker view of the prospect. READ MORE

From Entrepreneur

When you don't have a big budget to market your business, creativity can work just fine. READ MORE

From Social Media Today

It turns out that neuroscience can come in very handy when putting together a marketing campaign - the next time you’re choosing whether your marketing campaign is better served by a collection of blogs posts, an infographic, or an online quiz, look no further than the human brain for your answer. Read More

From Entrepreneur

Improving ROI is a matter of ensuring your work efforts end in tangible results. Read More

Steel prices likely will experience a boost in the wake of U.S. International Trade Commission rulings in recent trade cases that favor the domestic steel industry. Read More

From Credit Management Association

If you’re a contractor who’s been stiffed, or a supplier left holding the bag, the idea of taking legal action around the concept of a mechanics lien might sound complicated and expensive. Actually, it isn’t at all hard to file a mechanics lien. Read More

From Fast Company

For the vast majority of knowledge workers, clocking fewer hours that generate higher productivity is feasible if you keep these tips in mind. Read More

From Quartz

The companies that sell airline tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals face an uphill battle to get customers to actually complete the purchase. Read More

From the Credit Management Association 

A company’s cash flow is dependent on a lot more than just credit policies and collections. Read More

From Harvard Business Review

In decades of work with more than 100 global organizations, we have seen case after case in which managers and their companies are too eager to jump into the global arena before ensuring that all the right internal pieces are in place. Read More

From National Association of Credit Management

Though still dominated by American energy and resources companies, the list of outfits most likely to default was joined by a couple of fast-deteriorating Brazilian corporations. Read More

From the National Association of Credit Management

Extended slow growth, increased volatility in sectors including commodities and a domino effect of major bankruptcies is increasing default risk for firms across most of the world. Read more

From Dave Merrifield, WayPoint Analytics

Contrast Jeff Bezos' competitive beliefs with yours for some competitive insights. Read more

From Brown, Smith, Wallace

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) recently released its 2016 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. A key statistic is unchanged from the last report, issued in 2014: the typical organization loses 5% of revenue annually due to fraud. The association also reports that a lack of internal controls is the main organizational weakness of occupational fraud victims. Click here to read more

By Bruce Merrifield

Global companies have formal, “enterprise accounts” programs. Distributors typically do not. Deploying a team of specialists (to augment the Rep) on the biggest, 1-5%, profit-potential accounts will yield, however, big profit gains, especially in down economies.

Profit-Ranking, Math-Facts

A cumulative, customer-profitability ranking report for distributors reveals stats like the top 40% generate about 150% of the financial statement’s profit total. More sensationally, the top 20% customers yield 140%; top 10, 95%; and, – in one case – the #1 account scored 25% of the peak internal profits.

Protecting the #1 Profit Account?

In the case above, the CEO decided to try an experiment to defend against competitive intrusions. He personally followed his company’s product and paperwork flow through the customer’s internal systems visiting with customer employees along the way. He knew he would find fixable inefficiencies, because: