The results were pretty obvious once you got beyond the sports memorabilia lining the other three walls. They were arrayed in multiple sheets of graph paper, all along the far wall: five years’ worth of unit sales, updated in #2 pencil each week, in a line graph overlaid with a bar graph showing weekly revenues. […]
Interviewing a candidate for a job in your company can be particularly difficult if you and the applicant speak different languages. For the owners/presidents of many smaller companies, accountants are in a world all their own, employing a language known primarily to other accountants. How, then, can you assess their capacity to do their job, a job which, as much as anything else, requires them to be well-versed in accounting? It’s time for a qualitative interview of the number-crunchers.
On the Friday before Christmas, Jenna Olds gave two weeks’ notice of her termination and left for a week’s vacation. My client, the president of a technology-based start-up company, was floored. Jenna was employee number two when she was hired in the fall of 2005, and as the Office Manager and Bookkeeper she was the […]
The competition has gotten more aggressive. They’re pricing below your full cost. You can’t figure out how they’re doing it, because their cost factors are the same as yours. Quality, delivery, and service seem no longer to be key determinants in your customers’ purchase decisions. Whaddya gonna do? All too often, you feel like you’re punting from the end zone.