The difficulties that big businesses have experienced over the past several months are opening doors for small business owners to achieve renewed success.  It’s important for the entrepreneur to be primed for success, and a good control of business expenses, both fixed expenses and variable expenses, is a great place to start. 

The tightening of bank credit over the past year has caused debt service to increase for many small businesses as they have found their revolving lines converted to term loans.  And the small business owner can only cut other expenses, like staffing and advertising so far without a negative impact on the company’s sales and lead generation.  With these things in mind, it is critical for the small business owner to always be on the lookout for creative ways to control other expenses. 

Pool Resources Where You Can

Many business owners are working with non-competitive business associates in a collaborative method in order to cut expenses.  For instance, two or three business owners may agree to share office space and other overhead such as equipment rather than each be responsible for the entire expense. 

Others have created co-op marketing campaigns and shared the expense. 

Strategically combining resources is a great way to immediately improve what could otherwise be costly fixed expenses, an almost instant improvement to the small business owner’s bottom line.  As an added perk, you often receive referrals from your participating associates that you would have never otherwise received. 

Replace Expensive Staff Overhead Where You Can

A lot of small businesses are choosing to use non-traditional staffing strategies rather than rely on costly employee overhead.  Would you be able to take advantage of part-time or temporary help, contract labor or outsourcing rather than hire expensive employees?  A shift from a fixed to a variable expense can many times result in an immediate improvement to your bottom line by decreasing your overhead substantially. 

Many small business owners feel that sales employees are a necessary fixed expense, but there are even some solutions for keeping this expense in check.  Why not consider putting your customers and business associates to work referring you business by offering a referral fee each time a lead they send you becomes a sale?  By using this strategy, you only have to pay your sales staff when you actually get a sale.  Not bad! 

Rebid Necessary Expenses

There will always be expenses you just can’t get away from, such as insurance, telephone, and credit card processing charges.  But, as the economy becomes more competitive, so do many of these businesses, and it is important to be always on the lookout for the best deal.  Get new bids on these expenses frequently and your total expenses will decrease.  Even contract labor can be bid and improved, particularly as layoffs and lackluster economy provides more talented resources available. 

The small business owner who is able to adjust and make fast changes could be very successful in the coming year.  Analyzing expenses and making changes where you can is a great way to add to that success. 

To get more small business success strategies, and to claim your free white paper:  “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year"   visit www.WebAccountingOnline.com.