Controlling your costs the professional way Since I started my company Actinic 15 years ago, I’ve sold almost exclusively to small businesses - it’s been a blessing and a curse. A blessing in the sense that no single customer is too critical. Against this is that none of these guys has much money, which means we have to be incredibly cost conscious. This experience has taught me a few tips about keeping costs down.

How to learn from your mistakes I was at UPS’s worldwide headquarters in Georgia, USA. One by one the people I was meeting trooped in and seemed to be nudging one another and laughing. “He’s the one” was the gist of what they were saying. I was a bit puzzled, but eventually one of them let me in on the secret. We had just signed a partnership agreement with UPS, but unfortunately my Finance Director had taken the instruction to “Fedex it to them” a little too literally. Using their bitterest rival to return our worldwide strategic agreement was a bit of a faux pas.

Consultants? No thanks (or yes please)! In business, sometimes it feels like I’m over-run with people trying to sell me things. Nowadays this includes increasing numbers of professionals. It’s not just accountants and lawyers, there’s sales and PR advisers, IT companies, marketing and strategy consultants. Name the business function and there are the guns touting for hire.

How to Kill the Competition Killing the competition may be a controversial description of how a market economy works, but there is some truth in using the analogy of war in a business context. Those of us who have been on the losing side will certainly recognise the metaphor. In fact, the term “creative destruction” is now commonly used by economists to describe one aspect of capitalism.

Win in business by ignoring the crowd The crowd can be fickle. The expression “hero to zero” has come about to describe the way that the flavour of the moment can be despised the next.

Do you use your work time wisely? Years ago I remember reading Arthur Hailey’s book “Wheels”. This was a fictional tome that covered the car industry, and followed on from novels about the airline and hotel sectors. As a boy reading the book on the car industry, the thing that struck me most forcefully was how the executive, Adam Trenton, found he always had more things to do than time to do them. This particularly made an impact because it was out of my experience. Now, years later, it’s my daily problem.

The power and pitfalls of doing it yourself I’ve learnt that I can’t do everything, and I still couldn’t, even if I was the most talented person in the country. Even the practical guy who does his own car maintenance, decorating and electrical work probably doesn’t grow his own food.

Cloud computing can drive sales success Having an efficient and effective sales strategy is key to the success of all SMEs – particularly as they battle to build a strong customer base in their critical early years. Unfortunately, they are often held back by expensive and unwieldy IT systems that drain their resources and make the process of converting sales slow and unwieldy.

Saving money in less obvious ways I’ve found that wasting money is appallingly easy in business, particularly as you grow bigger. It’s not easy to deal with and I’ve had experience both of making great savings and wasting money too. Since saving money by negotiating with suppliers is pretty obvious, I’ll leave that topic out. Instead, I want to talk about a few of the more unusual ways I’ve found that make it possible to keep those costs under control.

Learning from the experience of others The job title CEO, MD or director does not confer the magical power of infinite wisdom. It’s important to have confidence and make clear decisions, but this can also create problems.

Avoiding ecommerce howlers – It’s common sense I get to talk to a lot of ecommerce businesses, and it’s very educational. I’ve pulled together some useful “ecommerce howlers” from this experience with names withheld to protect the guilty, but they are all genuine cases.