301 Great Management Ideas: From America's Most Innovative Small Companies [Paperback]

Bradford Ketchum Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1995

Scores of new ideas freshly selected from today's most innovative growing companies.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Idea #66 Write on the Money
You want visibility in your industry, but a full-page, four-color ad in a trade magazine can run into thousands of dollars. Ron Harper, chairman of Harper Companies International, a spending a lot of money. Harper offered a $500 bonus to any employee who could write a technical article and get it published in a trade magazine. The first 10 people who met the challenge cost the company "the articles have a lot more credibility than an ad." To boost editorial productivity, the company line up a local freelance writer whom the employees could work with for a share of their $500. That took away some of the hesitation of people who wanted to try but were shy about their writing skills.

Idea # 217:Plot Out Cash Flow

The biggest challenge for any young company is "making sure that you have enough capital to begin with and that it will last long enough to determine whether or not the business is viable," says Norm Brodsky, CEO of CitiPostal, in Brooklyn, N.Y. The best way to get your business to the point where it can survive without outside capital is to write a business plan, which Brodsky terms "essentially your best guess as to how you're going to get there. Basic is better. "I don't mean anything elaborate," says Brodsky. "What I'm talking about is a modified, down-and-dirty income statement and cash-flow statement, real simple. A reasonable expectation of sales by month for a year." Writing a detailed month-by-month plan, he says, makes you figure out exactly what you're expecting to sell per day. When Brodsky helped advise a pair of entrepreneurial novices on their first venture, he said to them, "Let's take July. What can you do in July?" The couple planned to sell $20,000 worth of product, and Brodsky pointed out that with 20 working days in a month, "that's $1,000 per day. An average order is $40, so you're talking about 25 orders a day, three orders an hour, an order every 20 minutes. for a whole month. Can you do it?" The goal of the exercise, Brodsky emphasizes, is not to dampen enthusiasm. For that couple, he says, the answer was "maybe yes, maybe no. The point was to make sure they were dealing with reality."

Product Details

• Paperback: 347 pages
• Publisher: Inc. Publishing; Rev Sub edition (November 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880394219
• ISBN-13: 978-1880394212
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,281,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is amazing, June 21, 2002

By 

ken smurf (MA, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 301 Great Management Ideas: From America's Most Innovative Small Companies (Paperback)

I love this book, it taught me so many things, now i am an excellent business man! I bought the book and it has totally turned by business liffe around. Buy it today, it will do wonders for you as well!

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant! masterful!, June 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 301 Great Management Ideas: From America's Most Innovative Small Companies (Paperback)

Brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed. A must-have on every manager's book shelf.