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| Nugget 24 |
August 29, 2008 |
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Do something. Quick!
It's time to make some changes if you're not seeing the growth in sales and profit you would like. "Holding your own" is not acceptable. Maintaining your sales at last year's rate is going backwards. You will need over 4% growth this year just to account for inflation. (Click here to see a summary of inflation rates.)
You've probably reviewed expenses already and made the appropriate cuts where indicated. What next? Visit this issue's featured link to see 10 Quick Tips to Improve Your Small Business. The tips cover the gamut from tracking financial trends to motivating employees. Spend a few minutes there to refresh your memory and discover new ideas.
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Inspirational Words of the Day
"If you don't have daily objectives, you qualify as a dreamer. ”
- Zig Ziglar
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Goals, goals, goals! You probably wonder why this subject keeps coming up in the Nuggets. It's because we still find that most recyclers have still not established written, concise, reliable goals. Operating your business that way is a lot like starting out on a driving trip with no destination in mind - or a destination with no map or directions.
The absolute best use of your time is to take a day (it may not even take that long) to develop detailed goals for the next three to five years. When finished with that, break them down into annual goals. Then develop monthly goals for the next twelve months and weekly goals for the next three months. You can now develop a calendar of "to-do" lists using your short-term goals. Be sure to share company goals with your employees. They need to buy into your vision too.
Developing goals is an important first step. The next step is to apply self discipline to ensure that you tackle the "to-do" list items on a daily basis. Keep the list where you will see it often. Make it a priority to work on them regularly. Check them off as you finish them so you'll have positive reinforcement from successfully completing each task. Periodically assess both your long- and short-term goals to be sure they are still realistic and that you are making the progress you should be. Make task adjustments as needed. Update monthly and weekly tasks as you progress through the calendar.
The secret to becoming as successful as you can be is to develop goals and never lose sight of them.
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Checkmate® Tip
Some Checkmate and Advanced Management Reports are formatted to use 14" wide paper because of the large number of data columns in the reports. This presents a challenge for those recyclers who do not have a wide carriage printer. |
There is a work-around to enable printing these reports on standard letter or legal size paper using an inkjet or laser printer. The report can be first "printed" to a text file. The file that is created can be opened, viewed, and edited in a word processing program such as Microsoft® Notepad© or Word©. Once opened, the data can be arranged and resized to print on standard paper.
Follow these steps to create the text file:
- Build your report. Select "print."
- Instead of selecting the printer like you would normally, enter c:\anynameyouwant.txt at the prompt. The file name can be anything that is meaningful to you, but .txt must follow it. Most recyclers find it easiest to name the file with the report name and date. (Example: c:\vehprofit20080827.txt)
- The report will be filed on the C: drive of your server.
- Open your word processing program, browse to the file you created, and double-click on it to open it. Usually you will want to change the page properties to the "landscape" mode for the report layout to take advantage of the additional width. You may also want to reduce the font size. After you have edited the report to your satisfaction, simply print it using your word processor’s print options.
Here is how an Advanced Management Salesperson Performance Report (5,12,13) is reformatted to print on standard 8.5" x 11" paper:
- Open the report you created using MS Notepad which is located in Programs>Accessories
- Click File>Page Setup and change the page from "portrait" to "landscape" orientation.
- Click Edit>Select All
- Click Format>Font and type 6 in the "size" box.
This same process will work with many other reports normally requiring wide paper, although sometimes you may need to manually align some parts of a report.
©2008 Car-Part.com. All rights reserved.
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