by Joe Coffee

Created on: November 12, 2008

There are 3 factors that drive the success of small businesses.

1) Acquiring start-up capital

2) Finding customers

3) Accounting, budgeting, and controlling cash flow

Acquiring Start-Up Capital

An adequate supply of capital is essential as many profitable businesses fail because they don't have enough cash to pay their employees and suppliers. But what is an adequate supply of capital? The only way to tell is by doing a significant amount of research on your potential market and formally documenting this in a business plan. I'm sure you know that a business plan is a very important document that is crucial to convincing your banker to lend you money.

There are two ways to obtain a business plan. Do it yourself by amending a business plan template, or hire a professional to do it for you. Obviously the first option will be a great deal cheaper, but probably not as effective.

Our research led to a website that has over 60 high quality and free business plan templates. We also found a directory that you can use to easily find a business plan writer in your city where ever you live in the world. Using a search engine query produced most of these results.

Finding Customers

Finding customers can be a difficult and expensive task for service business owners such as accountants, lawyers and plumbers. One cost effective marketing strategy for service business owners is to simply give all their personal contacts a few business cards. It may be surprising, just how far a personal relationship goes.

Many websites have pre-designed business card templates. The diversity and quality of these designs was outstanding. In addition, a significant savings can be obtained by finding a printing service on the Internet. We found that you could get 2,000 full color business cards for as little as $150.

Accounting, Budgeting, and Controlling Cash Flow

Accurate "small business accounting":://www.accountingandyou.com/small-busine ss-accounting.html is very important for owners. It's essential that you have timely access to information that could make or break your business. If stocks are running low, you need to know about it. If a large proportion of your debtors haven't paid, you need to know about it. If you do not react to these situations quickly you may have a situation where you don't have enough money to pay your employees, or worse still someone is stealing cash out the till.

Our research led to a website that compares and reviews top small business accounting software. The cheapest software for small business accounting, cost $89.99 and the most expensive software cost $1,499. It was interesting to note that the top 3 ranked websites were not the most expensive and cost between $250 and $300. As well as price you also want to consider quality and reliability. The relationship between price and quality equals value. The two companies with the most value are QuickBooks and Peachtree.

Hopefully you now have an idea of some of the tools that you can use to grow and maintain your small business. These three business aspects have a great impact on overall success and longevity.

Learn more about this author, Joe Coffee.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.