First Step Marketing

All business owners know what cash flow is—if not technically, then emotionally. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to approach this subject from the very beginning because it is key to business success. Some business school professors have even begun to impart to their students the latest thinking about cash flow: “Cash flow is more important than your mother.”

A useful way to think about cash flow is to view the business as a living organism. Cash is the nutrient that runs through its arteries and veins. The brain might be viewed as the product or service, the heart as the marketing, and the stomach as the finances, at which point it all begins to get a little messy. If you don’t have enough cash flow, though, rest assured that the living organism turns into a skeleton. ,

The essential point about cash flow that is often overlooked is that it is different from profit and, for a growing business, much more important. It’s possible to run out of cash and go broke even if you have a lot of purchase orders because you aren’t being paid in a timely way.

This is a problem that has afflicted more than one Inc. 500 company. One such company that sold a big-ticket item (a computer software product for $50,000 and up) was caught in that bind as its sales climbed from $2 million to $5 million. The orders were there, but the cash came in as late as six months after a salesperson received a commitment to buy. That’s because the corporate purchase orders might take another two or three months to be executed and the bills another one to three months to be paid after that. This company’s executives had to skip a few paydays, negotiate with suppliers to keep essential products and services coming, and otherwise struggle to stay afloat until the cash came in. Things were so tight that the company’s treasurer found himself monitoring cash flow on a daily basis.

Cash flow can also be used as a planning tool. By monitoring cash flow on a regular basis as cash comes in and goes out, you’ll see a pattern that enables you to plan for the future.

This becomes very important, especially if you want to expand or go after new markets. You can quickly calculate the effect of such actions on cash flow and determine whether you’ll need to seek a bank loan or other financing or whether you can support the new activity from internally generated funds.

Calculating cash flow. Quite simply, cash flow is a record of cash available at different points in times. It’s usually monitored on a monthly basis. A cash flow statement seems complicated at first glance, but it’s really very simple, and it’s extremely important as a planning tool.

Exhibit 9-1 provides a standard cash flow statement. You begin with the cash on hand at the beginning of the month. Then you add the receipts during the month—from customers, royalties, commissions, interest, and so forth.

From that, you subtract the actual disbursements—the cash going out each month in the form of fixed and variable expenses. Fixed expenses are such things as rent, debt, salaries—items you’re committed to for the long term and can’t easily change. Variable expenses include advertising, office supplies, promotion, consulting, and other such expenses that can be easily increased or decreased from month to month.

The result is the amount of cash available at the end of the month. The cash flow is the difference between what you started with and ended with.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Advertising, Business Schools, Promotion, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.