BizSieve Team | BizSieve.com

4 Tips for Understanding the Difference between Insolvency and Bankruptcy

Insolvency and bankruptcy are two entirely different things although the two are often confused. Insolvency is a state in which a business no longer has the means of paying debts on time. This occurs whenever liability or debt exceeds the company’s revenue or cash flow. Once a company is deemed insolvent, immediate action must be taken in order to settle or negotiate debts. Not effectively solving insolvency can lead to bankruptcy or a liquidation of all assets. Because insolvency and bankruptcy are often confused, it is helpful to know the differences in the two.

Insolvency is defined as the inability to meet current financial obligations. In other words, your company is not currently making enough money to pay your debts. This can occur at any time if your business revenue falls below what you require to keep debts paid on time. Bankruptcy is often the end result of insolvency and involves liquidating assets in order to pay debtors. In some cases and depending on the type of bankruptcy filed, the business itself may not be required to pay the debts off but will likely end up closing due to lack of assets.
Creditors have the ability to invoke additional rights if a business becomes insolvent. During a bankruptcy however, creditor rights are limited. Once your company is declared bankrupt you receive a bit of protection from your creditors. In the case of insolvency however, you have no such protection and creditors are legally allowed to collect their debts using a number of different means.
Companies that become insolvent actually have a way out. Bonds can be sold that will help to raise needed cash to pay debtors. Once a business enters into a bankruptcy however, this leeway is no longer an option. If you are forced to file bankruptcy on your business you will have to follow through with the bankruptcy. Becoming insolvent can be turned around by simply accumulating more cash.
Companies that are insolvent may be forced to become bankrupt or go into receivership. In some cases, you may be forced to liquidate assets in order to pay debts. Once you have found yourself insolvent you have a number of decisions to make regarding the future of your business. You can choose to attempt to raise additional revenue to keep your debts paid or find ways of refinancing that debt to lower your payments and/or bring your accounts current. Bankruptcy is normally the last result for small business owners who are insolvent and cannot find a way to bring their debts current.

Businesses can recover from insolvency and many have. There are a number of ways that you can raise capital to keep your business head above water while you build up customer bases and sales. Choosing to declare bankruptcy is a decision that should be considered carefully and again, this is often the last resort for small business owners. Understanding the differences between bankruptcy and insolvency is important as is choosing a qualified and experienced attorney should you decide that bankruptcy is in the best interest of your company.

Insolvency does not always lead to bankruptcy and all businesses that are insolvent are not bankrupt. However, all businesses that do file bankruptcy are considered to be insolvent because they have exhausted all means possible of paying debts and have found no viable solution for doing so.

About the Author: This article was written by Real Business Recovery, a team of award-winning insolvency practitioners specializing in Company Voluntary Arrangements or CVA. Visit us at http://www.realbusinessrecovery.co.uk for more information.

Increase your Brand Awareness with Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is one of the most effective marketing strategies you can use to promote your business, event or product. Banner advertising has a number of advantages over more common forms of advertisement, and has become quite popular as a result.

The first advantage of banner advertising is its cost, as it is relatively inexpensive compared to the many other types of available advertising. Banners are able to be used until they are worn out, and you only have to pay for one banner at a time, giving you a value for money advertising system. Other forms of print advertising such as magazines and newspapers require you to pay for each time you want to advertise in every different issue. Television advertising holds the same problem.

Another advantage of banner advertising is its high visibility. Banners come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, including amongst others, tear drop banners and flag banners. This allows you to cater for the type of space or area in which you wish to advertise. Due to their large size, banners are instantly eye catching, especially when designed with large words and bright colours in order to make people take notice. Customised banners such as the tear drop and flag banner, allow you to place them in areas with high traffic, whether that be vehicle or pedestrian in nature. Banners are likely to be seen by thousands of people every day in some situations, and if they are effectively designed, they will give your message a lot of attention and greatly increase your brand awareness to the general public.

Banners are also able to be easily set up and transported. This allows you to take your advertising with you to a number of different areas and events to help spread your message in a wider area. Banners are easily portable in carry bags, and can be quickly set up and secured via the use of accessories such as pegs, stands and weights. This allows you to effectively and efficiently advertise in and move between multiple areas, using a variety of different banners available including tear drop banners, flag banners, sail banners, pop up banners and many more.

Banners have been proven to be an effective marketing tool in a variety of different situations. Whilst not everyone watches television, or reads newspapers and magazines, they will leave the house to travel to work shop or socialise, which gives indoor and outdoor banner advertising a great advantage over other more conventional advertising methods.

About the Author: Joseph Caley is a proficient blogger and reader always on the lookout for information on different ways of marketing and advertising, helps to add insight to the designers creating Tear Drop Banners, Advertising Banners and Banner Stands.

An Independent Local Bookstore Beats the Odds

Few industries have been overturned as violently by the information revolution as the book trade. Amazon.com has proven such an efficient, convenient, and comprehensive retailer of the printed word, that for years now observers have questioned whether it might mean the demise of the brick-and-mortar bookstore.

However, this does not tell the whole story. The bookstore business had already been decimated on a local level by the rise, first, of national chains within the once-thriving mall ecosystem (B. Dalton, Waldenbooks) and then of big-box stores (Barnes & Noble, Borders). The latter could offer a selection of inventory that most independents could not, but in turn they were roundly beaten at this game by the big yellow e-tailer, whose ability to retrieve what customers want to buy is slowly approaching infinity.

So when Borders went bankrupt last year, it might at first have seemed like the end of the physical bookstore. But away from the malls and main drags, all across America, a dwindling number of small, independent bookstores had long been hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

A case in point is Houston’s Brazos Bookstore. Founded in 1974 by local literary scenester Karl Killian, over the decades Brazos developed a reputation as one of the city’s artistic hotspots. Always first and foremost a labor of love, the store buckled under 21st -century financial pressures and nearly closed its doors before being rescued by a consortium of patrons of the arts in 2006.

brazos bookstore
Image by Liz and Gianna’s Adventure Bookland

Despite new ownership and management, the store continued to lose money and faced another crisis in 2011. The end looked nigh once more, but in a bold vote of confidence (nearly simultaneously with the Borders collapse!) the ownership elected to keep the store open and bring in new management again. Today’s manager, Jeremy Ellis, has overhauled both the image and the infrastructure of Brazos, bringing not only a palpable new vitality but a steady profit. I asked Mr. Ellis the keys to his success in this extremely challenging niche. Here are his answers:

1. A hyperlocal emphasis

One advantage Brazos has over competitors like Amazon and even Barnes & Noble is that it’s a genuine, unique part of the community. The store’s bulging Texana section and close relationships with area authors provide real assets that can’t be outmatched by the more impersonal online experience.

2. Aggressive social-media presence

In tandem with this community focus, Brazos has beefed up its online activity. Readings and other events are announced via Facebook, email newsletters, Twitter, and across multiple other platforms. In-store inventory is now visible on brazosbookstore.com, where they are also selling e-books. On an internal level, the office has streamlined its operations, going all-Google for mail, document collaboration, etc.

3. Personalized service

This spring the store launched an initiative called Inuchan, patterned on a Japanese retail concept Ellis had read about and become enamored with. Enrollees in this subscription program complete an interview with mysterious questions right out of a personality quiz (“Paris or New York?” “Dogs or cats?”) in order to determine what monthly books and gifts each customer will get. This high-end service complements the store’s existing book club, special-order policy, and savvy, approachable staff.

4. Quality over quantity

Along with the new manager came a new buyer, Danielle DuBois Dimond, a graduate of the University of Houston’s prestigious Creative Writing Program. Besides her extensive literary knowledge, Dimond brings a keen aesthetic eye, insisting that “customers do judge books by their covers and so I do too.” Indeed, the store almost gleams with colorful displays and its gorgeous out-facing art section. This is not mere frippery, says Dimond but another strategy of survival in the shadow of Amazon: “I treat my job like that of a curator, because that’s our competitive advantage: we can’t have everything, but we can have the best things.”

About the Author: Aniya Wells is a freelance blogger whose primary focus is writing about online degree programs. She also enjoys investigating trends in other niches, notably technology, traditional higher education, health, and small business. Aniya welcomes reader questions and comments at aniyawells@gmail.com.

The Value of Your Response on Social Media to Upset Customers

In this article, you’ll learn…

From my recent experiences as a customer who complained over social media
5 tips on how to respond to angry customers who have lashed out at you over social media

One of the best ways to learn about social media marketing and the impact it can have for your customers is to use social media as the customer of some other business. You can learn a lot of valuable lessons on how to treat your customers, particularly angry customers, if you are first one yourself. Pay attention to how you are responded to and how that made you feel. Are you more or less likely to do business with the company based on how they responded to you through social media? I have personally had 2 instances in the last couple of weeks in which businesses earned my respect because of how they responded to my displeasure with their business.

Experience #1: I was instructed by my wife, on the morning of the last day of school, to go to McDonald’s and get a gift card for one of my kids teachers as an appreciation gift. This teacher loves McDonald’s. The morning was packed with things to be done and there really was no time to spare. I pull up to the drive up and ask for a gift card. Sadly, they tell me they are out. Okay, fair enough. I travel to the next closest McDonald’s and pull up there. I ask for a gift card and was told that they are out of gift cards. “Really”, I thought to myself? This is a monster chain restaurant. Can they all really be out of gift cards? I tweeted at them expressing my displeasure and end the tweet with the hash tag of #fail. Shortly after, I receive a tweet from someone on the McDonald’s Twitter customer service team. Did you know they have a whole team, website, etc. dedicated to providing customer service via Twitter? I didn’t either. We exchanged several tweets back and forth, which ended with a direct message asking if she could send me some gift cards directly. I was very impressed with how this was handled. They were very professional in their approach and very accommodating. Respect earned.

Experience #2: My wife called me to tell me that the local water park was closing down for the day because they were not making money. She had been there with my kids for the last 2 hours and they were now being kicked out so that they could close. It was a colder day, sure, but that is not why they closed. If the park had been packed they would have stayed open. They tried to claim on their Facebook page that they had closed for the “health and safety of their customers”. I took issue and commented on the post. Needless to say, I stirred a pot with others who “like” them on Facebook. Some supporting me, some saying that I should have my head examined for taking my kids to a water park on such a cold day. In some cases, it got personal. However, The local water park maintained a professional approach in their responses to my “calling them out”. They left my posts up on their Facebook page. They replied several times and was part of the conversation. I noticed that they did delete one post that was particularly personal against me. While I did not agree with their business decision to close the park that day, I gained some additional respect for them based on the fact that they did not shy away from the conversation and kept things respectful when I am sure it was not comfortable for them.

Business owners and marketing professionals everywhere need to learn the lessons of social media customer service. Here are some tips on how to respond and how not to respond to angry customers on social media.

Pay attention! Someone needs to be monitoring the company’s social media accounts and what people are saying.
Do not delete the post of an angry customer. This will only anger them more and send them on a longer rant, and potentially to other places to leave negative reviews.
Address the post in “public”. Let others see your responsiveness and your professional customer service. This will shed good light on your customer service.
If you need to go behind closed doors after first responding publicly, that is fine. In many cases you will want to do this to make sure you do not get a rash of fake complaints trying to get free stuff.
Do not become personal, stay professional. Even if you do not gain them back as a customer, they will respect the fact that you stayed above board on the situation and they are less likely to talk negatively about you.

About the Author: Rick Hardman is an SEO manager at seo.com who loves to use social media personally as well as professionally.

Public Liability Insurance

There are a number of insurance types businesses are required to have and one of the latest ones is public liability insurance. This is not a legally required insurance but many businesses are finding they are missing out on business if they do not have this level of cover. Members of the general public in recent years have learned a lot about business insurance and as such are looking for proof of public liability insurance before they will hire trades people to complete work for them.

Public liability insurance, in its simplest terms, covers businesses against claims of damages and injury. Whether a customer’s property is damaged on the business premises or within the customer’s own home, or the customer themself is injured, the business will be covered against any claim put forward.

As with all insurance there are a number of aspects to look out for when buying public liability insurance. When looking at any policy it is important to keep a number of questions in mind: these include ‘what is included in the policy’ – does it cover every aspect of your business and the situations you work in? It is also important to check that the level of cover is enough for your business: if you do not take out the right level of cover you may find yourself having to pay out against claims that the policy does not cover.

Another important question to consider when looking for public liability insurance is if you can change your level of cover depending upon your needs. There is no point taking out a policy which won’t allow you to increase the level of cover as your business grows. Similarly, if your work is mainly seasonal you won’t want to be paying large amounts out on months where you aren’t getting much work in – look for a policy which can be flexible around your business needs.