Small Business Handbook
The Complete Guide to Running & Growing Your Business
[Includes CD-ROM]

By Steve Parks
January 2006
Pearson / Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0273695312
213 pages, Illustrated, 6 ¼” x 9 ¼”
$57.50 Paper Original


Getting a business off the ground is only part of the challenge. What every entrepreneur needs is a handbook to guide them through every stage of actually running their business, from finance to marketing, from sales to hiring and managing people.

The Small Business Handbook is THE essential reference for anybody who is starting a business. It provides vital advice and guidance on all the day-to-day aspects of running your enterprise and also helps you plan your growth and exit strategy, so that whatever happens you'll be ready to tackle it, informed and prepared.

The accompanying CD contains a whole range of useful templates and essential documents for use in running your business, and also features audio clips of successful entrepreneurs offering their tips and techniques for making your business really successful.

Unlike many small business guides, Steve Parks is an entrepreneur with his own small but fast growing business. It's clear from every page of the handbook that he knows exactly what it's like to be in the reader's position, and he shares everything he wishes he had had during his early years of running his own business.
The book is endorsed by the Institute of Entrepreneurs, and by a wide range of entrepreneurs who have been there and done it.

Contents
1. Running your business
1. What are the vision and values of your business?
2. What are your vision and values? How can the business get you there?
3. Work on the business, not in the business.
4. Business planning.
5. Developing your managers.
6. Converting to a Limited Company
7. Learning to delegate
8. Monitoring your competition
9. Be your own competition
10. The board of directors
11. Board Meetings
12. The executive management team.
13. Executive Meetings
14. Growing through acquisitions
15. Sell your business every year!
2. Finance
1. Planning the finances of your business
2. Raising Finance
3. An accounting system
4. Good financial controls
5. Paying Staff
6. Paying Suppliers
7. Getting paid by customers
8. Working with your bank
9. Working with your accountant
10. Working with business angels or VC’s.
11. VAT
12. Corporation Tax
13. Dealing with money problems
14. Making the most of a cash surplus
15. Legal Issues
16. Best Practice
3. Opportunities
1. The big emerging trends.
2. What business are you really in?
3. What are your markets trends?
4. Developing your products and services.
5. Using new technology.
6. Adding services to products.
7. Be the best in the world - going global.
8. What is your ‘edge’?
4. Staff
1. Identifying your need for staff
2. Recruiting People
3. Managing People
4. Retaining People
5. Motivating people
6. Incentivising people
7. Promoting People
8. Preventing People Problems
9. Handling People Problems
10. Developing People
11. Legal Issues
12. Best practice
5. Customers
1. Finding new Customers
2. Persuading them to buy from you
3. Satisfying your customers
4. Keeping your customers
5. Doing more business with your customers
6. Serving your customers by Mail Order
7. Serving your customers over the Internet
8. Serving customers outside the UK
9. Legal Issues
10. Best Practice
6. Suppliers
1. Finding suppliers
2. Selecting suppliers
3. Appointing suppliers
4. Working with your suppliers
5. Handling problems with your suppliers
6. Dealing with suppliers outside the UK
7. The next stage: partnership
8. Legal Issues
9. Best Practice
7. Resources
1. Property
2. Machinery
3. Furniture
4. Telecoms
5. IT
6. E-commerce
7. Vehicles

Features
- Steve Parks is the author of the highly endorsed and fast selling Start Your Business Week by Week, he is also the founder of the Institute of Entrepreneurs.
-Finally a business start up book for those who are up running and growing.
-Will contain a FREE CD with audio of successful entrepreneurs tips, as well as all the spreadsheets and key documents you need to make your business grow and fly.

Author
Steve began his career as a journalist and presenter for BBC Radio in 1994. His work has been broadcast on Radio 4, Radio 5-Live, Radio 1, Radio 2, BBC TV and the ‘Today’ program. He left the BBC to form his own company, initially to continue producing programs for BBC Network Radio, but the company then evolved and grew into the UK’s leading publisher of business audio.

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