Oh, the joys of working at home. What is better than the 60 second commute to your home office, but have you taken time to consider the drawbacks. While a home office may be very convenient, they can be highly inefficient. There is no better place to get distracted then at home.

At home you have children, laundry that needs to be done, the television, pets, and a home phone that likes to ring.  All of these distractions are time sucks. They simply suck away valuable time. If they are taking away time, then it’s safe to assume that they are taking away profits from your business, and I don’t think that losing money was what you had in mind when choosing to work at home. Unless you have rock solid discipline, it’s easy for your work day to turn into a day filled with endless errands which means little to no business work gets done.

If you choose to work from home, you must keep yourself in a routine in order to get the best results. Set your alarm for a set time each day, go workout, get dressed, get the kids ready and off to school (if you have them), and then get to work.

If you cannot maintain the day-to-day disciplines of running a business, then you must seek an outside office for the sake of staying in business. The thought of having to spend additional money alone may help you stay disciplined. If you can’t make it work at home, then you will be forced to cut into your profits and spend money on leasing an outside office which also comes with added utilities (internet, electric, phone, water) that will be needed at the business location. And if you can’s make a home office work and you can’t afford an outside office, the it’s back to the J-O-B and nobody wants that.

One business method that is both a sure way to build customer loyalty and is also great for reaching out to new clients, is often overlooked. It is the concept of giving something away for free. For example, you can give away a trial size in the hopes of getting an order. If you have ever visited the food court in your local mall, you will have seen this method of giving put into practice rather aggressively. It doesn’t matter how many Asian or Chinese restaurants there are, they all offer you samples of their chicken in hopes of getting the sale. They know that if they give away enough samples, they will turn some of those taste testers into buyers. Those that sell cookies in the mall do the same thing. What’s better after eating some salty chicken, than a fresh chocolaty cookie.

If you go to the different cosmetic brands represented in stores like Macy’s, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue, they will offer trial sizes of makeup in an effort to get the sale. It’s also hard to walk through these stores without being offered the opportunity to test the latest men’s and women’s fragrances.

You may not be able to give away a sample of your product for your business. You may not even sell a product. If you have a service based business, you can give add-on services to the sale in an effort to close the deal. For example, if you have a steam cleaning business, you might offer to clean the stairs for free if a certain amount is spent by the customer.

When we purchased our car recently, the dealer threw in a free oil change and also offered to have the car cleaned again at their expense. I wouldn’t say that alone was enough to close the deal but it did make us feel better about the purchase. Some things that you can always give away and make a great lasting impression are smiles and kind words. These are free and can go a  long way in making someone’s day better. Always remember that we do business with those that we like.

So, what can you give away?

A lot of companies are going through tough times in today’s global recession and many companies have closed their doors permanently as a result. One of the reasons that they may no longer be in business is because they did not spend enough money!  They cut back on expenses too much. Let me be a little more specific here. They cut back on the wrong expenses.

It is alright to cut back on expenditures like new desks, chairs, memo pads, computers, software, and office supplies, but when it comes to things like marketing to get more customers, or spending money on client projects, you must refuse to cut back. Not having the newest computer more than likely will not put you out of business, but cutting back on the quality used on your product or service could very well create unhappy clients that will take their money and referrals elsewhere, and that truly can be the beginning of the end for your business.

When hard times hit companies, they often pull back the reins on spending and many times to a fault. Advertising and marketing are some of the first places that are cut back. But if you think about it, when you begin to remove your company’s voice from the marketing and advertising world, then you have just increased the ability of your competitors to reach even more customers by your absence  and thus increasing their market share. The best time to advertise and market is in a tough economy because there is less competition and it is simply easier to win.

So, when you are having to make tough budget decisions, elect to order a few less gel pens rather than cut back on your ability to service and reach new customers. This decision alone can help you not only sustain your business in tough economic times, but increase your market share when others are closing their doors.

In order for your business to save, it must obey the simple, yet profound principle of spending less than it makes. Large expenditures or one time costs must be analyzed and justified. All incoming bids and pricing must be compared. All expenditures should be negotiated and renegotiated with vendors when possible. In other words, don’t bite on their first estimate or offer.

The longer a company has been in business, the more things need to be analyzed because the accumulating costs of doing business rarely get reevaluated. Here are some smaller costs that often go overlooked when it comes to expenditures and lowering your overhead:

1. Cell phone plans, features, and minutes
2. Delivery charges
3. Shipping costs
4. Office supplies
5. Printing costs
6. Internet services
7. Computer repairs and support
8. Break room supplies
9. Add on charges for phone service

Now please keep in mind, that what we do not want to develop is a penny pincher mentality, which differs from the penny saver approach. The penny saver retains customer service and product quality whereas the penny pincher will sacrifice value and customer experience in order to save money. The penny saver is not cheap nor a scrounger. The penny pincher will cut costs with little consideration to the future outcome. The idea here is not to constantly change suppliers in an effort to save a couple of dollars.

So when you are making budget decisions, take a long look at how the additional savings will actually benefit the company and also consider if it will hurt the company in any way. Refuse to compromise your service and quality. The savings just are not worth it.

When it comes to good work habits, they can be discerned pretty early in life. Take the local teenage paperboy for example. The local paper has to be delivered 365 days a year whether it’s rain, snow, hail, sleet or shine, and did I mention that those papers are not exactly light. They experience the mundaneness of delivering to the same customers on the same exact route everyday, and they better not be late or they won’t get tipped on payday.

Most kids don’t have the discipline and constitution that it takes to perform such a job. The job needs to be done everyday whether they like it or not. If they do fail to show up, they need to have a backup in line to get the job done. The job always has to get done, and it is their responsibility to see to it that it does. Social peer pressure just doesn’t have a place in such a schedule.

Another challenge is that they also have to try to reach out to new prospects if they want to increase what they make each month. A successful paper boy gets that job done constantly and without excuses. These are the types of people that you want on your team regardless of position. Employees who take ownership of their position and job responsibilities.

If they failed when they were younger, to grasp desirable work ethics, this failure can continue to make tracks throughout their adult career. When you hire for your company, make sure you look for the “paper boy” in everyone before making them part of your winning team.