By Finance New Mexico

The City of Las Cruces wants local entrepreneurs to know about a new software tool that can help them succeed by accurately assessing how their existing or prospective business compares to industry competitors.

The Web-based program, SizeUp, gives users immediate access to reliable data from public and private sources that they can use to make informed business decisions and write reality-based business plans.

SizeUp has an interactive map that allows businesses to benchmark their performance against that of their competitors, decide where advertising messages are most likely to be seen by their target audience and identify where to find customers, competitors and suppliers. Continue reading →

By Finance New Mexico

Sharing customers seems incompatible with a competitive marketplace, but examples of such cross-promotion are everywhere: the bank or coffee shop that occupies its own niche inside a supermarket, for example, or the fast-food chain that promotes a blockbuster movie with theme-related food offerings.

But the large corporations that take advantage of these strategic arrangements don’t have a franchise on cross-pollination. In fact, many small businesses have found that collaborating with a compatible business or businesses can be mutually beneficial: It can help all parties expand their outreach into new sales channels and build a client base while saving marketing costs. Continue reading →

By George Kenefic, Director of Enterprise Empowerment, The Loan Fund

About a year after she had secured a small-business startup loan through The Loan Fund, Deborah Grossman got a visit from two consultants who work for the nonprofit lender. The pair — Joaquin Amador and Andrew Carrabus — dropped by Grossman’s Santa Fe store, Yarn & Coffee, to ask if she needed help with marketing, financial record keeping or any of the other tasks involved in starting and sustaining a business.

The timing was fortunate. “I was trying to figure out how to get more people in the door,” Grossman said of her shop, where people can buy yarn, knitting and crocheting tools and accessories, patterns and books or take a needle-craft class — and enjoy a cup of coffee, tea or cold drink at the same time.

Grossman strives to create a community atmosphere at her business housed in a stand-alone building tucked behind the Pantry Restaurant on Cerrillos Road and Fifth Street. Continue reading →

By Claudia Infante, Projects Coordinator, New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership

One obstacle to improvement in a typical American company is the assumption that change requires months of planning, major expense and a work stoppage or slowdown. Then there’s the fear that old habits and practices will slowly return as people forget what they learned amid the pressures and demands of running a business.

Even when the need for change is obvious, such companies often resist fixing something until it’s utterly broken.

An alternative, nonreactive view embraces change as a continual process of incremental improvements and tweaks — not as an exercise in obsessive compulsion but as an adaptive approach to reducing waste-related costs, eliminating inefficiencies and optimizing competitiveness. Continue reading →

By Julianna Silva, Albuquerque Regional Director, WESST

Entrepreneurs are naturally passionate about providing a service or product, but many avoid digging into the financial aspects of running a small business — perhaps because they don’t have simple tools that can help them understand their finances.

This avoidance can cost a business dearly, because financial success requires that the owner understand the target customer, how to price a product or service and how to keep track of cash flowing in and out of the business. Continue reading →