February “12 Seasons” focus is on continuing to constrict and control costs and expenses during 2011.  Careful, conscious expansion of expenses works if your company is actually growing, but most news media and economists are comparing where we are now to a year ago…we don’t think that’s good enough.  Most business (our estimate is more than 80%) are still well below 2007-2008 levels, so while things are improving over last year right now, they’re not “good.”

It sure looks like cash and credit will be tight all year, possibly even for 2-3 more years.  Perhaps the best tool of all time for knowing how you’re doing on cash, credit, billings, profits, and all key indicators is the Trailing 12-Month (T12M) tool.  Nearly eveyone receiving these emails has heard about it from me…but here’s a revelation:  Very few CEOs implement T12M’s the first time they hear about it.  And…when they DO IMPLEMENT they all tell me:  I wish I had “heard” you the first time, or, because of T12M’s I’m now seeing things and making profit-making decisions about twleve months sooner than ever before! 

The very best and easiest T12M’s to use are in the 4-Charts Tool and 5-Chart ULTIMATE Tool.  They really get you started on seeing what’s going on with the P&L of your business.  Either of these two tools plus the Cash Manager Tool are all you need to make DRAMATIC improvements in the management of your business.  Give them a try…just go to www.ceotools.com, click on New Tools Catalog, scroll down to those three tools, and then print out the free PDF.  complete, easy-to-implement notes are included; then you can either build the tool yourself or buy the Excel version (all set for copy-pasting your data in just a few minutes to use the tools).

Hope you will use these tools in your business.  If you’re already using T12M’s, great…you might discover additional application of them by taking a look at the tools mentioned above.  Let us hear back from you, please, with any thoughts!

With very best wishes, Kraig