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money you’ve saved. Have one column for tangible dollars saved and another column for estimated savings. If you find it difficult to assign a number to a specific benefit—such as what you gain when distributing colorful notes to employees—write an intangible benefit (“Elise seems much more enthusiastic about her job since I started putting notes on her computer”).
Share these ideas with your management team. There is no way you can implement all these suggestions on your own. Other people in your organization are in better positions to implement certain tactics than you are. Encourage them to test some of the suggestions here. Ask them to come up with their own money-saving concepts based on their knowledge of a certain area. The ideas in these pages can inspire them to come up with better, more germane plans; they don’t have to follow them to the letter.
Create a long-term plan after you’ve accomplished a few short-term ones. Once you get the hang of saving money—and once you see the benefits—you’ll find it easier to be more ambitious in your planning. Ideally, you’ll build up to 50 or more money-saving tactics—you’ll be taking action to save money in purchasing, in employee benefits, in credit card usage, in sales, and in other areas. This is when the savings really add up. When you’re saving $2,000 here and $5,000 there, the total dollar amount becomes staggering. This isn’t going to happen overnight, so there’s no need to create this long-term plan right at the start. When you have some successful short-term plans under your belt, though, you’re probably ready to create a more ambitious savings plan. How much can a small company save? I suppose that depends on how much waste a company is guilty of. No doubt, some small companies spend money as if they’ll never run out. Perhaps they experienced skyrocketing success at first, and it seemed as if they
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