March and April (Ups and Downs)

After few Insults and Sacrifice, March 09 turned out to be a good month
for sales, there was sudden surge in sales. The order were from unexpected
leads. Though there was good sales, it came with its own list of problems.
These problems were lot more tougher to solve.

Problems:
1) Payment - The payment policy was 50% Advance and rest on Delivery of the product.
I did manage to get advance from customers, but collecting the balances is a lot of struggle.

I have now changed the company policy to get 75% advance and rest on delivery, there is a risk of loosing order but it looks like mandatory policy to survive for long time in business.

2) Issues with product usage conditions - One of product had a requirement for standard power, unfortunately there was power fluctuation (Outside the normal range) issue, this lead to issues for one customer. A new circuit has been designed to prevent problems like this in future.

Learning:

1) Be Strict with payment terms, if this policy is not strict, you may have to face huge problems in future. I have learnt it from few lakhs heavy cost but useful.

2) Clean manual explaining the product working conditions is necessary, but explaining the condition is even more necessary.

APRIL 09 - Very bad month for sales, i was expecting it to be a great month, but did not work as expected.
Problems:
1) Analyzing the reason for fall in Sales, i understood that i spent most of April 09 on execution of orders from March and Payment collection task from March.
2) Did not generate any leads during March 09, which lead to drop in sales.
Learning:
1) By 23rd of April 09 i realised that i did not contridute to marketing of the product but just was focusing on payment collection.
2) Allocate few hours each day for marketing, or else the next month would end up tough.

Also seeing the positive signs of March 09 i have decided to move to a bigger office, not sure if it is risk. I have started to feel the need for a bigger office. I feel it difficult to analyze if i have made the right move, atleast it would give me more reason to generate order to meet the increase in expenses.