Even businesses with the best inventory tracking software or supply-chain management system reach a point where they have old, excessive or undesirable stock. While many companies opt to use liquidators, that method is never practical when you want to net more than just pennies on the dollar.

So, what do you do when you find your store overflowing with last season’s goods? The key is to sell them without making losses. Below are five effective tips and tricks to get rid of dead stock, create room for new products and even return a profit.

1. Sales and discounts

Regardless of your type of business, your first step to disposing of excessive stock should be to put it on sale. Everyone loves a good discount so, find out the smallest profit margin you can live with, and slap discounted price tags on the items. If you’re putting high quantities of a product on sale, placing all of them in dumpbins at the entrance of your store can encourage customers to sift through and pick up multiple items at a time, while freeing up your shelves for new inventory.

2. Creating an urgency

One of the simplest ways of boosting the sale of your dated stock is to let your customers know you want to get rid of them as soon as possible. Urgency tactics like advertising the items as limited in supply, placing a time limit on discounts or just using time-related words like “Now, Fast, or Hurry” will entice your customers to buy your products as fast as you want to dispose of them.

3. Bundling products

Selling related items in a bundle is another clear-cut way of offloading dead stock. If your dated inventory consists of air fresheners, for example, you can create a bundle with a brand of detergent for an enticing price. Bundled goods help to get rid of more than one item at once while keeping the customers happy that they’re buying your products for a bargain.

4. Flashing coupons

Flashing deals and discount coupons on your website and social platforms is a sure way of getting your dated stock off the shelves. This way, customers that visit your page will get attracted to those coupons first, even if they were interested in a different product. Let them know the moment they land on your site that you are offering free or discount coupons on select items, which they can redeem when they visit your store, and you will automatically increase your chances of clearing off dead inventory in time for the new season.

5. Listing on marketplaces

Online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist, are great for selling off excess stock because they enable retailers to list their inventory on a platform that already has an audience. Craigslist is particularly preferred among merchants because, unlike Amazon and eBay, all listings, new or used, are free to post. Moreover, Craigslist doesn’t charge a commission on the sales you make.

You may also want to consider sending your excess inventory to price comparison websites like Google Shopping, Nextag, Shopzilla, and PriceGrabber, which will ensure your items receive ample visibility.

Conclusion

Promoting the sale of dated stock can be a challenge, especially when you’re rushing to make space for newer items. With the tips above, however, you can successfully get rid of your old products and possibly avoid losses.

This is not the first time I had a chance to hear about storage facilities in the United States. When I think about it, self-storage in the form of storage units Louisville is a brilliant idea. It gives homeowners a chance to store in their homes only those things that they really need. The rest of things can be stored conveniently in a self-storage facility located somewhere close to them.

Right now when I think about it, it all makes sense. Once you get a key to your own self-storage, you will never want to live without having one. This can make all the difference in your life especially if you happen to work from home and you have lots of office supplies lying around everywhere. From now on, you can store there anything you want if you are not sure whether you want to throw it or not yet.

I have heard somewhere that self-storage has been announced as one of the most profitable real estate investments in the last ten years. Those who invest in self storage facilities know what they are doing.

When it comes to self storage in busy places such as busy towns or cities, a good self-storage facility has a lot to offer to residents, students and businesses. The idea of self-storage is based on easy principles. A person or a business rents a unit in a self storage facility, obtains his own lock and a key, and everything is ready to go. A self-storage facility owner will never have access to any unit in his facility unless a lien is imposed for non-payment of rent, bank loan, etc. Once you put your inventory in a self-storage unit, you can be sure that it will be there next time you come to see it. Such facilities are usually very safe, as many among them use security cameras and provide computer-controlled access to units. You can check various self storage facilities before making your final decision which one to choose. I personally recommend those self storage units that are temperature and humidity controlled. This way if you store there your electronics you can rest assured that they will be undamaged next time you come to get them there.

When you combine the stress of work with the hassle of traveling, it can make business travel incredibly challenging, and it may induce anxiety.

According to research conducted by the CWT Travel Solutions Group, an employee can lose up to 6.9 hours when traveling for work due to the stress they feel. This means they’re neither working nor resting. The study also indicated that the most stressful parts of a business trip are getting to or from the airport or train station and flying in economy class on medium- or long-haul flights.

However, business trips needn’t be something you dread. If you’re traveling for work, planning ahead can help make the experience much more pleasurable. So, here are some top tips for de-stressing your next work trip:

Plan in Advance

If you haven’t packed everything you need for your travels to sleep, workout, or work, you’re going to find yourself getting stressed right from the start. Make sure you plan ahead by charging your iPad, dry cleaning your suit, and packing your white noise machine that helps you get to sleep. Then, before you depart, make sure you’ve allowed plenty of time to pack your bags. This will feel much better than slinging everything into your case 10 minutes before you’re due to walk out the door.

Take Advantage of Corporate Travel Resources

Your company will pay for a number of services for their business travelers, and there’s a reason they do this – they can save you a lot of time and money. So, let them handle all the finer details like hotel bookings, car rentals, and plane tickets while you take care of the most important thing – securing that lucrative business deal.

Get Work Done Beforehand

If you know you’ll struggle to concentrate in your hotel room or you’ll not be able to concentrate mid-flight, try to get as much work done as possible before you set off. Battling with Wi-Fi outages in your hotel while you’re rushing to meet a deadline is not going to relax you. By getting work done in advance you’ll make your trip far more stress-free.

Make Use of Airport and Hotel Amenities

To relax before you set off, be sure to make use of any of the amenities on offer at the airport or nearby hotel. A number of companies, like Marriott hotel, provide airport hotels that include a wide range of leisure facilities, including swimming pools, gyms, and saunas. So do whatever makes you feel relaxed before your flight so you’re feeling recharged when you arrive at your business meeting.

Meet Up with Friends

Are there any friends or non-business acquaintances you know at your destination city? Then why not meet up with them for a couple of hours? Seeing familiar faces can really help you get out of “work mode,” providing you with a great way to de-stress and get to know the area.

Even though it’s inevitable something will go wrong during your trip, avoid adding to your stress levels by removing as many hurdles as possible. Plan ahead, take time to relax and put together a steady schedule that’ll let you focus on your own well-being as well as your work.

I am aware that there are some people out there who strongly believe that SEO marketing is dead. There are firm believers that the golden era of serp is over and that it is time to move on. I have to admit that I rather disagree with this view as I have reasons to believe that search marketing is going strong and this trend will continue to be valid for years to come.

If you know me in person, you know that once I get into something I am willing to focus myself totally on it. So when I started doing some research on the topic I came across various resources including this eBook here. This one was a real eye opener and it is a valuable read to all those who are into the topic as well as #SEOUncovered.

I also came across some fun facts about search engines. Here they are:
1. There is no denying that Google is the biggest player in the game. It is estimated that over 85% of search engine traffic comes through Google, which is more than all the other engines combined together. let’s admit it, Google is just too big to be ignored.
2. google actually distinguishes between the plural forms of words. This is why you will get different results when you write the term “apple” and different ones when you type “apples”.
3. The more backlinks coming to a website the more authoritative it is. This is why it is so essential to get some good backlinks to your website from other websites that have high authority. This might be sometimes easier said than done, but there are some effective ways to achieve that.
4. Many people using google are not that good at specifying keywords while looking for specific information, so often it might take them a few tries to come up with the result they are after. For example, writing simply “apple” will get you a lot of results about Apple Inc., but most Google users are looking for apple recipees and not particularly any information about the giant company.

As you can see from the points about, the knowledge about search engine optimisation can be very useful to a business owner, and the more you understand the rules behind Google, the more likely you will be to achieve the results you are after.

For dedicated business owners and entrepreneurs, the thought of handing over the keys to something into which you’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears can be a terrifying thought. However, until we find the fountain of youth, coming to terms with selling your business will just have to remain a fact of life. Here are a few signs that might indicate it’s time for you to sell your business.

You’ve Had Enough Risk

Risk is an inherent element to owning a business. There are no companies that face a zero-risk environment—be it from competition, changing business climates or disruptive technologies. Managing and mitigating these risks for years—or decades—can become a tiresome affair.

Risk is one of the great ironies of business. As your company grows and realizes success, it’s also accumulating risk. The repercussions of a PR disaster, or mismanagement, has much more negative potential for a company like Apple than a startup with three employees. There’s simply much more to lose when you’ve already gained a lot. When you reach a place where you want to start limiting your risk exposure, it might be time to sell your business.

Someone Wants to Buy Your Business

If you’ve led your company to a position in which suitors want to buy it, you should think long and hard about their offers. Of course, just because someone’s interested doesn’t mean you must sell. There are a few aspects that you should consider before pulling the trigger, such as:

• Is It the Right Buyer? While some people might not consider this aspect important if the price is right, selling your business to someone who doesn’t really understand or appreciate it is something you potentially might regret later in life. Longtime family-run businesses especially need to consider the viability of potential buyers.
• Are They Offering a Good Price? If a potential buyer is making you an offer at or above what you value the company, you should consider the offer no matter how much you like being the boss. That money could easily catapult you into starting another business.
• Are Your Books in Order? Before any reasonable buyer pays you anything, they’re going to want to see your business’s financial records. They’re going to want to see a list of your assets, the types of business insurance you use, accounting statements and a litany of other information. Make sure your numbers all check out, or risk scaring away buyers.

You’re Anticipating Market Changes

There are several ways markets can determine if it’s the right time for you to sell your business. The nature of your business dictates its reactiveness to changes in broader equity markets. However, almost all businesses suffer during down periods and recessions. If you anticipate a downturn in the markets, it might be a good time to sell your business, especially if you were already considering it.

Changing sector climates can also determine if you should consider selling. Disruptive technologies and companies are responsible for turning entire industries upside down seemingly overnight. If you see your business as susceptible to disruption, it might be prudent to get out too early rather than too late.

Ultimately, it’s your decision whether you’re ready to sell your business. If you’re still passionate about coming into work every day, maybe it’s not worth selling even if that’s objectively the best decision.

There’s something you know you need to do, but you can’t get yourself to actually do it. Despite how important the task is, you just don’t feel compelled to take action. We’ve all been there. Here are three things that I often procrastinate:

• Writing or finishing other tedious work tasks
• Paying bills or completing paperwork
• Having difficult conversations with friends, family or colleagues

I discovered an interesting approach for beating procrastination while listening to “Beat Your Genes,” a podcast about psychology and finding happiness. In episode 39, the co-host, Dr. Doug Lisle, an evolutionary psychologist, shares how to stop procrastinating by being aware of the living conditions of our ancestors, how our brains have adapted to account for those conditions, and how to update your decision making “algorithm” to account for the living conditions in modern society.

Sometimes procrastination is a good strategy

Dr. Lisle posits that procrastinating is not necessarily indicative of a character flaw or moral shortcoming. Rather, it’s an adaptive strategy that was quite effective for our ancestors, and can even be effective today.

Dr. Lisle discusses why procrastinating on paying back debt may have been an effective strategy for our ancestors. In pre-civilized times, there was more significant risk that your lender would die before he was able to collect on the debt that you owe him. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense to pay back your debt before you needed to. Rather, procrastinating was a better strategy because there was a chance that you may never need to pay back your debt, which would save you time, energy and money.

However, in modern times, there is significantly less risk that your lender will spontaneously die or disappear. In other words, you’re gonna have to do that thing that you don’t want to do! Yet, we haven’t updated our algorithms to account for the new conditions.

We need to update this algorithm in part because waiting to do the work until closer to the due dates means that your time will be monopolized and you won’t be able to pursue more promising opportunities. For example, if writing your term paper will take twenty hours, and you wait until two days before it’s due, you will have to spend most of those to days on your paper. So if a new opportunity comes up, such as an invitation to an important event, you won’t have the time to seize it.

You can prevent yourself from procrastinating on an important task by understanding the algorithm your brain uses to make decisions about whether or not to procrastinate on a task, and updating the variables within it to account for modern times.

Update your algorithm

Your brain runs a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it should procrastinate on a given task or complete it.

If there’s a high probability that you won’t need to complete the task, it makes sense to procrastinate. For example, if your friend often flakes on you at the last minute, it makes sense not to buy him an expensive concert ticket until the last minute. However, if you overestimate the probability that you won’t need to complete the task, you won’t be motivated to complete it until the last minute.

Thus, the key to overcoming procrastination is to properly determine the probability that you will need to complete the task.

In making this calculation, be aware that your algorithm will lead you astray when it’s driven by your adaptive brain — the brain that accounts for pre-civilized times rather than modern times. It’s critical that you calculate your probabilities based on modern times.

Once you’ve updated your algorithm, determine the best course of action.

If there’s a low probability that you’ll need to complete a given task, or if there’s a chance the probability will change based on upcoming events, procrastinating may be your best strategy.

If there’s a high probability that you’re going need to complete the task, complete that task sooner rather than later. Completing the task sooner will enable you to take advantage of new opportunities that may arise between now and the due date, reduce your stress levels, and potentially improve the quality of your work.

Beat your procrastinating genes

Don’t beat yourself up too much about your tendency to procrastinate. It’s natural. Procrastination was often an effective strategy for our ancestors.

To overcome procrastination, be aware of how our brains have evolved and how that can lead us astray, and update your algorithm to account for modern times.

This article was originally published on Medium.

Mike Fishbein studies psychology and philosophy and writes about how you can apply what he learns to your personal and professional development. He’s been featured on The Observer, Lifehacker, and Tiny Buddha. You can connect with him at mfishbein.com.