The object of any business transaction, be it foreign or domestic, is making a profit. That's why you go through all the effort of making and selling your product in the first place. Getting paid in a timely manner is crucial to making profit, but when your customer is in another country, this "timely and convenient" payment can become complicated; hence, your need for a banker with expertise in international markets.

One of the key questions to be answered when exporting is how you are going to get your product to your customer. All the time, effort, and money you've spent to make a sale in the first place can be wasted if the shipment is late, damaged, or lost, or if delivery becomes an expensive bureaucratic nightmare for either you or the buyer.

Exporting. It's one of the hot strategies for helping boost businesses of all kinds, gear manufacturing among them. With domestic markets tight and new markets opening up overseas, exporting seems like a reasonable tactic. But while the pressure is on to sell overseas, there is equal, justifiable concern about whether the move is a good one. Horror stories abound about foreign restrictions, bureaucratic snafus, carloads of paperwork, and the complications and nuances of doing business in other languages and with other cultures.

Given the current economic and legal climate, matters of hiring and firing are cause for considerable concern among managers. In addition to all the other factors to be considered, employers must be wary of exactly how these procedures should be carried out, so that the company is not left open to lawsuits based on charges of discrimination of one kind or another. The reasons given for a particular employment decision may be as crucial to determining liability as the decision itself.

Have you ever been confronted by a thorny business problem, only to discover - belatedly - that it has been creeping up on you for months, or even years?

The whole point of a trade show is to get leads that will turn into sales. No matter how attractive your booth was, no matter how smoothly the setup and the show ran, no matter how many visitors you had at your booth, if your presence at a show didn't net you any sales, then your considerable investment of time, money, and effort has been wasted.

Organizing a successful trade show exhibit is not unlike running Operation Desert Storm. The logistics can be a nightmare; the expense, horrendous; the details, mind-boggling. About the only thing you won't have to cope with is having someone fire SCUD missiles at you.

Cost cutting. It's the aerobics of the 90s for businesses large and small. More than just the latest buzzword or 90-second flash-in-the-panacea, it's a survival technique. Companies that aren't trimming the fat now may not be around in five years to regret that they didn't.

At the next meeting of your association's marketing committee, notice what happens. The rate of taking notes increases dramatically when the market analysis and international trade trends reports begin. Even with the handouts to match the overhead projections of numbers, the audience's pace is furious. This is vital, apparently hard-to-come-by information, and no one wants to miss out. Almost all of the information comes from one source, yet the data offered is only one small dip from an enormous treasure chest - the U.S. Government.

It's every gear manufacturer's nightmare. Your company had been named as a defendant in a product liability suit - one involving serious injuries and death. You're facing endless court appearances, monumental legal fees, and, possibly, seven figure settlements our of your coffers. The very existence of your business could be on the line. The question is, how do you prevent this nightmare from becoming a painful reality.