Even online, we are a society of window shoppers. On average, a measly 3 percent of visitors to a company's website make a purchase or fork over contact information, says Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase, a Web-based lead-generation service. On the bright side, "the other 97 percent constitute a powerful silent majority that is already interested in your company:' he says. "The key is finding out what their interest is and marketing to them."

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You may not have noticed, but a revolution has occurred in business banking. Cash management (also known as treasury management) services, which were until recently available only to big companies from big banks, are now available to most businesses, from many more banks.

Cash management tools, says Bob Seiwert, a senior vice president of the American Bankers Association, are designed to help "get the money in quickly but not pay it out until you absolutely have to' -a tried-and-true cash-flow strategy. They have also made the job easier, providing a real-time window on cash flow and automating many tasks that were previously tedious or time-consuming or both.

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Some VCs like to see familial skin in the game, on the premise that you will work hard to keep your nearest and dearest from ending up under a bridge. A clumsily structured seed round, however, can alienate both the amateurs who love you and the professionals who, you hope, will someday love you.

So when Aunt Gladys starts fumbling in her carpetbag for a checkbook, talk her gently out of an equity stake. Instead, structure the investment as convertible debt: a loan that gets swapped for equity in the next big round of financing, says David Cohen, a venture capital investor and CEO of Tech- Stars, a Boulder, Colorado-based angel fund.

When you go several years without a major disruption to the economy, you can forget what it's like to be faced with this kind of economic unpredictability. It takes a different mindset to run a business in a time like this. Instead of just looking forward, you've got to take a step back

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When you publicize a business, you are claiming a trademark, whether or not you realize it. That's because there are two kinds of trademarks. Many businesses officially register their mark as a statutory trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (uspto.gov), which entitles a company to use the name in every state. But a common-law trademark is yours once you start using a name, whether or not you register it. Provided it doesn't infringe on another's existing mark, it allows you to use the name in your local market or state, and your claim to it grows stronger as your business grows. 

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