2008 March
Published March 31st, 2008
Building a budget for your business will take time to put together. However, it can be easy to move away from following the budget. Below are some ways to help you stick with the budget you spent time developing.
First, if you have never done it before living within a budget can be difficult as well as educational. For instance, knowing how to reasonably trim your expenses, or how much of a cash reserve to keep on hand will take time to develop the skills. Learning along the way, adjusting when appropriate will become easier as you practice.
Next, you developed a budget, but that was a best guess. You will need to be prepared that you will most likely miss your budget projections. However, your actions in correcting the missed budget will be adjusting it accordingly. Specifically, if you have a bill that you budget for, say around $100 a month and for the last three months it has been consistently around $150, this is where you will need to adjust your budget accordingly. If it is running less expensive than you budgeted for, you can then reallocate that money somewhere else within your budget.
Even though you have established a budget, this does not mean that you become extremely rigid in regard to the budget. You will need to be flexible to change things accordingly, such as your revenue is not as high as you had budgeted for, then you will need to trim back on expenses, and if you are bringing in more than expected, you may want to invest the money into upgrading equipment, etc.
Additionally, ensuring that your inflow is more than your outflow will be crucial to following your budget. Monitoring the inflow will help you to know if you will be able to cover your monthly expenses, particularly if your business has long periods of time between the inflow of money.
It is also a good idea to be a little more conservative when setting up your budget. You can do this by overstating some of your expenses, along with anticipating your revenue to be lower. This is a good strategy to ensure that your cash flow will be enough to cover your expenses. Money saving ideas is a good choice as well, such as lower phone plans or less expensive office furniture, etc.
If you can, set aside a cushion of cash. Having a stash of cash will help any small business with both success and threats to its survival. Of course trimming expenses is a good way of adding cash, but if there is any extra, it is a good idea to put it away. If your budget allows for it, earmark a certain amount of money and put it into a money market account. This money may come in handy if your taxes were higher than anticipated or an unanticipated bill is received.
Again, ensure that you are checking your budget every month, if not more often. Examining your cash flow will ensure that you are away of what available funds you have and need. If you are adjusting your budget as you go, then this will help to provide a cushion should you have any overruns in your budget. Of course saving any extra for such occurrences is also a good idea.
Last, your budget should help to restrain you from impulse purchases rather than constraining you to pay for what you should be paying. Setting up and maintaining a budget is a good discipline tool as well as ensuring that you are reviewing it for any adjustments needed.
Tags: Accounting, budget, building a budget, Finance, Finance and Accounting, financial planning, money, tips
No Comments »
Published March 31st, 2008
With the cost of oil rising to unprecedented levels, businesses are seeing energy costs rise as well. While you may not have a direct link in your business to oil, the high price per barrel cost is impacting your business in some fashion.
As fuel costs increase, so do transportation costs whether by air, sea, or land. Transportation companies often times add on a fuel surcharge or a fuel fee. If you see one of those make sure to ask about it and check your agreement to ensure the added charge is legitimate. If it is legitimate, make sure when the price of oil comes back down that the fuel surcharge disappears.
There are many ways for you to lower your energy costs although you may not be directly impacted by the cost of oil. No matter what business you are in there are a number of ways you can cut your energy costs.
The most obvious is automobile or truck driving. If you need to do any driving for your business makes sure it is well planned out and that you are not wasting trips. If you have a series of deliveries to make spend the time to map them out in sequential order. If there are times or deadlines to deliver by call your customers and see if they would accept an early delivery. Who wouldn’t want that? The result of your trying to be efficient and save some money is a happier customer!
If you ship products to your customers offer discounts for multiple items per package if you can. Also help them to plan their orders if you can to cut down on shipping costs. If they regularly order from you twice a month perhaps you could talk with them about moving it to one time a month to save on the shipping costs for each of you.
In terms of facilities you can save energy as well. Have automatic timers on your lights, particularly in break rooms and bathrooms. Make sure if you have vending machines that you have energy efficient models.
In the office make sure printers, copiers, and other electronic equipment are shut off each evening and particularly on Friday nights. You may be surprised how many of your employees leave on various types of electronic equipment.
Turn down your thermometer and encourage your employees to adopt a layered approach to dressing for work. While you don’t want to be seen as a Scrooge, explain to your employees how much money you spend on heat and electricity. You also want to make sure you have energy efficient bulbs in all light sockets and use fluorescent if possible.
There are a number of ways to save on energy costs around your business. Make sure to pay attention to the details and let your employees and vendors know about your effort, they may surprise you with some great ideas of their own.
Tags: advice, cutting costs, energy bill, saving money, tips
No Comments »
Published March 31st, 2008
Spending time with your staff and observing how they go about their business can help tremendously. More specifically, there may be a small adjustment needed on a task that has ‘always been done that way’ and is no longer effective. Small changes to the simplest of details can pay off some of the biggest dividends. Below are some tips for engaging with customers in a retail setting.
Instead of positioning yourself where you would have to approach the customer, stand in the middle of the store. This will give you a better opportunity to greet and engage customers without the customer feeling threatened or put on guard. Specifically, people will begin to become defensive if a sales person starts to walk towards them. Their first instinct is to run the other way. By standing in the middle of the store it is easier for you to engage the customer and create a less threatening atmosphere, yet still be available for questions the customer may have.
In trying to focus on making multi-unit sales, there have been better responses from customers when the sales person will walk towards the items that he or she is talking to the customer about, or just talk about it where they are standing. The lowest amount of sales from talking about other products within the store is when the customer and sales person are walking towards the register. It is much easier for the customer to say no at that point, already being at the counter than walking towards the spot where the product is located.
The best way to sell products is for the salesperson to get the products into the hands of the customer. When a salesperson just points out the product or stand in front of it without getting the actual product into the customer’s hands, this usually did not result in a sale.
Most often customers will say that they are just looking when they enter a store, usually to keep the sales people at bay. However, when this occurs, a salesperson’s enthusiasm level may drop upon hearing this from a potential customer. Another approach would be to teach yours sales staff to maintain the same level of enthusiasm, thanking the customer for coming in, and give them a brief overview of the store and what makes it unique. Even if this does not result in a sale, this approach is non-threatening and will leave the customer with a positive experience.
The last tip is to teach your sales staff to reinforce the customer’s purchase during checkout, linking the purchase back to something that the salesperson had learned from the customer during their time together. This will have the customer leaving knowing that they just made a great purchase, plus leave them with a positive experience that the salesperson was truly interested in them ensuring that the purchase was a good one and not just trying to sell something. This will also help to reduce the amount of returned items.
When you take the time to observe how the sales staff is operating, making tweaks here and there will help to increase your sales as well as the confidence of your sales staff.
Tags: brick and mortar, engaging customers, Generating More Sales, retail, Sales
No Comments »
Published March 31st, 2008
Knowing what will motivate your employees is tough. Thus, it is important to determine how and what makes each of your employees tick. This will help you to establish different motivators that will appeal each person.
Regardless of what you do to motivate your employees, it is important that you do something. If you do not do anything to motivate your employees, they will care less about the success of the organization, or about their jobs. Motivation does not always come in the form of financial rewards. That is an important motivator to have in place, but money is not the only thing that will keep people excited about their jobs or organization.
First, it is important to make work fun. If you establish different fun things to do around the office, such as a daily drawing for prizes, or conduct a bingo game that is related to your business and the prizes will be an extra half an hour for lunch, or to leave early one day, those are motivators that will get people excited and want to accomplish more, which will result in more success. Other non-compensatory motivators could be as simple as having a dry cleaner that comes to the office once a week to pick up their laundry or employee of the month where it is the employees who nominate potential recipients, where they get the choice parking spot for the month or anything else you come up with for a reward.
When you reward employees’ successes, this is most likely the easiest way to motivate your employees. Depending on what type of acknowledgment they like, either public or private, complimenting them on their hard work is always welcomed. Another thing that you can do is to give them a handwritten note about their success and put a copy of it in their file for their annual review.
Additionally, keeping your employees excited about their job and knowing when they are becoming complacent in their positions is very important. One way to help your employees to continue to grow before they start to become complacent is to introduce new projects. Of course, you will need to know your employees pretty well to know if they can handle new responsibilities. Perhaps they have too much on their plate already, that it is not the amount of work, but the challenge of new things. Shifting around responsibilities where appropriate will encourage everyone to continue to grow and master new skills, which is great for them and for your business.
Monetary incentives and rewards are always welcomed, but should not be the only thing that you offer to employees. The monetary rewards can come in a variety of different incentives, such as bonuses, gift certificates, trips (even just an overnight somewhere in town), or an increase in their compensation.
There is not a one-size fits all when it comes to motivating employees. Individuals are motivated in different ways thus having an array of different programs in place is one step. The first step is to know your employees and what types of things will motivate them. Money is always good, but should not be the only thing offered.
Tags: advice, employee morale, Hiring and Human Resources, management, motivating your employees, tips
No Comments »
Published March 31st, 2008
Interesting thing isn’t it? How the internet has completely replaced the need to leave your house to buy things. Shopping malls were once the great meccas of consumerism. What a shame….What’s that you say? They still are? Oh….how is that possible? The internet has EVERYTHING and you don’t even have to get off your duff to get it!
Sarcasm aside, in spite of the incredible convenience the internet affords, people are still flocking to malls around the world to find what they are looking for. So why is that? I thought the internet was supposed to make things easier?
The reason for this according to a recent Inc.com article, is that while shopping can be done individually, it is largely a social activity. We rely on recommendations from our friends and family to locate sources for certain products we may be interested in because we trust these people to give us good leads. In the internet world, all we’ve had to rely on are the search results Google and the like produce for us which, as we savvy internet users have come to find out, is based primarily on variables that do not have the consumer in mind, often producing the most prominent (read "well known") sites first.
We’re in luck though. Smart entrepreneurs have recognized this and are doing something about it. For the first time, we are starting to see websites dedicated to tailoring the online shopping experience directly towards the consumer. Sites such as ThisNext , Shoposphere and Kaboodle are what is called "social shopping" sites. And here’s what they do:
- Features recommendations by friends and like-minded shoppers
- Gives authority users based on quality recommendations
- Display a wider array of smaller (and arguably cooler) brands/businesses
As a small business marketer here’s how and why you can use these sites to grow your business:
- It’s zero cost if you do it right. For example, on ThisNext, if you fill out a "Shopcast" including one of your products, it will likely generate interest and click throughs to your website.
- Again, done correctly, you could also end up forming a mini army of volunteer brand evangelists. Word of mouth is still a very valuable marketing tool. The same applies for the internet.
- You will see not only a rise in web traffic but also in sales. Topo Ranch , a t-shirt company, stated that after posting their original Shopcast, their "daily Web traffic has increased by almost a third and sales have risen 165 percent." The numbers don’t lie.
Just remember to be a responsible member of these communities. Many of them self police anyway but you cannot approach it from a strict marketing standpoint. Don’t be intrusive and abuse the system. Merely develop good relationships and allow it to work for you.
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, Generating More Sales, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online, retail, shopping, small business, social networking, social shopping
No Comments »
Published March 31st, 2008
In order to bring in new customers, many businesses use expensive advertising methods. From newspaper adverts to trade magazines, radio or television commercials or more, the cost to get your business name out in the open can often be an expensive undertaking. However, there is another method that you can use, and it’s both inexpensive and hugely effective - social marketing.
What is Social Marketing?
At its simplest, social marketing is a method of online marketing that can bring very substantial results for businesses that use it. By working to a set plan over certain timescales, you can use things like blogs, social networking sites, online forums and much more to drive new traffic to your company website. And new traffic very often means new customers.
There are literally hundreds of ways that you can use a social marketing campaign to get results; however, if you’re new to the idea then there are certain ones that are easier than others to implement from the beginning.
Make a Timetable
Just like any part of your business’ marketing plans, social marketing needs to be approached properly and with a solid plan of attack. Making time in your day-to-day workings will ensure that you can concentrate all your energies onto getting the right ideas across.
Use Social Media Sites
Over the last few years, traditional methods for reporting the news have gradually been replaced by social media sites. These websites have millions of users who share news stories as soon as soon as they break, often beating established news sites to the punch. Places like Digg, StumbleUpon and Technorati are excellent for users to recommend stories and other websites. If you set up a profile, you can then have friends and colleagues start to recommend your news to other users, which in turn will lead to an increased interest in your business.
Start a Blog
Often looked upon as the musings of lonely people with nothing better to do, blogs done properly can be as effective a marketing tool as you could possibly think. Not only can blogs offer a great opportunity to have the very latest news from your business made available, they can also allow you to show your strengths as an expert in the areas that you’re talking about. Once people start reading your blog and agreeing with what you’re writing, they’ll most probably look at the business that the blog is associated with.
You can start a blog fairly easily - either as a sub-domain on your existing website, or as a separate entity that links back to your site. This second option is an excellent way of growing links to your website as well, which is another important aspect of social marketing. By combining all these aspects, you’ll soon have a far improved presence online, and one that the likes of Google will soon pick up on.
Tags: advice, E-Commerce and E-Business, Growing Your Business, marketing campaign, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, social marketing, tips
No Comments »
Published March 28th, 2008
Today, most small business entrepreneurs have a home office - even if it’s just to catch up on a little office work on the weekends. Whether you’re considering setting up a home office for full or part-time work, here are some helpful suggestions in getting it set up right the first time:
Your home office space
Choosing the right space for your office is more important than you might think. Everything from the amount of sunlight to the color of the walls can affect your productivity. An area that’s secluded, yet bright is best - like a spare room in the house, but preferably not the basement or attic. If you don’t have or need an entire room to devote to your home office, that’s fine, perhaps a corner or closet in a spare bedroom will do just fine.
For the best work atmosphere, get rid of the maroon or navy painted walls and bring in some lighter colors. Keep windows unblocked and be sure your office space is uncluttered and clean - it’s hard to get into a work mode if laundry is scattered everywhere. Also, as tempting as it may be to set up a little corner of the living room for your office, don’t - you’ll end up getting half as much work done, having to constantly deal with distractions and interruptions. Your home office should be out of the main flow of the house - a secluded spare bedroom is the perfect recluse to focus on work.
Your work tools
For your home office, you’ll most likely need a phone, fax, computer with internet service and a printer. However, there are plenty of options for each. For your office phone line you might decide to use your cellphone, a voicemail phone service or an internet phone service like Skype. For your fax, you have options such as a fax machine, a scanner with a computer fax program or an online monthly fax service. As for your computer, you have the choice of a desktop or a laptop with a docking station. If you do a great bit of traveling, you might find that having a laptop as your main computer will make life much easier. And, of course, for internet you can choose from cable, DSL, T1, etc. You may find having a wireless internet connection is convenient if you sometimes prefer to work on the couch or in your bed in the evenings - hey, why not!
In order to have a productive home office, it’s important to have all of your work tools convenient and readily accessible. That means having files, paper, pens, trade magazines and books within easy reach. Nothing disrupts a great work momentum like having to get up and look through a basement full of file boxes for your business’ EIN number.
Having your office right at home can truly make going to work fun: not having to worry about what power suit to wear or what lunch to pack, no commute and no idle chit chat with cubemates you don’t particularly care for. Yep, working from the comfort of your own home puts you in total control of your workday - which for some can be scary and temptation ridden. But, don’t worry, a productive workday begins with your home office - and as long as you keep your work space separate from your home space, you’re off to a good start!
Tags: advice, home based business, home office, Starting a Business, tips, working from home
No Comments »
Published March 28th, 2008
One of the best ways to grow your business network is by building relationships with fellow alumni from your undergraduate or graduate school. Having that common bond immediately bridges the gap from stranger to acquaintance and helps open the lines of communication. You may have had the same friends, shared the same dormitory, had the same teacher, loved the same restaurant, etc. You’d be surprised how much in common you have with your fellow classmates, whether or not you even knew them back in your student days. Many startup companies are formed with fellow alumni, and today colleges and universities are making it easy with online alumni forums. There are even websites, like AffinityCircles.com , that help alumni build their own networking circles.
Networking with alumni can help you build your company, gain clients or get helpful information. However, it’s crucial that you think of your alumni contacts as relationships and not a pool of potential clients, investors or buyers. In other words, build the relationships first before asking for something in return. True, this may be months in the making, but having this common background can really help to take business to the next level - whether that be in becoming business partners, asking about potential investors or talking about a list of possible clients.
When joining an alumni network, it’s important not to abuse your membership by say, only logging on when you have a question or favor to ask, or sending a mass request for investment money. Think of your alumni network as your friends, and treat them accordingly. You can begin building relationships by getting involved in the forums and answering questions, fulfilling requests and doing favors. Try to keep your name in the postings regularly so that others will begin to see your name as familiar.
Once you have built some relationships and you have a relevant request or favor then consider sending a personal message to your alumni contacts, rather than a mass posting to anyone and everyone. A personal message is more likely to get answered and it makes your request seem more important because it was a specific request to someone who you thought would be most qualified to help you out.
Alumni classmates can prove to be truly powerful contacts. And as a new class graduates every year, your tappable market just keeps growing and growing. While sites like Myspace and Facebook are more for socializing, alumni networking sites are known for building and maintaining business contacts - after all, after college, that’s where most alumni end up - in the business world. So, whether you’re working on putting together a management team for your new company, building your client list, gaining private investors for your start up, or just improving your marketing programs, joining an alumni network can help you do all that plus make some life-long friends in the process!
Tags: affinitycircles.com, contacting alumni, facebook, myspace, networking, online networking, social networking
No Comments »
Published March 28th, 2008
An important part of any company’s success is the staff it employs. Although the management team may be the driving force behind a business, the people on the "ground floor" are just as important - without them your business would probably struggle to meet demands. Therefore it’s important that you attract the right caliber of employee.
Often this can be extremely expensive, with advertising costs in newspapers rising all the time. However, there are other methods in which you can recruit new employees, and often at a fraction of the overall cost of traditional advertising. Some of the most effective methods include:
* Advertise on your website. Many people looking for jobs will often use online searches to find companies in the industries that interest them. If they find your website, then having employment vacancies on your site is a great way to attract new employees. Plus it’s free, so the cost-effectiveness is 100%.
* Use online resources such as Craigslist. This is a hugely popular method for jobseekers to search for the latest job vacancies, and more and more employers are turning to this approach. With the web being such an integral part of everyday life, websites such as Craigslist has become normal for millions of Internet users everywhere. Again, like advertising on your website, it’s free to post on Craigslist and the results can speak for themselves.
* Recruitment agencies can also be a relatively low-cost way of finding your next employee. Although many of the larger ones can be expensive, many smaller agencies will charge you an extremely reasonable rate to find potential employees for you. This also saves you money by taking away advertising costs, and you can even employ someone via an agency on a trial basis. This means that the agency pays the employee’s wages, eligible holiday pay, etc, and that lets you determine whether the employee is right for you or not before taking on full-time.
* Job fairs can also offer excellent ways of meeting jobseekers in a cost-effective manner. Because of the way that job fairs are set up, there will be literally thousands of potential employees being put in front of your company. Now compare these figures to how much it would cost to advertise several hundred times to find the same amount of potential employees, and you can see why job fairs are becoming more popular with both businesses and employees.
* Perhaps one of the most effective ways of advertising for or attracting new staff is simply by having an open day at your place of business. This can be advertised in your local newspaper, and it will ensure that people that are genuinely interested in working for your company will come along.
Tags: advice, hiring, Hiring and Human Resources, staffing, tips
No Comments »
Published March 28th, 2008
Visit any company website, and more than likely you’ll see that they offer an option to sign up for their company newsletter. The reason so many companies have a newsletter, as well as the option to sign up for one, is that they are excellent and cost-effective marketing tools. Not only can you get the latest news about your company across to literally thousands of people, the very fact that it’s an opt-in email newsletter means that your news is going out to prospects that are already interested in your products and services.
However, a newsletter is only as effective as the content that’s in it, whether it’s via email or more traditional print media. Therefore it’s important to know what needs to go in your email newsletter, and what you can leave out.
Content is King
Everyone’s heard the saying "content is king", and this is particularly true for any written communication. Without the right news and content, your email newsletter will probably join countless others in the recipient’s email trash folder. Therefore you need to make sure that you’re getting across information that’s both relevant to the recipient(s), as well as promoting your company in as effective a manner as possible. Some of the best content to provide in an email newsletter includes:
* Tips and advice are excellent and are usually universally acknowledged as being an important part of any email newsletter’s success. Offering free yet expert advice is always welcome and your customers will be more likely to trust and use you for their needs.
* Interactive newsletters are also becoming extremely popular, not to mention highly effective at getting your message across. You could have a poll, or an "Insert Your Question Here" box or something similar. If people feel like they’re involved, again they’ll be more likely to come to you for your service or products.
* Offer your opinion on something that’s relevant to both you and your subscribers’ interests or industry. It may be discussing how the latest government by-laws will affect business, or how the economy can learn from other areas. It can be about almost anything you like - but for maximum impact, make sure you’re knowledgeable on the subject, and that it’s topical.
Once you have the content, your email newsletter will flow much more naturally and offer you a better chance of success. However, although content is extremely important, you need to make sure you present it properly as well. This is where list segmentation can help.
By only sending out relevant information to the right readers, you can soon set up different databases of customers that you can target with timely email newsletters. Not only will this save you time in creating your newsletter, it will ensure that you don’t get looked upon as a Spam emailer, making sure that your email newsletters will have a far better chance of being read.
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, email marketing, email newsletters, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, onlnie marketing
No Comments »
