Category motivate your staff

Entries 27 Total

Stop Worrying – Start Thinking Through Your Small Business Problems.

Aug 29, ’07 10:29 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Development, Entrepreneur, Small Business / SOHO, Start-Up, Work/Life Balance, avoid growing pain, be successful, bootstrap, do a reality check, grow your business, handle problems, motivate your staff, start-up in business

I find some of the most stressful things to running your own small business is when you can’t find an solution to a problem.

This is especially true when your are a personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants working alone. People have different strategies for dealing with this problem and clearing their head:

  • going for a walk
  • just taking a break and read about something else
  • watching a film
  • going to do some exercise

When you run a small business or start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, you can also talk to people associated with you or your business – people you trust:

  • your staff
  • your accountant
  • your bookkeeper
  • your virtual assistant
  • your friends
  • your business advisor or mentor

We all need advice from time to time – worrying about a problem has never solved anything. But be selective who you ask and remember what Blaise Pascal once said:


“What a difficult thing it is to ask someone’s advice on a matter without colouring his judgement by the way in which we present our problem.”

So make sure, when you ask people for advice not to waste your and their time by “colouring” your problem – you will quickly learn there is solution to almost any problem.

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Small Business Infrastructure For Business Start-Up.

Aug 28, ’07 12:42 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Accountants/CPAs, Accounting, Business Ideas, Contractor, DIY Business, Data Security, Development, E-Commerce, Employment, Entrepreneur, Exporting, Finance, Franchise, Freelancer, Generation-Y, Globalization 3.0, Green/Eco-Friendly, Health Check, Home Business, How to ..., Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Mobile Technology, MumEntrepreneur, Office - IT, Outsourcing, Personal Business, Red-Tape, Relationships, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Sales, Self-employed, Small Business / SOHO, Social Entrepreneur, Software as a Service, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, Suppliers, Virtual Assistants, Web Technology, WinWeb, WinWeb Live™, Work/Life Balance, avoid growing pain, be eco-friendly, be successful, bootstrap, choose your office, deal with taxes, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do cost cutting, do credit control, export, find funding, grow your business, handle problems, keep data safe, lower overheads, market and sell, motivate your staff, outsource effectively, plan cash-flow, plan your business, start-up in business, use online IT

I get regular questions about what we really mean by WinWeb’s Small Business Infrastructure?

On-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ centers around the idea that business start-ups and growing small businesses need help with numerous administrative tasks that are not core to the business success – such as bookkeeping, it services, internet services, call handling and other such services.

These services – if performed by the business owner – cause a great deal of time wasting – while the fixed cost of a business is still accumulating. This is in our minds a fatally floored business model and can easily be remedied with our infrastructure approach.

We should not expect business start-ups and small business in general to be accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, marketing & PR gurus and so on. We should provide small business with an infrastructure in which it can concentrate on core business tasks, while at the same time enabling the business owner to stay informed of all relevant business facts like cash flow, sales, HR issues, tax position and more. This will enable him / her to make informed decisions, maybe with the help of an external advisor.

Based on these facts, we have devised a six point on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept, which consist of:

1. WinWeb On-Demand Software Solutions – Anywhere At Anytime.

AccountsOffice and OnlineOffice are our two software offerings, which are based on the SaaS – Software as a Services model, to allow for the following key business benefits:

• tight inclusion of business advisors from the start,
• cultivating outsourcing techniques at the outset, i.e. virtual assistants,
• no IT knowledge needed and hassle free operation,
• real-time multi-user access from anywhere, increasing mobility.

2. WinWeb 24/7 Live Support – We Are Here For You Always.

Providing customer care and support only during business hours is not acceptable to our clients. Experience has shown us that most admin work gets done by small business before nine in the morning or after five in the evening. This practice is essential if the business is to survive it’s early years.

This is why we have provided our much acclaimed customer support for 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the outset. Saving our clients wasted time and money – while setting new standards in customer support. No manuals need to be read – all problems can be solved in real-time online.

3. WinWeb Live – Networking Community for Small Business Only.

To foster collaboration and outsourcing we have expanded our WinWeb Live™ offering to allow for small business community networking – thus enabling the business owner to make decisions about his / her current needs, with the following benefits:

• timeshare virtual assistants for professional results,
• offer contracts of work to contractors on a case-by-case basis,
• promote the business to a large audience or even locally,
• find new work and contracts online

4. Business Advice

Our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ enables business advisors, accountants, bookkeepers and other advisors to have a “Up Close and Personal” relationship with the small business owner, providing key elements for the success of a small business:

• timely and up-to-date advice from anywhere at anytime,
• more efficient advisor function due to SaaS technology, less travel,
• easily expandable advisor network.

5. Solution Partners

Third parties provide external services to complement our services, such as parcel service, office supply services, printing services. These and other services are provided on a bulk buy arrangements by leading businesses in their respective sectors – to provide the most reliable and up-to date service possible – with the effect of enhancing the professional appearance of our clients.

6. ClimateByte™ Technology – For A Cleaner Future.

Our clients are among the biggest demographics concerned with climate change and carbon footprint neutrality. It is a fact that employing remote working and collaboration techniques drastically reduces the damaging business side affects on our environment. We enable our clients to be more eco-friendly and aware, by providing them with our green technology – an ongoing development commitment of WinWeb.

WinWeb welcomes any suggestion that will further enhance our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept – especially the development of even more eco-friendly business processes – to serve our small business and business start-up client-base.

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Small Business Failure – Reason: Management Control

Aug 28, ’07 12:41 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Business Ideas, Development, Employment, Entrepreneur, Failure, Health Check, Lifestyle, Marketing/PR, Relationships, Sales, Small Business / SOHO, Start-Up, avoid growing pain, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do credit control, grow your business, handle problems, lower overheads, market and sell, motivate your staff, not to do it!, plan cash-flow, plan your business, recruit the right people, start-up in business

The typical scenario is you work hard all week, have no live and at the end of it all little money to show for it. This is often a sure sign of loss of management control in a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses.

The small business health-check questions for this episode are:

  • Do I know what is going on in my business in all areas or have I abdicated some responsibility to staff? You can pick and choose what you do work-wise everyday, you can not pick and choose what you should know about and make decisions about – this is your business, not your staffs business – act like it.
  • Am I running my business or is it running “itself”? No business is running itself, other than into the ground!
  • Do you know how your cash-flow is doing? Done this one before, yet it always comes back to this, check it out.
  • Do you have an overview of your small business fixed costs and sales, are you happy with the situation? I guess you could always do better, but if you do not know the details you can not improve your situation.
  • Is your vision in line with your small business targets? You need a vision for your business, that will allow you to develop your small business strategy and plan, so you know where you are going – don’t just drift along.
  • Have you asked your staff lately? Have a power-meeting with your staff once a week, to see how they are feeling about your small business, last week or the next few weeks. It will motivate them and give you a new insight in how others see your small business.

The central message here is to be involved in ALL areas of your business ALL of the time – in a management capacity. When I hire people I always hire people who do something better than I, but you have to stay involved.

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

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Competitive Edge for Small Business

Aug 21, ’07 9:49 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Entrepreneur, Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, Start-Up, grow your business, market and sell, motivate your staff, start-up in business

I just posted my Small Business Checklist: Size Matters and was thinking about all the reasons why small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, can be at an competitive advantage over big business.

So if you need reassurance that it’s good to be a small start-up business – here are some of my thoughts – and I’m sure you could add to these:

Low overheads – especially if you use bootstrapping techniques your value proposition to your customers is unbeatable for big business, who have to factor in a much higher cost infrastructure.

People – contracting a big company is not easy, one person will make the deal with you as the client and other will come and do the work. With small business you often talk to the person who also does the work – you can see how he or she works before you spend any money.

Flexibility and mobility – small business is not hampered by infrastructure and paper pushing, short decision processes combined with more mobility is key to keep customers happy.

Talk to the boss – with a small business you can always talk to the boss – try to talk to the Chairman of BT! Customer service with bigger companies can be very frustrating.

Please add to the list, I would love to do a Small Business Checklist: Competitive Edge – leave a comment.

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Marketing for Small Business and Business Start-Up

Aug 21, ’07 7:39 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, Start-Up, avoid growing pain, grow your business, market and sell, motivate your staff, plan your business, start-up in business

Starting, owning and growing a small business calls for many skills sets to be used by the owner, financial planning, people management, having a vision and development of a strategy, operational skills, technical, sales and marketing skills. They are all equally important – so lets have a look at marketing.

What is marketing? A fundamental marketing concept is Customer Value Proposition (CVP) - to succeed with your small business your must:

  • Offer the right product or service
  • To your targeted clients and customers
  • At the right price
  • Creating the perception of value
  • In a profitable manner

Consider these points when developing your marketing plan – a CVP should be part of your strategic plan and be inline with your efficiency efforts for your small business.

If you have more than one customer/client segments your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, is active in than you need to have more than one CVP, but most of the time small business will focus on one customer group and develop into a niche:

the newspaper shop – to provide newspapers and a small selection of consumer goods in a local (convenient) community with convenient opening hours and a good customer service (friendly) which can demand a slightly higher price

or

the online business – to provide a complete range of products within a market segment, which is available to purchase 24 hrs a day, every day at the lowest possible price with fast delivery using user-friendly online shopping technology

Create your own CVP – Customer Value Proposition for your own small business – again it will help you to focus on what is important (core) and what can be outsourced (non-core). Maybe you can share your CVP with us here?

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Let's talk business, ….SMALL BUSINESS.

Apr 26, ’06 5:50 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Accountants/CPAs, Accounting, Blogging, Data Security, Development, E-Commerce, Exporting, Finance, Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Marketing/PR, Office - IT, Open Source Software, Outsourcing, SME-Blog, Sales, Software as a Service, Start-Up, Virtual Assistants, Web Technology, WinWeb, market and sell, motivate your staff, start-up in business

Welcome to our new small business blog. We hope you will enjoy our rambling & ranting on the subject of small business.

On this blog we will concentrate on providing an inside to our thinking with respect to self-employment, home businesses and small businesses, the so called micro and small businesses.

Some of the areas will include:

  • Accountants/CPAs, we believe accountants/CPAs should be more then glorified bookkeepers. They are in a unique position to help small business and start-up business to get the financial and business advice they need to survive long term. We will discuss what to look for in an accountant.
  • Banks, they should help you to finance business and NOT overheads. We are going to talk about healthy and unhealthy relationships with your bank.
  • Business Start-Up, how to run a business while you keep your job and test the water, before you jump into business and commit your savings and/or borrowed money. Do you really need a VC before you can earn yourself a good living?
  • Government, why most government help for small business may be a sincere offer, but in reality is nothing but hot air.
  • Marketing/PR, the high tech way to create awareness for your products and services for the small budged.
  • Web-Technology combined with Live! services, changes the business dynamic completely, the “In & Out” of on-demand technology and why it helps you.
  • Outsourcing & Virtual Assistants, the technology driven way to timeshare professionals and keeping you overheads down.

Let us know what you think and let’s talk business, ……SMALL BUSINESS.

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