The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. Make sure that your chosen area of business is something that you know and understand, but most importantly it should also be something you enjoy and are enthusiastic about doing.
2. Be frugal with your business spending. The most successful startups are those that obey the basic principles of bootstrapping.
3. Don’t overlook the power of mentoring. A quality mentor is able to provide help and guidance through difficult periods.
4. You can’t expect to receive investment without first proving yourself. Demonstrate that you have a healthy growing business on the right track and investors will soon take notice.
5. Try to lead a healthy lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is a lot more demanding than the typical 9 to 5 workday, but you still need to find time to eat healthily, exercise and find time for your favourite activities.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. Make sure that you listen to what the other people who work in your business are complaining about. Your staff on the frontline are the ones most likely to first encounter any problems within your business. You should make a point of asking them about their concerns in relation to the company.
2. Work to address and fix problems rather than assigning blame to individuals or outside factors beyond your control. Dwelling on these issues will do your business no good whatsoever – it is important to get to the heart of the issue and attempt to fix it.
3. Don’t forget to address the complaints you personally have with your business. If some small problem is niggling you then it is likely to be extremely distracting and can cause you to lose overall focus on the important issues.
4. It is essential that you fix the right problem. Don’t assume that just because sales are low that it is the fault of your salespeople. Have you invested enough in marketing, or has your customer service perhaps been lacking lately? Hidden issues can be the root cause of a problem and it is important to identify these and address them.
5. If you find that the same old problems keep coming back even after they have been addressed, you have most likely addressed the problem but not the cause.
For example, faulty parts can be remedied quickly but unless your supplier changes their production process it is likely to recur. Similarly, if you keep addressing problems with your customer service department then you probably need to go back to the drawing board and provide better training to them.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. Good small business software should allow you to get an accurate picture of your company very quickly without any hassle. Keeping abreast of the status of your business is particularly important in today’s ever-changing marketplace.
2. Integration between the software you use is critical. If you purchase individual business software from a variety of vendors you are not likely to get much interoperability and it will also cost far more overall.
3. Financial management is key when it comes to small business software options. All of your ingoing and outgoing money must be tracked and you need to be able to produce detailed financial reports.
4. To receive money from customers you are also going to need robust invoicing software that will let you bill customers with ease. Invoicing should always be a top priority for any small business or else their cashflow will suffer.
5. Managing customer relationships is another necessity for small business software. You will need to be able to handle customer queries and keep track of ongoing support issues. To perform all of these functions I obviously suggest you try WinWeb Online Office!
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. The most important rule to abide by when dealing with awkward customers (and also potentially the hardest one to stick to) is to remain patient. Becoming impatient with customers is very unprofessional (even if they are argumentative and demanding) because they are only trying to get a resolution to their problems.
2. You must maintain a positive outlook at all times, even if the stress of the situation is getting you down. Negativity will only result in increasing the hostility of a problem customer even further.
3. Try to listen more than you actually speak to disgruntled customers. This is important to help you understand what their actual grievance is. Listening carefully increases the likelihood that you will be able to solve their problem.
4. Whatever you do, don’t argue back with a customer, regardless of what they say or the accusations they make. Dealing with a confrontation with your own hostility will only make a bad situation far worse.
5. If you find yourself spending far too much of your time on one problem customer you need to evaluate if this the best decision for the overall health of your business. The customer is not always right and as a small business with a limited amount of resources you may find life easier if you just stop dealing with this person altogether.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. A lot of people have great ideas, but the ones that are truly able to disrupt the market are those who follow through and turn an idea into reality. Try to have confidence in your vision.
2. Don’t be discouraged just because no-one has ever done what you plan to do. Every trailblazing entrepreneur has had the same same fears at some point during the product development cycle.
3. Remember that experts don’t always get it right. Entrepreneurs often have to fight against conventional wisdom in order to work their way to the top. Prepare yourself to be labelled by others as crazy or stupid.
4. Avoid delaying or hesitating because it is important to remain one step ahead of the competition. If they spend all their time trying to catch up with you, it leaves them no time to innovate for themselves.
5. The most important rule for disrupting the market with your products or services is to have fun! If causing chaos in your industry doesn’t appeal, entrepreneurship may not be for you.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. Write articles about your industry that will either inform people or provide valuable advice, then share these articles for free over the Internet. There are countless knowledge portals and article e-zines that are always in need of fresh content in exchange for a link back to your business website.
2. Social media is a great way of driving traffic towards your website. Whenever you update your website or add a new blog post make sure that you share it with your fans and followers on social media.
3. A regular newsletter is a great way of reminding customers that your business still exists and provides an impetus for them to re-visit your website. Encourage people to share your newsletter as this will only serve to widen your reach.
4. Link exchange is a proven way of generating additional traffic and it is also probably the least time-consuming option on this list. Simply find partners who are willing to work with you to host a link to your website and vice versa. However, it is important that the partner offers a similar kind of content to you or else there will be no search engine benefit.
5. A more time-consuming (but also very effective) option is to join online forums and communities relating to your industry. You will need to establish yourself as a trusted presence by participating regularly over a long period of time, because developing a good reputation on the Internet is not something that happens quickly.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. The statistics often paint a grim picture for the survival of a small business. It is not unusual to even see claims that around 50% of small businesses fail. Remember that the term ‘small business’ is remarkably vague and a statistic like this means very little in regards to your own business survival.
2. To be a successful small business, it doesn’t necessarily require you to take a whole load of risk. Entrepreneurs are often portrayed as wild risk takers but in reality the decisions they make are almost always careful strategies based on quality data.
3. Don’t expect to simply be able to pay yourself whatever you like, as many people believe when they start a business. In the early days it may be difficult to even turn a profit and business owners that do manage it will often reinvest that profit back into the business for the first few months or years.
4. You also shouldn’t expect to be able to hire people straight away that you can delegate all the worst parts of running a business to. For a long while you are going to have to get your hands dirty to succeed.
5. A common myth is that you need money to be able to make money. This is false, many large corporations have been built totally from scratch. Don’t be fooled into thinking you absolutely must have a bank loan or something similar.
The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners.
1. Joint ventures are a great way of moving your business forward quickly. By working together with another local business you can cross sell products and services that complement each other.
2. Improving your business productivity is one way to take your business to the next level. Your business will always be limited to some extent by what it is able to produce. Seek outside investment, buy new equipment or hire additional staff – do whatever it takes to improve productivity.
3. A new product launch will often be the catalyst for rapid business growth. If you have an established product that has reached a plateau of growth, it is unlikely to help your business grow quickly. Consider launching complementary products that will align with your current offering and boost sales across your entire product line.
4. Trying a new marketing strategy is another way to grow quickly. Find more effective tools to reach your target market or look around for markets that you don’t currently penetrate.
5. Sometimes it is too difficult to do it all by yourself. Consider changing the structure of your business and forming a partnership with the right people. If they want to buy into your business they will need to put up some capital, which you can then use to fund growth.
