Most business owners feel like they could work more productively throughout their work day. By implementing strategies to help you work more effectively, your business revenues should improve over time.

Here are 5 tips to help you to work more effectively and productively throughout the day:

Automate Your Systems
Automation is the key for many businesses success. Simple tasks such as responding to a customer’s question or comment can be performed online through an email auto-responder.

You can use an automated phone system to provide customers or potential customers with valuable information instead of spending time on the phone providing the same answers multiple times throughout the day.

Marketing campaigns can be automated and your time management systems can be automated with simple to use software programs.

Wherever you can automate a system, there will be a time and cost saving transformation to your business.

Implement Time Management Strategies
Good time management skills are at the core of any successful business. It is important to consistently identify and remove any time wasters that are present in your day.  Common time wasters are reading emails, surfing the internet, taking phone calls throughout your day and an unorganised schedule.

Remove any distractions that you currently have and start each day with a specific plan to complete the most crucial and highest revenue producing activities.

Time management is an active skill that requires constant attention and modification for it to be effective in your business. 

For more information on how to prevent those “time-stealers” visit www.secretstobettertimemanagement.com

Outsource
If there are activities that you complete throughout your day that could be performed by someone else, you are costing yourself valuable time and money if you are doing them yourself.

Start outsourcing slowly by choosing administrative tasks that you can delegate to someone else and then eventually you can build systems to continue to outsource work.

To learn more information about how to leverage outsourcing, click here to read one of my latest articles.

Track your Data and Results
Data about your business and its performance is vital to helping you make business decisions on a daily basis. Ensure that you are collecting and reviewing your business data on a daily basis for to facilitate your business’ optimal performance levels.

Organise your Work Space
Your business work space should be organised and uncluttered. If your work area is messy, you will spend valuable time looking for things instead of working on things.

Your desk area should also include the vital tools that you typically need throughout your day to avoid time wasted walking to another side of your home or the office to complete a given task.

Begin with these 5 strategies to help you work more effectively and productively in your business TODAY! 

Discover how you can take a control of your time at www.secretstobettertimemangement.com

Debt Affects Everyone

More and more families are saddled with debt nowadays.  The average American family is in debt to the tune of $12,000, the average UK family to around £8,800 sans mortgage.  Even students are getting affected, with those attending various courses having debts ranging from $8,000 to over $20,000.  Businessmen are in no way exempt to the general trend towards indebtedness.  However, their debts usually include loans which were taken out for capital or operational expenses.

Five Ways to Deal with Bad Debt

Why does bad debt happen to good people?  The answers vary widely.  If you’re one of the people saddled with this debt, all is not lost.  There are still ways of getting out from under that crushing burden and getting back on track.

1)  Take stock of your cash flow.  Some entrepreneurs with debt problems don’t know how much they’re spending, sometimes not even how much they’re really earning.  The first step towards handling debt is to find out how much money is coming in (your income), and how much is going out (operational expenses, debt servicing, etc.).  This information is needed so that you can figure out a) how to make “inflow” greater than “outflow” and b) how much more you need to increase inflow or how much more outflow you need to reduce to make this a reality.

2)  Establish certain fiscal guidelines to live by.  Establish a maximum amount you can spend, and keep below it.  No ifs or buts.

3)  Start cutting down on outgoing money.  Personally, this means reducing the number of times you go to the mall, brown-bagging lunch to work, commuting instead of driving, halting non-essential expenditures like subscriptions and vanity purchases, etc.  For your business, this is streamlining operations so you spend less to achieve the same business ends.

4)  Think about restructuring your debt, and if that can help you.  You have various options available to you.  One is to talk to your creditors and see if they’ll agree to lower your payment rates.  This can free up more money per month, at the cost of extending the loan lifetime.  Another possible option is to take money from any investments you have, such as an idle property you haven’t found use for yet and use these to pay off your high-interest debts.

You could also consolidate your loans to obtain a lower interest rate and reduce your payments each month.  Still another possible debt payment scheme is to snowball your debt, meaning you pay off the smallest debt first, followed by the next-smallest, and so on.  This is a way to keep motivated paying debts, as you see those amounts disappear one by one.  Take note, if you obtain the services of a credit repair company, you may get a negative mark on your credit history.

5)  Discuss your options with an advisor.  Look for a reputable one and he or she may be able to help you make your repayments more manageable.  Ultimately, though, you’ll have to be the one to follow through with any suggestions the advisor might make.

Employers have come to realise that one of the best things they can do for their business is to get feedback from their own people.  While listening to customers’ suggestions and complaints is important, soliciting the input and ideas of employees can be priceless. 

What You Learn from Listening 

Your employees are your “contact people” as they are the ones who directly deal and interact with your customers.  If your employees are dissatisfied with their working conditions, they are unlikely to pass on a good vibe to your customers.  They cannot serve with a smile if they have nothing to smile about.

When employees are dissatisfied, moreover, they will not stay long.  Employee turnover rates would be high and this can not be good for your people’s morale – why be friends with your office mates when you or they’d be gone soon, anyway?  With high turnover rates, moreover, you’d be forced to devote a lot of time (and company resources) on hiring and training new employees so you’ll have little or no time to growing your business.  You’d be dealing with the employee learning curve again and again.  Inexperienced employees also means more mistakes.

Employees, moreover, are not machines.  When they work, they think and they usually have an opinion about the way things are being handled, the company policies and how the business operates.  Your employees are therefore good sources of ideas for your business’ overall improvement.

Imagine, then, what mere listening to employees can do and give you.  If you listen to your employees, you will LEARN a lot of things.  You will learn what your employees think about the way you run the business, what company policies are hindering your company’s growth and what needs improving on your product or service.  If you listen to your employees, you will know what pleases and bothers them so you can introduce programs that will improve your employees’ satisfaction with their jobs.  By so doing, you will retain more of your employees.  This, in turn, means better and more experienced employees dealing with customers (this means greater customer satisfaction), satisfied and happy employees (motivated employees who have the good of the company in mind) and less time/effort/money wasted on training new hires (efficient use of company resources).

Overall, if your listen to your employees, your company can improve for the better.

Listening to Your Employees 

How do you listen to employees?  There are many ways.

Survey:  You can do an employee survey; you can formulate a questionnaire and distribute it to your employees.  To make sure you’re capturing the information that you need, you can ask professional researchers to make the questionnaire for you.

Meeting:  You can also set a meeting with your employees and directly ask them what for their feedback.  You must be careful here; you don’t want to offend people by shooting down their ideas just because you personally think such ideas have no merit.  During the meeting, just listen and take down notes.  Then, you can analyse the information you have gleaned on your own.

Discussions:  You can meet with each of your employees for a more in-depth and personal discussion.  This will give you the privacy that you need so you can get useful suggestions without being wary of embarrassing your employees.

It’s very common nowadays for managers to resort to extreme measures such as firing employees just so the business or company can stay afloat.  Then there is the other, more common reason for firing an employee.  That is, when an employee has become a non-performing asset, a liability so to speak, he or she is usually fired.  One other reason for firing employees is the “greater good”.  This usually applies when an employee, through their own behaviour and attitude, disrupts the peace of the entire company.  Whatever the underlying reason, however, firing an employee is never an easy task.

The right way

You must remember that there is a proper way of letting go of an employee.  If you choose this path, you will avoid creating an enemy and perhaps even save your company from a costly legal battle.

1.  You must have the right reasons.  Why are you really letting your employee go?  If you are firing your employee because of their dismal performance, that’s understandable.  If you are letting them go because it is crucial that your company be downsized or because the employee has behavioural problems, that’s unfortunate yet still understandable.  However, if you are letting personalities – particularly the clash of theirs and yours – colour your decision, then you must think again.

2.  You must follow common courtesy.  You must sit the person down in your office and talk to them privately.  It is even more important that he or she hear it from you first.  Moreover, do not let other employees know about the dismissal before the involved employee knows about it.  Inform your employee about your decision as soon as it has been made so that they can prepare for the inevitable.

3.  You must follow standard operating procedures.  You must be careful to keep the matter legal.  Before you proceed with the dismissal, review your company policies that concern firing employees.  You must follow the details of your employee’s employment contract to the letter.  If a month’s notice is necessary, you should abide by that.  Furthermore, it is required that you file a written report of the dismissal, let the employee read and sign it, then file it for record purposes.  The employee must also be fully appraised of the reason for their dismissal and you must listen to what they want to say as well as answer their questions, if there are any.

4.  You should be civil and professional.  It is important to remember that while the interview cannot be really pleasant (you are firing an employee, for goodness’ sakes), it can still be civil.  Thus, you should be professional.  Do not scold the employee and go through their transgressions; proceed in a matter-of-fact manner, instead.  It would be even better if you can be empathetic; just never be antagonistic.

The wrong way

Doing anything that violates the above is to fire an employee the wrong way.  Personal reasons, gender discrimination and avoidance of workers’ compensation (firing injured employees) should not be reason for firing an employee.  Moreover, never treat the matter unprofessionally; telling all others before the employee concerned, engaging in rumour mongering and callousness on your part encourage bad feelings.  All these can leave your company vulnerable to litigation.

It goes without saying that an effective storefront calls out to potential customers and invites them to look at the merchandise.  No matter how great your items are, if your storefront doesn’t attract passers-by, you will have a hard time encouraging walk-in customers who actually contribute a large part of your sales income.

Have you ever looked at a boring signage that looked completely out of place in front of a store and never gave it a second thought?  That’s how important a good storefront is.  It is not something you put up without careful thought and it is not something that you can just display your name on.

Designing an Effective Storefront

When considering the design of your storefront, you have to take note of the following:

1. Branding – Your logo should be designed in such a way that people will immediately have an idea of what you are about.  For instance, a candy store should naturally have a logo that has a touch of something associated with sweets or sugar or something to this effect.  You get the picture.

2. Window display – Your window display should support your branding.  Let’s go back to the candy store.  Think about children since they are mostly your target market when conceptualising your window display.

3. Concrete theme – Consider the look of your logo/branding and your concept of the window display.  These two should be in sync when put together.  Consider the font of your letters, the logo itself, the colours, and the over-all look of the store.  Everything should work together to convey your marketing message.

4. Materials – These are important too because they contribute a great deal to the coming together of your theme.  No matter what materials and tools you choose, you must be able to successfully incorporate these into your theme.

5. Size – You don’t want something so small it can’t be seen by anyone who’s just a few feet away from the store.  It can be as big and bold as you want for as long as you don’t ruin the look of the store.  In fact, some fun stores will have you walk right through doors or entrances that are part of the theme such as the front part of a car or a pirate’s ship.  These are already calling out to customers.

Get Professional Help

The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone.  Your great ideas can be turned into something more tangible by professional graphic and design artists.  They can help you with the concept as well as design you a powerful logo (taking into account everything you want to incorporate) and then some.

If you don’t know where to look, the internet can help locate some good artists that can design your storefront for you.  Choose those that have portfolios so you’ll have a good idea of how they work and what they’ve done.  The only important thing to remember is that your storefront should attract customers and not shun them away.

The success behind any business lies mainly on three things:  your product or service, its affordability and you (or the people) who run it.  Make just one of these components mediocre and your business and everything for which you’ve worked hard will go down the drain.

Therefore, once you have an excellent product or service idea, done your research on the market and have come up with a consumer-friendly price for your product or service, the next thing you need to do is to look for a business partner.  While going at it alone could be a better choice, it isn’t always the best because a partner could actually help you achieve your vision – IF you have the right one, of course.

Choosing a Business Partner

1.  Specify what you need in your business partner/s.  First of all, list down your strengths – your skills, talents and capabilities – or what you can bring to the business.  If you are thinking of putting up a graphic design and web development business for instance and you already are a good graphic artist with years of experience, there really is no point in getting another artist as your partner.  In this case, your partners (you’d probably be looking for more than one) should be someone who is an excellent marketing strategist and someone who is an excellent website programmer.  You’ll need the programmer for web development and the marketing strategist for selling your services to the market.

2.  Be strict about your business partner’s qualifications.  Remember that you want your business to become profitable – and unless your partner or partners can deliver their end of the deal, your business will never take off or will not last for very long.

It might be easier to choose your friends or relatives who know a little something about the business you want to put up or have a moderate proficiency for the tasks that your business partner will be expected to perform.  However, a partner who knows “a little something” is not someone you’d want to begin your business with.  Choose only people who can do an excellent job, whether they are your friends or not.

3.  Check his/her credentials.  When presented with a potential business partner, you should not take him/her at face value.  You should research his/her background and track record.  You need someone with loads of experience so he/she should have a portfolio bursting (or near bursting) at the seams with past work samples, references/testimonials and other proof of skill/talent/capability.

4.  Designate.  After deciding on your business partner/s, you should list down the tasks that need doing in your business.  After specifying the tasks, you should assign these tasks accordingly.  You know what you can and can’t do, and you know why you picked your partner/s; thus, task designation should be easy.  Make sure that task assignments are clearly understood by everyone involved.

5.  Make everything legal.  You should draw up a contract that lays down – in black and white – the details of the partnership.  The contract should be quite specific on what is expected of each partner (including you).  There should be sections on each partner’s obligations and responsibilities, share of capital, profit share, dispute resolution, and partnership dissolution.  Have a lawyer draw up the contract for utmost detail and protection.

For any small business owners out there who need a little inspiration when recruiting the right calibre of staff, this short movie may help you.

http://www.eagleschoolmovie.com/

From the start of your business, you’re in a race against time.  Your hard earned money will essentially become like the sands of time, trickling down into a void of nothingness from which your business must rise above within a short period of time.  To help you cope for the initial race with time, here are ten things that you must do before you start your business:

Assess yourself:  Know if you have the qualities – discipline, knowledge, drive, and skills – that are needed to see your business venture through.  Are you willing to go through months of financial insecurity and fear?  Knowing yourself is winning half the battle to come.

Assess your business idea:  It’s one thing to be convinced that your product or service is better than what is currently offered in the market, but it’s entirely a different matter trying to convince other people to believe the same.  Test the waters; get an idea of how other people will respond to your products or services by talking to them first.

Assess your market:  All businesses are based on the relationship between buyer and seller.  Plunging in without getting to know your intended customers spells doom for your plans right from the start; this will lead to expensive marketing (and budgeting) mistakes and hamper your plans and strategies for getting your investment back.  Get to know your target market; know their buying power, their spending habits, their preferences and tastes and the world will be yours.

Assess your budget:  Many start-up businesses close down after a few months due to the lack of a robust cash flow.  In fact, no matter how good your business idea is and no matter how many customers you have, if you don’t a solid financial plan, there will be no way for you to go but down.

Assess your marketing and advertising plan:  Marketing and advertising will be some of your most expensive tasks during your first few months in business.  It goes without saying that you must make every cent count.  Carefully plan what marketing and advertising methods you will be using.

Assess your competition:  Knowing the competition is a big factor in maximising your chances of becoming successful.  Get to know your competitor’s pricing, marketing and other strategies so you can compete.

Assess your people:  Check whether or not your people are assets or liabilities to your company.  Train and retrain them if necessary.

Check your premises:  Now will be the best time to check your premises or the assumptions that underlie your decisions.  If, for instance, you have decided to under-price the competition so you could get into the market, you have to ask yourself whether or not your assumption that price is one of the significant determinants of your target market’s behaviour is correct.  This step is necessary so you can correct plans based on incorrect assumptions.

Put all your plans down in writing:  This way, you’ll have a blueprint of your plans.  Your business plan will serve as your guide and your compass during the months to come.

Make sure you have all the necessary papers and permits:  Doing this ensures that you will avoid future problems; it also increases your credibility with your customers.

In the world of business, nothing but change is constant – and change is the means by which the Darwinian process selects the businesses that are likely to survive.  Thus, for entrepreneurs, a stagnant business is almost always a dead business.

So what are the top five tasks that you must perform to grow your business to the next level?

Know who your customers and your most profitable future customers are:  At the heart of every business is a two way relationship between you and your customer.  Some businesses, however, operate for quite a number of years without taking the time to get to know their customer demographics and the preferences of their loyal customers.

At the start, doing “chance marketing and lucky targeting” may be fine; it is even understandable since you are busy dealing with other start-up matters.  If you want to grow your business, however, you must get to know your target market as well as your future potential market.  This will help you streamline your plans and set definite goals for expanding your marketing and advertising reach.

Use efficient and cost-effective advertising and marketing strategies:  Trying out all marketing and advertising methods then praying that one will work is not a very smart move.  When you don’t know which advertising/marketing methods are most effective for your business, you’ll lose a lot of money, you’ll soon run out of advertising money, and you’ll soon be overtaken by your much smarter competitor.

Create a brand:  Businesses that plan to make it big have to some day leave the realm of tangible competitive advantages such as superior product quality or faster delivery times and move on to the intangible aspects of competition.  Take notice of the biggest businesses around you.  How many of them talk about product specifications and features; how many are selling their brands and their products through psychological and emotional means?

“Nike:  Just Do It” – Targets customer’s feeling of confidence and self control when it comes to playing sports.

“HSBC:  The world’s local bank” – Targets customers’ deep need for personal service; indicates respect for cultural differences.

By moving into the realm of perceptions and deep rooted needs and wants of your customers, you are in effect positioning your business for the biggest prize of them all – a share of your target market’s minds.

Manage your cash flow:  Your most important tool in growing your business is your cash flow.  After all, it is from the cash flow that you will acquire the funds needed to jumpstart your expansion.  By integrating your cash flow into your expansion plans, rather than by making do with whatever is left, you are essentially directing and taking control of your business’ growth.

Know how to lead your people:  Your team is the most important aspect of your business.  In the end, your business will only be as good as the people running it; money or growth, after all, is first and foremost created in the minds of men.  Invest in the growth of your human resources, set aside funds for training, become a true leader of your people, learn how to motivate and inspire, and never stop learning and growing as a team.  Ultimately, your people will be your business’ greatest growth asset.

Communication is the act of transmitting thoughts, opinions, ideas, and information (the message) from one person (the communicator) to another (the receiver).  It is a process that requires a medium.

Traditional communication medium
Traditionally, business management communicated with employees through written memoranda.  The boss would dictate or type the message, make copies of the memo and distribute the same to the employees.

This day and age, however, a person reads, hears and sees so much that his mind is simply incapable of retaining every piece of information that it has received.  Among the information that a human being receives, written messages have the least chance of being retained.  This means that written memos can be very ineffective communication media.

Memos, aside from the fact that the messages they contain do not usually get retained, are also restrictive means of communication.  It is so formal that it restricts spontaneous and honest reactions.  It also does not facilitate interaction; it’s mainly used for top-down communication.

This does not bode well for people in lower levels; such employees couldn’t feel empowered and efficacious if their ideas, thoughts and opinions can’t even get heard in their business organisation.  The business also loses out since it couldn’t benefit from its people’s unique talents, skills and varying points of view; these could have been tapped had the business created a looping communication and feedback channel.

The Skype communication medium
Skype is a welcome alternative to traditional modes of communication.  It is an Internet Protocol or IP-based communication method that allows people who have a computer, an internet connection and the Skype client software – which can be downloaded for free – to communicate with one another.  Skype also makes use of various communication media:  text, graphics, sounds, and video.

The above qualities of the Skype communication channels have brought about three major changes to the way we communicate:

• We retain much more information.
Multimedia messages – those with both visual and aural elements – are much more easily retained than mere visual or mere aural messages.  Skype is fully capable of multimedia communication; in fact, Skype offers video calling for free.  Skype is thus a potentially effective medium for business communication.

• Employees and team members feel much more empowered.
Skype is not a top-down communication channel.  It offers free conference calls.  Thus nine people can communicate and interact simultaneously online.  This way, one person’s message gets transmitted to a lot of people – who can immediately react and give the original communicator their feedback.  Thus, communication channels are open between one user and each of the other participants in the conference.

Multi-channel communication empowers team members and employees to comment, suggest and – overall – improve on other people’s ideas and suggestions.  A company that uses Skype communication tools is thus able to tap into a wealthy reserve of creative talent and skill.

• Businesses go global –easily and inexpensively.
Skype calling, messaging, video calling, and call conferencing are offered for free.  Thus, businesses have found an easy and inexpensive way of expanding globally and communicate with independent contactors abroad, mobile employees and international clients.

Indeed, Skype is effective, is empowering; makes people more responsive and interactive, has a wide reach, and is free.  Definitely, it is one communication tool that you should look into.  Take a look at www.skype.com