Business:Small-Business

2005-10-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Getting A Small Business Loan

Getting A Small Business Loan by Daryl Des Marais
There are a variety of resources for small business owners. If you have a previous credit history and some invoices or a track record many small banks cater to business loans. If you are looking for a grant there are a great number of resources on the web. If you are creating a new innovation go to http://www.sba.gov/expanding/grants.html and check for grants that are currently being offered for innovations. You can also find small business loans for minorities and special projects.

If you need capital raised to develop your prototype and you have a viable product that people have endorsed they would buy then ckeck out growco.com and maybe you will find an angel investor. For more information on grants and loans go to www.usabuinessgrowth.com and click on grants/capital.

If you are going to apply for a business loan make sure you have a business plan and monthly income statements as well as a 2-year cash flow plan. Show them you know how to manage money or get someone to help you with a plan. Continued Success!
Daryl Des Marais Business Growth businessgrowth.ca

2005-10-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Email Marketing Mistakes made by Small Businesses

Email marketing isn't complex or new. Yet we see the same mistakes being made over and over by the marketing executives, sales professionals and owners of small businesses.
If done correctly, email marketing is a very effective medium to generate new leads, and build continuous contact with your customers and prospects. It can easily help you yield new sales and meet your targets.

Take care of these top 10 mistakes and you are on your way to new sales!

1. Underestimating Current Customers List - This is by far the biggest mistake we see. Marketers just disregard their current customer list, and leave money on the table. Even worse, most have no systematic way of capturing their customer's email and contact details in a common list.
A consolidated customer email list can be easily used to market new products to existing customers or to get repeat orders if done regularly and consistently. Existing customers have seen your product and service before, and are more likely to buy from you again.

2. No specific Target - One big, long message for everyone is no longer smart or effective. Nothing works the fast way. Now the trend is to do personalized, 1 to 1 marketing. If your standard message is for all prospects in all industries, chances are that it does not address anyone needs.
It is best to send several small, targeted emails to focus groups, which you can track to see what works in which industry, and who opened which mail. With this potent arsenal, you can focus your efforts on those chose few to spend your time upon, and generate sales with a much bigger ROI.

3. Using cheap lists - Using 300,000 emails from a $100 CD is bound to fail. These email addresses are mostly defunct, and most are acquired through snooping and email extraction from forums. Most will not be from your target market anyway. Just sending a blatant marketing message is a sure-fire way to get yourself banned from major Internet Service Providers. Anti-spamming laws are catching fast in most countries, so beware of such tactics.
You can either buy a good list of your target group from reputed list brokers, or start compiling your own house list of all past and current prospects, customers, vendors, suppliers, contractors to market to them.

4. No system to measure response - Marketing just continues to send out message after message: No ROI, no measurement of efforts, and no mechanism to evaluate the response of past messages. No wonder these efforts hardly bring in any results or prospects.
A systematic measurement system is very important. With emails, you can tag each and every link, email account and email sent, so that when it is opened or clicked, you can immediately know who is interested, who is keen to buy, what product, and how eagerly.
With a good measurement, you can call those few that spent time with your message, or on your website, and by knowing their browsing behaviour, you can customise future messages for them. Market something that they have shown interest on, and you are closer to another sale.

5. No clear goal or strategy - Start with the right goal and marketing strategy. Your first goal should be to establish trust and credibility within your target market.
Secondly, get the prospect interested enough in what you are selling, so that they are willing to give you their contact information.
Thirdly, your marketing message should be sent out regularly so that the prospect expects it, waits for it, and it shows that you are consistent, reliable, and trustworthy.
Remember, marketing exists to generate leads, prospects and help sales and delivery teams to close the deals, & not for any other purpose. So focus, and strategize on these lines.

6. Marketing folks don't have time to update anyone about their initiatives - Most of the time, the services folks, the receptionist and other employees of the company are not even aware of what marketing is up to. So when a prospect calls the office to talk about the offer made in the email, neither the receptionist has a clue, nor the employee from the service department. None has seen the email, and have no idea who to refer this prospect to. Here goes another lost sales.
Marketing efforts need to be integrated over the entire organisation, and everyone should understand the need & importance of what's going on.

7. Marketing message is inconsistent - Many marketing firms just send out a message, without making sure that it is consistent with the other company collateral. It is not even properly linked to the company's website, and does not incorporate the complete office address, telephone, fax, contact information. Just giving an email address is not sufficient to build trust and prove that yours is a genuine offer.

8. Boring Marketing Message or Ad copy - A long repetitive message is no way to capture the prospects attention. You can't watch a boring movie even if you paid for the tickets, so who is going to read your unasked for marketing email if you are not even addressing the problem.
Most messages spend countless paragraphs talking about what they offer, their products, services, and me, me, me. There's nothing in the message to catch the reader's attention. You need to talk about the problems faced by your target market, their industry, and their issues. Once you establish a bond by acknowledging that you know about their problems, they will be more amenable to your message, and products.

9. Dropping Prospects Half Way - It is a proven fact that a new prospect will take an average of 5-7 different interactions before they build enough trust on you, your company and your products or services before thinking of buying from you. So if you drop prospects after meeting them once or twice, thinking that they are not qualified or do not seem interested, you are losing sales too quickly.

Continuing to hand hold them and stay in constant contact will help you in the long run, as you will be familiar to the prospect. People love to do business with people they know, and not strangers. Email is the most cost-effective way to stay in touch.
10. Not interested in Educating the prospect - The marketers are so focused on sales, that they do not spend enough time with their prospects to educate them. Remember that if you service a prospect well, they will most likely convert to a paying customer sooner or later. Have patience. Use email to market to them regularly with information, education, free offers etc. until they build enough trust to buy from you.

Conclusion:
Email marketing has been proven time and again, if done correctly. Big companies like IBM, Amazon, HP are using it effectively, and smaller companies are catching up fast in understanding its marketing reach.
With its lows cost, and effectiveness, email marketing helps to build long term relationships with your target audience. Use it wisely, and ye shall reap its rewards.

About The Author
Copyright © 2005, Vinai Prakash. All Rights Reserved

2005-10-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

Three Keys To Starting Your Own Successful Business

* The Three Keys *
There are 3 key ingredients to starting a successful business:
- Good people
- A wanted product
- Low overhead
If you can achieve these three things your business has a great chance of succeeding. Lacking in one of these key areas will almost ensure that your business will fail.
If you look at a business plan these three items are highlighted as the backbone of the plan. Management, use of funds, and the products and/or service or competitive landscape sections of a business plan show that you have looked into these three areas and done your research.
This is why it is recommended by so many that you write up a business plan. If you fudge the numbers, lie to yourself about the items or do inadequate research, in the end it will come back to haunt you.
* Good People *
What do I mean by good people? Good people for your business are those who are knowledgeable and hardworking. These people put their nose to the grindstone and get things done. When I was in the Navy they called it "attention to detail". In other words people who will not stop until the task is done and done well.
Some may think I am describing a perfectionist. That is not entirely the case. A perfectionist never quits but they also never fully finish anything either. They endlessly toil away never knowing when they have reached a point of stopping. A perfectionist on your team can kill your business.
For example, say you're running a technology company that is rolling out a new Internet product. If your lead programmer is a perfectionist they may never get to the point of completing the project and giving the green light. They'll run past deadlines, run your expenditures through the roof and never end up with a completed project.
The other side of the coin is getting someone incompetent. In our Internet product example above, having an incompetent lead programmer is just as bad as having a perfectionist. First, they won't know when to declare it complete and doing so prematurely with bugs in it could doom your business from the start. This was seen time and time again during the dot-com boom when companies would bring in millions and never complete their actual product. Many went belly up never having actually launched a product. Most of this was due to incompetent people.
The final litmus test for the people involved is in personality. Can the people involved actually get along together? It's surprising the number of businesses with good people that fail because they simply can't get along.
The most important person to ask questions about is yourself. Are you ready to undergo the stress and strain of starting a business? Are you willing to call investors and ask for money? Can you make it financially?
If you are a procrastinator or hate doing any work outside your immediate field of knowledge you may not be the right type of person to start a startup.
However if you love trying new things, don't mind putting in some hard work and sacrificing both time and energy, running a startup may be a fun and rewarding experience for you.
* The Right Product or Idea *
You don't have to have "the better mousetrap" or "the next great thing" for your product or service. There's an old saying that "ideas are a dime a dozen" and it is very true.
There's no real secret to finding the right product or service to sell.
All you have to do is provide what a business or individual wants and needs.

By right product I mean something that is needed or wanted by people or other businesses. If your potential customer base is male and you come out with a pink dress then you've failed in doing your research. Granted there are some men out there who may like to wear pink dresses, but the market isn't large enough for your business to succeed.
If you are providing a service you should definitely do your research on the "competitive landscape". If you come out with a mediocre product compared to your competitors, you have just cut your company off at the knees from the get go.
Improving upon an existing product, service or system that already works can make your company fly. It has already been proven to work.
For more on researching your product and the competitive landscape see the article "The 5 easy steps to researching your market".

The hardest part of settling on a product or service is determining what a client wants or needs. Don't expect your new company to become the next big name brand. With a lot of new businesses they project heavy volume as if they are going to become the next Nike within the first year.
Don't do this.
Keep your growth numbers conservative. You don't have to be a huge company to make a lot of money. Settling on a smaller niche market can make you a fortune.

* The Money Game *
Andrew Carnegie said the sole purpose of being in business is to make a profit. If profit is not your goal from the start, then you are probably looking at starting a hobby and not a business. There are a number of sources for funding your company.
These include:
- Self-funding, such as credit cards, savings, personal income or friends and family
- Traditional financial, such as banks and financial institutions
- Venture Capital
- Sale of stock
Self-funding is usually a bad idea. With the failure rate of new businesses you stand to risk losing it all on one mistake. By self-funding you are taking all of the risk onto yourself.
Traditional financing and Venture Capital both come down to your reputation. If you haven't started a successful business in the past and have an active and working relationship with these groups your chance of receiving funding is virtually nil.
Sale of stock of your new venture comes down to the old quote of "would you rather have all of a small pie or a smaller piece of a large pie?"

Without adequate funding you could end up having no pie at all. Your company will not succeed without adequate capital. A sale of stock, while lowering the amount of the company you own, dramatically increases the chance of its success in the long run.
We'll take a more in depth look at fund raising later. For now though let's talk about the other half of the coin... fund spending.

As noted above one of the three keys to a successful business is low overhead. Running out of capital by hiring too many people, having an expensive location or spending too much on unneeded goods, can run you into the ground immediately.

Keeping down costs is a key part of financially managing your company and as we'll see below lack of financial knowledge is a key reasons businesses fail. Don't be cheap however. Sometimes it's worth it to spend the extra on something that will save you money in the long run.
Clearly defined long range goals and planning will help you keep your overhead down, your efficiency up and your business running within it's budget.
I'm a firm believer in automating as many tasks as you can. With automation you don't need to hire personnel to fill those rolls and it lowers your "burn rate" and capital requirements. When I started a sports news website in 1998 we were competing with companies that had 150-250 employees. Through automation and smart design I was able to keep our total overhead down and reduce our actual hands on employees to about 6 for all 24 hours in a day.
Take a look at your business and see where you can streamline it and automate things from the start and you'll reap the benefits of needing less capital and the ongoing monthly "burn rate".
If you need office space and won't be meeting a lot of clients face to face you may look into renting an apartment and furnishing it with cheap used furniture. A lot of people work from their homes. There's no standard that says you have to have an office. You can get a P.O. Box or mail store as an address.

Don't hire a ton of people!
For each person on the payroll you have then incurred a monthly cost and added to your "burn rate". On top of their pay, there are the payroll taxes, workers comp insurance, office space and equipment and other expenses that you have to pay for each employee.
Don't go overboard with your capital. Right when you think you have enough is when you'll run out.

* Business Failure *
SBA statistics tell us that 60% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years and 90% fail within 10. So how do you get to be the 1 successful startup left standing? Well there are a number of answers to that question. Knowing what the key reasons businesses fail is a start.
Let's look at some of the main reasons businesses fail.
1. Under-CapitalizationThis is the number one killer of small businesses. Not having the capital needed to keep the business going snowballs. Without capital you stop fulfilling orders, customers get fed up with you and sales fall off or stop completely. Not only will you need initial capital, but later you will need it to expand.
2. Bad DebtGrasping for any type of financing you can for capital can also come back to bite you. Taking a high interest or balloon payment loan can put a company under relatively quickly.
3. Not enough or too many salesNot having enough sales is self-explanatory. How can too many sales kill a company though? An example would be taking so many sales you don't have the cash to produce the inventory or personnel required to fulfill. Things back up and the company's reputation is damaged beyond repair.
4. Financial mismanagementNot understanding the financial side of your business can kill you. Really small businesses with low costs initially are easy to understand on paper, but as you grow things can quickly get out of hand. Lack of understanding the roots of the finances of your business can take its toll.
5. Acts of God, disasters and economic downturnsThere's not a whole lot you can do about a major economic downturn or a natural disaster. If you are selling high-end vacuum cleaners and people don't have the money for luxury goods, your business is going to be hit hard. If you are running an Internet business out of your basement and it floods it can kill you off pretty quickly. Having adequate insurance is a necessity. Planning ahead for such instances will give you a leg up on not seeing your hard work go down the drain.
6. Death and disabilityHaving a key member of your team die or become disabled can crush your small business. Long term disability and life insurance can be a key to avoiding this.
7. Owner and personnel burnoutWorking entirely too hard and expanding at a great pace can kill a business due to burnout of the people involved. Proper planning for expansion is a must.
All of these failures can be avoided through planning. While disasters such as a fire in your main office cannot be avoided, it can be planned for so that your business can continue running.

* Forming Your Company *
How many founders do you have?How many shares should you issue?How much stock does each person get?Is everyone working full-time on the company?Has everyone signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and IP(Intellectual Property) agreements?What is the company's address and phone number?Make sure no one has signed an NDA or IP rights agreement at another company!

Some of these sound like unnecessary questions to address. Why should I have a friend I trust sign an NDA? Why should we make employment agreements?
I'll tell you now from experience that it is necessary. You may be friends now, but you never know what will happen in the future. In addition, when forming your company it is an entity unto itself, which means it can be sold, traded or dissolved. Who knows who may be in charge of the company in the future?
Having all of these loose ends done from the beginning will help avoid future headaches and conflicts.

Actually forming your company legally isn't that difficult. A company really is only some paperwork in a filing cabinet. There are a number of places you can go to and actually form a company online. Just remember there are tax requirements for a company and that you should look into all the legal and tax issues when you form it.
One of the main reasons you would want get all of these things completed and get incorporated is in preparation for the next topic.

* Funding Your Company *
Funding your company is a necessary step to getting it off of the ground. Sure, you can try and bootstrap it along in hopes that it will succeed, but the point of all of this information is to give you the best chance at success, not to start a business on hopes.

This is probably the scariest part for those engaging in their first startup company. Having all of your ducks in a row through proper planning is a necessity. You don't have to go overboard and end up in "analysis paralysis", but you sure better know who your people are, what your product is and how it can be sold and what proper amount of funding you need.
A common source of startup funding comes from investors known as "angels". "Angels" are people who have made money in business and are looking to put their money to work. Most "angels" will require a business plan and possibly a description, prototype or demo of your product or service and how you intend to implement your plan. "Angels" will be looking at your three keys above. Your product, your people and your funding uses.

A key step to raising funding is determining the value of your company. How much is your company worth now? Remember that you are not only determining the current worth, but the future worth of the company as well. This is a hard number to determine.

There are some investors that won't even look at a company that values itself at less than a million dollars. Investors aren't going to put money into something that is going to remain at the current valuation, they are looking towards the future.
Once you have settled on a value for your company, you have to determine how much startup capital you will require. Let's use an example.

You value your company at an even $1 million dollars. You have also done your homework and you have determined you will need $100,000 in startup capital to purchase equipment, pay salaries, acquire insurance, etc... Breaking the numbers down shows that you would need to give up 10% of your company to get the needed capital.
Just remember that when you approach an investor that you are offering them an opportunity. You aren't simply panhandling, but are giving them the opportunity to profit off of your hard work, research and know how.

Copyright Dan Amato
Dan Amato lived through the dot-com boom and bust in Santa Clara, CA. He is the co-founder of numerous companies from the ground up and currently maintains http://www.startuphints.com, a free resource for those starting a new business. He can be contacted on his blog at http://www.diggersrealm.com or via email at danamato@gmail.com.

2005-10-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

Small Business Basics

Most large-scale business houses that today stand as giant corporate were once started as small business concerns. Small businesses have always been a key to present successfully running high profile industries. While most of us desire to run a big industry some day very few are actually daring enough to give it a try. Starting a small business is not a cup of tea for all. People who aspire for definite life style and confirmed earnings usually are not ready to take chances for small businesses. As the term business always carries with it a sense of risk and uncertainty. It’s the endeavor of small business owner that makes the trade work and reap good return. Anyone who wants to give a try to any type of small business must be ready to work around the clock and also invest a considerable amount of his money in his business. There is always a chance of loosing all expenditure done towards the small trade if the person does not work hard enough or does not take correct decisions at a right time.

The risk involved in undertaking any small business is as high as risking one’s career to a make or break situation. But sometimes a person acts very diligently and almost foresees any possible upcoming problems. In such cases the entrepreneur can prepare himself to face any adverse situation and come out safely form difficult times. Aiming towards the best and preparing for the worst might well be a perfect formula for running a successful small-scale business concern.
At a time when almost the entire market is captured by huge corporates it is very difficult for a small business to find a place in such competitive world. Large corporates with their great resources and public appeal create a tough competition for small-scale trade centers. But with a bit of innovativeness and skill even small enterprises can find a comfortable zone for themselves. Adhering to genuine business policies and providing utmost personal customer satisfaction to each business associate could lead a small business house to the top running high profile company in world.

For a business to be successful the exact motive behind the trade must be first cautiously analyzed. The goal of any business either big or small must work towards fulfilling some needs of the people. Someone starting a small trade must first analyze the market trends carefully and make sure that there was a place for such a business to exist. One must also consider his personal potential before starting the business. A vigilant scrutiny of one’s capabilities to handle the pressures of business along with the personal financial strength enables him to decide whether he may go for that business or not.
Individuals who like to enjoy life easily and with a fixed routine without taking any tensions are better choosing service as their mode of occupation. Some times when a person is not sure enough about his capabilities to handle all types of demands in the business he might also consider having a partner for the trade.

Mansi aggarwal writes about. small business Learn more at http://www.asmallbusinessbegins.com

2005-10-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

How to Avoid Someone Stealing Your Customers

Your potential customers are being stolen from you every day. They are going to the competition, rather than choosing you. Your business is haemorrhaging money as a result and you need to put a stop to this dreadful situation. Well, OK, it might not be that bad, but unless you own 100% of the market you are in, your competitors are doing something you are not.
Online, you can find out why your competitors are beating you quite easily. Your competition is the group of businesses who appear above you in a search engine listing for your keywords. You might not think they are your competitors, but the users of the search engines do. That's because almost all the clicks from search engines go to sites listed in the first five positions. If you are below that, you are losing out to the competition.

Now, search engine optimisation experts will tell you how to get into the top 5 places. It is actually quite simple - have plenty of highly focused content on your site, add material every day and have plenty of links to other relevant sites. You also need to get mentioned on other sites, like Ecademy. Getting high search engine rankings is the easy bit.
The difficulty you face when losing out to competitors is how their sites convert prospects into customers. It's never a good idea to be too general about these things, but what you will find is that those people whose web sites work better than yours tend to offer a mix of the following aspects which help the conversion process.

1. They collect the email address of visitors - it's the number one priority.
2. They keep in regular touch with their site visitors and make it clear they will do this.
3. They make it easy for prospects to get in touch - email, phone, fax, postal address, instant messenger etc.
4. They provide plenty of free information - material that other sites protect because it is seen as intellectual property.
5. They 'talk' directly to the viewer as an individual.
6. They have a single focus, which is precisely on the solution to the prospect's problem.

Depending on your sector, other things may be important too. So, you ought to check out the top ten web sites in each of your keyword search terms. Look at their sites and see how they are achieving their results. Learn from their successful methods and apply them to your web site.
You will discover that the sites that get high search engine ranking AND which get the best conversion rates are usually devoted to a single topic. So instead of having one web site which deals with all of your business, the greatest success comes from having individual web sites devoted to the specific problems your prospects face. Hard work, I know, but the results will tell.

Graham Jones helps people make the most of the Internet and helps them with information marketing.

2005-10-12T00:13:00.000-07:00

Exploiting The Internet As Money Machine!

The internet is the greatest money machine in these days. Google, Yahoo, Amazon or Ebay have achieved a higher market capitalization than many traditional brick and mortar companies. Google has grown within a few year to a value of more than $77 billions.

How is most of the money made?

The big search engines make most of the money with advertisement revenues. Google Adwords and Overture are the leading cash machines. Other search engines and directories also rely on advertisement revenues. The higher their Google Page Rank, the more often they demand fees for directory listings. DMOZ is the only directory with a top Page Rank, where a listing of a website is free of charge. It is, however, almost impossible to get listet at the Open Directory Project.

Other big players benefit from the internet as market place. It’s a viable business to provide good and reliable payment services for the millions of internet merchants. Clickbank, Paypal, Stormpay and others are great in this business and make their money with getting fees from their services.

A lot of followers also benefit

This great market place has attracted a lot of other participants. They benefit, because the internet community still grows. They offer books, music, travel booking, retail shopping and much much more. Already established brands have a great advantage if they join the internet market place. Many users type in automatically the names of big brands, if they are looking for something.

How can a small or home business benefit?

The above mentioned companies have been lucky because they have started as pioneers from scratch in an early stage of the internet or they have been backed by an already prominent brick and mortar firm.

It seems that the best places are already occupied. Newcomers have to find niches and new opportunities. A lot of website owners try to promote goods as affiliates. They do not need to invest much money. The best way is to sell a good that just can be downloaded. No warehouse and shipping are needed. New opportunities to make an extra income evolve, e.g. getting paid for taking surveys or reading ads. There are no limits for innovations.

What has to be considered?

• Ask yourself, what you can do best, how you can use your own skills in the internet business. • Research a marketing niche that looks promising. • Write a small business plan. • Limit your own investments. • Research, what you can get for free or for low costs for your business.

The conclusion of all is: Do the right things right! Try it at least!

Lil Waldner is a business economist. She is experienced in project management and marketing. She has worked as editor of newspapers and she has written booklets and essays with economic and public issues. Visit the web site: Make Money Tip