Jumpstart Your Business

If you want to build a sound relationship with your best customer, you need to focus on communicating well with him or her. There are 7 caveats to good communications and here they are:
1. Context
Who is the audience and what do you want them to do?

2. Content
What single question is your communication designed to answer? Do you have the answer already or do you need to research it and if so, what information do you need?

The CEO of a company sets the vision, makes a set of rules to establish a company culture, builds the management team, then leads the team on the journey to make the vision a reality. The CEO needs to be able to fly at thirty thousand feet to be able to differentiate the forest from the trees.

photo credit: nggalai

The management team is tasked with using the set of rules to realize the vision. They are similar to referees in a game, making sure that the game is played according to the rules. Generally the environment may be changing and the rules need to be tweaked. The management team typically operates at ground level, planting the trees, and generally cannot see the shape of the forest.

The entrepreneur in a successful start-up has to learn to be both the CEO and the manager. He/she needs to fly high to establish the vision and see how the forest is progressing but also needs to come down to ground level to keep planting the trees in the forest.

Getting an early start in the CRM software industry may have helped Salesforce.com to become a leader in the Hosted CRM space, but another CRM solution provider is making a statement of their own, paving the way for some intense competition in the small to mid-size business sector.

Better known for its on premise desktop CRM software, Commence Corporation has been providing contact management, sales force automation and marketing campaign management solutions to small and mid-size companies for more than two decades. The company introduced a web-based hosted version of their popular CRM software and is gaining notoriety. With an outstanding track record for performance, reliability and world-class customer service Commence is a strong competitor and becoming a favorite among smaller businesses looking for a flexible hosted CRM solution with productivity tools that are easy to use.

“Commence web CRM has an impressive and unique user interface that makes the product very easy to use and navigate” says Gary Sanders of OK! Magazine. “The product’s Home Page or Dashboard is completely customizable by individual or job function. This allows each user to create a dashboard to the way they work. The value here is that you can place the functions you use most right on the home page, such as today’s calendar and activities, e-mail, sales opportunities, leads, reminders and even an interactive sales funnel. We hadn’t seen this in any other CRM solution. This flexibility enables people to conduct 90% of their daily activities without ever leaving the Home Page and has really improved productivity.”

See the whole story at Customers Find Good Value In Commence CRM

It is bad enough that the big banks are screwing small businesses by totally ignoring their need for capital. Must the SBA aid in the screw job by providing irrelevant and outdated training materials to those wanting to hone their small business skills.

photo credit: ShashiBellamkonda

Yesterday. I was looking for a marketing text to pass along to a client and decided to go up on the SBA website to see what they were referencing. I went to www.sba.gov and in the search box typed in “marketing documents” and it returned the following page:
http://search.sba.gov/gcse/searchresults.html?cx=012149749304426494285%3Avl4bn0plkpq&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&q=marketing+documents&sa.x=30&sa.y=5#1060
where I chose to review the following three documents on page 1 of the extensive listing:

Obituary to Small Business

Small Business lived a long life but died in the United States from heart failure, on the brink of the 2010 economic recovery. No one really knows how old she was, since her birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

photo credit: dsb nola

A friend of mine recently received the attached letter from Key Bank. It appears that he kept some small change in a checking account at this bank and because the account had no activity for the last year the bank is threatening to charge the account a $5.00 inactivity fee every month. To prevent this from happening he needs to sign this letter and return it or make a transaction or keep a minimum of $5000.00 in a checking account that pays no interest.

As small businesses try to follow the move to eliminate incandescent bulbs, we decided to take a look at how different business types would go about changing bulbs.

photo credit: CarbonNYC

1. How many venture capitalists does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They can’t see enough return on investment to be interested.

So you want to be an entrepreneur. Well, here are fifteen items you need to be on top of. These won’t ensure your success by any means but they might prevent you from failing.

photo credit: Infusionsoft

1. Your customer is your biggest and most valuable asset. Know your customer.

2. Understand your product and how it solves your customers’ problems and makes their pain go way.

Women-owned businesses account for some 30 percent of all businesses in the United States and represent approximately 800,000 new start-ups per year and account for close to 55 percent of new start-ups. There are considerable resources available to help women in business especially in the areas of financing and business planning. These resources are in both the public and private domains.

A good place to start is the Small Business Administration (SBA). They have considerable resources for women owned businesses. They guarantee loans and provide additional services to help in the search for funding. To apply for a loan, you’ll need a business plan, a credit report and some start-up capital.

The most important element of your business plan is undoubtedly the financial analysis. This will tell you whether your business idea is financially viable and whether it will be profitable in a suitable time frame. You also need to understand how much startup capital (money) you’ll need to get the business up and to keep it running until such time as you think it will become profitable. Here are some items to keep in mind as you try to add up the startup costs. You might also want to use this startup calculator

1. Legal Fees
2. Licenses and Permits
3. Prepaid Rent
4. Deposits (Public Utilities, etc.)
5. Remodeling Work (Build Out)
6. Furniture and Fixtures
7. Letterhead, Cards, Logo, Brochures
8. Advertising (Signage, Grand Opening, etc.)
9. Computers, Web Site, Software
10. Insurance
11. Accounting Fees
12. Management Consultants
13. Cash
14. Accountant
15. Beginning Inventory