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Category Archives: Business Development
Closing Sales Starts With Building Trust
Making the sale, especially when your small business offers products and services to other businesses, demands more than being good at what you do. It definitely requires building professional relationships. To do that, you must earn your customers’ trust.
There’s no scientific formula for earning trust. It requires time, patience, and honest effort.
Here are some suggestions to help you lay a foundation of trust with your potential customers: Continue reading
It’s Time to Budget for 2020
by Kelly Deis of SoundPoint Consulting
Most businesses are on a fiscal year which coincides with the calendar year. Now is a good time to look back and reflect on 2019 as well as look forward and create a new budget for 2020.
A budget is a roadmap. Based on where you have been, it can help guide you to the desired final destination for year-end.
If you stay on the current course – where will you end up? Alternatively, if you change the route – where will you be at the end of the year? It is up to you to decide which path is the most profitable and most likely to be achieved.
Here are a few things to think about as you prepare your budget. Continue reading
The Megaphone of Main Street: Startups, Fall 2019
The first year of operations is a critical time for any small business, with decisions made about market focus, finding financing and hiring a team that will have a significant impact on the business’s success or failure in the future.
SCORE’s fall 2019 “Megaphone of Main Street” data report focuses on the challenges facing startups, which are companies in operation for less than one year.
This latest installment of the Megaphone of Main Street is the fourth in a data report series that presents a snapshot of the current American small business landscape. This particular report delves into the world of startup entrepreneurship, sourcing both qualitative and quantitative data directly from a diverse group of roughly 1,000 startup small business owners across the nation. Continue reading
11 Changes to Make Your Business Better
How often do you make changes in your business?
Like most entrepreneurs, I love “shaking things up.”
Here are 11 changes you can make in your life and your business for a more exciting, enriching and profitable future.
1. Update your business technology.
Tech tools enable small businesses to run as productively as big ones. Are you taking full advantage of them? Assess which technologies would help you do business more effectively in the coming year, whether that’s new computer hardware, switching to more sophisticated business apps, or using cloud storage and collaboration tools to streamline your workload.
2. Get organized.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, lighten the load by cleaning out your office. You’ve probably gone digital in many aspects of your business, but you might still have old folders or file cabinets full of paper documents. Purging those piles and files of paper will make you feel more focused. Shred what you no longer need; scan important documents you still need to save and store them in the cloud instead. If they contain sensitive financial or personal data, make sure they’re encrypted and protected from access except by employees who need them.
Considerations and Resources for Small Businesses That Want to Sell Their Products Internationally
According to the most recent International Trade Association data available through the Small Business Administration, small businesses represent 97.7 percent of the U.S. firms that export goods to other countries. In fact, they account for over one-third of the United States’ known export value.
With business technology ever evolving, expanding our collaboration and communication capabilities, we can assume that more small business owners will want to seize opportunities to extend their customer base beyond U.S borders. With 96 percent of global consumers living outside of the United States (according to the U.S. Department of State), reaching a global market can fuel revenue growth and offer some protection against fluctuations in the U.S. domestic markets. Continue reading
Is Your Business Ready to Franchise?
Is your small business thriving? Do customers from out of town ask if you’re going to open another location in their neck of the woods? Are you secretly yearning for a new challenge now that your business is running so smoothly? If you can answer “yes” to all these questions, it might be time to consider franchising your business.
But there are a few other questions you need to answer to determine if you’re ready to get serious about franchising your business.
Ask yourself:
Does my business have strong systems in place?
A good franchise has operational systems and processes that can be standardized and taught to other people to provide a consistent product or service across all locations. For example, if you own a sandwich shop, do you have a written system for all the steps of making a sandwich, such as:
- Whether to put on gloves first
- How much meat, cheese, mayonnaise, and other ingredients to use (such as “two ounces” or “one tablespoon”)
- The order in which to assemble the items
- How to wrap and package the sandwich
