Entrepreneur Network Australia

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What Will Happen To Your Small Business When You Die?

Planning for the succession of your business can be a daunting thought. Unfortunately, many people continue to grow their business without planning what will happen when they retire or die. Small business owners are particularly hesitant about estate planning because they are overwhelmed with daily operations. Additionally, they are often reluctant to make decisions that may be unpopular or hurtful to their employees or family members. However, business owners can easily begin planning for the succession of their business by taking small steps while they are still active in the operation of their business.

One often overlooked business tool is key person insurance. Key person insurance is an insurance policy taken out by a business that would financially compensate for the permanent or temporary loss of a key employee of the business. Anyone who is an integral part of the business, and whose presence contributes financially to the company may be covered by this type of policy. These insurance policies can compensate for many types of losses including replacement or recruiting costs for a key employee; loss of a business project worked on by the key employee; insurance that protects partnership interests; and insurance relating to business loans.

In addition to insurance, there are many other ways to achieve a smooth succession of your business. For the next two years, Congress has initiated an estate tax-exempt program that will allow you to gift up to five million dollars to an individual and ten million dollars to a couple. This is an amazing opportunity to ensure that your liquid assets are given to the people you feel will protect your business in the future.

Another way to protect the succession of your business is through a cross purchase buy sell agreement. This agreement would enable the surviving partners of a business to purchase the deceased partner’s interest at a pre-determined price. This purchase money can be funded by the partners buying insurance policies on each other and using this money for the purchase payment.

Creating a living trust is yet another opportunity for you to plan the succession of your business. A trust is a legal entity which allows another person, the trustee, to hold legal title to property for a beneficiary. A living trust is established during one’s lifetime instead after death. This arrangement can be beneficial in reducing estate taxes and avoiding probate. Avoiding the arduous process of probate is important because businesses often need to make quick financial decisions after the death of an owner.

Estate planning and small business attorneys can provide you with the critical information you need for the safe and effective succession of your business. It is never too early to consult a professional when your family’s livelihood is at stake.

Article by Michael D. Wild

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Small Business: Growing Your Business

Growth in a business is essential. How much growth, depends on your vision for your business….

Many business owners often confuse growth with expansion. Expansion is moving into new product lines, new services and new areas. Growth is increasing your capacity to continue with the products and services you have. Growth may require expansion, but expansion is not necessarily needed for growth.

Growth is necessary, at the very least, to ensure that your business maintains a healthy profit margin. Expenses typically rise each year and, as such, your business needs to grow, otherwise it will ‘fade’ away.

This is why having a business plan and regularly reviewing your businesses performance is so important! Understanding the businesses financial bottom line and how the target markets are evolving is paramount to ongoing business success and growth.

Be Honest With Yourself…

Sometimes, the largest obstacle any small business owner can have, is themselves. Far too often, we as business owners fall prey to own success and we ignore the change indicators in our market. A wise business owner will ensure that they can independently evaluate their business – a business mentor is great for this kind of oversight.

Be brutal in your assessment – really extrapolate the possible changes in your market and determine how you can refine your business strategies to capitalize on the changes.

In one of my ‘previous business lives’, I ran a retail franchise store. We were a very niche business and when we first opened the stores, we did really well. However, as the market evolved it became more of a consumer market (not niche) and our Franchise did not change it’s strategies to take this into consideration. That franchise no longer exists – it was placed in receivership.

Growth Strategies

There are several strategies for growth that may be applied by a business owner.

Sell More Of The Same Thing

This is possibly one of the most popular strategies for business growth – do more of what you’re already doing.

This could be a valid approach, particularly if the business or market is relatively young.

One of the biggest things to consider here, is whether there is ‘room’ to do more of the same thing. If your business delivers services, can your existing staffing levels handle more work and if not, can more people be employed quickly enough to deliver the work?

Does your market allow for enough growth in the sale of more of the same? Sometimes, the market is near saturation and selling more of the same thing is not going to provide enough growth for a business.

Consider moving into other target markets with the same product or service. Often this will require a rethink of Unique Selling Proposition, but it can reap big rewards.

If the business doesn’t have sufficient person power to sell more, consider options like licensing and franchising to increase the reach. One very simple method to immediately add more sales people to the business is to offer an Affiliate or Referral program, where the business will pay a commission or referral fee to people who bring in new business.

Raise Prices

Raising the prices of your products and services may result in growth. This approach needs to be implemented carefully, and the results monitored regularly.

Raising prices will, generally, result in a higher profit per sale – and as such higher profit overall.

In some cases, raising prices will result in an increase in sales as well. This tends to occur when the price of a product or service is so low that it gives the perception of a low value / poor quality or appeals to a target market that is not willing to spend money. When the price is increased, the target audience feels that the quality is much better and will more readily invest. By increasing the price and increasing sales, growth occurs naturally.

I experienced exactly this in my retail store – we had priced a product at less than $10, which we thought was an ‘irresistible price’. Unfortunately, our customers did not and the product was not moving. After overhearing several customers discuss that they believed something must be wrong with the product for it to be so cheap, we increased the price to $14.95 and sold out in a week! Perceived Value.

Diversify

Diversification is a valid and very smart business growth strategy. Add more products or services to your business portfolio.

Depending on your business plan, the products or services may be related to your existing product range or, it may be appropriate to start a new ‘arm’ to your business.

Diversification, as a business growth strategy, provides a major benefit as the risk of market downturns is spread over a wider base.

By adding more related products and services to its portfolio, a business can also capitalize on return business from existing customers.

In Conclusion

These are three very broad ways to grow your business – and which one(s) to use will depend on your business plan.

Article by Charly Leetham

Photo by Jason Goodman

Best Tips For Business Growth

Business, like any other entity, demands growth, especially when in the embryo stage; embryo in the sense that when it has not gotten the blue-print to be successful and make waves. What is then to be done to make sure that it gets the proper footing when trying to launch or gain popularity, the business in this context is any undertaking made to provide goods and services to people with the aim of making profit or maximizing profit. There are so many business models that has been written on how to ensure the growth of a business and this will be no exception, so in simple terms in making sure that one’s business grows in leaps and bounds, the following tips or advice should be worked upon.

The first among them is to choose a niche and then specialize on it; it is very important to know that a business cannot grow if does not have a selling point or niche that has been carved out. People don’t like to associate themselves with a business that is all screwed up without having a focus. If one’s business is to grow there is the need for it to have a particular thing it focuses on or a particular service it renders, better still a particular product it sells. With this, one will be able to specialize and fully develop the business rather focusing on too many ideas, products and services that will not only make the business lose its standing but also drive away prospective customers since they are not convinced about the specificity or what the business is all about. Do not think you will make some big bucks by selling everything or offering all the services under the sun.

Business growth is always characterized by having a specific set out goals or targets which is what the thrust upon which the business will be built upon. The set out goals or targets should be arrived at after a careful process of knowing the demands and needs of the target market which will then be analyzed and a kind of mission statement is being made, most businesses that manage to go an extra mile in having a standing mission statement have over time gained popularity and has hundreds and thousands of subscribers because people know what they exactly stand for other than they being known as one of those businesses that does not have a set-out target in terms of services they render for example an outlet that has been providing public relations services just decided to start selling drinks and snacks. In this regard, in a perfectly competitive market such a business is destined for doom as it loses its image, credibility and the customers at will as it does not have a target and goal. Simply put, in growing a business, a mission statement is needed to serve as a summary of the services rendered and also a specific market that the services are intended to serve.

Good marketing impetus is another important point to be worked upon when hoping for a overwhelming growth in one’s business and it is very simple and straight, the more you market your product and services, the more you have a down-line of subscribers. The reason why most business remain stagnant is that they lack good marketing impetus and they continue to struggle for survival in the market, good marketing impetus could be achieved through sales promotion, offering high discounts, making a good jingle using the television or the radio. This will no doubt give prospective customers the sense of belief that one’s business is the best offer they could settle for in making their needs to be met. Corporate social responsibility in the form of sponsoring community programmes that offers educative and informative scenery will no doubt make one’s business the best brand people will want to settle for and one’s business will end up being an house-hold name in the industry.

The corporate identity of a business is clearly the eye of the business in the public, the belief that business is primarily run to make profit has made many businesses crumble because once sales are coming in and profit is made the deal is done. On the contrary, what most business owners do not know is that certain things have to captivate the interest of customers when trying to find a product or service to use to suit their needs, of note is a product like Heineken that has subsidiaries all over the world. The secret to their success till date is having a good corporate identity ranging from their corporate logo, their brand name and their distribution all over the world. A corporate logo must be able to sell the product or better still speak for the product and also arrest the mind of the prospective customer, the ideal thing is to seek the services of a good company that can design one that will represent the image of the business that one is into. Also one’s business should have branded materials like t-shirt, polythene bag, biro, bag e. t. c, it may appear capital intensive but it will no doubt pay off as growing a business is like sowing a seed that will take time to reap fruits. Therefore, the image of the business should be properly maintained and it will no doubt create a good impression in the mind of the prospective customer depending on the services that one’s business renders

The last of them all is creating a good website that has the latest 3D fonts and templates with proper contents good enough to proclaim the gospel of one’s business, it is not enough to have a free blog because it won’t afford one’s services to be seen as a product that should be given consideration in the light of other venture that offers such service. The truth is to give one’s business the wings to be able to fly among the best, a fully developed website is needed to bolster one’s chances of making good profit. Since thousands of people flocks the Internet day in day out one’s business will no doubt be patronized in no time at all, a good website developer should be consulted to make use of the cutting edge layouts available, but the most important thing is to make sure that it is packed with all what the prospective customers needs to know about one’s business. Growing one’s business in leaps and bounds will not happen over-night but when adherence is given to the above explained points it will no doubt make the outlook of one’s business to be a masterpiece.

Article by Ajayi Oluwadimimu

Business Growth Specialist – Help Your Business Grow – Improve Sales – Unleash Corporate Success

Who is this person?

The prime goal of every company, big or small, is business growth. While running a business, you might have hired specialists for marketing, sales, finance or even business, everyone who you think is required to make your business a success. But you still feel that although your business is successful in terms of sales and cash flows, it is lacking the business growth desired by you. Despite having all the specialists that you thought were necessary for your business, it seems perplexing that the business fails to grow at the pace you aim for.

The answer to this complex riddle lies in the absence of one person who understands business in terms of growth and is an expert in implementing the right strategies to obtain the desired business growth. While all the specialists hired by you are experts in their respective fields, none of them are experts in expanding your business or moving it forward in the direction you want. Moreover, while all of them could offer you ideas and techniques and help you create strategies, none of them can guarantee that their ideas or strategies will actually boost company profits and sales at the least possible cost and ultimately promote business growth.

This is what a business growth specialist can do. A business growth specialist is an expert who offers assistance in creating strategies that will improve leads, enhance sales and ultimately lead to business growth.

Why do I need someone with these skills and experience?

If you are at the helm of a company that has been stagnating in terms of sales and profits, and all your efforts to revitalize business growth have failed to bear fruit, you can be sure that you are in desperate need of a business growth specialist.

Has your company started trailing its competitors amid the fast changing market trends? Then, it definitely is time to hire a business growth specialist. Moreover, if your company is in the process of diversifying, expanding in overseas market or undertaking acquisitions in the domestic and international markets, you can ensure the success of all your ventures by letting a business growth specialist plan your strategies.

Where can I look for this resource?

This is not as simple as asking friends and family or looking up the Yellow Pages. Decide on the details for your specific situation and then invest some time and energy making a good match. Often your Board of Directors, law firm, accountant, or banker may make suggestions.

This search will not be easy. It will be rewarding when you add this missing key member for your team.

Article by Gary W Patterson

Business Development Strategy For Innovative Business Growth

The evidence is very visible and many have already spoken that innovation is the core element in creating new versions of growth. Long-term business growth requires an authentic innovation. However, it is not easy to detect what kind of innovation shall click and that will lead to platforms of development. And there are a lot of ideas to invest on and the time it takes for an invention to be innovated into a product requires patience. These big challenges mean managers usually send away truly innovative prospects as it is too risky, and the growth imperative stays unfulfilled. Nowadays, professionals concerned have developed proven ideas to improve the probability of success in innovation business growth and this is through business development strategy.

The innovators’ solution offers tips in making and sustaining growth in the globally competitive market. Disturbance is inevitable, but companies who can grasp the process can harness it and they can actually take advantage of disturbing growth. To take advantage of disruption and create new growth business, managers need to make counter-intuitive decisions. There are different identified areas in addressing business development strategy and some of them are:

According to research balancing not aligning is the key to create future platforms for growth. Strategic planning is also another helpful way as it combines elements of scenario based planning to real options and the result is a portfolio of flexible strategies provisioned to execute arrangement of contingent strategies.

Good and innovative ideas do not usually occur by chance and most successful companies have well designed processes, structures and tools to motivate and manage idea production. From ideas appear innovative strategies to be used in executing the plans. Ideas are effective plans and if they are already implemented, they can make a great difference. Ideas can be best achieved through group collaboration and team work.

Creating a new way for the business to grow is a way to unzip the process of innovation and it is through creating innovation-driven growth business all over again. Managers should be challenged in a way that they should best manage the capabilities of the company to deliver innovation. A best business development strategy will help identify the processes capable and incapable of accomplishing. That’s why a good plan is needed beforehand so all involved can look at and visualize all possibilities on how the business will go. In order to survive, learn how to apply these strategies at work.

Article by Adam Hermann

Personal Growth Aids Your Business Growth

If you are interested in growing your business, you may need to work on yourself as a person. Self improvement is a great tool for improving your business. Most people never think about how they could improve themselves to make their business grow, but there are actually some things you can do to improve your self and to make your business more profitable as well. If you want to grow as a person to grow your business, here are some important personal growth tips that can help you out.

Personal Growth Tip #1 – Stay Motivated

First of all, one of the most important ways that you can grow as a person in order to grow your business is to learn to stay motivated. One of the main reasons that online businesses fail is because people lack in motivation. If you want to keep your business going and you want it to grow, you need to learn how to motivate yourself. It’s now always easy to stay motivated, but if you learn how to stay motivated as a person, this will transfer into your business life, helping you to keep motivated with your business, which will help you to grow your business successfully.

Personal Growth Tip #2 – Stop Procrastinating

Another important personal growth tip that you can use to help grow your online business is to stop procrastinating. Procrastination is a personal problem that you need to overcome as a person. If you continue to procrastinate in your life, you can miss out on important things in life, such as finding the right person, making important decisions, and more. It’s important to learn how to avoid procrastinating as a person, and this will improve your business life as well. Procrastination can ruin a business, so if you work on this personally, it will help you to grow your business substantially.

Personal Growth Tip #3 – Keep a Positive Mindset

It’s important that you also learn to keep a positive mindset. Many people suffer from a negative mindset that not only ruins their personal life, but their online business as well. Dwelling on the negative part of life can cause a lot of grief and pain, and looking on the positive side can open up your life in many excellent ways. Start looking on the positive side and you’ll also improve your business, since you’ll think in a different way, which will lead to growth in the long run.

Personal Growth Tip #4 – Build Your Self Confidence

Building up your self confidence is also very important. Many people lack self confidence, and it comes across in their relationships and throughout their entire life. It’s important that you work on building up your self confidence, which will definitely help to improve your personal life as well as your business life. More self confidence on the business end can help you to confidently take on tasks and to work towards the success and profit that you want. When you have a lot of self confidence, nothing can stand in your way.

Personal Growth Tip #5 – Allow Yourself a Break for YOU

Many people don’t take time for a break in their lives, thinking that they don’t have the time or that they don’t deserve it. This can be a big problem. If you want to see personal growth in your life, you need to allow yourself a break for you from time to time. This will not only help you on your own emotional level, but can improve your productivity on a business level as well. Breaks are important for you to work your best, so taking a break now and then will actually help to grow your business.

Personal growth is important for your well being, not only on a personal level, but on a business level. With these personal growth tips, you’ll not only grow as a person, but you’ll be able to take these tips and use them to make your business grow and prosper as well.

Article by Kevin Sinclair

Business Growth – AFAB Is a Four-Letter Word, So Say Focus Instead

AFAB (A-fab) noun:

1) a sale of “anything for a buck” in order to generate revenue and keep billable employees busy

2) a business situation which can impede company growth, differentiation and/or profits

3) in more mature firms, a symptom of lack of focus on specific product or service offerings

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However you define it, AFAB (anything for a buck) is a condition, which typically impacts a business at some point or points in its life cycle. It is essential to recognize when your firm is suffering from AFAB in order to take corrective actions. Failure to do so will impact your firm through lower gross margins, increased opportunity costs, and lack of brand and services differentiation. Even better, learn the warning signs (e.g., flat revenue growth or always needing different skills to staff projects) in order to avoid the condition whenever possible.

The remainder of this article addresses business growth and where AFAB can occur, AFAB’s causes, symptoms and treatment, and the benefits from minimizing AFAB in your firm.

Business Growth and Maturity

The growth cycle of an IT professional services firm encompasses four phases. Many firms never experience the full cycle, which does not say they are not successful. It just means they probably did not reach their full potential. Also, it is possible that a firm can jump into the marketplace with a unique offering and rocket through the growth cycle. This situation would clearly be an exception.

The four phases of growth generally occur in the following sequence:

1) Business Initiation

In this phase the business is just getting started either from scratch with some form of business plan or seeded by one to two initial accounts you have already presold. Attention is given to marketing and sales activities and quality of project delivery. Scope of services is based on what your team knows best, but to continue to drive revenue you sell what you rationalize you can deliver, even if you have to use third party contractors.

This is the most typical scenario for AFAB. It is easy to justify, and it helps you generate revenue to fund the business. On the upside, you may begin to develop some long-term client relationships. On the downside, you have trouble differentiating yourself, because it is hard to define what you do in terms other than the breadth of technologies you use. To prospective clients, you sound like everyone else. In addition, you typically undervalue your services based on the price you can command.

2) Practice Development

At this point you recognize that there are some patterns to your technology work. You have specific focus on certain vendors and their products, so you decide to increase the firm’s depth of experience in these few key technologies. Practice managers are assigned to lead the development of solutions, the management of people within their practices, development of partnerships (e.g., product vendors and training companies), and ultimately the profitability of the practices themselves.

It is during this phase that the firm starts to become known for its technical expertise. Most, if not all, of the company’s work is done in the local market. Your technical expertise begins to narrow down the competition some, but differentiating the firm is still quite difficult.

3) Business Expansion

This phase is characterized by growth into business solutions and/or geographic expansion. Just as you recognized technical specialization in the earlier phase, your firm now has a pattern of performance in industries (i.e., verticals) and business functions (e.g., sales, human resources, etc.). The intersection of a technology and one or both of these other areas allows you to focus in on specific business solutions. For each one you assign a practice manager as you did for your technology practices.

These business solutions begin to provide the firm real differentiation. You narrow the field of competition down significantly and can begin to command higher fees for the work you deliver. In addition, as you master these more unique offerings in the local market and are recognized for your expertise, you are afforded the opportunity to take them to regional and national markets, especially those you view as being underserved.

4) Continuous Improvement

Your business is growing, profitable, differentiated and known in the marketplace. The competition is aiming for you. You need to constantly re-evaluate all aspects of your business from service offerings to marketing and sales to delivery to operations. Typically, the two biggest areas requiring focus are adjusting your offerings to meet market needs and improving efficiency in delivery and support services.

This is a time when you can more confidently introduce new ways to provide offerings to your existing and target clients such as managed services (e.g., application support or network infrastructure) and SaaS (i.e., software as a service).

AFAB is prevalent in the first phase, Business Initiation. It can also occur in the other phases co-existing with specific practices or business solutions. In some circumstances, AFAB can be justified on a temporary basis. For example, if your firm is exclusively projects-based and you are experiencing the down side of the “roller-coaster” sales effect, then you might need to take action to improve utilization by accepting work outside of your normal scope. In this case, keeping a constant eye on resource allocation is vital in order to minimize the time AFAB is prevalent.

Causes of AFAB

There are several reasons AFAB can surface in your organization.

Being in the Business Initiation phase of your firm’s life cycle (where AFAB is a normal occurrence)
Not defining your scope of services and just assuming that over time it will define itself
Lack of attention to business planning and analysis of results – you are busy working in the business and unable to dedicate the time necessary to work on the business
Unassigned billable consultants on the bench
Relatively lean sales pipeline
Having a good management team, but lacking someone with the experience to proactively manage your services portfolio

Symptoms

The warning signs of AFAB are numerous. The issue is having controls in place to recognize them as soon as possible. Among the symptoms are:

Revenues are flat or are growing at a decreasing rate over time
Each project you sell is a one-off (i.e., unique where you have not done the work before) or is another variation of prior work – there is little repeatability in delivery
You never seem to have the right staff to fill the available project roles
Gross margins are flat or decreasing due to increasing cost of delivery – you are using more third party consultants at a higher than budgeted cost
Sales cycles remain relatively long and key opportunities are bunched together under the same sales stage or two
Qualified lead generation is inconsistent (e.g., limited marketing activity) signaling another roller coaster wave in the sales cycle

Treatment

Eliminating AFAB and avoiding future business plateaus require diagnosis of the condition, treatment and preventative measures designed along three concepts:

1. Focus

Review historical information on projects (i.e., numbers and revenue) to identify patterns of technologies used, industries served, and business functions and issues addressed
Review historical client information (i.e., numbers, revenue, industries, company size, buyers, issues, length of time as a client, etc.) to identify an ideal target account profile
Factor in current sales pipeline activity and knowledge of other areas (e.g., pending changes in technology, potential marketplace changes, etc.)
Refine your services portfolio to include the offerings that best support the direction you set for the company
Identify and assign practice managers to lead each area in further development of solutions, management of their consulting teams, development of partnerships, sales support, service delivery, client relationship management, and producing favorable financial results

As elementary as it sounds, it is surprising how many IT services firms do not perform an analysis of their projects and clients to ascertain this important information.

2. Alignment

Assure that the company management team is in sync on the direction of the business and decisions made around your services portfolio
Provide clear definition of goals and objectives to the business areas that will support the practices, especially marketing and recruiting
Communicate the newly refined business strategy internally, then to the marketplace when ready

3. Metrics

Enhance your monthly performance dashboard to include indicators of a potential AFAB situation (e.g., growing use of third party contractors)
Manage the sales pipeline to notice the ebb and flow in new leads, delays in closing opportunities, etc.
Develop performance reporting for each practice to enhance the manager’s ability to run his/her business

Each of these three areas (i.e., focus, alignment and metrics) requires ongoing attention as part of leadership’s responsibility within the business.

Benefits of Minimizing AFAB

While AFAB has a place in the Business Initiation phase of a company’s life cycle and can be justified at other times on a temporary basis, you must develop the discipline to manage AFAB to a minimum, which means learning to say “no”, an uncomfortable thing to do. The potential benefits of preventing or limiting AFAB by developing solutions addressing specific industries, business functions and technologies in your firm include:

Enhanced differentiation of your service offerings
Greater opportunity to work with client executives when you sell business-oriented solutions
Increased repeatability of projects and work components
More efficient projects, thus lower costs of delivery
Reduced risk on projects
Better pricing opportunities based on differentiation
Increased revenues
Improved gross margins
More efficient on-boarding of new consultants

These benefits are real and do not require significant incremental investment in your business.

Do you suffer from AFAB?

Article by Jay Rosenfeld

How Business Development Consultants Position Companies For Growth

So you’ve got ambitions to grow your business to the next level, and your wondering where to go next. Before you start making decisions have you considered whether your business is ready for growth?

Ensuring your business is ready for an increase in business is just as important as having a way to generate that extra business, so that you achieve both the initial boost and sustainable long term momentum.

A Development Consultants Effectiveness

To effectively develop a business, the consultant should be looking at generating and sustaining growth.

When it comes to generating or stimulating growth it will be a marketing and sales led process that will start with positioning the business and ensuring the products and services are right for the market. Momentum will come from continued efforts in the areas of marketing and sales but to ensure that its sustainable the business must be able to to fulfil demand.

The return from any money spent in business development will be diminished if the business is unable to move beyond its initial growth spurt into a sustainable trajectory so its important to asses the organisations resources and infrastructure to determine if they can meet peek demands and avoid have supply being overtaken which may severely affect customer relationships.

The last thing you want to do is invest unwisely and in an untimely manner in additional staff or equipment that is either underutilised or never used so timing these investment can be crucial and there may be some inevitable upfront investments as well as further staged investments in-line with growth plans.

Assisting With Change And Adapting The Business

Ensuring sustainability will also require continued effort and development to meet new demands and changes in market trends.

As well as the needs of the business and primarily its customers, the needs and desires of the owners and investors in the business must also be considered which may include future decisions such as full or partial retirement, sale, flotation or merger.

Having plans that cater for both the short and log term goals as well as any back up plans, will be essential for dealing with unforeseen eventualities that may throw the business off track temporarily.

It may also be that because of changes or new developments things like staffing and company procedures may need reviewing in-line with policies and processes for getting thing done.

You should also give some thought and consideration to your target market and products and services so that you can continually evolve in-line with the market and create other avenues for expanding the business further.

The Business Growth Development Process

Developing the business should be a stepped process where each stage builds on the last.

Initially a review of the business is performed to determine where it is, its ability to cope with demand increases and potential hidden assets that can be quickly leveraged.

The first step is to position the business correctly and understand what makes its stand out.

Next we look at integrating this knowledge into existing marketing and sales processes.

Then comes the first part of systematising marketing and sales so that information can be captures, segmented and used for effective marketing and sales purposes.

These is broadened into other special relationships and partnerships.

Its further exploited with more custom marketing and advertising.

Later visibility in the local community is stimulated.

Then we come onto more direct marketing.

Finally stimulating word of mouth.

Put it all together and you have a very effective programme for creating and maintaining growth.

Article by Nicholas Windley

Strategic Planning Is Vital to Long Term Business Growth

Strategic planning and business reviews are important for businesses to provide timely and accurate insights into customer desires, environmental trends and potential competitor actions so that your business can create methods and tactical plans to achieve long-term business success. Strategy reviews should be undertaken annually at least, to ensure strategies remain focused and in line with current business goals and direction. These reviews also provide a good platform to track and measure business results enabling businesses to understand the effectiveness of tactics in creating the desired result.

Each business has different requirements of their strategic planning process. Some businesses will need to create a corporate strategy, so your business plan. Your business plan provides direction on the overall company strategy (low-cost, focused, niche), what your goals are for the total business, what resources are required to achieve these goals and what competitive advantages you can utilise. Other businesses, especially those simply undertaking their annual review are most likely to need a marketing plan. The marketing plan divides the overall business into segments (generally based on product groups). It then goes through which segments to target, what to offer to each segment, what tactics should work in each segment, right down to what prices are recommended for the products.

Planning is critical to sustaining long-term profitable growth as they plans you create help you identify market opportunities, prepare for, and where possible avoid or minimise market threats while understanding and capitalizing on your strengths and minimising weaknesses. They help you understand what works and should be replicated, what doesn’t work and should be avoided ensuring that you are not spending time and effort on tactics that are ineffective. Planning also helps to minimise risks by making calculated decisions based on data. Most importantly they give you the ability to track your progress, measure (and celebrate) achievements and have a realistic vision of what you can expect to achieve in the future, helping to manage expectations and avoiding large disappointments.

It is common practice for businesses to review their business and/or marketing plans annually. Generally this is done 2-3 months prior to the end of a calendar year or financial year (depending upon company preference) to help the company prepare for the year ahead by reviewing the effectiveness of the strategies implemented throughout the year, to understand the goals for the following year and then what resources; people, financial, logistical, etc are required to fulfil the gap (gap analysis) of where you are now, to achieving the goals for the following year.

It is important not only to create a strategic plan, but to review it annually as Strategic Inertia is becoming a major issue in today’s markets with the increasing levels and rates of change. Monitoring these changes is vital as they could affect the productivity of your business, the competitiveness of your product (quality, pricing, time to market, etc) as well as the effective methods to reach your target market. Social Media Marketing (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc) is a fantastic example of how technology has transformed the marketing field in terms of ways to reach and communicate with your target market.

Current economic conditions have made the competitive environment harder for businesses and those that are unprepared, do not understand their USP (Unique Selling Point) or are ineffective at getting their message across will find it more and more difficult to survive. Strategic planning is critical in creating a long-term competitive position; effectively reach your target market and focusing your energy and efforts in the best, most responsive direction.

Article by Lorraine C Salvi

11 Resolutions for Business Growth in 2011

11 Resolutions for Business Growth For The New Year

If you’re operating budget or your marketing plan looks like it did five years ago, two years ago or even last year, there’s a problem.

With every advancement in technology, with every emerging social platform and with every shift from the desktop to the cloud, the ways people communicate, the ways your customers make decisions and the ways your employees work will continue to evolve. To stay ahead in today’s marketplace, your business growth strategies and tactics must evolve right along with them.

Here are 11 resolutions that you must make for your business to achieve success in the new year and beyond:

Shed your excess baggage.

You’ll never get ahead as long as you’re the one impeding your own progress.

In today’s economic climate, efficiency is the number one rule of survival. The future of business is leaner, smarter and more responsive. It’s time to take a look at your operating expenses and see what you can reduce or eliminate.

Now that technology has made it possible to do business anywhere and at any time, do you still need to maintain a spacious physical office and everything that goes into supporting and maintaining it: utilities, landline phone systems, servers, furnishings, cleaning services, etc.?

Or is it time to consider shedding that office and all of its outmoded systems in favor of transitioning to a virtual operating model and reaping the benefits of lower expenses, increased efficiency, higher employee satisfaction and – most importantly – greater profitability?

Even if you’re not ready to fully commit to making the virtual leap just yet, there are still plenty of things you can do to lighten the burden of the reoccurring expenses you carry.

A great first step is to look to the cloud. Today there are excellent cloud-based solutions for everything from project management to accounting and even CRM. Google Apps alone added dozens new business-focused web-based apps in the last few years.

These tools are lighter, more flexible and more affordable than their traditional personal-computer-based counterparts, making the business of running your business more efficient and less costly.

From Basecamp for project management to Grasshopper’s virtual phone systems to Skype for voice and video conferencing to Dropbox for online file sharing and synchronization, these systems are designed to promote productivity and facilitate collaboration among your employees, whether they are tethered to a cubicle or working from a home office.

So even if you can’t yet throw away the keys to your office, you can at the very least reduce your dependence upon phone systems, printers, paper, filing cabinets, on-site data storage and back-ups…the list goes on and on.

Bow to the tribe.

Just ask Digg, Toyota, Apple or Gap: What the tribe says can make you or break you.

What is a tribe? At its core, it’s a group of people that connect around common goals, interests or needs.

If you want to grow in today’s marketplace, you must identify, become a member of and lead the tribes that are relevant to your business. Moreover, your products or services must be shaped around meeting the needs of its members and making their lives better or easier.

Fortunately, the evolution of social media has stripped away the communication barriers that once divided companies and their tribes. Take advantage of having direct access to your customers and their opinions and engage them in your business operation.

Keep them informed about what you are doing. Ask for their honest feedback, not just about what you’re doing right but also about what you’re doing wrong and how you can do better. By listening and responding, you’ll solidify their trust and earn their continued loyalty.

For evidence of the power of tribes, look no further than Gap’s disastrous attempt to launch a new logo in October 2010. According the company, the logo was intended to signify Gap’s transition from “classic, American design to modern, sexy, cool.” However, in actuality, it raised the ire of their tribe and sparked a wave of embarrassing publicity.

While a simple logo redesign might seem like just a superficial cosmetic change, when Gap’s tribe saw their familiar brand icon fall by the wayside, they interpreted it as an indication that the company’s traditional style and values would soon follow suit. In response to this vehement backlash, Gap swiftly scrapped the new logo and reinstated the classic blue box, and in doing so, they recovered the trust and loyalty of their tribe.

Get out of your corporate comfort zone.

In order to engage with your tribe and relate to them in an authentic way, your company must be human in every way.

What does this mean? Think about qualities that are uniquely human. These include passion, sincerity and humility, just to name a few.

Humans take the time to understand, so be accessible, responsive and generous with your expertise and assistance.

Humans make mistakes, and they apologize for those mistakes. Don’t be afraid to show the world your flaws. Instead, be honest, accountable and trustworthy.

Taking ownership of a problem isn’t the same as taking blame. Your end game shouldn’t be saving face at all costs; it should be demonstrating that despite the inevitable misstep, you always have your customers’ best interests at heart.

People want to do business with people who genuinely care about them and understand their needs, not faceless corporations whose only concern is the bottom line. When you engage in real, authentic relationships, you create fans who are not only loyal customers but also brand evangelists that do your marketing for you.

Don’t just be likable, be indispensable.

The omnipresence of Facebook has turned the act of “liking” into its own unique form of currency. Brands engage in hot pursuit of being “liked” as if the acquisition of that status in and of itself is the culmination of the company-customer relationship.

However, competing in this rat race makes it easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. In today’s economic climate, customers don’t easily part with their hard-earned dollars – unless, that is, they simply can’t live without you.

It’s time to re-examine your value, not just in terms of price but in terms of what it is that your customers have come to depend on you for and how you can give them even more.

For instance, a Maytag washer might initially cost more than a comparable model from GE or Whirlpool, but their customers also know that they can expect reliable, worry-free service for years to come, which will ultimately save them the time, hassle and expense of repair or replacement.

What aspects of your competitive landscape can you own? Is it service? Is it convenience? It is reliability?

Make sure that you address the needs of your tribe and make their lives better or easier in meaningful ways that no one else can duplicate. In doing so, you’ll transform your products or services from mere commodities to indispensable necessities.

Stop treating your website like a brochure.

What separates the superstar websites from the rest?

It’s not pretty pictures or flowery copy.

It’s not flashy graphics – or Flash, for that matter.

It’s not videos or animation or any of the other bells and whistles in and of themselves.

It’s achieving the right balance of form and function, of design and functionality.

Stop wasting opportunities to grow your business with a website that doesn’t truly perform. It’s no longer enough for your website to sit like a brochure on glass and provide just the basic ABCs about your company.

In fact, the term “website design” itself is a bit misleading. While your site can and should be beautiful, more importantly, it must be useful.

Perhaps there’s no better case for this argument than Facebook. Facebook is hardly the most beautiful website ever built. However, it serves its purpose well, and it’s simple enough to navigate that everyone from your 10-year-old cousin to your 80-year-old grandmother can use it with relative ease.

People love apps and for good reason: they’re intuitive to use, they’re focused and they serve a specific purpose.

You should keep this mentality in mind with regard to the way your website functions. People come to your site for a reason, and they have specific needs that need to be addressed.

When they land on your site, don’t make them think too much. Instead, point them in the right direction. Your goal should be to provide a useful web-based extension of your company that’s available 24/7 and provides the path of least resistance for your customers to reach the resources, information and products they seek.

Go organic.

Once upon a time, it was easy to ensure that whenever someone was searching for the types of products and services that you offer, you’d be in front of them. Every year you’d write a check (albeit a big one) to the Yellow Pages and then just sit back and wait for the phone to ring.

But in today’s marketplace, when people have a question, want information or need to find a product or service, they don’t flip open the phone book, and they don’t scour online directories.

Instinctively, they turn to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. As a result, these sites are the gatekeepers between you and prospects who are looking for a solution that you can provide. With over 16 billion searches performed in November 2010 alone, there’s clearly much to be gained from appearing in the first few results when someone enters keywords that pertain to the products or services that you offer.

However, unlike in the days when the Yellow Pages ruled the world, you can’t buy your way to prominence on an organic search results page. Instead, you must commit to an ongoing, dedicated investment of time and resources to work your way up through the rankings of a search using legitimate, proven search engine optimization tactics.

While there’s no easy or instant way to jump from page 10 to page one, over time, your patience and persistence will be rewarded with better ranking, greater traffic coming to your site, more prospects seeing what you have to offer and increased opportunities to convert visitors into customers.

Be everywhere all the time.

To compete in today’s on-demand culture, you need to ensure that you’re available to your customers on their timetable and on the platform of their choosing.

No longer are people usually sitting in front of a computer when they’re searching for answers to their questions and problems. With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, mobile browsing is on the rise.According to data from comScore, in October 2010, approximately 36 percent of mobile subscribers used their devices to browse the web, while 34 percent downloaded apps and 24 percent accessed blogs or social networking sites.

It’s critical to make sure that when your customers are out and about, you’re in their pocket and along for the ride. The first step is optimizing your site for the mobile Web to ensure that it is small-screen-friendly and that browsing on the go is a pleasant and efficient process. There’s nothing more frustrating for your customers than when they’re in a hurry and waiting for your image-saturated website to load on their Android or struggling to navigate your drop-down menus on their iPhone.

Simply put, mobile web development is a trend that you simply can’t afford to ignore any longer. Your customers won’t understand or tolerate your failure to keep up and will keep browsing until they find someone else who can provide what they want when and where they want it.

Break out of your social bubble.

Social media is about communication and connection, with the ultimate goal of building and nurturing a community around your brand. However, to be successful, you must break out of your own brand bubble and let others direct the conversation.

Wherever you choose to establish a presence – whether that’s on LinkedIn if you’re B2B, Facebook if you’re B2C or on Twitter – you must realize that these sites are not just another place to leave your brochure, nor are they your own personal podium for endless self-promotion.

Instead, think of your social media outpost as an ongoing party where your people can hang out and talk about the things that they care about. You want the atmosphere to feel like your living room, where everyone is free to pull up a chair and join in the conversation at their leisure. The people who congregate there will get to know each other and will form relationships that are founded upon a common interest in your brand and the values it stands for.

Just like any real-world social setting, the more comfortable you make it, the more people will call it home, and the more they’ll look forward to coming back again and again.

For example, if you’re in the business of selling your own custom-made handbags, your people are those who care about fashion and about standing out from the crowd. They’re people who like to be on the cutting edge of trends and gossip.

So there’s no need for the chatter on your Facebook page to constantly revolve around handbags. You could just as easily talk about what Natalie Portman wore to the Golden Globes or discuss the latest episode of America’s Next Top Model. As long as the conversation is happening in your living room, it doesn’t have to be about you.

By contrast, if you put up a Facebook page and do nothing but talk about yourself, you’ll watch the party empty quickly.

Stop keeping up with the digital Joneses.

Because the Internet is public domain, suddenly it’s easier than ever to keep close tabs on what your competitors are doing. And along with this comes the temptation to constantly make sure that you are present anywhere on the Web that they are.

However, just because you can see what you’re competitors are up to doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing it well or that their tactics are worth imitating.

Just because your competitors are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and every other platform in existence, doesn’t mean you should be, too. Just because they have 1,000 followers doesn’t mean that you’re a failure because you only have 200. Just because they have a message board on their website doesn’t mean that you should necessarily have one as well.

While it’s always good to keep your competitors in your crosshairs, don’t let it take your focus away from doing what’s best for your own business. It’s far more important to stay laser-focused on your customers and to gain an understanding of where they live and how they prefer to be engaged.

Focus your efforts not on keeping up but on setting yourself apart. Carve out your own niche in the Web marketing universe, create your own identity, offer something unique to your customers and cultivate your own community of dedicated followers.

Get out more.

With all the buzz surrounding social networking, don’t forget the importance of face-to-face networking.

As one responsible for growing a business, you belong to an expansive community of people who are in the same boat. Collectively, you represent an almost limitless pool of knowledge and experience in addressing the challenges of building and growing a business. Whether it’s a colleague in a related industry or the owner of the shop next door, there’s a wealth of wisdom and contacts just waiting to be shared.

All too often, however, people treat networking as a stop-gap measure when nothing else is working. Networking shouldn’t be approached as an instant fix to a sales pipeline that’s running dry but as a long-term investment.

To be successful, you must apply the principles of trustcasting: be willing to give generously of your own time and expertise, not focused solely on what everyone else can do for you.

Build your reputation as a knowledgeable resource, take a genuine interest in helping others succeed, and eventually you’ll find that opportunities will start to flow your way.

Turn your resolutions into reality.

It’s not enough to set the goals. You must develop an action plan for their execution. Otherwise the coal-shoveling tasks required to keep your business engine running smoothly will always dominate your time and attention.

Simply put, you must schedule time for growth, or all your good intentions will drown in a sea of wishful thinking.

In reality, you probably can’t tackle all 11 of these resolutions at once, so decide what’s most important for your business and set your priorities accordingly.

Break down each big-picture objective into specific, manageable tasks, and establish milestones and metrics by which you’ll measure your progress.

Set aside some time each week to unplug and apply focused effort toward meeting your goals. Treat these tasks with the same level of importance as meeting with a client or filing your taxes, and don’t let anything displace them from your schedule.

Don’t fall into the trap of reactionary business growth planning and wait until there’s a crisis of income and cash flow to get serious about shoring up your competitive position. In today’s marketplace, there’s no room for objectives du jour that only aim to put out whichever fire is burning hottest at the moment.

Establish your goals for the year now, and make a firm commitment – to yourself and your employees – that other projects won’t be allowed to interfere with achieving them. If things don’t unfold as planned, don’t worry and don’t give up. Just adapt and stay focused on the ultimate goal: owning your market.

Article by Sharon Lane