Telecommunications can mean many things, but keep in mind that all small businesses share several common needs, specifically, the need to serve sales, purchases, financing, and operational functions. Your telecommunications option should be the one that best serves all of these functions. This covers things...
Marketing is much more than just advertising and selling. It involves learning about the market you want to sell to, understanding what they can afford, and how best to approach them. There are four basic aspects to marketing: product (description of what you’re selling), price...
There's no one way to develop and execute an effective marketing campaign, and it can change from location to location. The thing to remember is that your marketing campaign determines the presence your business will have in your area. Your best bet is to actually contact...
These are not mutually exclusive propositions. To begin with, you should always be learning. Business continues to evolve and you need to know what direction it’s going in and what direction you want to go in to parallel with it while adding your own twist...
Generally speaking, tough economic times is a good time to look into buying and merging companies since you'll be able to get it for a good price, but you should also make sure to do your due diligence, this is not a time to guess....
In most cases, it doesn't really matter. Most small businesses use the calendar year for simplicity. However, it can be useful to use a fiscal year if your business has a busy season at a particular time. For example, this adviser was previously in the...
When you're talking about working with suppliers, you're talking about a relationship with another business owner. That relationship has to be about more than money. I can see that you're concerned about quality, but have you considered service? Delivery? How fast you're taken care of...
A USP is an acronym for “unique selling proposition.” Basically, it's a concept that originated in the 1940's and the idea is that every advertisement makes a proposition to the customer that suggests that buying the product or using the service will grant them a...
If your regular customers are going to the other bakery, there's something that they offer that you don't. It could be that they're simply closer to a large portion of your customer base (walking distance?), but odds are that they are doing something different from...
Keep in mind that in a business like yours, you're not just selling a product; you're selling the prospects on the benefits of doing business with you. Frame your pitch in terms of what's good about working with your company rather than just what's good...