As a business owner, you should always be looking for a way to increase your bottom line. There are different strategies claiming they can help you increase your business, but one that is often overlooked is forming business alliances. This term might be complete Greek to you, so here’s a quick breakdown of what it is. Continue reading
Yearly Archives: 2012
Power Partners: It’s Not What You Know But Who You Know
You may have heard the phrase, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” In most cases that applies to the business world. Developing partnerships and networking to broaden your people base is one important component of being successful in your business. It is defined by whom you know. This is never more true than when building relationships.
Finding your Power Partners is not only about you, it’s about them. Continue reading
Successful Entrepreneurs Become Successful Business Partners
There’s an interesting story about the partnering of the ice cream giant, Baskin-Robbins.
According to a post in Entrepreneur, Burton Baskin and Irvine Robbins each began their ice cream stores as separate companies at the advice of Robbins’ father. Dad thought that the men would take too much time making compromises and “kill the product’s potential.”
So only after each had launched successful separate businesses did they subsequently become business partners. Continue reading
As A Small Business Owner, Why Is Tracking Sales Important?
As a small business owner, you may ask yourself why tracking sales is important. You know the products that you offer, you know your budget, and your books balance at the end of every month. Why do you need to make the effort or invest in some type of software that will allow you to track your sales? This article will discuss the importance of that and more.
Selling Products Continue reading
Strategic Alliances: Creating and Maintaining
Sustaining strategic alliances for success requires short-term planning and planning over the long-term. You need to determine how to best use your available resources to ensure you have the infrastructure in place. An article posted on the Financial Post talks about building and maintaining strategic alliances.
“As companies enter into an array of alliances, the potential for achieving benefits can increase dramatically.”
A portfolio of alliances Continue reading
Alliance Performance Coaching: Better Process Makes Better Practice
There’s an interesting video on YouTube featuring former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In it Schmidt explains the benefits of having a coach. He tells the story of his early years as CEO when a board member suggested that he find one. Though Schmidt felt there was nothing wrong – he was the CEO, after all – he took the board member’s advice and began to work with a coach. As Schmidt explains in the video, a coach helps give perspective to things we are unable to see ourselves.
The same is true with alliances. Continue reading
How Value Added Resellers (VAR) Can Help You Find More Hours in a Day
As an Entrepreneur what is the one resource you wish you more of right now? I’d be willing to bet the answer is most likely time. If you’re running low on energy there’s always more coffee, right? But, if you find you just don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done what do you do? You can’t add more hours to the clock.
So how do you free up more of your time? Continue reading
When the Target Market Changes, Rethink Your Sales Strategy
Think you know your target market? Most business owners will answer with a resounding, “Yes.” However, too often companies identify their demographics at the onset and then never look back.
Target Markets are Evolving
The 2010 white paper, “2010 America: What the Census Means for Marketing and Advertising,” forecast changes in the demographic make-up of the U.S. along with the resulting business implications. It suggests that too many entrepreneurs neglect changes to their current target market. The result: same old sales strategy, no increase in sales.
Strategic Alliances: Secrets from Fortune 500 for any businesses
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. When you form a strategic alliance with another company, you get the benefits of leveraging an expertise, product, service or asset that isn’t even yours. Yet, they call on the same customers you do.
Big businesses have been reaping the rewards of these relationships for years. Continue reading
Entrepreneurs: Moving Beyond Organic Growth
When it comes to their growth strategy, most entrepreneurs have some variation on the same theme: produce a good or service, market it, and supply that good or service to as many people in as big of a geographical area as possible. It’s called organic growth, and it’s a great strategy–but it also has its limits. There is a point in the lifecycle of every business where the company has three choices for continued growth: build, borrow, or buy. A new book out Continue reading
Entrepreneurs: One with the Spirit of Change
There seems to be a growing trend. The number of entrepreneurs is increasing. People, whose life are in an upheaval, discover that their real passions become the fuel that drives their work. This work becomes their source of revenue. There are several reasons for this:
- Jobs, thought to be stable careers, are no longer jobs to be counted on for life. Continue reading
Collaboration in Small Business: Who Needs It?
Chances are the answer to the above question is easy: we all do. However, what exactly is the benefit of having a business collaborator? Many of us just don’t like other people getting involved in our own business. Too many people having a say in how a business is run can slow efficiency and even detract from business quality. This does not include any personal frustrations from working with people with whom we simply do not like. But small business collaboration brings advantages to the table that make it worth the trouble. That’s why it’s so important to choose your business collaborators carefully.
A business collaboration is a relationship two or more businesses have with one another that benefit all involved. Continue reading
The Best Sales Strategy: Fix the Customer’s Problem
Whenever you go into a sales meeting, you are on the spot. Your goal is to explain why your prospect should use your company’s product (or service). The best way to convince them is through demonstration.
Demonstrating what your product can do for them is a great sales strategy. However, it’s even better if you can demonstrate how your product will fix this customer’s current problem. What is the pain that the customer is experiencing?
Defining the Customer’s Problem
Your goal is to help your customer. Your product must fulfill a need. Hopefully, this need has previously gone unfulfilled. But what exactly is that need and how will your product help? Continue reading
Business Partners, Joint Ventures and the Win-Win-Win Strategy
Most people are very familiar with the idea of “win-win” in the development of joint ventures. This way of thinking has helped push old world business owners into thinking about the benefits of helping their business partners as well as themselves.
To strengthen business relationships, you need to focus on what would benefit both parties. The result creates more of a unified force. Asking yourself how you can help your business partner will truly make a huge difference in the long-term stability of your venture. A good way to start a relationship is to ask both parties for their Conditions of Success (COS). Then everyone knows what is expected at the end for joint success.
Looking for Your Next Business Partner
You’re a talented and innovative thinker planning to launch a ground-floor venture. Should you go it alone or bring in a business partner?
As we mentioned in our earlier blog, “Is it Too Much to Ask for the Perfect Business Partner?” a number of business pairings throughout the years have turned into great successes. Primarily because of the skills and traits each partner brought to the pair. However, a lot had to do with the actual relationship between the individuals involved.
Not Everyone Should Be Your Partner
This seems like an obvious statement. However, Continue reading
3 Questions to Develop Your Channels of Distribution Strategy
When developing a new product or service, one of the first things to consider is how to get it to the end-user. Deciding on what channels of distribution to use is a very important business decision that must be made correctly. Using the wrong channels of distribution costs you money and depletes the value of your product.
1) How does the end-user want to buy?
To answer this, you’ll need to understand your customers and your relationship to them. How does your customer prefer to buy this product? Will they need customization or regular service? Maybe your customer needs other products or services to be able to use your product. Continue reading
If You’re an Entrepreneur, Only the Strong Survive – If You Have a Business Plan
Some entrepreneurs may disagree with this assessment; however, according to a 2009 MSNBC.com article, “Economic cycles are Darwinian, picking off weak companies and leaving survivors stronger.”
The good news is that the survivors often benefit as their competitors disappear. Unless, that is, you haven’t planned ahead.
Comprehensive Business Plan Vital Continue reading
Joint Ventures Must Be Mutually Beneficial
It’s hard to imagine peanut butter’s success without jelly and vice versa. Without the unique qualities of both these elements, the PB&J would have its anonymity. Like this staple sandwich, so many businesses are also making successful names for themselves through their wise joint ventures with other companies.
Choosing just the right partner, however, is just as important as selecting that special someone in your personal life. If you don’t find a genuine, natural fit, it could be disastrous to both your companies.
So, how then do you make a joint venture beneficial to your company? Continue reading
Collaboration – Tips for Better Presentations
If you are like me, then you have been forced to suffer through your share of presentations given by uninspired, uninterested and disorganized people. “I can do better than that. Much better!” One might say. But one might also find that when the time comes to collaborate on one’s own presentation, that creating an experience of oratory (plus visuals!) that will wake up the back row is more difficult than it might initially seem.
That being said, as I have already said, going into a business presentation, people are not necessarily expecting anything amazing – so use that to your advantage by providing the audience with something amazing. And here are a few ways to do so. Continue reading
Corporate Collaboration Leads to Global Sustainability
The traditional business paradigm encouraged companies to secure their assets by remaining isolated from other corporations. While businesses still must protect their products and designs, there is a sentiment today that appreciates the benefits that the world gains when all business subscribe to collaboration to solve global issues.
The catalyst for this shift is the fact that business collaboration is necessary in a socially sustainable world (from Mashable Social Media). The advent of the virtual world and the social media storm that ensued has demonstrated the revolutionary power that exists when people work together.
Certainly, businesses must operate with a certain level of autonomy Continue reading