The everyday struggle of the market competition can make or break you if you did not make the cut. Here are some business boosting points from business owners that use them to on top their games.

1. Do not be afraid to invest and expand your workforce and workload.

The addition of work force in the office can benefit your business enterprise. The addition of effective professional workforce will not only lighten up your daily workload, but it will also enhance the performance and quality of your workforce.

2. Make your Business visible.

Advertising an ad placement on newspapers and mainstream media can open up great market opportunities for you. If you are on a tight budget, blogs and internet content can also boost your visibility effectively without the cost of mainstream advertisement.

3. Train your personnel to work according to your management style.

Effectively training and making you personnel up to date with the latest trends and technology in the industry will make them more effective in the workplace. Training your personnel according to what suits your management style will configure your workplace the way you would want it.

4. Make your business the talk of the town.

Once in a while, you should offer promotion deals that could put your business’ name in the mouth of the public for its great deal. You will get more recognition thru the use of this strategy.

5. Make a good name for you and your business.

Sponsoring worthwhile community activities like that of a charity type of event can give an image of  you giving back to the community for their support of your business. In these events, you could also meet potential business deals with your co-philanthropists.

6. Invest in better record keeping and always keep tract with your contacts and transactions.

Managing your contacts and transactions will give you the edge of knowing who among your contacts have what you need, at what time, and at what price. This will save a lot of time in canvassing for the materials that you may need based on your previous interactions with past suppliers.

7. Be a Hands-on business owner; learn through practice.

Spending time in managing and running your business  real-time is priceless for an entrepreneur. The more you immerse yourself in your business enterprise, the more you can gather useful insights on how you can make your business work for you.

8. Maximize, utilize and minimize.

Maximize all available resources that are available to you. You can also use the offers and promos of other companies to turn the tables. Furthermore, always utilize your workforce effectively so that the amount of workload can be increased. Minimize costs and losses by proper handling of and management of your workforce and resources.

9. Hire specialists if you must.

As business owners,  we can do multitasking at times and effectively save money and resources. However, once your company starts expanding, hire additional personnel to accommodate the added workload.

10. Employ effective technological advances to your advantage.

Do not hesitate to try labor-saving and resource-maximizing technologies to your advantage. These technologies can save you the money that are usually spent on expensive manual work.

Starting up a small company is one thing; merging your company with another company is another. Merging, or a merger, is an act of unifying the accounts, assets, and liabilities of two or more companies to produce a bigger and stronger company. This bigger entity can then specialize in a broader range of operations; depending on the type of companies that had undergone the merge.

Merging is a common business tool that can make the big difference for your existing entrepreneurial base. A well-planned and agreed on merger can take on larger credit loads and accommodate a larger workload. This therefore means that the overall production rate of your company and the other merging company will be dramatically increased.

Mergers can open worlds of opportunities for you. The increase in assets will make it possible for you to get bank loans easier; hence, capital will not be of much concern when you try to expand your operations. In the case of nearing bankruptcy, the balancing value of the merging company can check out the liabilities threatening your company for bank embargo. Utilizing this business tool therefore can make your business stable, economics-wise.

The joining together of both workforces will lead to higher production targets resulting to you taking on larger markets and supplying more deals. Furthermore, merging companies will also share and expand on more market and consumer lists by combining the ones that they already have. Customers that are loyal to you or the other company could be more satisfied with the combined services that you will now give. In this sense, you are not just marketing to create demands from customers, but you are also  making your customers happier and more satisfied.

Synergizing both companies’ staff and workforce could scout and spot new talents and manage them according to what role you want them to assume. In this sense, a merger brings new and fresh workforce into your business without the additional cost of hiring them independently.

The development of a more effective pitch for sales is also one of the good effects of a merger. Your existing public relations line will be reinforced by the public relations line of the merging company. This is like getting an additional PR line for free. The combination of the two entities can form a cohesive unit that can launch big media campaigns. Likewise, this can also lower costs thru sharing of contacts, ideas, and tools.

Another benefit is found on the field of product innovation. The sharing of manufacturing or servicing techniques can generate you a new line of products and services to launch in the market. The differences between the technical approaches of both in servicing and manufacturing processes can create a condition for your technical staff to adopt an improved version of your own technological formula. The merger can then adapt these new processes as their own; therefore resulting to an improved version of both processes.

With all the benefits of mergers, there is so little reason for you not to consider it.  So if I were you, I will merge to emerge.

Watching news and hearing reports about market crashes, inflation, and big companies going belly-up can make you quite unsure of your business’ future. However, entrepreneurs have a long history of finding ways around whatever situation that the business environment gives them; even finding more opportunities in the process. As a business owner, you can also do the same; even if the current environment is quite challenging and uncertain. Here are a few strategies that can help you nurture your own company despite today’s business climate.

The first tip is to always continue seeking more business from your most profitable clients. Doing careful market research will tell you which of your clients in your niche can double your sales. Experts also advise to always keep in touch with clients; ideally every two weeks or so. They also suggest alternating your communication between email, phone, and snail mail until you get to set an appointment or get to talk to them by phone.

Another thing to always remember is that doubling sales will take some time; so, don’t expect it to happen overnight. However, building strong working relationships with prized clients today will put you in a much better disposition in the long run.

Another tip to keep your business competitive is to try education-based marketing. This is one of the best ways to reach your prospective clients. Doing education-based marketing can increase your clients’ interest in your business because you will be providing them information on how they, or their employees, can do their jobs better. Education-based marketing can be done by just informing your potential clients some data or information you’ve gathered in the industry that might be useful to them. Taking on this approach gives your client the impression that you are an industry expert. This can turn into a high level of trust and rapport. Sharing this expertise can put you on the top of your prospective clients’ list when it comes to them selecting a product or service provider.

The third tip to keep your business competitive during these times is to use your website to get more leads. You can offer something valuable for free, or for a low cost, on your website in exchange for a potential customer’s contact information. This in turn, will build you a list. It is now your business’ task to contact these potential customers for follow-up, or to sell them something.

Fourthly, always find out what things matter most to your prospective clients. When talking to existing and potential clients, make sure you ask what are the reasons why they’re getting your products or services. Doing a little bit of extra questioning allows you to find out what your customers’ needs are so that you can close the deal earlier and easier.

Finally, always remember to invest in your business; even if budget is tight. Strategic investments are what will make your business move forward. We ask our customers to take a risk and choose us among all the others. It’s also a good idea to take a risk and choose your business as an investment as well.

Are you planning to sell in big businesses? But then something is hindering you because you are not sure of what to do? Don’t worry here are tips to guide you in venturing to this big corporations.

1. As an entrepreneur you should be aware of the products that are needed by the big businesses because there are many competitions in this kind of area.
2. Know how to introduce yourself to the company and prove to them that you are better than the others.
3. You must also have a good background in your financial account because this is business and both of you are taking risk. You must remember that you should earn your credibility so that they can trust you in this business.
4. Make sure that you have the capacity to provide the volume or number of products that they order. Remember that you are doing business with them.
5. When you already get their orders, make sure to follow up your buyers. In this way they can see that you are serious with what you are doing.
6. Provide also a business card so that they can have your contact number in case that they want to order. Put the basic information in your business card like your name, contact details and email address, name of the company as well as the location. You can also put some offers at the back of the business card to advertise your products.
7. You must also provide a company email for you to monitor the progress in your business. In this case it will not interfere with your personal email address.

These are just some of the tips that you can use when dealing with big businesses. Remember that it is a tough competition so you need to do the best thing you can to be able to survive in this competition.

Looking for an apt business mentor is like entering a relationship; you look for certain qualities that lead to a successful partnership. In this case, you have to find someone who can understand your ideals, cater to your needs, and would want the best for you.

Step One: Identify your needs

First and foremost, you should identify the kind of mentoring your business requires. A business has several aspects, each one different from the last, so you should examine them separately.

You may come across several problems in areas such as public relations and marketing or perhaps you want to seek for leadership mentoring that can help expand your enterprise. Also, you might be pondering on selling your business.

Mentors for the said aspects (and a lot more) are widely accessible. Recognizing your own capabilities will help you further in finding the right business mentor. List the things you can and cannot do and specify if you are good or extremely good at doing them.

Furthermore, examine your business and take note of proposed ventures that may need a little boost in order to be launched. Concerns regarding operations (that are yet to be improved) should be listed down so you can discuss them with your business mentor in the future.

After acknowledging such difficulties in your business, it’s now time for you to choose the appropriate business mentor for the job.

Step Two: Find the Best Candidates

The question is where? An instinctive thing to do is to scope your own network. You may already be acquainted to somebody who can serve as an effective business mentor to you and your company. Or maybe, a friend of yours can refer a suitable colleague. By asking people from your own network, you’re already broadcasting to the world that “Hey! I’m looking for a business mentor.”

If this endeavor proves to be unsuccessful, you can also consult agencies that can provide business mentors. They can give you a list wherein you can choose a mentor possessing qualifications suited for the job in hand. You can also try to searching for business mentors via the Internet. This can provide you with a wide range of viable candidates to choose from.

Step Three: Choose the RIGHT business mentor

Finally, it’s now time for you to choose your business mentor. But before making the big decision, be sure the one you would choose owns the level of expertise you are looking for, holds experiences applicable to your company, and knows referees that you can talk to. Also, make sure to consider if you can work alongside the person.

Work between you and your future business mentor will entail intimate working relations and trust so you should feel easy and comfortable around that person. It doesn’t matter if you’ve found the perfect business mentor (CV wise) but if there’s tension going on between the of two you, perhaps it would be wise for you to think twice if that mentor is really the right one for you.

A vital yet critical factor in the expansion of a business is selecting the appropriate business mentor. Recognise your deficiencies, learn as much as possible about the problems, be open minded and accommodate ideas that can be useful in the future.

It has been said that no man is an island. Just the same, no business is an island. Although you think you can handle it all, you have to accept the fact there will always come a time that you will need some sort of support. Specialists from different areas will definitely come in handy since they have the knowledge and skills that you may lack.

Knowing the strengths of your business is one thing; knowing your weaknesses is another. The type of your enterprise, your industry, and your specific condition will dictate the right combination of support services you may need. Here are some types of services that you may find helpful for your business to be fully successful.

Looking for the experts

In the ancient times, there has been a notion that every citizen should fully develop each and every aspect of their lives. Children have to learn everything there is that can be learned. However, throughout history, people have learned that this system is quite impractical. From the agricultural to the industrial age, people have learned the art of specialization. Over the years, this has been proven as an efficient system as it saves time, resources, and energy.

With specialization, it is undeniable that there are numerous kinds of work that you cannot simply give solutions all by yourself. Usually, businesses seek help from professionals like book keepers, lawyers, accountants, web designers, public relations officers, business coaches, and advertisers. Finding a good professional services provider is not quite an easy task. However, for starters, you could ask other businesses and employees. A good recommendation from trusted colleagues shall also be a great help for you.

Consulting with peers

Almost always, the problems you are dealing right now have been already encountered by other businesses out there. Seeking support from peers will definitely help you in dealing with your problems. Use the different channels you can access to increase your network of peers. Usually, this type of help is readily available during certain events for your industry, local business support groups, and professional online networks. This will expand your horizon to things beyond your business.

However, do not forget that peer support is a two-way relationship. Help your peers as much as how they have helped you.

Seeking from other support services

The support services that you may want to avail will largely depend on your situation. Other services available in the market are financial services (from banks), trainings and workshops, federal, state and local government services.

Building the right support network

Do not forget that asking for these support services would mean engaging in numerous business relationships. Since getting support is one way to save time, be careful in choosing the right support providers as you would not want to have unnecessary conflicts with them. If you are having a hard time dealing and working with them or if you are having doubts, do not hesitate to have a change of heart, no matter how good people say these providers are.

Krista Neher, launched Boot Camp Digital sometime in 2008. During that time, Boot Camp Digital is a social media marketing company that already had quite an impressive list of clientele. But like any business owner, Krista wanted more.

When asked what was her game plan to grow the business, Krista mentioned that during her first year, she reevaluated her business model. She wanted more revenue streams. During her re-evaluation, it seemed that the most logical way to expand her business was to hire more people. This was one strategy though that she didn’t want to employ.

It was then that Krista came up with an ingenious solution. She began to develop products that highlighted her expertise. Instead of her doing one-on-one training sessions on social media, she decided to use technology to reach out to a bigger audience.

Boot Camp Digital launched their Social Media DVD in March of 2009. Now, training videos can be bought from the Boot Camp Digital website. Krista also began offering social-media boot camps at her office. So, instead of doing on-on-one sessions, she can now facilitate these sessions with a bigger audience- about thirty people at a time.

In less than a year, Krista Neher has expanded her business from a few clients to thousands. When asked on what she advice she can share for entrepreneurs like us, she has these pieces of advice in expanding a business.

Her first advice is to look at your current business model. Krista suggests that business objectives should be well-defined by what success looks like to you, as a business owner. Moreover, she also suggests to come up with very creative ways on how to change one-on-one interactions to one-on-one-hundred situations.

Furthermore, in evaluating your business model, she also suggests to also consider changing the way you sell and changing your location. Krista gave a coffee shop she came across as an example. This certain coffee shop started selling at a farmer’s market during weekends. According to her, she talked to the owners and  found out that the coffee shop was making about eighty percent of their revenue while operating at only twenty percent of cost by selling two days at the market.

Aside from coming up with clear-cut business objectives for expansion and changing the way to sell and looking at the best locations, Krista also suggests to come up with scalable marketing ideas. She has done this in Boot Camp Digital to boost her bottom line. What she did was instead of attending a lot of networking events, she signed up for her local Chamber of Commerce. She then posted her training classes on their calendar. What’s more is that she joined as many local calendar listings she could find. She also built an email list, employed search engine optimization techniques, and improved her website.

The result of all of Krista’s effort is that she is looking at the potential of doubling her revenue for the next year. It might also be a good idea to try out her suggestions to achieve the same success she had.

As far as business is concerned, there are two prerequisites for survival in the market: strategy and hard work. There is no such thing as constant and unchallenged supremacy. The case of the Forbes 400 proves that fortunes can change quickly and unpredictably in numerous circumstances. What made the difference for these remarkably rich people are the skills and the determination to stay in the game.

Drawing lessons from the Forbes 400, we can note the fact that very few or none of the companies in the list began as huge businesses. Steve Forbes, editor of the Forbes magazine, Chief Executive Officer of Forbes Inc., and himself an established business tycoon, stressed that these businesses started as small ventures. The owners did not inherit the businesses – they created them. They crafted the design, the working schemes, the internal dynamics, the products, and the services; among others. Forbes made it clear that in the market battleground, there is no unshaken aristocracy; there are no invulnerable competitors. The business owner has to be skilful in calling the shots of ‘making something happen.’

Next, to ‘stay in the game,’ one has to understand the true meaning of wealth. If we are in the context of businesses and the market, wealth is not simply the iconic piles of gold, jewels and money all around you. The business owner, more often than not, dismisses this ‘fairytale-ish’ or the ‘commercial ad-ish’ representation of wealth. For him or her, the focus is on the primary determinants of wealth.

This now brings us to the question, “What generates wealth?”  Forbes said that it is the “value that people put on the asset.” One of the classic principles in economics tackles the factors behind every demand curve; two of which are the preferences and the price and accessibility of alternative goods. The business owner, therefore, has to possess sheer knowledge about the prevailing preferences in the market and has to learn how to manipulate variables to increase profit. “If the people suddenly don’t like what you offer or if somebody does it better, then the value disappears,” Forbes said.

Indeed, the business owner must know how to answer the crucial question. Will the product or service be preferred over other competitors? More importantly, what will give the product the edge over the other?

Now, the hardest part is the fact that the tastes or preferences of the consumers are always changing. In fact, conditions in the market are characterized by vicissitudes. Thus, there are changes in the factors that determine supply and demand. The cost of manufacturing a product or offering a service can increase dramatically; or some other powerfully decisive exogenous change can take place in the market. There can be an unexpected depreciation of machines, or even political turmoil that creates an atmosphere hostile to vibrant economic activity, among others. In the smaller scale, changes happen more quickly than they do at the macro level. Hence, the owners of small businesses are most familiar with the speed in which conditions can change, Forbes said.

The competent business owner, therefore, must know how to respond to such changes. He or she is never lax; and never assumes that favourable business conditions are eternal. Forbes shared his father’s favourite quote, “if you think you’ve arrived, you’re already shown to the door.” True enough, the businessman, if anything, knows that the market is also characterized by the survival of the fittest, and adaptation is a necessary feat.

Cutting to grow can be quite a helpful strategy to some business owners; but we’re also all quite sure that a good number of entrepreneurs would also disagree. However, as a personal experience, I would say that the cut-to-grow strategy has greatly helped me out.
I’ve spent the last few months re-evaluating my business. Given the current situation, I was now almost four hundred thousand dollars short of what I initially had. Like with many starting entrepreneurs, I thought I could do everything all at once and I expected to do all of them very well. However, this was not the case. I was entirely wrong.
Realizing the mistake, I strategized on how to proceed with my business to make up for the lost time and money. This is when I decided to employ a cut-to-grow strategy. But contrary to the common definition of the term, I mean cut-to-grow in a different manner.
Decide on What to Cut
I started my business with the thought of launching four products. To begin with, I didn’t even have one product launched yet. During that time, I had no idea why I thought that launching four products all at the same time would be a great idea. For me, it just seemed reasonable. So, I started out with four products when it would’ve been better to just launch with one. Lesson learned: learning to cut right from the start is an important consideration for your business.

Decide on What to Cut Online

Social media marketing has been the craze these days. With the advent of free marketing tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and blog sites, reaching out to more people has never been easier. Though these tools have their benefits, always assess if these tools actually helping you out. Is spending two hours a day writing blog posts or tweets getting you your expected responses compared to only writing once per week? In my case, I found out that posting weekly is generating the same results as posting daily; therefore, I used that two hours daily doing something else more productive for my business.

Decide on other things that you can Cut

Is your participation in a lot of volunteer committees eating up some time? Are these committees also helping you out? Another question is, “How many hours do you spend watching TV daily?” It is great to have these activities to unwind; but you must also ask yourself if the time spent on these can be better spent on your personal fitness and health or your company’s growth. Look for other things, especially the ones that are non-productive, that are taking up your time and try cutting down on them.

Another change that I had was that I gave up my office and went back to working in coffee shops until I get things back to their usual way. I was looking for other ways on how to still continue supporting my business in the short-term, with very minimal impact on the long-run. Giving up the office was a big decision.
People usually relate cutting-to-grow as a way of cutting down on valuable resources. As a personal belief, this is not right. You can find other things that you can cut down on. Cutting down on unnecessary things will ultimately help you in expanding, instead of downsizing, your business.