5 Steps to Closing the Sale
Selling product sounds easy until you own a small business. Suddenly you are out on your own, without any kind of policy, procedure, or guidance to show you the way. Luckily, you can go from zero to closing the sale in just five easy steps.
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Business Planning for New Business Owners
Business planning can be one of the most difficult tasks for a small business owner. You may have a vision of success and a good foundation for your business, but the steps that occur between are a little foggy. Having a business plan will give you a roadmap to navigate this scary path and help you to make good focused decisions for your business over the long term. Here are a few ways to begin the planning stages of this very important document.
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From Drawing Board to Market in Less than a Year
Many small business owners get the idea for that perfect product, but it seems to take forever to move through the stages of development, manufacturing, marketing, and finally sales. Not only does it take a long time; it takes a lot of capital as well. However, there are notable exceptions: business owners who can rush the process without even a hitch and end up with their finished product in less time than the rest of us would need to print out a mailing label. Magnus Hammick, inventor of WOWee speakers, is just one of these people.
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Learning from Failure: An Essential Small Business Skill
Many new small business owners wonder: what is the most important skill for them to have. Indeed, there are many different abilities that give you an advantage in the cutthroat world of business, but there is one that stands out as a particularly important one: the ability to deal with and learn from failure.
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Working from Home a Trend in 2010
In the midst of a recession, one would expect the small business trends for this year to be related to higher levels of debt or desperate measures to bring in business. We certainly have seen a lot of both this year, but there is another small business trend that deserves attention this year: the work from home entrepreneur.
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Do you have a selling script?
Every entrepreneur should learn how to maximize every conversation or interaction with customers and prospects. It is quite easy to forget this objective particularly if we enjoy chatting with them. Don’t forget that the purpose of these relationship building efforts is to promote your business or your brand.
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Turning Customer Complaints to Conversations
Complaint is one of the most dreaded words in the business world.
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Do You Have the Entrepreneurial Spirit?
What separates great entrepreneurs from the rest is their power to conquer fear, take risks, and act on their plans. A lot of people dream of becoming big someday but don’t do anything about it. Others are victim of this dream-killer called procrastination. A dream is just a dream. Stop analyzing and start working. As the old adage goes, practice makes perfect.
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Starting An Online Or Any Other Business
Some years ago when the dot com boom was in full flow, everyone thought that the internet was a sure fire way to become a millionaire overnight. Then came the big crash which left most of the start ups with burnt fingers, or worse. There are many reasons why this happened, but the biggest one was that people were so involved with the potential of the internet and the incredible business opportunities it offered that they forgot the most basic issue.
Running an Online Business – A Checklist
Before you take the plunge into online business, you need to be aware of the complexities of it. It may appear to be as simple as setting you a website and offering goods for sale, but it is not. It is a business and you need to run it like one. Everyone thinks of marketing and sales, but people often overlook the procedural basics of running an online business.