Business - How To Be a Successful Businessman

By Anna Poelo

To be successful in your business ventures, what is really important is your attitude to your work and everything you do. This is what makes you a successful entrepreneur in the end. How exactly is this? Let's break it down.

Passion For Your Business: You should be passionate about what you do and the business you want. There are others who don't think that it's important to believe in the products or services that they offer. This is actually very crucial, because believing in your business, and in yourself, can be obvious to your customers. What the customers see can affect how your business goes.

Go For the Goal: Like every plan and business, it is important that you have set yourself short-term and long-term goals. This will ensure that there is something that you are working for rather than just get lost on the path. Your goal is also important for you to formulate ways and strategies to use to further improve and expand your business. The short-term goals should lead to your long-term and ultimate objective.

Make Up Your Plan: With the goal in mind, you'll then have to make up strategies to reach your desired results. Marketing and business plans should cover all aspects in your business --- marketing tactics, budget and financial objective, logistics, your target market, etc. Research and adjustments will be needed to know how to effectively execute your plans. Do not be hesitant to employ whatever resources you can get hold of to achieve your goal.

Follow Up: When you are in the execution of your plans, make sure that you've established your priorities straight and clearly. Follow up on daily and weekly reports and keep track of everything. This task will naturally require effort and commitment from you. It may seem tiring at times but learn how to keep a cool head and accomplish what needs to be accomplished. It can help if you keep a time diary or work schedule for your daily activities.

Balancing Your Professional Life With Your Personal Life: As your work will be taking up a lot of your time, you should learn how to balance it with your personal activities. It's nice and refreshing to take a break at times, and you'll need your mind to be fresh and alert when you encounter problems with your business. Don't forget to mind your health. A healthy body contributes to a healthy mind. Take exercises if you need to and power up.

Continuous Research and Study: As business patterns and the economy evolve, it is wise to always keep up with the news and evolve with it. There may be opportunities hidden in the oncoming business trends. Continuously studying and improving your business is beneficial and may even be crucial for it to grow and expand.

In every step of the business process, you need to have commitment and passion to keep on the business. This is the right attitude for businessmen. Without the right attitude, your business may become sour and would result in a loss.

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By Peter Venero

As a business owner, the responsibility for the success of your organisation falls on your shoulders. With the markets in the delicate state it's in, wouldn't it be nice if you were one of the businesses that was not affected? Here are 8 Business New Year Resolutions that will help you succeed at enjoying that rainbow at the end of the storm.

1. I will Promote and market my business. This is important if you want to seperate yourself from the competition. Focus on value added benefits and the bargain your particular products and/or services offer.

2. I will focus more on customer service. People are looking for the personal touch from local businesses. Don't disappoint them. Make an effort to know your customers and their needs.
3. I will communicate more with my customers. It is your customers that should come first. Treat them well and stay in contact with them - and they will return. There are many ways to do this. It can be as simple as a printed newsletter sent out once a quarter, an e-mail message reminding them about your new and improved services, personal telephone calls to your best customers, or improving your web site.

4. I will upgrade my technology. You've been putting it off too long. It's time to start using the Internet and other new technologies to your advantage to improve your business. We'll be go over some handy tips in fourth-coming installments.

5. I will work more efficiently. Can you identify three things you can do to be more efficient and effective in your current job? Are you spending too much time on e-mail, for example? Too much time returning phone calls? Does it interrupt your work too frequently? Sometimes, those job inefficiencies are not very obvious. However, if you can specifically identify them, then those inefficiencies can be eliminated and you can become more productive. This can increase work satisfaction as well.

6. I will increase my working network in and out of my immediate area and inside and outside my company. Could you use getting to know more people? Can you meet more people not just to say hello, but to find out what they do, how they do it and what skills they use to be productive? Let them know about your traits, abilities and interests, too. Ask yourself if you can you interact with them to mutually benefit both your jobs. Can you include them in your circle of contacts so that you can call on them when you need a favor, a contact, or a reference? The reverse should be true as well.

7. I will re-evaluate my business model and business plan. It might be time, in light of the economic situation,to look closely at your products and services to better focus your resources and target your promotions.

8. I won't get stressed out! Do whatever it takes to keep yourself healthy and sane in the New Year. Enroll in a calming yoga or metaphysical class. Remember, your customers count on you to be there for them. They are, in a real sense, like an extended family. So, exercise, eat wisely, and stay focused.

Have a happy, healthy and most prosperous 2009.

Peter Venero has been doing business online since 1999. Peter also runs his own consultancy Creatiq http://www.creatiq.com in Sydney, Australia where he works directly with small business owners on improving their own online business in areas such as selling online, strategy, technology and design and getting more clients.

By Bob Vamvas

These days our consulting and training practices are busier then ever! Why? Because our strategy is to become part of the solution not sell something that you don't need. Let me explain...if you have a delinquency rate of 25% do you have a people performance, training or business practice issue? From our perspective you have first a business practice issue and secondly a people performance measurement and expectation issue. Once solutions to these issues have been embedded in your business, THEN you might have a self storage training or HOW TO issue.

For instance, when creating solutions to correct delinquency we'll ask you to expound on your business practices such as your auto debit/credit solutions for your tenants. Further, we might assess the kind of information you capture during the leasing process, how often you keep this information updated and what kind of late fee you assess. These are all business practice issues.

From here, we would then look at how you're measuring the performance of your staff (an in depth look at this is forthcoming). Ask yourself: What are my expectations for my staff and how do I FORMERLY communicate these? Do I have a metric and measurement system in place that my staff understands? How often do I FORMERLY conduct a performance appraisal?

And, did you know there are certain personalities who will out-perform others? For instance, if you've decided to start a records management business, you must hire someone who's more sales driven, persistent yet professional because that person will be interfacing with law firms, doctors, CPAs and other professionals. So then what does their job description say?

There are countless performance management criteria you need to address...and all of this before we conduct...self storage training! From our experience the key to driving success in a manager-centric industry like ours is how well we train our people (assuming everything upstream is done correctly). What discrepancies do they have in their performance based on the expectations previously communicated to them? How often do you train them? What kind of self storage training do you conduct? What are the various training delivery processes can you incorporate without negatively affecting your business.

So, if you're thinking about retaining someone to conduct self storage training, step back and first ask is it practices, performance or people? Don't know? Call.

Bob Vamvas and Bob Copper
Self Storage Training Online
866-269-1311

By Jon L Iveson

Budgets are really tightening. Layoffs have come in droves. In fact, as I write this article, it was announced that more than 50,000 layoffs occurred yesterday. Tension is high on all fronts. And uncertainty is clearly dominating the minds of most people.

Staying positive doesn't mean you ignore current reality. It means operate with optimism and hope despite the negatives of the current bleak reality. You face the brutal facts of the situation but you never lose faith. It is more than the passive hope that comes with going to bed and praying that the nightmare will be over when you wake up.

Now is a time to focus on the right basic fundamentals and look for opportunities to test new inspired and leveraged action to create your new reality. The world economy is going through a dramatic change right now and will never be the same again. So, passive hope only puts you further behind when things do get better. You must use these times to sharpen your strategies, skills, and tools!

If you study history, you'll find that a lot of people and organizations made a name for themselves and grew their businesses during tough times. In fact, Allstate Insurance now has a commercial speaking about its roots from The Great Depression Era. The key for these successful people and organizations was their focus on thriving while others merely tried to survive.

You can do the same things right now to thrive if you stay positive (and have effective strategies for staying positive), fight back fear (and have effective strategies for fighting back fear), and take initiative in the right areas.

Here are five ways to thrive during these tough times:

1. Don't actively participate in the Recession
Businesses and people that thrived during past recessions focused on "forward movement" regardless of the market conditions. They remained optimistic, worked smart and hard and took action in a forward direction. They did what was necessary to deal with their reality decisively and quickly so that they could spend their best energy on forward movement. They left for others to allow fear to paralyze them.

2. Increase Marketing
During recessions, there is far less competitive clutter in the marketplace. People and organizations need to cut expenses and thus pull back on marketing activities and initiatives. There is a great opportunity to build your brand, expand your presence and gain market share during a recession. You might have to re-evaluate your market strategies and how you direct your funds but you can get creative and focused in building awareness, relationships and trust in the marketplace. People will buy from those who they trust. In fact, trust is a very big part of the buying process during tough times.

3. Get Innovative
Great ideas, innovations, and new business ventures are born during tough times. In fact, the boundaries and constraints of tough times help to get thriving people and organizations really focused on transformation. During booming times, it is much easier to dismiss transformational change and innovations. Allstate, GE, Disney, Microsoft and many other successful companies were all born during recessions.

4. Focus on Talent and Strengths
There is no better time to attract, get, and keep the best talent in the marketplace. Over 1 million people were displaced from jobs in 2008. Not all of these people are low performers. There are many talented, high performing people looking for opportunities. Make finding talented people a daily goal. It is also a good time to re-align people and jobs to better fit their strengths and those of the company. If you do these two things, you'll position yourself well for when the market rebounds.

5. Be Audacious and take Inspired Action
The Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge were both built during the Great Depression. And as I said earlier, Allstate, GE, Disney, Microsoft were all born during recessions. They were a result of people setting audacious aspirations during tough times. Not all aspirations will be achieved fully but people and organizations with audacious aspirations, visions, and goals who take inspired action will be many more times likely to have a brighter future than those that don't set their sights high. Add an optimistic attitude and hard work to the equation and you just might be surprise how this current recession became such a great blessing!

About the Author:
Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D., The Champion's Coach, is a Gazelles Certified Coach who helps individuals and companies produce champion results and build champion relationships. Assess how ready you are
(http://www.learningtobeachampion.com/assessments/thechampions.htm) or your company is (http://www.learningtobeachampion.com/assessments/winningcompanies.htm) to "Thrive during Tough Times."

By Kaye Dennan

When you first meet a person usually their face is the first thing you see, and so too it is with a business name. Especially in our technological world today, and with a work at home business, your business name more often than not will be the first introduction of your business to a new client.

A habit most of us have is to form pre-conceived ideas about a person, a business, a sport and other things. This will also happen with your business.

HOW DO YOU DECIDE ON A NAME
-Your business name should have a uniqueness all of its own

- If you have a very good reputation you could use your own name in the business name, but keep in mind that if you want to sell the business at a later stage this could be a draw back with buyers saying that YOU are the name of the business and therefore not want to pay as much for the business.

- It should epitomise your business activity

- Be careful of having business names with geographical names in them because at a later stage as your business grows, this could limit your business marketing area

- With so much business being done on the internet today it pays not to play around too much with the spelling of your business name. Unless you are going to do something like: daze for days. I wouldn't suggest: 4mating for formatting

- Keep the name reasonably simple and short. You can always have a sub-title to describe your business. For example:

BELLA ENVIRO LANDSCAPERS
Creating Eco Friendly Gardens.
Logo: BEL

- Think of a catchy name if you can but if in doubt, leave it out

- Before registering your business name check domain names to see that the one you want or one that you can set up to relate to your business, is free. It is ideal if your domain and busines name match, but that is not always possible. Often though, all you need to do is make a very small change to get a domain name accepted

- Check the name register to see that the name is available for use. This job is a priority. VERY IMPORTANT before you start printing stationery and packaging. If it is free, register it.
Choosing the right business name will make a massive difference to the presence of your business and the ability of clients to remember it.

When you have decided on your business name pay for a graphic designer to design it into a logo. Logos are great for business because once you get known you can use just the logo on packaging, badges, cars and the like. Owning a work at home business needs more work on the marketing side of the business as you do not have a 'face' (shop front), that is why your logo can be so valuable as it can become the 'face' of your homebased business.

Color is very important when it comes to attracting the attention of your buying customer. How many times have you walked through a shopping centre, down the street, or through a market and been attracted by a color. Sure, you may not have gone over to have a look at the product because you did not want that particular item, but it did attract your attention. Remember this when packaging, setting up displays and anything to do with promoting your product.

Write down every conceivable name you can think of, with every derivative, and ask friends for their opinion. Get them to do a vote on the ones you think are the most appropriate and tell you why they think that name is the best. Question every name you choose and make sure that it tells your customers exactly what you do.

Copyright (c) 2009 Kaye Dennan
Kaye Dennan has worked at home for many years and now as an internet marketer and website owner Kaye brings ideas for working at home on her website with A Guide To Working At Home. View her blog at http://blog.ebooksnowonline.com/?cat=67

By Melanie Jordan

Question:
I've always wondered why infopreneurs will give away some of their information products and services for free and not charge for everything they create?

Answer:
An infopreneur can create all kinds of content, and, yes, some are developed as freebies that are used to induce people to take an action, rather than having a cost associated with them. But there's definitely a method to this perceived madness.

Here are three great ways to use an information product as a freebie:

1. To get someone to raise their hand and say OK, I like your stuff, you can have my e-mail address in exchange for this "bribe". People generally don't join your opt-in list without some incentive. You need to address the fundamental question your prospect will have of "what's in it for me?"

2. To get someone to eventually buy from you (hopefully sooner rather than later), because they got a peek into the knowledge you have through your free offerings, believe you are the "real deal" and that your paid products will give them the full knowledge they seek.

3. To get someone to buy a more comprehensive product or service from you than they might have otherwise because the free content you've already given them (a.k.a. "bonus") is something they decide they really want to have.

Of course, you will create plenty of content that is available for purchase, and eventually more than make up for the fact that you gave away a sample of your work. So don't sweat the giveaways, they're an essential part of your internet marketing.

And now I'd like to invite you to check out my What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know Podcast that teaches you how to make the maximum possible money from what you know, working legitimately from home as an infopreneur. You can get free, immediate access to all the episodes by going to http://Podcast.SunLoverPublishing.com.

Copyright 2009 SunLoverPublishing LLC

By Charlie Bennot

By giving a plastic loyalty card to their best customers, UK business owners can increase both sales and customer allegiance. In this article, we'll present some of the benefits associated with implementing a customer loyalty program in practically any type of business.

Make Easy to Identify Your Best Customers
By virtue of a magnetic stripe or an embedded microprocessor chip on plastic loyalty cards, merchants have the unprecedented opportunity to learn exactly what their customers are purchasing. Here are some specific tactics merchants can employ when using customer loyalty cards to increase both traffic and sales.

Consider a Points Program for Your Loyal Customers
A popular customer loyalty reward is a points program. In this scenario, customers earn points on current purchases that can be applied toward future purchases. For example, a supermarket chain might allow customers to accumulate points all during the year. Then at holiday time, customers can use their points to buy a turkey or ham at a substantially discounted price.

Another great way to use a points program is to employ it to stimulate sales during slow periods. For example, the same grocery chain might offer customers double points during the naturally slow sales period that follows a holiday. Another popular option to offer to loyal customers is the opportunity to redeem their points for a plastic gift card that they can give to a friend or relative.
Other Ways to Use a Loyalty Card

One more way to use a customer loyalty card program effectively is to collect information on customers' purchasing history and behavior. If a merchant has data about when customers shop, what they buy and how much they typically spend, he can tailor his loyalty program to identify and reward those customers who spend the most time and money in his establishment. Loyalty card programs are great ways to stimulate sales by offering bonus points when customers' purchases exceed a certain amount. Finally, a business can single out customers who hold loyalty cards for "members only" sales and promotions. An example would be a pet shop that offers a free bag of pet food to customers who have purchased a certain number of bags in the past.

With a little creative thinking and ingenuity, UK business owners who use a plastic loyalty card program to reward their best customers can expect to reap the benefits of increased sales and good will.

Charlie Bennot is premier card printing expert working with conceptcard.co.uk for the last 12 years. ConceptCard is one of the UK's premier providers of cost effective plastic cards for membership, loyalty, hotel key access photo ID and business cards. Over 21 years experience enables ConceptCard to specialise in High Quality, Short Run Card Solutions where Cost, Quality and Speed are your primary requirements. ConceptCard is specialized in providing plastic card - custom plastic card - plastic business cards - plastic card printer - plastic card printing - plastic credit card - plastic discount cards - plastic id card - plastic loyalty card - plastic membership cards - plastic security card.