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There comes a time in every business owner’s life where they have to graduate. They have to make a fundamental change to how they spend their day-to-day. It can be truly difficult and it’s where a lot of go-getting, energetic, and enterprising individuals will have trouble. But if your business is to continue succeeding, it is necessary. It’s the step of moving from working in the business less and working on the business more. Taking yourself out of the front line to sit back and plan the whole offensive. A lot of people know they need to do that but aren’t exactly sure what it means. Here are a few places your priority needs to shift to.

The path ahead

The time to start working on the business, not in it, is around about the time you start really getting into the rhythm of the business. You’re making good profits and you’ve got a respectable chunk of the marketplace. But good-as-usual soon becomes not-good-enough in business. If your business is at risk of stagnating, your first concern should be finding the path ahead and exactly how you’re going to grow your business. It might mean looking at a new market, diversifying your products, opening a second location, even acquiring another business to take under the umbrella. Even if you’re not quite at the stage to action that growth yet, you need to choose your path.

Plan, plan, and plan again

Most owners probably wouldn’t say that creating a business plan is their favorite part of their job. But when you complete the initial business, it’s crucial to get back into it again. If you have one of the goals mentioned in the past point in mind, then you need to know what steps you need to take to scale the business to make it ready for them. Even if you don’t, it’s important that the business has goals and it has steps it can take to fulfill them. Otherwise, you, the team, and the outfit as a whole will lose focus.

Share the load

But, how do you get to the point where you can scale back your focus and slot into a more bird’s’ eye view of the business? You already have plenty of responsibilities. Obviously, you have to start giving them up. You need an exit strategy, as far as running every detail of the business goes. Learning to delegate is crucial. But you should also be looking for the potential leaders in the business, or consider hiring them from outside. You need to develop a core team of managers if you don’t have them already. While you’re working outside the business, team meetings with this core can help you keep your finger on the pulse of the team.

Lighten the load, too

Naturally, you can’t just shift more of your responsibilities downwind and just hope that the team there is prepared to deal with all of it. When you’re dealing with the day-to-day processes of the business, it’s sometimes hard to imagine there’s a better way of doing it wall. When you catch your breath and step away from it, the solutions might be right there in front of your eyes. For one, automation is becoming a more and more reliable tool in business. Functions like accounting, HR, even marketing can be automated. Not only does it mean the team can get more productive, it also reduces the burden of some of the team’s more repetitive task. What can’t be automated can probably still be done better. Looking for new tools for process and new methods allows you to systemize them.

Pulling the strings

Adding and subtracting to the workload of the team isn’t all it means to be a leader, either. You also need to learn how to manage your team well. This all boils down to, essentially, creating a healthy work environment and a company culture. Caring their safety and wellbeing in the workplace, promoting positive working relationships, creating a legally tight HR policy. These are all elements that go into making sure you have a team that is happy, productive, and a lot easier to retain. Keep your door open, communicate often beyond the meetings with your core management team, and recognize employee success. Dole out the accountancy, but keep the responsibility to yourself.

Build better people

You want to manage your team well so that they’re more productive and less likely to quit. But creating a positive workplace culture isn’t the only way to do that. If you want employees to care about the business’s future, you have to care about theirs. Invest in them and make sure that they have a place in the business for some time to come. Finding opportunities for internal promotion is the easiest way to guarantee that more people stick around and work towards bettering themselves and providing better results. But when you can’t do that, focus on the mobility you can help them achieve otherwise. Create a practice of employee development plans, finding the opportunities for training and delegation. Work on their experience internally and externally.

Mind on my money and my money on my mind

The past few points have focused largely on the employees and for good reason. They are the most valuable resource the business has. But they’re not the only one. Money is the blood, pumping through the whole body of the company. Without someone to really give it the attention it deserves, you have no idea how healthy it really is. Creating cash flow projections, tracking incoming and outgoing, creating cost-cutting plans. These are all ways to better know what your finances are doing and how they can better do. At some point, you might want to consider assigning an accountant to the job as it can be easy to get lost in it to the extent that you don’t have time for your other duties. But getting some grasp of your finances is important.

Be the face of the business

Working on the business isn’t all about creating a machine that works well internally, either. There’s also the exterior to be concerned about. As the business owner, you should be the face of the business. There are no others qualified to do the kind of networking that you can do. The reason business owners network is to find new partnership opportunities, exciting new talent, and places to spread the brand. Trade shows, networking groups, talks, press relation chances. You are the one who needs to be in the spotlight on behalf of the team.

Think outside the game

Reaching outside the business shouldn’t be done to find new people and opportunities to make the best use of. It should also be done to get connected with your target market. It’s too easy to start making assumptions once you’ve been running successfully for a while. But once you start assuming you know who your customer is and what they want, that’s when you risk creating a rear barrier between you and them. Take the opportunity to think like a customer. Re-examine your branding, your price points, your strategy by blind-testing the business with people in the right demographic. Keep up with the market research and never stop evolving to make the business as relevant as it can be.

Find the evidence that matters

Internally and externally, making decisions that unlock further progress is what matters. But how do you know whether you’re actually making progress or not? You need to define the factors of success in the business. Individual managers, teams, and employees will all have their own metrics for success. But they don’t always give the most comprehensive picture of how the business is doing. You need to set key performance indicators for the business. This can include big picture numbers like your rate of customer retention, your rate of employee churn, and the cost it takes to convert a lead. Make use of your team to capture the data that feeds into these KPIs, and give them their own to help them work better. KPIs can track individual productivity, for instance, helping everyone stay honest and helping you solve problems like distraction or poor work methods.

Relax

When they’re on the way up from the bottom, the driven business owner tends to climb and climb without taking a breath. Fighting to make a success of the business can be tiring, so taking a back seat can give you the opportunity to find the work-life balance that’s been missing. There are reasons to justify not doing so, like wanting to keep your momentum or even believing that a little stress helps you work better. None of those justifications are worth the very real risk that going “all-in” can quickly strip away the love and passion that got you into the business. You want to be just as enthusiastic about your own business five years down the line as you are at the start. Don’t let ambition spoil that for you.

While it’s important that how you spend your time changes, it’s just as vital that you never forget what it’s like to work in the trenches of the everyday. Forget what it’s like to be in the shoes of your employers and you risk alienating yourself from your own business.

In business, you can often struggle to find your feet at times. Even if you’re doing well with one area of business, you may find that another is starting to wobble. Whether you’ve thrown yourself in at the deep end or you’re trying to master a new skill, you may wonder if you’ve taken on too much. In some cases, you may have done, but in others, that’s just how the world of business works.

Sometimes, to be successful, you have to just figure things out as you go along. You can play it safe or wait for opportunities to come your way, but where’s the fun in that? If you want to be a big business, but you’re not quite there yet, faking it can help. By thinking bigger, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and trying to do as the big guns do, you’ll be edging yourself closer to the mark. And to help you get there, you’re going to want to…

Have Goals

To get yourself set up ready to fake it until you make it, you need goals. Without goals, it’s never going to happen – you’ll just end up taking it for the rest of your life. So, you need to be able to think of the goals you have for your business and start putting them to work. When you have goals, you have vision. And it’s often that vision that can drive you to get to where you’ve always wanted to be.

Think Ahead

So, now that you’ve got your goals in place and you know exactly what you’re working for, you need to set the wheels in motion. But, when it comes to everything you do, especially your operations, you’re going to want to make sure that you think ahead. You need to be able to have the right tools in place to handle your growth, and not see your business struggle when you do start to thrive.

Knowledge Is Power

And just like you want to prepare your business for growth, you’re going to want to do the same with yourself. In life, you should always aim to keep learning. When you learn, you’re acquiring new knowledge, and we all know that knowledge is power. If you want to better yourself and your business, you need to soak everything up and push yourself.

Brand Yourself Bigger

You may also want to take a look at your branding, or if you’re yet to establish yourself a strong brand, that’s the first place you need to start. Developing your brand is often one of the first steps to taking yourself seriously as a business. When you focus on your brand, you’re not only working on your image, but you’re also committing to your business as a viable future investment too.

Dress For Success

Next up, think about your appearance. Faking it only works if you have the confidence to carry it off. And although you may think that your brain, integrity or business idea is more important than your image, you may be wrong. When you dress for success, you instantly feel more confident. Power dressing is a thing for a very good reason, so work with it.

Look Bigger Than You Are

But you may also want to make sure that the way you work fakes it as much as you do. So, you dream of having a multinational or even a national business? So, you want to make sales that can lead that to happen. Whether you find yourself a call forwarding service for national or international numbers or hire contractors around the country to work on your behalf, it can happen. When your company looks bigger than it is, you can often win business that will finally take you there.

Bring In The Big Guns

And while we’re on the topic of hiring contractors, let’s take a look at the idea of outsourcing a little more closely. When you are a small business, you may not have the knowledge or the resources to get the things done that you want to be able to get done. So, instead of suffering and worrying that you’ll never grow, hire the right people for the job. Then, those tasks can get done, and you can focus on growth.

Have Contacts

And finally, you’re going to want to network like crazy. Trying to fake it can be exhausting, so sometimes you need a helping hand – or a break. Either way, networking can aid both. When you know the right people and acquire killer contacts, you should be able to grow in the right direction, get advice, and even know exactly where to head when you’re in need of investment.

If you’ve never run a business before, you should consider your role in the company. What does it mean to be the owner of a business? There are various roles that you will need to fill if your company is going to be a success. Although, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the success or failure of your company rests solely on your shoulders. It does, however, show how important it is to understand your position in the business and the steps you must take to keep it running effectively. So, let’s look at some of the key roles of the common business owner.

Following The Leader

Yes, it’s worth pointing out that you are the leader of your company. What does this mean? Well, all your employees will look to you to steer the ship and choose the best direction to take your business in. You should think about how you can present yourself as a leader that they can trust and follow. Perhaps the best place to start would be to think about what makes a great leader of a business. According to http://www.broowaha.com, you should consider feedback. Feedback is a crucial part of your role leading a company. If you want your employees to improve or do something differently, you need to tell them why and show them how. You should stay in regular contact with your employees and make sure that they are always kept up to date with how you would like your business to proceed and move forward. What is their next goal and how can they achieve it? These are some of the things that you should be discussing with your employees on a regular basis.

By doing this, you can show them that you are a great leader who they will want to follow.

Charmed, I’m Sure

As the owner of a business and the leader of a company, you need to make sure that you have a certain degree of charm about you. It’s important that you can show clients and potential business investors that they should sign up for the services or products that your company offers. Don’t forget, every business needs a figure, a face who clients can connect with and think of when they hear word about your brand. This has helped a number of key companies on the market today. Arguably, the most famous would be Apple. We all remember Steve Jobs, the stories of him on stage and how he completely captured the attention of the room. While this is an extreme example, every successful company has a unique figure at the head table. You may not recognize them, but we guarantee the clients and investors of that business certainly will.

Being charming is a trait that some people develop naturally, but you can also learn it. There are plenty of management courses that teach new business owners the art of securing a deal. You can learn more about securing a deal on http://fortune.com. This is essentially the same thing because without a little charm and not an undue amount of moxie, you’re not going to get them to sign on the dotted line.

Trust In Me?

Employees, clients, and customers must be able to trust you as the individual heading your company. If they can’t, if you come up short then you will lose their faith and their respect. At this point, you could experience a number of issues. Firstly, your employees won’t be working to their full potential in your business. Instead, they will give the bare minimum just to get through the working today. Employees expect very little from their employers. As long as you are considerate, provide them with a comfortable and safe place to work and treat them with respect, they will be on your side.

What about clients and customers? This is all marketing and the products or services that you sell. It’s crucial that you maintain quality and ensure that people are satisfied with what you provide to them. If you get too many complaints about quality, you will need to adjust your business model. You would be surprised how quickly negative reviews online could bring your business crashing down.

These are just some of the roles that you take on when you become a business owner. As we said, it’s not up to you to guarantee the success of your business. However, your actions could certainly impact the chances you have of finding success. That’s why it is worth taking your role seriously, being a great leader, a trusted individual and a charming character guaranteed to win over new clients.

There is literally nothing worse than having provided an excellent service and product to a customer, and then having them drag their heels overpayment. It’s a nightmare! It puts all of your accounts off and can make you seem like you are unreliable to your service providers, as you don’t have the money to pay your bills. It can even make your employees hostile if there pay gets delayed. So how can you deal with customers that are dragging their heels on payments? Read on to find out.

Update your invoicing system

One thing you can do that can help you to deal with heel dragging customers is to update your invoicing system. That means say bye bye to paper invoices and go for a digitized system instead. The evolution of which is described at http://resources.taulia.com/.

But that won’t make any difference you say, as both ways, they have the invoice and are not paying, right? Well, some customers are going to be difficult but for most having this instant system can definitely increase the likelihood of easy and prompt payment. In fact, it’s one of the points that such services as sold on.

Get someone on collections

Next, if you have some customers that are repeat offenders at not paying their bill on time, it can help to have someone in the accounts department assigned to collections. That means it’s part of their role to call up and chase payments that are still outstanding.

This is a role that needs specific skills as described at https://www.indeed.com/. So make sure you look for confident folks, with a good phone manner, that can create a good relationships with those they need to speak to. Remember you always get better results with the carrot rather than the stick, so hold off on cracking out the big guns until late a possible.

Have plan a B

Something else that can help when dealing with a slow-paying customer is to have a plan B in the works. Your plan B should include alternative sources of finance for the things in your business that are essential to its function. Such as business rates, wages, and materials.

To do this is can be useful to agree on an emergency overdraft with your bank, or to look into getting a cash advance from a site like https://www.swiftfinancial.com/ to pay for the essentials. This is particularly useful, as it can allow things continue even if you are having an issue with customer payment. Something that can have a knock-on effect of making the dealing with said company a lot less stressful so probably more effective.

Make paying easy

Lastly, a good way to preempt problem with customer payments is to make it as easy as possible for them to pay. If it’s taking 10 minutes to complete a payment over the phone, or they have to print and send a check, she can just add extra time to a situation that is already behind.

That is why it’s worth considering offering payment through an online service like Paypal. As the easier you can make things the more likely it is that they will get done.

Feedback and data reports are the only way to track your business’s results and ensure that you’re running a company that will progress and move forward. Therefore, it’s essential that you have a solid plan in place which shows the methods you’re going to use to gain your information, and how you’re going to utilize the knowledge. The following are the key areas in your business, that will need to produce a steady flow of data; so take some time and check out if any improvements can be made to your tracking techniques.

Finance

Your financial analytics may well be stored in a comprehensive list on a spreadsheet somewhere; however, it’s time to start thinking about how to improve the tech that records your company’s accounting and spending data, and ensure that it’s as easy and quick to access as possible. If you feel that your small business need a helping hand when it comes to budget planning and forecasting, then analyst programs like PlanGuru might be a smart option for you to look into. Ensuring that you can understand and access a financial dashboard is another way to keep on top of spending and profit, so it’s worth taking the time to find the tech that’s right for you.

SEO

Tracking your SEO and consumer traffic is vital to an online business, and it goes well beyond checking how many followers and likes that you have gained in the last month on each social media platform. Invest in the right tech that will help you to track and analyze the relevant information, and consider if a SERP tracker system is right for your company. You’ll need to continually improve and update your methods when it comes to your SEO, and decent tracking software will help you to decide on your next move, so that you can stay ahead of the business game.

Inventory

If you’re in the business of selling products, you’ll need to ensure that you can find out exactly what’s in your inventory, along with when items are leaving your company’s storage and when new products arrive. Inventory knowledge and management are crucial so that customers know if an item is in stock, or when it will be returning so that they can purchase it. If a mistake has been made at the front end, you’ll be able to send out an apology and offer a solution to your consumer and alleviate any angry encounters; so researching into the best management system for your brand is worth the effort. You can check out Five Ways Inventory Tracking Technology Is Evolving to see what will be available to you.

Feedback

You’ll never know where you’re going wrong unless you listen to your consumers and their feedback on your products and services. Ensure that you give every customer to leave feedback, whether through an email or a website, so that you can continue to improve and your business will be a success. Collecting all that data will mean nothing if you’re not listening to your customers and making the right changes, so ensure that you take their comments on board.

From the get-go, businesses are encouraged to set goals. The reason for this is because by setting goals, you have something to aim for, something to work towards. A big part of long-term goal setting is using smaller targets over time to ensure that you and your team are slowly but surely working towards achieving the larger goals. The issue is that often these long-term goals can get lost as time goes by, with your team failing to meet enough of their short-term targets to make your long-term goals a success.

To give you the very best advice about ensuring that your goals are met, below are the strategies that many of the most successful entrepreneurs swear by for smashing their targets and achieving their long-term goals.

Monitor projects

If you want to understand how your team works then monitor them. Utilize software that allows you to map your team’s projects and keep track of their progress. By monitoring your team’s progress, you can not only ensure that targets are being met, but also that each team member is working as productively as possible. Plus, another benefit of using this type of software is that it will allow you to find out the types of targets that are achievable for your team, which is vital in the long-term.

Hire an organizational leadership specialist

An organizational specialist can make achieving your goals easier, as they are trained to create and develop targets that will help to make achieving your long-term goals more likely. Ideally, you want to select a specialist with a PhD in organizational leadership, who has all the skills, knowledge, and experience to help your business to smash those target and achieve your long-term goals. Don’t fancy hiring anyone? Perhaps you could ask one of your current team members to undergo organizational leadership training instead? How organizational leadership specialists work is through effective communication and problem solving, looking at anything that stands in the way of targets being met, and showing you how to prevent these kinds of issues from occurring again.

Encourage your team to set their own goals

To encourage your team to work harder and be more productive so that your long-term goals are more likely to be met, encourage them to set their own goals. Organize an exercise where your team creates their own long-term goals to work towards. When they realize that working to meet your goals will allow them to meet their goals, your team will be more likely to work harder to ensure that short-term targets are met, so that long-term goals can be achieved more easily.

Reward hard work

There’s nothing like an incentive to encourage your employees to push themselves a little harder to work more productively. To encourage your team to work harder, offer them incentives. This could simply be sending them an email expressing your gratitude for their hard work on a project, or it could be giving them half a day extra vacation time. By offering your team members incentives and rewarding them for their hard work, you will encourage them to put more effort into meeting targets.

Smashing short-term targets and achieving long-term goals in business isn’t always easy, but it is doable, it’s just a case of understanding how to ensure that your team are working as productively as possible.

Running a small business means that you probably have a list of worries as long as your arm. And while these vary from sector to sector and business to business, there are a few that are common to all of them. These are the ones that we will be taking a closer look at in this article. As well as highlighting what they are in the first place, we will also look at the ways that you can address them so they are not keeping you up at night – at least not for so long!

Cash Flow Problems

Your business wouldn’t be able to keep functioning without money continually streaming in, so that is what we will focus on to begin with. Unexpected outgoings and mounting bills are two of the biggest issues, but clients stalling payments is another one which you may need to look at the right kind of lawyer you need for debt collection. Money management tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated online, so take a look at these first. And you should also have a spare cash reserve so you can deal with the costs that life throws at you.

Fatigue

There is no doubt that running a business is hard work, but if you find yourself becoming too run down and fatigued, you will never be able to run your business at its highest level. For highly motivated people, delegation can be a difficult thing to do, but it is absolutely essential that you concentrate your energy on the parts of business that you are best at. You could even outsource some processes to different companies. Try to get into a habit of dividing up each day and don’t forget to make time for your personal life!

Having Too Many Overheads

Going back to finances again, another common concern is that your costs are spiraling out of control which is certainly something that you want to avoid. You should make a habit of assessing each area of your business closely and working out ways that you can streamline them. It may be that you find a new program that helps to make a certain process easier or you may find that you can get a particular service cheaper from another provider. Always analyse investments that you make so you are sure that you are doing the right thing.

Losing Customers

Many business owners are too focused on always getting new customers through the door and don’t pay enough attention to keeping the customers they have already. So, always make sure that you take the time to show your current clients that they are valued. This may be through offering them exclusive discounts or access to a loyalty scheme. And remember that your customer service is absolutely everything, especially in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

These are just a few of the biggest concerns for small business owners as well as a few ways in which they can be addressed.   

Managing a small business can be a lot like being a teacher. You’re there an hour before your employees turn up and you know you’ll be sticking around long after they’re gone. You try to be friendly and approachable, you want them to know that you have their best interests at heart… And most of the time it’s great.

But there’s a niggling doubt at the back of your mind. An itch you can’t scratch. A sense that, despite your best efforts, you’re losing them.

Maybe you find that you’re having to spend more and more time checking up to make sure they’re on task. Maybe you have to break up one-too-many long conversations at the water cooler. Maybe you’ve asked them once too often not to have their phones out while they’re working.

Smaller enterprises tend to have a much more friendly and intimate relationship with their employees and under these circumstances, you could be forgiven for sparing the rod. You don’t want to risk damaging your relationship with them, but things don’t look good if you can’t get them back on task soon.

If you’re noticing a spike in off task behavior, employees taking longer than expected to carry out tasks or a little too much muttering among the ranks then many leaders will question their efficacy. That’s not a bad thing (it’s what makes you a good leader), but it’s important that you don’t beat yourself up about it. Rather, you should take the bull by the horns and confront the matter of employee engagement head-on before it has a detrimental affect on your business.

It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility

You shouldn’t take off-task behavior personally but you do need to take steps to measure, address and restore employee engagement so that you can be assured of peak productivity continue to steer the ship in the right direction. It can, however, be difficult to find the right approach.

Here are some tools to assist you in restoring high levels of engagement amongst your employees.

Quantify their engagement

There are many ways in which you can quantify your employees’ engagement and involve them in the process so that is seen as a developmental tool and not just a perceived means of you checking up on them. There is recommended employee engagement software that will allow you to do this. This is usually done by collecting survey responses from your employees. Unlike employee satisfaction surveys, these use the MAGIC model of employee engagement. They quantify:

• Meaning
• Autonomy
• Growth
• Impact
• Connection

By measuring these factors which drive meaningful engagement, you will be able to quantify just how engaged your employees are, ascertain how well founded your concerns are and act accordingly.

You can use your employees’ feedback to draft strategies and action plans for individuals and the workforce as a whole and while their responses should be confidential, the data should still be used as a tool to hold them to account.

Provide opportunities for development

It’s hard to remain engaged when you’re not motivated and a great way to ensure employee motivation is a clear and accessible career path with regular opportunities for development and constant coaching. Not only will this give your employees something to aspire to and a reason for them to bring their A game every day, it will also show that you value them and are prepared to invest your time, resources and capital in helping them further their career.

By offering provision for all members of staff to develop and grow under your wing you will help to improve engagement and solidify your working relationship with them.

Create the right environment

Having quantified employee engagement, you now need to create an environment that is conducive to improving it. You’re already on the right track by using the employee data to formulate a strategic narrative that the whole workforce has a hand in. Now you need to ensure that you are constantly driving engagement through environmental and cultural factors.

• Give them a voice- Ensure that they have meaningful input in strategic or operational decisions in the business. This will ensure that they feel they have a personal stake in the enterprise.
• Offer support and coaching- Opportunities for development are very important but even more so is constant support. Employees need to feel they can come to you if they are struggling to overcome a task or rise to the next challenge in their development.
• Create a team dynamic- This will create cohesion amongst the workforce and dispel any sense of “them vs. you”. Regular meetings, roundtables, circular emails and teambuilding exercises are tremendously helpful for this.

If you’re a budding entrepreneur, you’ll learn that first impressions count for everything very quickly. Sadly, in the competitive, harsh world of business, it’s rare to get second chances. If you’ve developed a product or you’re in the process of building your brand, it’s essential to work on getting that first introduction, pitch or meeting just right. Here are some tips you may find useful to ensure you make the best impression in business.

Selling yourself

If you’re the main spokesperson for your brand, you are potentially the most valuable and influential marketing tool, so it’s really important that you come across well. Remember that you are representing your brand at all times. This means that the eyes of investors, colleagues and clients will be on you from the moment you first meet. Creating positive impressions isn’t just about arriving on time, greeting people with a smile and looking the part. You also need to know your stuff. Branding is all about giving people information about your business and showcasing its personality and unique selling proposition. Make sure you can embody what the brand is all about, and you show off your passion for your business. If you’re pitching, prepare thoroughly. If you’re disorganized, you lose your thread over and over again, or you’re muddled when it comes to the numbers, this will put buyers and investors off.

Creating the right environment

Whether you run a shop, an SEO agency or a sales firm, it’s important to ensure that you create the right working environment. If you’ve got clients coming to your office or buyers coming to have a look around your stockroom or the shop floor, you want to impress them from the moment they pull up outside. If you’re on the lookout for new premises for your business, bear the impact of aesthetics in mind. Look for rental commercial office space that reflects your business, and gives off the vibe you want to create. Make sure the space is light and clean, and search for something that fits in with the way you work. If you’re hosting meetings, you don’t want to be huddled around a small desk with a captive audience within earshot. Look for offices that give you the flexibility to work collectively and host private engagements.

Promoting your brand

When you’ve worked hard on a brand name, logos, and straplines, you want to promote and protect your brand. Anything and everything that carries that logo or brand name should fit in with the message you’re trying to get across. If you’ve got a great logo, for example, the last thing you want is it to be adorning a dirty van that has seen better days. Every employee and every piece of equipment or item of merchandise should look the part.

In business, first impressions often count for everything, so it’s essential to ensure those first meetings and appointments go to plan. Start with your role in the marketing strategy, and focus on ensuring that you sell your business in the best possible light at every opportunity.

Any new business owner will recognize the struggle of making a name for themselves and their brand. At the end of the day, you can have brilliant products, perfect service, and innovative ideas. Your prices can be cheaper than any competitor and you could deliver products faster and more effectively than anyone else. But if nobody knows you exist, you aren’t going to make any profit! So how do you make your business shine in its field? How do you draw customers’ attention and bring them to your store first? How do you make potential buyers opt for you over a competitor or switch their loyalties to your brand? Here’s a quick guide to get you started and the profits rolling in.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You’ve probably seen the term SEO flung around. But do you really understand what it means? SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. It is the name given to any form of activity that improves your site’s ranking in search engine results. When people are looking for a product, they are most likely to use a search engine such as Google, Bing or Quora to find what they need. Most people will click the top link in the list presented to them and the majority will not search further than the second or third page before purchasing a product. So you want your products and site to come up tops! It’s relatively easy to get yourself to the top of the list if you bring in a little help from companies like Orlando SEO Services. These services help you to maximize your profits and incoming revenue by strategically optimizing your site to give search engines what they are looking for. The process is simple, relatively cheap and extremely effective in grabbing buyers’ attention.

Targeted Web Design

It’s easy for anyone to create a beautiful and neat looking website. But the thing you need to focus on is making it appropriate for your target audience. You need to make sure that your page is apt and attractive for the people you are hoping to sell to. So do your research! If you happen to be selling stairlifts or dentures, your targeted buyer is probably someone of older age who may not be so tech savvy. You should make sure that your website is minimal, neat and easy to operate. This will prove much more functional than a modern, complex design which could leave your customers confused and more likely to head to the high street for face to face advice from your brick and mortar competitors. If you are selling merchandise to youth with a distinct aesthetic, make sure that your site reflects this. It will draw them in if they feel that they identify with it. Stores such as Hot Topic or Blue Banana have excelled in this field, creating sites which adhere to the aesthetic of the rock-loving youth they cater to through dark color schemes and font which resembles those used by hardcore bands. Cater to your audience!

Offer Multiple Payment Methods

The more payment methods you accept, the more likely you are to make sales. Someone may have a full basket and be disappointed to find that you don’t take their preferred payment method. This is a huge reason behind abandoned baskets and incomplete sales. So try to cater to everyone. Accept all major credit cards and have options such as Paypal available. Paypal is great, as it stores an individual’s’ card details, meaning that they can still make purchases even if they don’t have their bank details or card details to hand. It is also a secure payment method, which makes customers feel more confident in the act of buying from you.

Offer Multiple Delivery Methods

With the ease of access that E-commerce offers, people have started buying things more last minute than ever before. So you need to have effective delivery options ready. First class or next day services will draw in buyers who have forgotten a birthday, or left purchases for special occasions, holidays and vacations until the last minute. You should also have economy services available for individuals who are looking to waste as little money as possible and international services for those who are interested in your goods but live further afield. You never know where your ideal market may be and overseas sales can proliferate, resulting in increased income from your store.

Online Advertising

Help consumers discover your goods by making the most of any online advertising. Set up social media feeds for your business, allowing people to recommend you to others or subscribe to information regarding sales, new products, and special events. Make your presence known!

Sorry but it is true: your company may be vulnerable. No one likes to admit it, but it is the first step on the road to acceptance. Once you get over the initial shock, it’s time to move onto the next phase, which is optimizing the office. Although the firm may not appear to be a prime target, it is at the top of every thief’s list. Why? It’s because you don’t take your physical or cyber security seriously. With that in mind, here is a handful of high-tech items that will assume responsibility so that you don’t have to worry.

Biometric Door Locks

In this case, the title is a fancy way of saying an eye scanner. Okay, so eye scanners are little bit James Bond, but that was a long time ago. Nowadays, they are the norm, and suppliers distribute them at a fraction of the cost. They are by no means cheap, but they are affordable. Plus, they are as close to foolproof as possible. Without the right clearance, which links to your biometrics, there is no way through the door. This stops people in their tracks and prevents opportunist burglars looking for an easy ride.

Remote Video

Remote video monitoring and a CCTV security system do have a crossover. But, in general, a remote video operation is the newer and more advanced version of CCTV. The reason for this is the range of in-play features. A closed circuit television system mainly watches and records footage in a certain area. Remote video, however, allows the user to stop footage in real time, as well as access snapshots and video clips. All in all, there is far more control and access. Both are useful, but RVM goes the extra mile which gives it the edge in the security stakes.

Cloud Control

Businesses are increasingly using the cloud to store data, and it is easy to see why. The problem with the cloud, however, is a lack of security mixed with the fact that it is a sharing platform. When put together, these two factors are potentially fatal. So, it makes sense to take precautions, the main one being data encryption. It is possible to prevent hacking in the first place, but hackers are good and can get through most defenses. What they struggle to unlock is a high-level encryption. With this tool at your disposal, the cloud is a useful tool and not a potential security flaw.

Exterior Lighting

This may appear low-tech, but it isn’t a low-grade security measure whatsoever. In fact, it is pretty high grade if you invest in the right lighting. For one thing, the brightness shouldn’t be taken for granted because there is a science for mixing light fixtures and powerful bulbs. Secondly, the most effective ones run on a timer, so there is no need to man them 24/7. Finally, they randomize the pattern, so it is nearly impossible for thieves to guess when to make a move.

Exterior lighting isn’t looking low-tech now, is it?

Now, this isn’t to scare you off the idea – but small businesses are nothing if they aren’t under threat. Small businesses aren’t like big businesses; they can’t fold a wing in and cut costs to survive. Small businesses face collapse constantly, and it’s hard work to keep them afloat. A small business might find that cutting some costs to make ends meet is the exact decision that sees it close down. It truly can be a lose-lose situation.

Nobody said that running a business was ever going to be easy though. It’s hard work, and the fact that the chances of failure are so high shouldn’t put anyone off of starting a business. There’s success to be made – certainly for anyone who can pay attention to detail and dot the i’s while crossing the t’s. A business will see collapse if it’s unable to pay attention to the smaller details, that might represent the nuts and bolts holding the business together.

A business needs to protect its interests to survive – that doesn’t just mean patenting and locking down ideas, but protecting its brand and its employees. If it’s a smaller business, though – you’ll need to lock down what is said and done when the business is represented publicly. A small business cannot afford to say silly, slanderous things in public nor should it pursue courses of action that can be considered libelous in nature. There are a lot of ethical considerations to be considered when a small business reaches out to the public, but above all, it should have some self-control, reign it in and ensure it doesn’t say or do anything that could be taken the wrong way at all. We need to watch out for any potential conflicts of interest as well. A business can get into legal trouble pretty quickly through its actions, but it can also cripple its integrity. Both are to be avoided.

Any business that brings something new to the table – be it a technique, a design or a product needs to ensure that the idea is protected. This is done through a process known as a patent, and if you are unsure about this course of action, you need to seek advice from agencies such as NK Patent Law to ensure your ideas are protected. If patents are breached by yourself, you can land in some very hot water indeed. What’s more, your business stands to lose if someone uses your idea without attribution or payment – patenting can protect you from that reality. Patents are enforced on simple ideas years and years in advance, even if the technology isn’t ever realized – just so a business or individual can protect their ideas and their interests. It’s also true that businesses and organizations patent items just to trip up others, so be careful and always seek advice about this area of intellectual property that can represent a legal minefield.

If a business doesn’t protect its interests, it might find it suffers a blow to its reputation, and it’s coffers. Ideally, a business should stay out of court. It can only do that if it protects its interests in the first place.

If you’ve just finished producing your brand new products, you will most likely want to throw a launch party – here’s what you should know.

Get a team together

If you know that you will need some helping hands, other than yourself, assign one person the job of managing all the details. That will take a lot of the pressure off yourself, and you will be able to focus on more areas regarding speaking to your guests and networking. Just make sure that everyone knows exactly what they’re doing throughout the day.

Plan it out well

Have a sit down with all the people that will be helping you on the big day, not only your employees but the catering staff too (if you have any.) Walk through every step of the day from start to finish. Think about all the little things like where and how the chairs will be placed, to what guests will see when they enter the room, and even how the napkins will be folded. It’s a good idea to think about hiring security too, as you never know how people may end up behaving.

Create a budget

Once you start seeing how you want the event to look and feel, write everything down, with what they are going to cost beside it, then add it all up and see if this is realistic or if you need to scale back a little. If you do need more money, other than taking out a loan, see if you can find a sponsor for the event, or even sell tickets well in advance.

The right insurance

Now that you’re starting to make a name for yourself, it’s even more important to get the right insurance for your business. You want something that can cover you in all possible situations, and throwing a product launch party is one of them. Speak with a few different companies and ask them for a contractor insurance quote if you haven’t already thought to do so. You want to cover yourself for any theft or damage to your goods, as well as if someone gets injured at an event of yours.

Have a goal in mind

What is your purpose for launching this party? Did you want to gain more exposure, create awareness to something you consider important or sell some products in bulk? Once you have an idea of why you’re doing all this, you can make sure your needs are met, and how you can achieve that.

Figure out the scope of the event

If this is your first time throwing an event, you don’t want to go too overboard and risk it looking disorganized or unprepared – you don’t ever want people to think that of you, so only bite off what you can chew. When you have figured it out, you can start thinking about whether you want food and refreshments, public speakers, entertainment, and so on.

Get the date right

Before you go choosing dates, it would be wise to speak with other businesses and even look online for any other upcoming events within your industry, as well as any holidays. You don’t want your date to clash with anything important otherwise no one will come.

Alert the media

Having the local media attend your event is a necessary way to build awareness about your party within the community. So get some reporters and bloggers a front row seat and invite them to cover your event. The publicity will be a great tool for giving your day even more exposure.

Create a marketing plan

And when you have one, make sure you have enough time to get the word out. There are many ways you can get in touch with people whether that be through direct email, the radio, online and more.

Using social media is a great way to connect with your target audience and let them know about your event. It’s all about building the buzz, so don’t put all your cards on the table too soon. Tease the event in advance with little pictures and posts about your preparations – then start inviting customers to the event. Think about giving the option of a VIP entry ticket too, as well as the standard ones. It makes everything sound a lot fancier, and will intrigue your consumers.

Make sure you get some of your team to take lots of photos and videos throughout the night – they could even go live on social media to keep people tuned in.