5 TIPS for Home-Based Business Entrepreneurs
January 23, 2008
Have you ever heard that only a small part (5%) of ‘all’ Home-Based Business entrepreneurs achieve success?
Do an online research on your favorite Search Engine and you will understand what I mean.
In this article I’m going to show you the KEY to Home-Based Business entrepreneurs success; you’ll find out what makes an entrepreneur succesful in the home-based business field.
Below are 5 TIPS for Home-Based Business Entrepreneurs:
1. It’s their mindset that brings success
Serious entrepreneurs have ‘programmed’ their mind to succeed no matter what. They don’t lack focus on their home-based business and let nobody stop their plans in achieving what they want.
They know what they want and they have the DESIRE to succeed. If you don’t know exactly what you want when it comes your home-based business, think about it again and re-consider your plans, what you want to achieve, a get-rick-quick or a profitable, long term business.
2. It’s their start-up plan that brings success
Smart entrepreneurs know that it takes time to set-up and grow a profitable home-based business. They plan to succeed. They have a start-up plan that might fail but they never give up and start again with a better plan.
You Must Get Going If You Want To Get Growing
January 22, 2008
For many of service-based businesses out there, it’s not that you don’t know you should be marketing or don’t want to get better at it. It’s just that you don’t.
For some, it might be that you don’t really know what to do, so you’re doing nothing. And that includes not taking any action to learn more and find out what to do. If you were a car, you’d be stuck in PARK.
For some, it’s not that you don’t know what to do, you just don’t. Other things always seem to take precedence. You have to call those prospects back that never returned your call from twelve weeks ago. Maybe you have to re-index your collection of business cards. If you were a car, you’d be stuck in NEUTRAL.
Still for others, you’re doing as much as you can to market your services, but you’re just not getting the results you’d like to have. It gets frustrating, because each of your ideas cost time and money, but you’re not seeing the payoff. If you were a car, you’d be stuck in the MUD!
Eliminating Objections to Increase Sales
January 21, 2008
You want to increase the flow of sales revenue, but you are stymied by prospects’ seemingly endless objections. Prospects say they’re not interested. They tell you your price is too high, or this isn’t the right time. You’ve heard all the objections. What can you do to get rid of these once and for all?
Engineering Your MarketingWhen I was seven one of my favorite ways to spend a hot summer day with my friends was playing a backyard game wecalled “waterworks”.
We’d use a trowel to construct channels in the dirt, put the hose at one end and watch the water flow. If we wantedthe water to go straight, we’d remove rocks and debris toclear a path. We became sophisticated engineers, guiding water around corners and across short aqueducts. We felt like masters of the universe, directing the water where we wanted it to go. (You can bet my mother loved seeing uscome into the house at the end of the day.)
Plan your marketing to take charge of increasing your sales. Your marketing can lead prospects to your products and services the way my friends and I engineered our waterworks; by making clear paths and removing obstacles. Channel your prospects’ attention and interests and eliminate objections. Below are the four most common objections and ways to eliminate them.
How to Start Work at Home Business and Make a Living
January 20, 2008
How to Start Work at Home Business and Make a Living
by: Alice Nero
It is no more the phase of national depression. Conditions have improved and employee poaching at maximum remuneration is becoming the trend. But still at personal levels discontentment and depression resulting from overwork, less payment, workplace harassment is common. Work from home is one of the many consequences of the merging workload, job outsourcing and the need for flexible work hours.
When Should You Start Work at Home?
Though there is no dearth of home business careers, but you should not plunge directly. It has been seen that the successful home business owners have made it big after considerable exposure to the works in the office.
Be it marketing, content development or business processing, you are facing a global clientele where sub-standard does not fetch anything. So, it is believed that couple of years experience in a particular job will power you with the industry standards and make you market-ready.
Should Start Work at Home?
There are many popular work at internet home business opportunities (http://www.milanodirect.biz/start-home-business.asp) such as business processing, website promotion, medical billing, online marketing and direct sales, etc. But, to make it to the top you must be prepared for the particular work and should be aware of the conventions of that job.
The Chicken or the Egg?
January 20, 2008
Even before I checked my calendar on Monday morning, I knew the appointment would be there. Passed over for promotion again, Ralph wanted specifics on why I hadn’t chosen him for the position. This was not a new conversation. I thought of Ralph as my chicken and egg dilemma. Ralph was the chicken. He believed he would make a great Team Leader, and when I promoted him, he would step up and show me how well he could lead. My position was that of egg. Prove to me you have leadership skills by demonstrating leadership in the job you have now, and I’ll consider giving you the next position.
Here’s the question: is it better to do the work, knowing you will ultimately be rewarded for having done it, or should you wait until the reward is there before you do the work? Like the proverbial question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, people differ widely on the answer and run their careers accordingly.
Leadership in Troubled Times
January 19, 2008
Leadership in Troubled Times
The first task of a leader is to keep hope alive. - Joe Batten
Leading an organization can be challenging, even when times are good. When times are troubled, it is even more important for leaders to come to the forefront and provide direction and inspiration. We face challenging times today with a weakened economy, layoffs, and intense scrutiny of a mistrustful public sector. As leaders, now is the time to stand up for our beliefs.
I subscribe to a value based leadership theory that has as much if not more relevance in our troubled times today than it has in the past. Leadership is about hope, vision, inspiration, communication, and trust. As a leader, you have the opportunity to provide vision and hope to those around. You have the opportunity to instill belief and restore trust to those who look up to you. And you have the opportunity to build a bond with those around you that is forged under difficult circumstances and tempered with the steel of your own personal values and beliefs. I believe that this is true regardless of what level of leader you are. Whether you are a first line manager, or a CEO your people are looking up to you for direction and inspiration. And they are looking to you to provide them hope.
Take the Logo Litmus Test
January 18, 2008
Here is your C.I.T.T. (pronounced “kit”)[Color ? Illustrate? Type ? Test]COLOR. Color plays a major role in influencing particular moods and feelings about your company. Don’t believe me? Look at Dove? soap. You’ll find the shampoo bottles are white. White conveys purity, simplicity and a sense of cleanliness. It’s strategic and makes sense doesn’t it?! Have you noticed that you can associate an industry by its color? Blue is a popular color for technology companies and bottled water companies, for instance. How about identifying a certain mood by color? Quick, what mood do you think the color red evokes? Could be romance or anger or urgency…
ILLUSTRATE. Small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs don’t have budgets like Nike, Starbucks and McDonalds… so, if you decide to create a graphical image to represent your business, make sure it communicates what your customers might expect from your company. Great examples of this includes the logo of Giftpile.com and IndieArtistStation.com
TYPE. There is an art to lettering… just ask a calligrapher or illustrator who can create a logo based on letters. Again, illustrated in the Giftpile.com (mentioned above). An illustrator created a custom type which looks similar to gift wrap and ribbons on presents which is very appropriate for the service Giftpile.com performs (wedding gifts).
Small Business Newsletter Dilemma: Which Day Do I Send?
January 17, 2008
If you’re just ramping up your small business email newsletter, you might be wondering what day you should send it to your opt-in list. After all, you want it to get opened and read and you know your prospects may be weeding through a ton of email clutter. What to do?
There is no magic bullet to figure out the science behind when your small business prospects will open your email. But you can help yourself along by doing some up front legwork. And the answer is right in front of you.
Don’t do what I see so many other small business owners do. They ask their friends and colleagues what day is best and then move forward on that advice. Bzzzzzzzt — wrong answer. Unless those friends and colleagues fit your target market, you will be wasting a lot of time with this approach.
One of the best ways to determine the day to send your newsletters is to think about the details of your target market. Do you get emails from them on a regular basis? What time of day are their emails written? What day of the week? Do you feel comfortable asking your current subscribers? By assessing the habits of your market, you can figure the best day and time to send.
Put Your Marketing To The So What? Test
January 16, 2008
Want to get Better at your Marketing today?
For many service business owners, marketing can be a real mystery. We don’t really know exactly how it works. We’re not real sure about what works best for us. And probably because of some past frustrations, we’re not even sure where to start.
Most seem to at least have a notion of what’s involved in marketing…a web site, Yellow Pages advertising, brochures, direct mailings, networking, seminars, trade shows, etc.
But if that’s all it took, wouldn’t we all be attracting enough clients?
I’m sure you’ve tried one or more of these things at least to some degree. And I’m sure you’ve had at least some successes now and again. But are you able to make it work consistently for your business?
If not, what could be going on?
First, let’s agree to a definition of marketing. Here is my favorite one for small, service-based businesses:
“Marketing is the use of strategies to generate a constant supply of high-quality leads for your service business.” Simple to understand and speaks directly to the results we want.
7 Ways to Stop Selling & Start Building Relationships
January 15, 2008
Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.
I was inspired to write this article after a few coaching sessions with a client named Michael, who sells a technology solution. Michael had been struggling with a mental block about how to detach from the traditional sales thinking he had learned from old-school sales “gurus”.
You know who they are. You may even have some of their books or tapes. And you know their sales messages too: “Always be closing,” “Think positive, and you’ll overcome all your cold calling fears,” “All you need to boost your sales is a few new sales techniques.”
But all these outdated sales messages fail to address the core issue of how we think about selling. And unless we get to that core, and change it once and for all, we’ll go on struggling with the same counterproductive sales behaviors. We’ll go on experiencing the same difficulties and frustrations. And we’ll continue to believe that we’re always just one new sales technique away from the breakthrough we’re looking for.
