Archive For: Business

Analysis Paralysis, Or Just Plain Fear?

Are you experiencing Analysis Paralysis or avoidance issues in your business? This is something that I have seen with many businesses – you can get so involved with analyzing everything, that you forget you are in business to achieve something – like making money and helping your clients.

Of course, you could just be avoiding doing something – and that has the same impact as analysis paralysis.

Analysis Paralyisis occurs when you become obsessed with knowing EVERYTHING there is to know about something. When you get caught in this trap, you spend all your time analysing, and no time doing – and this is not healthy. Read more

Business Planning For 2010

Given we are in December, I thought it a great time to look at what planning we, as business people, will be undertaking over the next month or so to get ready for 2010.

Are you going to do any planning? Do you take time out from your ‘day to day’ tasks to review your business at all? If not, WHY NOT?

Planning is key to business success! The one phenomenon I have observed in my business (and techie) career is that when we don’t take time out to look ahead and actually see where we’ve pointed our ship, we will often find a iceberg to hit.

I know that the term Strategic Planning can seem scary – but really, all it means is to develop a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Read more

Business Building With Children In Hand!

There is no doubt about it, starting a business is a daunting thing – but starting a business when you have toddlers in hand in even more daunting.

The sheer idea of trying to break your time down into manageable chunks so that you can look after your little ones during the day and create a successful business is mind boggling for many – but without a doubt, Moms (and Dads) all over the world are doing it.

My children are now teenagers, but I remember the challenges we faced trying to run our businesses when they were little – balancing the need for some pretty long hours at times, with spending time with the kids and allowing time for ourselves. Sometimes we weren’t so succesful about it, soemtimes we were. Read more

Closing The Sale…Tips to overcome the hangups

Closing the sale is an art and possibly one of the biggest ‘hang ups’ for budding business and sales people, copywriters and more…  but why and what can you (or we) do about it?

Let’s look at why Closing the Sale can be a challenge for some… I believe it’s the fear of rejection that makes Closing a Sale a challenge for most. We all want to be liked, and if we ask someone to ‘buy’ what we’re selling and the prospect says no, then we feel that they are rejecting us personally.

Really, nothing can be further from the truth – our prospect is not really rejecting us personally, they are just rejecting our product or service – AT THE MOMENT.  However as most Sales or Business People are passionate about their product, it can be difficult to differentiate the ‘no’ for the product or service from a ‘no, I don’t like you’…. Read more

Cold Calling Tips For Entrepreneurs

I was recently asked by a reader of my newsletter about what they should consider when Cold Calling on businesses.  I thought I would share my answer here.

The one thing that I would like you to consider, is that when you Cold Call – whilst your goal is to create life-long customers, the purpose of a Cold Call is to take Suspects to Qualified Prospects. What I mean, is that when you Cold Call on someone, you SUSPECT they could use what you’re selling, but you’re not certain.  After you’ve called on them and discussed what your product can do, you will know if the Suspect is really a fit for your product or not. Once you have a qualified prospect, you then focus on converting them to a customer, and then to a life long customer. Read more

Manage To Own – Franchise Training and Bakers Delight

Sponsored by Nuffnang

Starting a small business can be very, very daunting. There is a lot of information that a Small Business Owner needs to have, including but not limited to, personnel management, financial management, stock ordering and OH&S requirements, as well as having sufficient capital to fund the business through the start up and lean times.

Certainly, most first time business owners will not have a fraction of the skills they need to run a business and there really is no substitute for the learning that occurs with experience however, that learning often comes at a high price.

A JOB is a safe option and some of the bigger companies, retail or food service chains, have a complete managerial program for their staff. They will train you to become a manager – so that you learn the system, you breathe the system – and then they let you loose to manage the system.

Unfortunately, for small business owners this option really doesn’t exist – it is highly unusual for anyone to provide you with on the job training for your business. The Small Business owner is required to invest (often heavily) in their business and deal with what comes – without having a support framework to turn to. Read more

Reclaiming Your Power In Business

Have you lost your power in business? No, I don’t mean “are you weak in business”…. Listening to Jenny Leather, a Melbourne born and bred Mother of 3, on the Stretch Your Mind And Body Talk today, I wondered how many of us have let go of our power, or put our power in the hands of others.

Jenny is a successful property investor who found that the old adage “It’s easy to make your first million, it’s not so easy to keep it” is true.

When Jenny and husband first experienced wealth generation, they handed the management of that money over to someone else. This was not necessarily the best thing to do – and Jenny shared that it was like handing over you power to someone else. Read more

Be The General Of Your Army

It is very easy for a business person to become so ‘bogged down’ with doing everything for their business, that they lose focus on ensuring that they do the important things that will ensure success.

Now this has several effects – the main one being that we rarely get anything done WELL.  We’ll get things done – but we are typically so strung out that we just do whatever we can to finish the job.  The other thing that seems to happen is that we are tired and ill – a lot!

For those business people fortunate enough to have staff and contractors – trying to be the soliders instead of the general only annoys them – because we end up doing their job instead of ours. Read more

Finding Your Niche Pt 1: Listen To Your Potential Clients

The first thing to creating any business, online or offline, is to find your niche. I know – you’ve heard this before – and so have I, on so many different occassions and it becomes frustrating – because HOW do you find your niche?

The majority of the advice around is that you find out what people are searching for, what problems they have and address those specific problems.

This is all good and well – but I found it really hard to ‘get excited’ about something that I knew very little about and had even less interest in. I also didn’t want to be promoting something just because it was “hot” at the time – it felt all a bit ‘me to’ like. Read more

Do You Really Need A Business Plan?

What is the benefit of a Business Plan?  There is an awful lot of work involved in creating a Businss Plan – and is it really worth it?

Well, I think the proof is in the pudding!  One of the main benefits of a Business Plan is that it really can help clarify your thinking and planning.  I coach a lot of clients who are developing their business plans and I am always amazed at how their embryonic business ideas become solid and defined as we work through the plan. Read more

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