Jan
26
2012
When providing B2B service, computer consulting businesses’ ideal clients, or “sweet spot,” are companies with 10-50 PCs and 1-10 million in revenue. These “sweet spot” small businesses typically look for four things in their computer consulting businesses.
1. Response Time
2. Knowledge (Business and Technical)
3. Customer Service
4. Price/Value
In this article we will focus on the top two items, response time and business and technical knowledge.
Speed is Paramount in Computer Consulting Businesses
The more that a small business needs IT, the more likely that response time will be the leading factor. Why? Downtime is money lost. How quickly computer consulting businesses can address their clients’ urgent or emergency IT needs becomes very important.
Computer Consulting Businesses are more Than Just a Bunch of Technicians
Your technicians’ quick response to IT needs is of prime importance to most sweet spot small businesses. Second in importance would generally be your business or industry knowledge. For example, how well do your employees understand the client’s particular industry and niche? Sweet spot clients definitely want technology providers that can really solve business problems, as opposed to just running around doing “screwdriver” kind of work, such as upgrading RAM or loading software.
Computer consulting businesses basically becomes the outsourced IT department for your sweet spot clients. Your company will end up working on hardware support, software support, LAN and WAN support… so you deliver soup-to-nuts, end-to-end solutions.
The Bottom Line on Computer Consulting Businesses
In this article you’ve been introduced to your sweet spot clients’ first two requirements in computer consulting businesses.
Jan
24
2012
You surely know that a small idea can lead to a great business success. The first movement is to think of an idea that would be suitable for the business market. After coming up with the idea, the next step is to put that idea into action. Of course, this is a very difficult step and having the idea is only the start of the journey. After that you will have to face many obstacles before being able to carry on with your business project. This is just the beginning of this process and there is a lot of questions you will have to answer before even start.
Some of the main aspects you have to concentrate on when you have business ideas are the abilities and gifts you can pour into the business. It is very important for you to be identified with your business project. Those ideas should be based on activities and actions you take pleasure in doing. For example, if we suppose that you dislike working in the open, landscaping business would not suit you. On the other hand, if you like working with children, setting up baby-sitting or tutoring business would be an excellent idea. In this case, without any doubt you business will be more successful because you will have put your mind, effort and also your heart on it.
Another vital step is to analyze the needs of a specific product or service in your region before setting up your business. Do people of your area need your product? Are there other business like the one you are planning to start? You should ask yourself whether or not you are the only one offering that service or product. If you are not, you will have to analyze the competence you will have to face. You have to think whether the service you are offering is one that customer would repeat, or if it is a one-time specialized service. Obviously, the former are more likely to succeed than the latter.
There are other aspects you have to take into account. These aspects are described below:
- One of them is that if the idea is unique, you will reign the market. But if there is much competition, it will be difficult to enter into the market.
- A second point would be if you can offer quality from the very beginning, otherwise, you won’t succeed.
- Finally, you have to think about your capital to start your own business. There are many business ideas that require little investment and bring great profit. Some demand research, such as daycare service, and others need a large amount of money to begin the business. So take this recommendation into account before investing all your money in a small business idea.
Jan
21
2012
An accountant resume must highlight important information about your accounting experience, skills and education. This article gives you some ideas of the sort of information that an employer is looking for.
Basically a resume should contain your full name, permanent address, telephone numbers and email addresses. Apart from that an accountant resume should include the following information:
- A clear cut career and job objective which shows your sense of direction to the employer.
- Your resume should have the names of each of your employers and your corresponding job titles.
- Give a brief description about the employer like what they are doing, if they are not well known.
- Include your career goals and express your interest in a specific job that you are applying for.
- Mention a minimum of two and preferably not more than ten points, each describing an accomplishment in terms of results as an accountant.
- Mention all your accounting related skills which make your resume outstanding.
- In reverse chronological order include required information that includes your degree(s) and major, date of graduation, universities you attended, location of universities and any certifications of licenses related to your degree.
- Emphasize your accounting related accomplishments and contributions.
- Optimize your sentences for effectiveness and use management oriented words in your resume.
- Use as many accounts related key words, skill headings and use of action verbs. For example Management of A/R Accounts, Billing and Collections, Supervision of Accounting and Administrative Staff, Balance Sheet and Management Status Reports etc.
- Mention how you have reduced costs and saved money in your department or the organization in general by any means.
- Mention how you improved the efficiency and productivity within your department.
- Highlight any other achievements that have benefited your department and obviously your organization in general.
Jan
12
2012
Because of a recent boom in business, my company needed to update our office phone system. We had a very nice system in place already, but our business had tripled within a matter of months. Since we rely on phone orders for the vast majority of our sales, we needed to upgrade in order to handle the increase in call volume. We were lucky to have a great relationship with our telephone equipment provider, as within days we were able to have a new system ready to put in place. It’s not often that businesses find themselves in situations like this, but when they do come up, it’s important to know that the companies you have chosen to do business with are capable of meeting your needs in a timely manner.
Prior to this happening, we had a trunk study performed, after which we were told that we were losing business as a result of not having a new phone system in place. Anyone who has ever run a business knows that losing money because you are ill equipped to handle your customer’s needs is the worst way to lose money. Being able to make a phone call and knowing it would be taken care of quickly and efficiently was a great relief to me. I knew that with every passing day, thousands of dollars were being lost and that’s something I couldn’t afford to let happen. The whole situation made me think about the importance of knowing qualified vendors who can get you the products you need, when you need them.
I soon began looking into other areas where we were dependent upon other companies for goods and services to see if we were utilizing vendors who could facilitate the changes our growing business was experiencing. After a long, hard look, we decided to switch shipping companies and to switch to a new overnight call center operator. It’s not that our needs weren’t being met at the time, but that if things continued to grow, we would likely outpace our current vendor’s ability to provide service. Being proactive in your business relationships is just as important as being proactive about your business. After all, most companies depend on other companies to make their operations run smoothly. I encourage all business owners to seek out the service providers and vendors that can handle your needs both now and in the future. When your business grows, you’ll be happy you did.
Jan
5
2012
You are busy at both work and at home. Some days it may seem impossible to find time for YOU. You may wonder how other busy Mom Entrepreneurs make time for themselves, but you don’t have time to stop and ask. Here are four quick tips:
If it’s too late and you are already stressed…
1. Take a break.
Have you ever been overwhelmed and feel you can’t stop for fear you will fall further behind? When you’re in a high-stress situation, your thinking is often cluttered making you less productive. Michele Dortch, The Integrated Mother, suggests that you take a break when you become stressed. Whether you choose a 15-minute nature walk or a full day doing activities you love, stopping can actually provide amazing clarity and help you complete your tasks on time. This may seem counterproductive, but it really works!
To prevent going on overload, try the following tips on a regular basis…
2. Take time out to socialize each week.
Alice Seba of Mom Masterminds advises taking time out is invaluable to the Mom Entrepreneur. Alice makes a point to have a few opportunities to socialize each week-with girlfriends, her partner, or to just have some time alone. It revives her and makes her more focused when she comes back to being a mom or a businessperson. Alice says, “All work and no play not only makes you a dull mama, but it makes you a stressed out and ineffective one, too!”
3. Take a few “Mommy Minutes” as often as possible.
Ponn Sabra, author of Empowering Women to Power Network, puts herself on “time out” and takes “Mommy Minutes” as often as possible. Ponn sits in a self-made sauna in the bathroom with the hot shower running or enjoys a favorite goodie (she sometimes hides special ice cream sandwiches in back corner of her freezer where no one, even her husband, can find them.)
Ponn also insists that “adults need naps, too!” Whether for ten minutes or forty-five, it is important just to take a nap. The revitalization you receive from a catnap is very powerful. If you are unable to nap in the middle of a chaotic day, it is important to take yourself out of the situation to regain focus. You will have more energy if you meditate and clear your head.
4. Go “off duty” regularly.
In Linda Goodman Pillsbury’s Survival Tips for Working Moms, she recommends choosing a regular time when you are “off duty.” For example, you might say that after 8:30 every night, the kids cannot bother you with “Where are my blue jeans?” “I need cookies for a school party tomorrow,” etc. (Of course, you are there for emergencies.) Children will soon learn to ask for what they need before you go off duty or wait until the morning. This works on very young children up to teenagers–but you should make exceptions for talking to the kids when they come in from a date!
Jan
1
2012
In these times, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get by or make ends meet with just one source of income. Thus, more and more people are investigating the possibilities of, and indeed, the idea of, starting their own extra-income businesses. Most of these part-time endeavors are started and operated from the comforts and privacy of these people’s homes.
Most of these people are making the extra money they need – some have wisely and carefully built these extra income efforts into full-time, very profitable businesses – while some are just keeping busy, having fun, and enjoying life as never before. The important thing is that they are doing something other than wait for the government to give them a handout, to improve their lot in life – and you can do it too!
The fields of online products and services (information products, eBooks etc) mail order selling, multi-level marketing, and in-home party sales have never been more popular. If any of these kinds of extra-income-producing ideas appeal to you, then for sure, you owe it to yourself to check them out. But, these aren’t the only fields of endeavor you can start and operate from home with little or no investment and learn as you go. An hour or so searching on Google will give you countless ideas.
The first thing you “must” do however, is some basic market research. Find out for yourself, first-hand, just how many people there are – particularly in your local area – who are interested in your proposed product or service, and “would be willing to stand in line to pay money for it.” This is known as defining your market and pin-pointing your customers. If after checking around, talking about your idea with a whole lot of people over a period of one to three months, you get the idea that these people would be paying customers, then your next effort should be directed toward the “detailing” of your business plan. The more precise and detailed you write out such a plan – covering all the bases relating to how you’ll do everything that needs to be done, and when – the easier it’s going to be for you to attain success. Such a plan should show your start-up investment needs, your advertising plan, your production costs as well as procedures, your sales program, and how your time will be allocated. To often, enthusiastic and ambitious entrepreneurs “jump in” on an extra project and suddenly find that the costs are beyond their abilities, and the time requirements more than they can meet. It pays to lay it all out on paper before you get involved, and the more detailed you can “see” everything before you start, the better your chances of success.
Assuming you’ve got your market targeted – you know who your customers are going to be and how you’re going to reach them with your product or service offer; and you’ve got all your cost as well as time requirements itemized – the next thing is to set your plan in motion and start making money.
Here is the most important “secret” of all, relating to starting and building a profitable home-based business – Regardless of what kind of business you start, you must have the capital and the available time to sustain your business through the first six months of operation on the basis of not taking in any money. Most importantly, you must not count on receiving of spending any money coming in from your business, on yourself or for your bills, during those first six months. Any and all the income from your business during those first six months should be reinvested in your business in order for it to grow and reach your planned first year potential for it.
Dec
9
2011
As a student, it is very common to know that you will have many assignments in order to make you always hone your academic skills. There are many assignments that can be such a problematic matter for a student if they have to finish a lot of assignments within a short amount of time. The students will definitely have to sacrifice many things in order to finish all of those assignments. Not to mention that not all of the students are having the skills which are needed to make good assignments, for example is thesis.
Since thesis is very important for you to graduate and earn your degree, you have to put all of your efforts and sacrifice any unrelated things to finish it up. However, there are many students who are not willing to sacrifice their time to have fun and get some decent sleep and looking for the easy way. For those students, thesis service is the most important thing that needs to be looking for and worth for the trouble.
It is not a secret that writing a thesis is very hard to do. You need to consider many things and do some research in order to make a great thesis. That is why there is a lot of online writing company offering their help to those students.
Dec
8
2011
There are two type of people in the world. Those who see the glass half empty and those who see it half full. This experience was heightened for me when I had lunch with an old colleague from work and he began to complain about how only rich people could start a business. I thought he was joking.
As I sat and listened he ranted for almost ten minutes giving all the reasons he could not start his own business and get out of the rat race. He talked about the high cost of start ups,
franchising and real estate development. When he finally came up for air I decided to ask simply ask him one question. Mark, “Have you every asked yourself what kind of low cost businesses with high profit margins are out there?”
He looked like he had been run over by a truck. I went on to say, “You are just asking the wrong question.” He sat for a minute and said, “Ok, if you’re so smart give me some ideas.” I said, “Great. Oh and by the way let’s make it fun and focus on the ones you can work from home in your pajamas.”
Here are the 5 low cost high profit businesses I shared with Mark.
1. Internet Marketing: Do you have a computer in your home? If so you could be sitting on a gold mine. People use the internet to do all types of things. From a multimillion dollar wire jewelry making enterprise to a young kid from Long Beach California who created his empire teaching people how to play music by ear. Everyday people are getting on the internet and pursuing their own dot com fortune.
2. Tele-seminars: If you not a very technical person one of the
best strategies is tele-seminars. With simply a telephone and a
conference call line for your guest to call in on you can offer
a class or seminar. You can either use it as a lead generator or you can sell your product or service from the seminar itself. An additional product can come from recording the class. Once you record the class it can become an instant product you can create passive income from.
3. Joint Ventures: If you like the idea of not needing a product or money of your own than the idea of joint venturing could be for you. This business is simply the art of the deal. You are paid in direct proportion to your ability to bring together two parties who would not otherwise know each other outside of your introduction.
For example if you combine company A’s products, knowledge,
resources and partner it with company B’s client list you get to share in the profits. And it would not cost you one cent.
4. Affiliate Marketing: What if someone else did most of the work but you got to share in the profit pie? Well, that is
what affiliate marketing is all about. There are thousands of
products ranging from digital down loads, books,seminars not to
mention hard products like computers, cell phones and other
techie stuff. Your job is to find the products that your market is interested in and when you sell something you get a percentage of the sale. You can do this without having any inventory or the overhead of a traditional business.
5. Information Products: This is one of the most highly lucrative low cost businesses you can get into. If you have specialized knowledge or can do you can research and reporton it you can create products that are highly profitable. For example, one of the fastest ways to success is to interview experts in a high demand niche market.
Once you have interviewed these experts you can take the information and create several different products from the one interview. Some of the things you can do is sell the recording itself, sell the transcript of the call, use some of the content create an e-book or report or take several of the interviews and put them together for an expert tape series.
6. Network Marketing/MLM: I have always been a fan of network
marketing because the business model is as much about self
development as it is building a business. The premise is you find a company that you are passionate about the product, has a proven system and strong team leadership. Most of these companies are low cost of entry. And you build your empire leveraging the efforts of many.
Some people incorrectly believe you are going to get rich off the back of someone else. Not true. The very core of network marketing is built on the fact that you get paid in direct proportion of your ability to recruit, train, inspire, support and lead a voluntary group of people. For those who can do this the rewards are great.
7. EBay: I was recently introduced to the EBay craze by someone
who in the beginning had no money so he decided to sell a tape set a friend had created. This product was a compilation of interviews with successful entrepreneurs. Their first sale was $37.00 and they went on to build multi-million dollar empire. EBay is one of the quickest ways to get to a profit. You can take things that you have in your garage today and sell them on EBay tomorrow. Remember one mans junk is another mans treasure.
At the end of the lunch something interesting happened. My friend Mark was starting to see the glass half full. How about you? Are you looking for a business you can start without breaking the bank? The above five businesses are just a few ideas to jump start your thought process. However, make no mistake you can start a low cost high profit business and enjoy it while lounging in your pajamas.
Dec
5
2011
Should Small Businesses have a web presence?
In one word, yes! The internet is the most effective marketing tools in existance nowadays, have the capability of reaching far more people than any leaflet drop or advertisement in the local paper ever will.
Should you produce your own website?
It all depends on your skills, if you have the ability to produce a site that looks good, then go ahead, it will save you money and will work wonders as a marketing tool. However if your skills are limited or non-existant then we’d say no. Why? No, not because we want your money (although we don’t mind if you want to give it to us…), because if your site doesn’t have a professional look to it, then it is going to reflect badly on your company’s image.
Do you need to spend lots of money?
It really depends on the size of your website, if you’re looking simply get a presence on the internet, then you can easily get something for around £250 if you take the time to look, if you’re really getting into the idea of being online and effectively having your shop exist in cyberspace you’re going to be looking at more money, however even then, there are many self-build options such as Ekmpowershop.
What content do you need?
This all depends on what you want from being online, if you want to sell online, have your products online is going to be very useful! If you’re just looking to get your company online, then there are TWO elements that we believe are imperative:
Information about your company
How to contact you
Without these two no-one is going to know who or what you are, with the former being your chance to sell yourself. Remember when people look at websites, if its well designed they won’t know if they’re dealing with a multi-national company or a one person organisation, this is your chance to play alongside the big boys!!
What to do now?
So you’re convinced a website is the way to go? Excellent, this can only be of benefit to you! Now you’ve got to find a designer (there’s one right here!!!), things to keep in mind when looking is what kind of style are you looking for, find some websites that you like then find some designers and see if they can produce something along that line! If they can, you’re on the way to bringing into being what can be one of your best employees!!
Dec
1
2011
Are you looking for useful software which can help you do task management? If so, it will be better for you to put your trust to TeamWox SaaS. You do not need to spend more money for this software because it is now provided in a more affordable price.
With the software, you can also manage online documents more easily because it has been completed with a sophisticated feature called Docflow. This feature enables you to solve many document tasks at once.
By this way, your sales and marketing management will be able to flow more fluently. As a result, the interaction with your client will be satisfying. In case you want to give a try, simply visit TeamWox.com.
