A Good Reason To Start A Home Based Business

Written by Marc Parham, Business Development Consultant, Partec Consulting Group, mailto:marcp@partecgroup.com, www.partecgroup.com

Most employers have had to cut costs due to rising cost of having employees.  Health Insurance plans, taxes and employee related overhead, cost a lot for a  business.  This is especially important for small business.  If you were a business owner would you not do the same?

The unemployment rate is currently 10% or better.  This means a lot of people with skills do not have jobs.  Where have all the jobs gone?.

• What if, a business could use your service or skill with about having to pay all the additional cost.
• What if, multiple businesses used your skill or service without having to pay all additional cost.

You are the product! Any job that you have worked at as an employee..you were the product.

The only difference you let the business take advantage of all the financial benefits by not making you worry about how the business worked.

A sweet deal until they decide they don’t need your product any longer.

Think about it..

If you had multiple businesses/customers/clients buying your product at the same time, loosing one of them might not majorly affect your cash flow.

This is what business is all about.

And you can do this by setting up your own home based business.

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4 Simple ways to build your customer marketing database

Need to build your customer database? If you plan to use the internet and email to market your business, you will have to get your customers information. This information is important because it will allow you to keep in contact with your customers. Remember “Out of Sight, Out of Mind!”

This article will show you some simple ways to get this information.

Option 1 – Just Ask For It!

This might sound too easy but the simplest way to get this information is….Just Ask for It! You will be surprised how much information you can get by just asking. Generally the best time to do this is during the purchase process. Either hand them a short form with a place for their name and email address only. If you ask for too much information they might not want to do it. Make sure that your form has a statement on it that says something about by giving you this information they are giving you this information to receive information from you.

Option 2 – Use a business card drop box

You can place business card drop boxes around your store or at the counter where people can just drop in their business cards. You can then purchase a business card scanner for an office supply store that will scan the cards in and create a database of all the information on the card. Remember to include the same statement as mentioned before about how you will use this information.

Option 3 – Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Creating a simple survey form with about 5 questions about how the customers feels about your business is a good way to get this information. They will answer the questions and enter their email address on the survey form. You can also offer some type of coupon or discount for persons that fill out the survey.

Option 4 – Ask for email contact list

You can sometimes ask your friends, family and customers to either send you their email contact list or just give you 3 to 5 names of persons that they feel will what to buy your product or service. Make sure to get the name of the person giving you the names so when you contact them you can say “Marc gave me your information because he felt that you might be interested in our products.

Once you start building your database you can now start sending emails, flyers and newsletters to these new potential customers. For information on how to use email to market your business read the article “How to use email to market your business”

Click here if you would like more info, need help or have a question about this topic.

7 Steps to Writing a Basic Business Plan

Written by Marc Parham, Business Development Consultant, Partec Consulting Group, www.partecgroup.com, mparham@partecgroup.com, 770-634-7231

 

Writing a business plan? You have an idea or a product that everyone says “You should start a business and sell your product”. “You can be your own boss and make money” or “This is great! People really need this”.

Yes, you can write this yourself. After all who knows you and your idea better than you!

Below are the basic steps to writing a good business plan that you can present to others that will give them the basic concept about your business idea, why it is a great idea, why you can do it, how you will sell it, and how you plan to finance it.

Let’s get started!

STEP 1 – The Business Plan Outline

The first thing to do is create an outline for your plan. The outline should cover the main topics or points that will be important to the people that will read your plan. Some basic headings should be;

1.                  Vision/Mission Statement

2.                  Business Profile

3.                  Business Objectives

4.                  Capital Requirements

5.                  Management Team

6.                  Market Analysis

7.                  Marketing Plan

8.                  Conclusion

 

STEP 2 – Write the Plan

Start writing your plan one heading at a time. Use your own words. It is you that is selling the idea. You will have someone read it later to see how well it reads. Research, Research! Yes I said it! You will have to some research to fully develop your plan. Use the internet to do this research.

 

 

Below I have listed the headings and the basic things that will need to be written about under each heading.

•                    Vision / Mission Statement – What is your vision? What is your product or service idea? Keep it simple. You might come back to this later to add more content.

•                    Business Profile – What type of legal business structure do you plan on using? A Sole-proprietorship, an LLC or a corporation. Is it going to be a retail business where people come to you to buy your product or service (i.e. store, restaurant, cleaners, etc) or will you take your product or service to the customer?

•                    Business Objectives – What will be the objective of your business? For example if you are starting a restaurant, what will be the main reason people will come to you.

•                    Capital Requirements- What will it cost to start and run your business for at least the next two years. There will be fixed cost or cost that will pretty much stay the same (i.e. rent, utilities, equipment, insurance, etc). There also will be variable cost that will change as your business changes.

•                    Management Team – Why can you be successful in this particular business? What is your or your key person’s background and experience in this area of business?

•                    Market Analysis- Who else is doing what you are in the area that you want to sell your product or service? Your competition. Who will buy your product? Your potential customers.

o   Your competition – A simple internet search will give you loads of information. For example, you want to start a take -out wings restaurant. Use Google or another search engine and search for “take-out wings in 30303(your zip code)”. There should be a number of returns on this search term.

o   Your customers – Using Google again just enter the zip code for the area you want to service and you will find a report in the return hits that contains the demographic information for this area.

•                    Marketing Plan – How will you market your business? The internet, local newspapers, flyers, coupons, etc. How will you get the message out? You might attend neighborhood meetings to announce your company.

•                    Conclusion – This is where you summarize your idea again and stress your confidence in your ability to be successful. You should also thank your reader and give them a way to contact you if they have any more questions.

STEP 3 – Review the Plan

Use spell check and other tools to help correct the basic errors in your plan. Remember they will not catch everything. You must read it yourself and have other read it as well. Don’t get all sensitive if they come back with changes and corrections. You would rather have them find them then your potential investor or bank.

STEP 4 – Finalize the Plan

After you have received all the comments and changes start the final draft of your plan.

STEP 5 – Review the Finalized Plan

Refer to Step 3. Need I say more?

STEP 6 – Create the Cover Letter

You will need to create a cover letter to send along with the plan when you have someone look at it for possible investment. Just the basics. Introduce yourself and explain about the plan and why you are presenting it. Remember to thank them for reviewing it and give them a way to contact you if you have any questions.

STEP 7 – Get Ready To Go Into Business!

Now that you have a plan you can really start putting things together to start your business. You might have found by doing your plan that there are some areas that need more work. So do it and get your business going.

Summary

Remember, this is your plan! Just work on it a section at a time. Start with the sections that feel you know the most about or have the most information.  You will find that some of the other questions that you have will be uncovered as you work through the plan.