The one thing you should keep in mind about opening your dream business is that it is a significant amount of work. The trick is understanding where to start and knowing what to do first. Before you even put the “open for business” sign on the front door, there is a lot you need to do.

Write a Business Plan

An entrepreneur should never attempt to get a business off the ground without a business plan. Your business plan is your sales pitch to potential investors, your employment brochure to prospective new employees and your personal blueprint to running your company. This plan should include projections of expenses, business insurance (if you haven’t gotten it already, you can find good rates on websites like BusinessInsurance.org), and projected growth and estimated expenses of that growth.

A good business plan also outlines exactly what your company does, the methods you will use to get products to customers, and your sales and marketing approach. Everything you will ever need to know about your business will be in your business plan, and it will become an essential document to running your company.

Secure Financing

After you have written your business plan and scouted around for potential locations for your company, it is time to get that first infusion of cash that will get your company off the ground. If you are able to fund your start-up yourself, that is the ideal solution. Your business plan will tell you how much money you will need to get started. If you cannot provide all of the start-up cash you need, then it is time to go out and get financing.

Before you run to the bank and fill out a small business loan application, you may want to consider looking for a partner or an investor. A partner or investor can not only supply you with money to get started, but he can also help you run your business. You may even be able to find a partner that can help you get your first few large clients. A partner is an active investor in your business that will help you get results. A bank is a passive investor that will just sit around and wait for results. It is always better to start off with an active investor.

Marketing

Before you even open your doors, you need to start getting the word out about your company. Put together information fliers and start handing them out to people that may be interested. Get your family and friends to start talking about your business to the people that they know.

Once you are ready to open your doors, put together a focused marketing plan that will get your information in front of your target audience. You cannot sustain a business without customers, and marketing is how you will drive people to your company.

Getting a business off the ground is hard work. But if you lay a good foundation, then you will give yourself a better shot at success.

For anybody to be extremely competitive, they should consider the power of social. In particular, real estate agents must have a presence on the Internet specifically the social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Foursquare. Maintaining a presence on websites such as the ones mentioned here is highly beneficial for real estate agents because it gives them a place to communicate regularly with their clients. A less explored advantage is how social networking websites help turn potential clients into customers.

After they log into their Facebook accounts, real estate agents often focus their attention on the houses that have just recently entered the market. They also discover what is going on in the industry through their Facebook pages such as the events that are coming up, the news that is important to them and the trends that are occurring.

If the fairly unused technology, GPS, were implemented more often by real estate agents, they would find that their direct sales efforts would be much more efficient. For this purpose, real estate agents will need to let their locations be known to the public from their Facebook Places pages. They will also learn what they need to know about the houses they are considering purchasing such as the asking price and when they become unavailable.

Real estate agents will find it easy to update their locations when they are on Twitter or Google+. If they are away from their computers, they can still update their locations if they have an iPhone. When people take advantage of the app “Find My Friends,” they will be able to use their phones to find where their friends are located.

Although the best way to update one’s status, receive and make comments and view the media is to go directly to Facebook or Foursquare, real estate agents with Google+ can update their locations more easily so that their friends, family and anyone interested can find out where they are. Other real estate agents may be curious to know which houses other real estate agents are showing!

It cannot be expected that every time a real estate agent sends out information on a new listing that all of the followers will receive them. It would be impossible for one real estate agent to manage several clients at once, remembering the details of everything they are searching for and making sure to send a message to every client that might be interested in a new listing. Even so, it still offers real estate agents several benefits to be able to inform their clients whenever they can through the social media.

It’s possible that the information that is being sent to each client will not be what they are looking for at that moment, so Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare make it possible for real estate agents to place their clients into groups. Each group will only receive the information that is relevant for their needs, and it helps to prevent the real estate agent from showing any favoritism toward any client.

The bottom line is that the locations feature makes a real estate agent’s job a lot easier. Real estate agents constantly need to be on the road, and using Facebook Places, Google+, Foursquare and Twitter to update their locations is excellent for keeping their followers updated on their whereabouts.

1. Evernote
All those in the business world need to be equipped with a reliable and efficient note-taking app. Evernote is an easy-to-use app where notes of all sorts can be recorded, even audio. One other feature Evernote provides is accessibility. After recording notes, one will be able to access notes from one’s BlackBerry, computer, or any other device with internet capabilities so you can have your ideas with you no matter what the situation. To make things even better, this app is totally free.

2. Documents to Go Premium 2.0
This app is for the majority of businessmen who are involved in presentations. With Documents to Go Premium 2.0, you have the capability to tweak a presentation on your way to work or even create a new one. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are all compatible with this application. The price for this app is near $15.

3. Advanced Conference Call
Most businessman either host or participate in conference calls. With this app, up to 5 people can communicate at once anywhere in the world where wireless coverage or Wi-Fi is available. Also, notifications and scheduling can be done via this app, making these meetings even easier. Advanced Conference Call costs roughly $20 in BlackBerry App World.

4. Backup (OTA Data Backup Restore)
Either it’s happened to you, or it will happen to you: All files will mistakenly be deleted, inevitably ruining your day. Backup is an app specifically designed to put your mind at rest when this happens. Addresses, memos, task lists, calendar, and other important information can be effortlessly stored. A simple press of a button will instantly restore all of this information back onto any BlackBerry. This app runs for around $10.

5. Superpower
One of the biggest complaints many smartphone users gripe about is the lack of adequate battery life. No businessman wants his phone dead when he needs it most. With Superpower, extending battery life is easy and profitable. For $0.99, this app provides schedules where Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other battery-eating mechanisms can be turned on or off, thus saving precious battery life. This app can be obtained for under $1.

Technology advances have forced companies to change their marketing strategies.  From traditional methods, they get to embrace modern ways to carry out their marketing campaigns. Companies have spent billions to strengthen their marketing strategies. They have adapted several new methods of promoting their products and services to compete with the rising market. Although many have relied to modern marketing today, there are still businesses who opted to use the traditional methods to do their marketing.

Traditional marketing is used by businesses to get the word out about their product or service, whether it is by pushing a cart load of wares around, distributing flyers or advertising in newspapers.   Anyone that is trying to sell something used some sort of these to get their products noticed.

Door to door sales also constitute the traditional marketing.  In some industries some form of knocking on doors is the best way to do business even today.  Another one is by using Yellow Page.  The yellow page is a very thick book filled with thousands of business listing of business owners throughout a specific area.  People would often look through the book to search for businesses that interest them.

Now, there are a lot of other traditional marketing methods that people use to market their businesses, yet because of the emergence of new technologies, they don’t respond to these methods like they did before.  Instead of a business spending millions on television advertising or on other traditional marketing strategies they can save on using some modern marketing strategies like SEO, B2B telemarketing and email marketing and promote just as effectively.

E-marketing is another name for web marketing or online marketing.  It is a business strategy that is increasingly being adopted over the traditional forms of marketing.  For businesses that aim to establish an online presence in a cost-effective way, then this is a much preferred solution.  One of the advantages of e marketing is that it can reach a wider client base for it uses Internet as medium to connect with millions of potential customers.  Unlike with traditional marketing strategies, e marketing can undertake all sorts of tasks like customer service, information management and public relations at low costs.

Some businesses die because of their weak marketing strategies.  Success in business requires careful and longer research of the market, product and service.  Really it takes time to learn what method works for your business.  You will constantly need to find and adapt methods that will meet your needs.  Take a step now.  Outsource your marketing activities to reliable call centers before your competitors eat their way into your potential customers.

The same is true in lead generation. It is necessary that every little thing is qualified, not a mere illusion. Sales leads must be qualified in order to have higher chances of closed sales. The installed technology ought to be qualified according to a company’s specific needs. The outsourced telemarketing company should be qualified in order to wrap up qualified appointments that their clients want.

Every company aims for qualified appointments. They do not want their sales representatives to arrive empty-handed after an assumed qualified appointment setting with a sales lead. After all, they pay a price to get what they want. However, when a business entity outsources a business-to-business  B2B telemarketing, every penny paid is returned in double or more.

Let us uncover the costs and rewards of a qualified appointment setting.

1. Cost Per Appointment

How much does a company pay for every qualified appointment? Does the payment worth the outcome of the appointment? Or is it overpaid?

Cost per appointment depends on the agreement between the telemarketing company and its client. Another thing that has been considered is the specific decision maker that an appointment setter has targeted.

The telemarketing firms have trained and educated their professional appointment setters to provide their clients with a list of qualified appointments, which targeted those decision makers who are at the top management. When client’s sales people delivered well during the presentation, sales come in a hundredfold.

2. Cost Per Quota

Aside from cost per lead, another cost scheme used is the cost per quota. Meaning to say, clients pay when the telemarketing service provider has reached the requirement in the number of qualified appointments. This is no problem for both partners. In the case of the client, an aggregate payment is lower than a cost per appointment. On the telemarketing firm’s side, there is no pressure in meeting the requirement since such agreed demand has been based primarily on the appointment setters’ experiences and capability.

3. Other Service Costs

An appointment is the start and not the end of customer relationship. This is to be followed with lead nurturing. This is so because it is crucial to keep in touch with the customer so that loyalty will exist. The business organization is obliged to keep their customers aware through constant updates.

A life-time value should be established relative to the customer. If a company is content with one sale to one sales lead, then such firm ought to think seventy seven times. It is to be remembered that one closed sale is a big no-no in doing business.

4. Opportunity Costs

When appointment setters pick up the wrong prospects, the opportunity costs foregone is high. The time, money and endeavor that should have been used to generate qualified appointments are wasted when the wrong ones are chosen.

The good thing is that this is not an issue with telemarketing service providers. Through their pre-qualification processes and specialists, no appointment is set until it has been accurately determined that a sales lead is qualified, sales-ready and within the company’s criteria of targeted prospects.

I understand (to some extent) why the B2B sector has been slow in taking up the online space, I just don’t agree with it. In particular it seems that B2B is ignoring Social Media as simply this glossy tool for marketing directly to consumers.

The fact is, the social media phenomenon is a human phenomenon. Last time I noticed, those involved with B2B still fit in that category. So no matter the specific industry, the opportunity must at least be explored. At its best a social media strategy for B2B will open up networks, generate leads and streamline your business’ customer communications. At its worst, you can spend too much time tweeting, posting updates and sharing articles.

The risk is worth it and in addition to the advantages noted, it all contributes to a company’s search engine performance, which nobody can argue with. So to get to the point, here is my Business to Business Marketing Guide to Social Media. They’re five of the biggest names but that’s for a reason isn’t it?

LinkedIn
I start with LinkedIn because it is being heralded as the social networking platform more suited for B2B. The Facebook for professionals (not really but that’s what they say). It has more than 2 million members in Australia and 100 million members worldwide.

Create your individual profile and complete as much information as possible, the more info and the better your SEO return. Make sure you change your public profile to include a vanity URL, i.e. linkedin.com/johnsmith. Connect with as many of your contacts as you can, then go through their contacts and identify some opportunities. Start joining groups that are relevant to your industry and engage.

You should also create a company profile and again complete as much of the profile as you can including products or services. Then encourage other companies to connect with your company.

Finally, there is an advertising platform for LinkedIn and it’s great. You can target other members via location, company and their job title. It can be a really effective tool depending on your specific business. For example, if you’re selling business insurance you could target the CFO’s within your local area from companies with 100+ employees.

Blogging

I would say blogging is the single-most beneficial social media platform for B2B. It can be time consuming but the advantages plentiful. Blogging will drive traffic to your website in ways that you may not have realised. So let’s say that you’re a professional services business with hundreds of competitors all trying to rank in the top five results in Google. The beauty of writing blog posts is, you write about something specific, something that your potential clients are searching for. Instead of searching ‘Accounting Company Melbourne’ or ‘IT Company Melbourne’ they might search ‘How to start a business’ or ‘IT Opportunities for small business’ and all of a sudden there you are (and not the hundreds of competitors)..

Blogging also allows you to validate your knowledge within the marketplace. Sure the customer can read your website and everything that you say you can do for them but they will get more from your opinions on relevant topics.

Facebook
I consistently find myself advising B2B clients on one or the other, Facebook or Twitter. Facebook is primarily an opportunity for you to create an online community for your brand and business. It is a great opportunity to encourage conversations and is best utilised when you can get a level of engagement from that community. This may or may not be possible for your B2B.

I guess an exception in this case is to use Facebook as a customer service tool. Let’s say you’re still in that IT business and you invite your clients to use your Facebook page as an opportunity to ask small questions, so your tech guys can leave answers that are there for the whole client community to see. If it makes it easier for the client, it has to be good for business right?

Twitter
A little more susceptible to a one-way conversation (still highly recommend you engage). Identify the companies you would like to target and follow them. Look for local business and follow them. Search to see who is talking within your industry and follow them. Before you know it you’re engaging in the industry and wider business community. If you want to get attention of people try retweeting them and engaging. Use hashtags to enter yourself into a live stream of conversation. Share relevant articles, express your opinion, share your blog posts, ask people to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Twitter like Facebook can also be a terrific customer-service tool. I rarely like to give telcos a plug but @telstra uses Twitter really well as a customer service tool, which if your query is generic is a real time-saver (compared to waiting on a call)

YouTube
The online video site is the second-largest search engine online. It’s a great opportunity for you to upload product and/or services videos. You can also use the site to produce video blogs with the same theory as above. Whatever the strategy, potential clients can find your videos through search engines to help convince them of your services or alternatively you can actively promote the videos to get that next client over the line.

Honourable @Mentions

Quora
A simple Question and Answer tool. Users follow particular topics and when a question is put out there, those following submit their answers and they are voted on. It’s great for those looking for the answers of course. But the opportunity for B2B is to follow the topics relevant to your industry and answering when you can. By answering you are establishing a knowledge within the marketplace and creating more links to your website and improving your overall search engine presence.

Google+
It’s the newbie out there at the moment, already tipped to reach heights greater than Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m yet to be convinced at this stage because, whilst I love the features, it’s hard to network when you know very few people using it. But if some of the expectations are true then it could very well be a social media tool well worth B2B adopting.

Among a few it features Hangouts, Circles and Sparks that might all benefit B2B. The Hangouts are a great way to video chat and perhaps coordinate face to face meetings between the sales team and prospective clients. The Circles feature would allow a B2B to segment their audience and tailor communications accordingly.  The Sparks feature will allow you to let your audience know when you’ve published content they’ll be interested in.

SlideShare
It’s a great site that allows you to upload your powerpoint presentations like you would videos on YouTube. People can search their interests and find your presentations. It’s a great way to get people to look at your work and of course use the opportunity to encourage people to connect with your company.

Whatever platform you choose to investigate, I hope you don’t flatly dismiss social media as being an opportunity for businesses marketing to consumers… You can always benefit in engaging with potential clients on a human level, isn’t that what the free lunches and tickets are for?

Can you afford to make price your main selling point? Here’s five really good reasons why I believe you should not be discounting:

The big boys have the money to outlast you
It hurts any small business owner to see big retailers or big business in general coming out with a heavy schedule of advertising, promoting discounts and undercutting your products. But trying to combat this by matching the discounts is really dangerous because the chances are, they have bigger margins because of their buying power and they have more advertising dollars to promote their sales.

Consumers come to expect it all the time
In a frugal environment we as consumers are more than often researching online to find the best prices, or even visiting various stores to assess prices before purchasing. So it goes without saying, once we find the cheapest price for something then we will continue to go back. The only thing we’re loyal to at this stage is price. Once that price goes back up, then it’s back on, we’re searching again. This means you will have to find something else to keep them coming back otherwise they’re gone, or continue discounting.

We’re becoming immune to discounts
There was a time and it wasn’t that long ago when 10% or 20% off actually meant something. But now, anything less than 20% isn’t that special and to be honest 10% off or less is just embarrassing (maybe 10% off a BMW). This perception will not be changing overnight and worst case, it might continue so whilst you’re happy to discount 25%, have you got the margins to go to 40% and further?

It devalues your product and your service
Unfortunately we tend to perceive value by cost. Everything in a discount store is cheap and nasty and basically very poor quality. Is this really the case? Do we know for fact? No. But because it’s all cheap that’s the perception. So there is every chance that once you’ve been discounting for a an extended period of time, consumers will start to devalue your products and your service. This affects your brand and your business.

It cuts your margins and your profits
Business is tough. The overheads are increasing, consumers are cutting their spending. Can you afford to cut your margins in an environment like this? Obviously many see no other way. If you discount 50% then think about it, you’re going to need to sell twice as many units.

Of course it’s real easy to turn around and say don’t do it but you need a solution right? Please check out some of my other posts for some ideas or if you prefer to just keep discounting then hopefully these ideas should help:

• One Day Only Sales - Identify what is your slowest trading day and introduce discounts for that day each week. It will encourage the people looking for bargains to come in during the week and it will ensure your margins are still healthy on your busiest days.
• Encourage Loyalty - Ask for your customers mobile numbers to run small SMS campaigns, get their email address so you can send them an email newsletter, ask them to ‘Like’ you on Facebook. The point is, it’s OK to give a customer a discount if you know you’ll see them again and again. So get their details and provide exclusive discounts, it encourages loyalty.
• Minimum Spend - Only apply discounts on a minimum spend to ensure that you are doing what you can to increase revenue.
• Offer a Freebie - Is it possible in your situation to give away a freebie instead of a discount? At the end of the day, the consumer is looking for value. If you can source cheap, relevant gifts that perceive value this may be a better strategy. Perhaps this might even be branded to help encourage them coming back. For example, if you’re running 25% off and someone comes in for a $100 item, you’ve essentially handed them $25 in discounts but what if it was a $10 gift? As long as it weighs up in the customer’s mind.

Discounting has a place in any marketing strategy, but it can be dangerous and it should not be done hastily. Think about some of these options I’ve noted and be creative. You will be much better off if you do not compete for a customer based purely on price.

Photo credit by linder6580.

Totally wrong. Your subject line is the most important part of your message. If it’s not a good one, your email gets trashed in a nanosecond. In fact, research by ExactTarget (my email newsletter service) show that the average person spends only 2.7 seconds on a message before deciding if they’ll delete it, forward it or read it.

Just 2.7 seconds. That’s all the time you have to capture a readers attention. That’s why your subject line is so darn critical.

First, let’s talk about what you don’t put in a subject line. In order to avoid auto-deletes, it’s imperative for you to:

• Avoid salesy verbiage. Get rid of words like excited, hot new product, free offer or special pricing.

• Avoid info on your company. No one is interested in your new product announcements or company updates except you.

• Avoid capital letters. Just the first word should be capped. Otherwise it seems like a headline, not a personal message.

Now, let’s talk about what works in your prospecting emails. Here are several options that have proven effective with today’s crazy-busy prospects.

• Use a referral. If someone has referred you to this person, put that in your subject line. They’ll want to know why. For example, you might write: Terry Jones said to get in touch.

• Ask a quick question. If your prospect feels it’s simple and relevant, they’ll take a look. Your subject line might read: Quick question re: new client acquisition challenges.

• Tempt with ideas or information. My prospects are always interested in subject lines like this: Idea to reduce your sales cycle time or How XYZ company increased sales to Fortune 500 companies by 127%.

• Mention a trigger event. If something is happening within the company or in their greater business environment that’s relevant to your offering, bring that up. For example, if you read about a recent merger, you might write: Impact of XYZ merger on (insert relevant business issue you address.)

Get the picture? To work, your subject lines must focus on something your prospect cares about. If you do that, they’ll keep reading.

Here’s a major caveat though. When they start reading your message, it needs to deliver exactly what you promised in your subject line.

If you move into salesy mode or talk about your company, you’ll trigger your prospect’s auto-delete reaction. They can’t control it. And you’ve lost the opportunity to open the conversation.

Hopefully by now you understand just how critical those simple little subject lines are to your sales success. I’d suggest you sit down right now and create 10 new ones you can use in the upcoming weeks.

Finally, start your experiment. See if you can tell which subject lines are most effective with your prospects. Then create variations off the same theme. You’ll immediately see the difference in your sale success.

What are some of your favorites websites and blogs to read?
I always go to my deviantart.com, cgsociety.org & other art sites, this gives me ideas when I work on graphics. For blogs, I don’t usually read many blogs but I go to megagogo.com and it’s affiliates.

What are your favorite social media marketing tools, and why?
I use Facebook & LinkedIn, because a lot of people go there and because I’ve met a number of clients there.

How have social media, and/or your blog, helped build your business?
Word of mouth referrals helps me build trust with my clients because when you refer or they see that I am their friends’ friend they will also trust me to do their projects. Social media is one of the best marketing tools out there.

What’s your biggest online marketing challenge?
For now I have only tried advertising in Facebook & Google ads, but I haven’t challenged myself enough with online marketing. I still don’t have much time, I think it is because I have two jobs plus am actively freelancing at home.

Follow Crom on:

Tumblr: My art blog which I post my designs & artworks, it is http://www.tumblr.com/tumblelog/cromworx.

Link to company website: http://www.cromworx.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cromworx.

The Psychology of Graphics

In the previous two articles, we discussed both The Psychology of Color and The Psychology of Copy. In this third and final article in this three part series, I will be discussing one of possibly the most influential psychological aspects to a web site.  That if done effectively, will create an outstanding increase in your web site conversion rate.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

The Psychology of Graphics

“Ads with 10 or more visuals are 55 percent more likely to be noted than ads with few or no visuals.” – Drew Whitman. Graphics draw in the viewer. They engage, draw emotion, and educate them.  Without graphics, your site is like reading a nutrition label.  It’s informative, but doesn’t hold my attention.

But what are the best types of graphics to use on your site?  Do some graphics work just as well as others?

In my experience, there are a few categories of photos that when used, draw a huge response.

• Women
• Food
• Celebrities
• Groups of adults

The reasoning behind this can be connected to the psychology of the human mind.  Women are seen as more trustworthy, kind, and visually appealing than men are.  Food is a factor in human survival. People love to admire the lives they aspire to be in. And everybody has the desire to be accepted within a group or organization.

Here are a few other psychological graphic tips.

• Having a person in a white doctor’s coat draws immediate credibility.  Whether the person is an actual doctor or not.
• A women facing directly at you smiling is the most trustworthy image to have on your site.
• Placing a photo of your product on the main screen increases conversion by 13%.

There are a million different tricks to boosting your business web site.  These are just a few examples.  Most will come with trial and error.  These, on the other hand, have been proven time and time again and can be implemented today!