You’re out there everyday, telling the world how great your service is, that what you have to offer is exactly the solution they are looking for. The best way to prove that your services are the answer to your prospect’s problems is to build your credibility as a professional and to show that you’re the expert in your field. photo credit: gcoldironjr2003 Here’s how to prove that you are the solution: Prove that you deliver what you promise
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How To BE The Solution
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twenty_questions/ / CC BY-NC 2.0 We live in a world where there is a plethora of options – we are deluged by products, gizmos and gadgets, some of which we don’t really have any use for and most of which tend to get obsolete in no time at all. So if you’re a marketer, you must know how to sell your products effectively so that customers know what they stand to gain by buying and using them. A successful marketer avoids making fatal errors, mistakes that could kill their chances of success. There are many marketing don’ts, but the most important of them are: Being too intrusive: No matter how badly people want to buy something, they’re not going to buy from you if you’re too intrusive. I hate callers who ring my doorbell when I’m busy and refuse to go away; I get irritated with cold calls from salespeople who gain access to my mobile number through mass marketing lists that they purchase and hound me at all hours of the day; and I find pop ups that block the web page I’m trying to view a big nuisance that I must close immediately. So when you’re intrusive and in your customers’ faces, you don’t start off on the right foot or make a good impression on them. You tend to drive them straight to the arms of the competition at times. It’s hard enough earning a good reputation, and your job is made even more difficult when you have to overcome a bad one
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Guest Post: Marketing At its Worst – 3 Marketing Mistakes You Must Never Make
Whether we like it or not, business these days revolves around the use of credit or debit accounts and if you’re involved in e-commerce you have to address this situation. It is fairly easy to establish payment procedures using these types of cards for your online business, whether you use PayPal or another authorized reseller
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Don’t Give Up on Your Customer if Their Payment Card is Declined
photo credit: ManojVasanth 6 Tips to Start and Run a Successful Business It’s not something that most of us would dare venture, but starting your own business venture does have its share of excitement. There are pessimists who say that 9 out of 10 new ventures fail, but then, failure is a relative term. It depends on how you define it – if you don’t make a profit in the first few months, are you a failure? If you are not busy all the time, does that mean that you’ve failed to succeed? And if you are going through a bad patch, would that count as failure? The point I’m trying to make is that we all want to succeed, but success means different things to each of us.
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Guest Post: 6 Tips to Start and Run a Successful Business
Trevor Emdon and I met over the internet a few months ago, and we hit it off right away — something about personalities meshing that just can’t be explained. He offered to write a series of guest posts for The Savvy Entrepreneur blog, specifically to help you, my dear readers, with ‘out of the box’ strategies to get more of what you want in your business. Enjoy! The Savvy Mindset – Time Management While You Sleep! Working from home means you can run your own schedule. That sounds great until you get a “to do” list so long that clocking off time becomes when you can no longer keep your eyes open. Here’s an unusual tip for time management. As you go through the day you’ll accumulate things to add to your to do list
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Guest Post: The Savvy Mindset – Time Management While You Sleep
I don’t want to feed into the R-word frenzy, but I want to know how you feel about your marketing efforts this past year? If you’re like most virtual assistants I’ve spoken with, you feel burned out. In fact, many of you are thinking of giving up your VA business to get a “real” job or do something else. There are a lot of “shoulds” around marketing. This year’s “shoulds” were all about using social media to market your VA business. But how many clients did you actually get from tweeting and from your Facebook fan page? What was your ROI on social media?
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Exhausted of “Marketing Activities” That Don’t Get Results?
Do you follow marketing techniques the successful VAs are using, in hopes of learning from their success? You obviously understand the importance of having strong role models, keeping tabs on what successful VAs are doing to generate business, and imitating some of what they do. “ After all, ” you reason, “ if it works for them, it could work for me too! ” But for some reason, copying what your peers are doing just isn’t working the way you had hoped.
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When Doing What Other Successful VAs Are Doing Isn’t Working For You
Basic Tips to Establish Yourself as a Brand Becoming a brand has lot of advantages. A strong brand doesn’t only give financial advantages but you also get loyal customers who connect themselves with your brand. Companies with established brands can introduce new products easily and effectively under their same family brand. Branding gives you a significant advantage over your competitors when customers start associating advantages with your brand. Don’t think that branding could be done for only big companies with an unlimited ad budget. You can also establish your small business as a brand. In this article I will be discussing some tips which you can implement to create an effective branding strategy for your own business. Relevant Tagline: Your brand should have a relevant tagline with its name which represents what your business stands for. The tagline would give an idea to your customers about your services. For example, the tagline for Apple is “Think Different.” Taglines help your customers to connect with your brand
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Guest Post: Basic Tips to Establish Yourself as a Brand
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Sean D’Souza or Psychotactics.com. If not, you should! I’ve enjoyed their website, newsletter and products over the years and have found it to have very useful marketing information. This morning, I got an invitation that said Sean was giving away a workshop he normally sells for $2500. And that he’s doing a test and giving a limited number of copies away absolutely FREE… No charge. This workshop, the Brain Alchemy Masterclass , explains why structure—not marketing —is critical to grow a business effectively
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$2500 Marketing Workshop For Free
Mainframes to Minis to Workstations to PC Desktops to laptops to now, handhelds and SmartPhone computing. We need to pay more attention to the way people relate to and use these devices! Now every five years, a new generation of people relate and use these devices in ways we cannot imagine!
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Generations of Technology Speeding Up Themselves….It’s not the hardware you need to pay attention to..
Normally, October is Anti-Procrastination Month here on The Savvy Entrepreneur blog. Since all my time is spent working on my new venture, Mompowerment , I decided not to post daily procrastination-beating tips, tricks, resources and suggestions this time ’round. However, Chris Lloyd was kind enough to submit an article for me to share with you here! Enjoy! Planning To Beat Procrastination Scientists have conducted research into procrastination and what causes it. You can read the report for one study here (pdf), but I’ll try and sum up the results and what they mean for you without all the big scientific words
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Guest Post: Planning to Beat Procrastination
[ Beware : Grab yourself a fresh cup of coffee or make yourself a green smoothie ; This is a long (but important) one.] Today, I presented Secrets to Using the Know, Like and Trust Factor to Get Clients at the 4th annual Online International Virtual Assistants Convention (OIVAC). I think I loaded the audience with WAY too much information, but overall I think it went OK! At the end of my presentation, I apprehensively made my first public announcement about the new direction I’m going. So I thought I’d share it with you here before you hear it from someone else. [I wanted to write it here first, but I was too busy putting my presentation together -- last minute as usual.] So… I’m taking my business in a new direction, as I already said.
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The Cat’s Out of The Bag
Last week I asked an innocent question on one of the VA discussion boards about VAs opinions on the work-at-home-mom label. An animated and passionate conversation ensued! Based on the conversation, most VAs feel the work-at-home-mom label casts a negative or unprofessional light on their services to their clients and prospects. It created such a buzz that it got me thinking — Is having an open conversation about this topic worth pursuing? I thought it would be nice to get all us women together and talk about the challenges virtual administrative assistant moms face and how to overcome them. But that’s just me. I really want to know if you feel the same ! If you’re a Virtual Assistant, would you take 2 minutes to answer a short 5-question survey to know your level of interest (even if you’re not)? Click Here to take survey Or leave your comments here and let’s keep the conversation rolling!
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Stigma Attached to Being a Work-At-Home-Mom (WAHM)
Can you tell I have branding on the brain??!! You would too, if you were me!! I’ve been wanting to brand my coaching business since the beginning, but “never had the time” (translation: haven’t taken the time). I thought I was on to something with The Brainstormist . While it’s brilliant (if I should say so myself), I found it too limiting — like ALL I do is brainstorming. At the beginning of this summer, Jaime Lee Mann came to my rescue yet again. [For those of you who don't know this, if it hadn't been for Jaime Lee, my 30-second intro guidebook would still be a draft copy!] For the past 2 months, we’ve been emailing each other back and forth. She’s come up with some AWESOME branding ideas but they just weren’t right for me. It’s the kind of situation where I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know when I see it… With each email, I’d feel we were getting closer to something big, the more restless I’d feel. You know, branding is a BIG DEAL. It seems so final… And being the ever doubtful person, I much prefer playing it safe by NOT making a decision. At least then I won’t have to worry about making the wrong decision (I have my issues, I know… I’m a work in progress…).
Inc.com is reporting that Indiana is the third state to pass a law requiring state agencies to analyze the economic impact to small businesses when proposing rules and regulations. The other two states to pass such legislation are New Mexico and Virginia. In addition to requiring state agencies to analyze the economic impact of the proposed rules and regulations, the law also requires these state agencies to evaluate alternative regulatory methods. Regulatory flexibility laws are important to small businesses because they help reduce the costs and burdens that come with regulatory compliance. Hopefully, these three states are just the beginning of a nation wide trend to free small businesses from some of the regulatory stranglehold.
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Indiana Gives Small Businesses A Voice In The Regulatory Process
Welcome to Law & Entrepreneurship News for Blawg Review #4. This blog is powered by law students at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Things have been a bit slow around here lately, as the students are immersed in final examinations, so we are thrilled to have the Blawg Review this week. Let me begin with a question: Do a disproportionate number of blawgers use Blogger? Having recently hosted the Carnival of the Capitalists, I can tell you that those business folks have mostly hopped off the Blogger train. I suspect that lack of funds (law students) and lack of technical prowess (some of the rest) explains the difference, though I am just speculating. Ok, I know you’re anxious, so let’s get to the posts … Law Schools Jeremy Blachman , on the eve of his graduation from Harvard Law School, confesses the dirty little secret of all new law school graduates — law school teaches you nothing about the law. Colin Samuels , ten years removed from law school, consoles Jeremy: “You know more than you think you know.” and “Much of what you know is useless in the real world, but will be impossible to forget.” My co-blogger Christine Hurt at Conglomerate asks, “Are Law Schools Family Friendly?” So how about this for irony: in her post, Christine observes, “Outside of class time, I am available whenever a child … has a dentist appointment….” Then, look what happened this morning ! Robert Ambrogi suggests that at least two law professors would not have made the Legal Affairs list of “Top 20 Legal Thinkers in America” had is not been for their famous blogs.
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Blawg Review #4
I am going to post stories from the past three days. Small Business Week has opened the floodgates to small business articles so here is a sampling: – House Committee passes Small Business Checking Act which would allow small businesses to earn interest on checking accounts (NFIB) – How women can enhance their bargaining skills (Business Week) – The reasons why many startups collapse (Business Week) – Tips on where to find funding (Business Week) – The San Francisco Bay Guardian is calling on politicians to fight President Bush’s SBA budget cuts – An American Express survey shows that small business owners are optimistic about their growth prospects over the next six months (Inc.com) – SBA Office of Advocacy testifies in front of Congress in an effort to eliminate the tax gaps between small business treatment compared to its big business counterparts ( Press release here ) – Entrepreneur.com reports on why small businesses are vital to America – SBA Office of Advocacy testifies in favor of regulatory reform – Sen
In recognition of National Small Business Week, the Internal Revenue Service has announced an abundance of free resources available to assist the nation’s 45 million small business and self-employed taxpayers with their tax responsibilities. And, they are all just a mouse-click away. The small business section of IRS.gov provides a one-stop resource for information on starting and operating a business. On this site taxpayers can: Learn about employment tax requirements. Make tax payments. Find out how to set up and distribute retirement plans.
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IRS to Offer Free Tax Help to Small Businesses
With finals taking up a majority of my time for the next couple of weeks, I am going to be providing quick hits (with links) for what is going on in the small business world instead of longer articles. Yahoo.com is reporting that President Bush has declared this week small business week with programs and ceremonies to celebrate America’s small businesses Inc.com is reporting on the fastest growing counties in terms of job growth (interpreting a recently released Bureau of Labor Statistics report). A Wal-Mart survey is indicating that small business economic confidence is waning. The Chicago Tribune is reporting that spending on technology will be slow for small businesses this year.
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Happy Small Business Week
The House of Representatives passed a new bill yesterday with $8 Billion of targeted tax incentives. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes provisions that would shorten recovery periods for natural gas pipelines and air pollution control facilities, ease restrictions for deductible contributions to nuclear decommissioning funds, exempt from tax-exempt bond arbitrage rules some prepayments for natural gas, and increase the limitation for the oil depletion deduction for small refiners. The Bill also would provide limited incentives for residential solar- powered water heating, photovoltaics, and fuel cells and would create a 15 percent business tax credit for the purchase of fuel cells. Both individuals and businesses would be allowed to use several new energy credits against the alternative minimum tax. The Senate is expected to begin working on an energy bill within the next two weeks. The House vote was 249 to 183
