By now, everyone has been talking about or has talked about the importance of time management for any small business. It’s one of the integral components of successful home based business systems. But what most home based business systems lack is how to efficiently implement time management when applied to result-producing activities. You know that it’s important to organize your time, organize your activities, and try to minimize the time spent on activities to increase output. However, what I find lacking is that most people are not talking about how to apply those techniques in reference to home based business systems where you have several categories of tasks that need to be accomplished every day. Those categories are prospecting, business execution, and support.In order to create a time management action plan, you must first decide how much time you set out to devote to your home based business systems.Prospecting:When we consider prospecting in home based business systems, we need to understand that prospecting needs to be worked in two pools: customer base and distribution. Now, most people start freaking out when it comes to bringing people in to their businesses, or are up in arms on how to do it right. But isn’t that one of the basic precepts of any business? Think about it: what is the best way for you to increase your reach?Consider the basic retail business in this regard. Companies like Walmart, Target, Macy’s, or franchises like McDonald’s or Burger King all have exponentially increased their revenues by expanding their number of distribution points. The more stores in strategic geographic areas, the more customer base. When it comes to your home based business systems, the same principle applies. If you identify people that want to achieve their dreams through owning their own business, you can expand your customer base and increase sales revenues through increased distribution.Anyhow, back to the main focus. 1/2 of your day should be focused on prospecting customers and potential business owners. Business doesn’t grow if you just focus on administration and maintenance. This is especially true of home based business systems because of the fact that you don’t have the large financial budget compared to retail outlets and corporate companies, so you need to create clout and business organically. These methods can be done online and offline, in-person or utilizing social media. However, you must set out specific times in which you go and promote your business to get exposure.Some examples of how I prospect are that I join local community groups through Meetup and Chamber of Commerce. I keep a schedule of events that are posted and make time to get out and network. You can even prospect through your daily errands. If you are a stay-at-home mom, there are tons of ways to prospect. Whether it’s at the park, grocery store, picking up your kids, PTA meetings, every day that you are out in the world is another opportunity to prospect customers and potential business partners. Study up on how to start and maintain conversations and figure out approaches that will land you names to add to your list. I will write an article on this at a later time.Executing Business:A 1/4 of your remaining time should be devoted to administration and business maintenance tasks. Home based business systems all have administrative tasks that need to be completed on a timely basis. Failure to do so can result in penalties and setbacks in your business. It’s no different than the same penalties that traditional businesses suffer when failing to comply with certain regulations. For example, if a restaurant fails to renew their alcohol license or they fail a health inspection, fines are implemented. In your business, tasks can include filling out forms to maintain sales reports for safe taxable reporting, organizing your names list, and answering emails, tweets, comments, and posting new content on your funnels. The list goes on and on, so it’s key to write all your tasks down per week and organize them in to daily lists to organize your time to complete them.Supporting Your Business:This is something that I think most home based business systems lack in terms of having their business owners spend time thanking and maintaining customer loyalty. I’ve found that offering to provide your current customers with incentives to refer other customers to you is one of the primary and most effective marketing methods there is. Identify your top 5 customers and personally thank them by sending a note. Also useful is to provide a special promo incentive for them, like a tiered discount structure for the number of customers they refer to you. Just be sure that you don’t harass your customers by sending too much communication. Be smart with your business. Give them incentives to provide reviews and testimonials for the products they love that they purchase from you, so you solidify your sales materials for other potential customers.Not only do you want to support your customers, but support your team as well. Take time out to call your teammates and make sure you are providing them the support they need. Stabilize your organization and you stabilize your own income as well. Utilize contests to promote friendly competition with your team to boost sales, and set goals with your team and follow-up with them to keep them accountable.Don’t forget to keep track of your business volume and make sure that you are being rewarded for the result-producing activities you and your team are conducting.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.
Starting a Home Based Business – Turn Your Hobby Into Cash
Starting a home based business and working from home can be exciting and fun, there are many people that have started a business from their hobbies. What was once was a past time of pleasure can turn into a full time work from home business. One industry that seems to keep growing by leaps and bounds across America is antiques and collectibles.There are many across America that start each year, for the simple reason, they were introduced by their Mom or Dad or a close relative, this hobby has an infectious way about it. Once you have a true desire to collect the treasure of the past, the desire will always be with you throughout your life, once you have been bitten by the bug there is no turning back and there is no known cure.There are many people that enter this business on a daily bases, not having been associated with anyone that can show them the ropes of how to go about it or to know the value of the collectibles and antiques. Many people start out collecting just one item, such as collecting dolls or collecting western gear and cowboy spurs or western prints etc.Many will start collecting as a team, that is husband and wife. The husband will collect the items that is of interest to him and the wife will collect what is of interest to her.• Where To Buy….If you’re a newbie to collecting, you might want to know where to start first in buying your collectibles. But, before you rush of on your buying spree, you need to learn a few things first, so you don’t get taken in on your purchases, not knowing to value of the items you buy can cost you a great deal of money in the end.• Buy Low, Sell High….You always want to buy with this in mind, buy at the lowest price you can negotiate, with a view of reselling at a profit, if you have the hope of starting your own home based business. To gain the knowledge of the value of antiques and collectibles come in various ways. Buy, collect and study the antique and collectibles appraisal books, always have the books with you for reference purposes when shopping for your treasures.• Starting With Garage Sales….Garage sales are a great way to start to learn about your collectibles you want to acquire. In order to get the best buys, it is advisable for you to line up your sales a day before they start, if they start on Saturday, make your list of ones that are advertising antiques and collectibles on Friday.• You’re Not The Only Dog in the Hunt….Be mindful that you’re not the only one looking for the great buys, there is a lot a competition searching out the garage sales. To get a leg up on the competition try to be at the garage sale an hour before they open, sometimes this works and sometimes it don’t. You will meet all kinds of people, some will let your browse around and others will flat out run you off if you are an early bird.• Trash or Treasure….
When mapping out your garage sales, always take the shortest distance between the sales. When arriving at the garage sale, if they have unpacked everything then you can make a quick scan of the merchandise and see if there is something of value in the collectibles category. Be aware, there are people that think they have treasures, but in fact they have trash and need to make a run to the dump.• Expanding Your Market….When shopping for the items you want to collect, you will invariably run across other valuable collector items, don’t pass them up, you need to expand your market, remember there is a buyer for each and every collectors item, the more versatile your inventory is, the greater your market will be. Your home based business can become a reality with patience and hard work.