Small Business Tools
Advanced small business tools help to avoid a big problems with the finance planing strategy.
Posted by Sara Lopez on December 23rd, 2010 ~
0 Comments The more I read about virtual phone services, the more I like them. For small businesses, they can really help provide customer service and communication at a reasonable price – and make the small business look much bigger.
Below Kevin Baker, my1voice Product Marketing Manager for Protus offers tips on how a virtual phone service can help keep your small business running during the holidays – and help provide some time to enjoy the holidays with your family as well.
- Tip 1: Record informational messages that answer repetitive questions. Rather than taking time to answer the same questions about what days you’ll be working over the holidays or what time the business is open, pre-record a message and make it an option on your virtual receptionist. This tip is extra helpful for businesses whose hours will be varying greatly during the holidays.
- Tip 2: Spur holiday sales by offering door busters. Add a burst to your ads and/or direct mail/email promotions encouraging customers to call a particular extension you set up to promote the door buster of the day.
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Tags: Phone, Phone Answering
Posted by Brian Reed on December 23rd, 2010 ~
0 Comments I don’t recall the first time I was asked about the “cash-to-cash cycle” for a business, but I do remember my surprise when I realized how long it was. The term “cash-to-cash cycle” refers to the time from when the cash outlays start for a new product, until the time that the cash revenues are fully realized (deposited in the bank).
When a new product development starts, it can be as a result of an idea, a competitive product, or the need for “something new” in the product line. Whatever the reason, as soon as a decision to proceed has been reached, cash starts to flow out. Designers, engineers, marketers and so forth are all working and being paid. Other expenditures also start. Market research must be done, or completed if some preceded the decision.
Prototypes must be built, which might mean an outlay for tooling and/or equipment. Testing must be done, perhaps at outside laboratories. Package designs a
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Tags: Cashtocash Cycle, Cycle
Posted by Sara Lopez on December 19th, 2010 ~
0 Comments I was enjoying Chris Dixon’s Size markets using narratives, not numbers when I realized his point is a lot like a point I like to make about patents:
good to have, but not to believe in
On sizing new markets, with startups looking for investors, Chris says:
The only way to understand and predict large new markets is through narratives. Some popular current narratives include: people are spending more and more time online and somehow brand advertisers will find a way to effectively influence them; social link sharing is becoming an increasingly significant source of website traffic and somehow will be monetized; mobile devices are becoming powerful enough to replace laptops for most tasks and will unleash a flood of new applications and business models.
That makes good sense to me. He adds:
For early-stage companies, you should never rely on quantitative analysis to estimate market size. Venture-style startups are bets on broad, secular trends. Good VCs understand this. B
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Tags: Good, Good Believed
Posted by Brian Reed on December 19th, 2010 ~
0 Comments Sometimes the hardest thing for small business is the strategy. We see the day to day need, intimately, and we dive in with our products, services and solutions. And because we hustle diligently, and bustle consistently (hustle and bustle? Can you feel the holiday message on the way?), we survive.
But long term, business is about more than just survival. If we intend to thrive and create things for our children’s children to build on, then marketing (and systems) remains a linchpin to our businesses.
What better time than the holiday season to give ourselves the gift of strategy?
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Tags: Marketing Solutions, Solutions
Posted by Sara Lopez on December 17th, 2010 ~
0 Comments It was a warm late-spring day in 1999. I sat in my office with a venture capitalist, my lawyer, and my son. The sun beamed in the patio outside my office. We talked about Palo Alto Software and its web subsidiary bplans.com. At one point the VC said:
You wouldn’t be an attractive investment for VCs. You’re too profitable.
I chuckled. I thought it was a joke. We’d grown sales in four years from less than $1 million to more than $5 million annual sales. We had to be profitable because we had no outside money.
He said:
That’s no joke. It’s like the Oklahoma gold rush, a land grab, and the assumption is that if you’re profitable, you’ve stopped too soon. You should be spending more to build traffic.
Those were strange times.
Posted by Sara Lopez on December 10th, 2010 ~
0 Comments Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) and the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) have announced the winners and finalists of the prestigious 2010 Regional Innovation Awards for new technology.
The 2010 Regional Award for New Technology recognizes small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for their innovative excellence in the development and application of innovative new technologies across Canada.
Winning this award is an incredible coup for the companies involved. While you can read the entire list of winners and finalists in each of the five geographic regions in this press release, I thought it would be most interesting to see what each of five winning companies actually did so I looked them up.
Here are the five regional winners of the 2010 Regional Innovation Awards for new technology and what each company does.
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Tags: Winners
Posted by Sara Lopez on December 10th, 2010 ~
0 Comments Last Tuesday I had the privilege of taking 10 half-hour appointments with student entrepreneurs developing business plans. The idea was listening, talking, suggesting, and maybe helping with a thought or two. What a kick that is. No wonder I love what I do for a living.
I started each of these sessions with a warning about one-size-fits-all business advice:
would-be mentors and advice givers contradict each other all the time. Half the time the advice you get today is directly opposite the advice you got last week. And last week’s contradicted what you were told the month before.
Everybody who’s been down a path to entrepreneurship thinks theirs was the right path to take. And everybody else should do it exactly like they did. Get angel investment, or don’t. Have passion, or a big market. Build a team, or lever up. Grow quickly in several markets at once, or focus on a beachhead. Do it like I did. That’s what we all say.
But you have to have the strength to do it your way, not my way. Listen to me, absorb, digest, take some of what I said into your plan, or not. But it’s Read more…
Tags: Business, Onesizefitsall Business