Month: May 2010

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Two Types of Entrepreneurs Plan for Vacation

No matter how much a female entrepreneur loves her business, taking time away from it is essential to finding a balance that provides security for the company as well as her personal satisfaction. Because each business owner has an individual style for running her business, she must make individual considerations when it comes to vacationing.

A recent study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals there are five distinct types of women in business. Based on professional market research of more than 2,500 women in business, this study shows that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business and therefore each one has a unique combination of needs. This article outlines two of the five types and provides tips for planning for much-needed rest and relaxation.

Merry Jane. This entrepreneur is building a part-time or “flexible time” business that gives her a creative outlet (whether she’s an ad agency consultant or she makes beautiful artwork) that she can manage within specific constraints around her schedule. She may work a day-job, or need to be fully present for family or other pursuits. Representing about 19% of women in business, she realizes she could make more money by working longer hours, but she’s happy with the tradeoff she has made because her business gives her tremendous freedom.

The multi-faceted Merry Jane is adept at juggling several different aspects of life at once –  including her business, her other priorities, and taking care of herself. She appreciates the flexibility to work when, where and as much as she wants. The desire to maintain that flexibility means Merry Jane is very systems-oriented, and she doesn’t put an exorbitant amount of time into her business on an ongoing basis. Plus, Merry Jane-owned businesses are often not the primary source of income in the household. Therefore, if Merry Jane’s other obligations allow her to do so, vacationing does not pose a problem.

One challenge Merry Jane faces is that she would like her business to make more money without a significant investment of time. She already excels at managing her time, so if she increased her income, she would have better means for using her free time to vacation.

Here are some ideas for Merry Jane to consider for gaining more clients and profiting, while retaining her time freedom – and vacationing potential:

* Identify the target and a clear message. Merry Jane should define an “ideal” customer, and define his or her needs. Then she can market the product or service to that customer as fulfillment of his or her needs. This will save Merry Jane time and money on unnecessary or misdirected marketing efforts, and will land her more of the “right” customers. She can then use the time and money she saves – and the new profit she makes – toward a well-deserved vacation.
* Select an appropriate marketing method. Most Merry Jane business owners need a slow-growth marketing method that builds relationships over time, and that doesn’t require a huge monetary or time investment. Examples include social networking, affiliate marketing and referral marketing. These marketing methods can work for Merry Jane even while she is on vacation, so she won’t need to worry about maintaining them while she is relaxing.
* Make it easy for new customers to buy the first time. Merry Jane might offer incentives for first-time buyers, such as coupons or discounts. They can make it easy for customers to keep buying by offering incentives such as auto-billing or earning a free product or service after a specific amount of time. Again, these profit-boosting ideas do not require much work on Merry Jane’s part, and can continue making money for her even while she takes time away from the company.

Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who never actually set out to start a business. Instead, she may have decided to start a business due to frustration with her job or a layoff and then she decided to use her business and personal contacts to strike out on her own. Or, she may have started making something that served her own unmet needs and found other customers with the same need, giving birth to a business. Although Accidental Jane may sometimes struggle with prioritizing what she needs to do next in her business, she enjoys what she does and is making good money. About 18% of all women business owners fit the Accidental Jane profile.

Most Accidental Jane business owners report a high level of satisfaction with their businesses. They often started their companies to create their ideal jobs – to gain control over critical aspects of their working lives. They want enough, but not too much, work, and enough income to meet their needs – and they often have it. Because Accidental Jane business owners like making and living by their own rules, they often have no trouble taking vacation. One consideration, though: because they dislike corporate politics and often don’t want to be responsible for traditional employees, vacationing requires more planning (since they may not have employees to handle their businesses while they’re gone).

If Accidental Jane can gain control of the typical ebb and flow cycle that plagues many of the entrepreneurs in this group, she can more easily execute the necessary planning for her vacations. Low-maintenance marketing (such as an ongoing newsletter, pre-written tweets to go out periodically on Twitter, or pre-written weekly blog posts), can help Accidental Jane to market even when she’s working, so that when she finishes one project, she has another waiting. With a consistent flow of clients and projects coming through her door, Accidental Jane can plan for a slow week or two during which to take a vacation – and she can relax while she’s there, knowing that work is waiting when she returns.

Taking time off is just as crucial to running a successful business as making calls, sending invoices and closing sales. It provides business owners with the relaxation, rejuvenation and refreshment they need to get back to work energized and powered up, in their best form.

About the Author:

Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com.

Categories
Operations

Seven Tax Tips for Business

Article Contribute by Bernard B. Kamoroff, C.P.A, author of 422 Tax Deductions for Businesses

Tax Filing Season is here, and there are still several things you can do to reduce your taxes for 2009. Here are Seven Tax Tips that can possibly save you a lot of money on your 2009 taxes. Remember, “It’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep!”

Tip #1. For businesses on the cash accounting system (most small businesses), expenses are usually deducted the year paid. However, if you charge any business expenses to your bank credit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover) you can deduct those expenses the year incurred even though you pay them in the next year. Go through your December charges and add them to your December expenses.

Tip #2. Normally, the cost of your inventory (goods for sale, parts) cannot be written off until sold. But if you have any damaged inventory, inventory that is out of date or out of fashion, goods unsalable for any reason, you can write off this inventory for 2009.

Tip #3. Your business expenses are deductible even if you paid them from your non-business bank account, personal credit card or debit card, or cash. Take a few minutes and go through all of your expenses for the year. If the expenses were for your business, deduct them. (Does not apply to corporations).

Tip #4. Manufacturers, and some construction, engineering and architecture firms, software developers, and video producers, are eligible for a 9% “manufacturer’s deduction” for income earned from domestic production. This “bonus” deduction is in addition to the deductions already allowed for manufacturing expenses.

Tip #5. In addition to your deductible business expenses, you may qualify for special “Tax Credits” available to businesses. Tax credits are very specific and limited, but if you qualify, the credits reduce your taxes dollar for dollar. Tax credits can be a real tax pot-of-gold.

Tip #6. You can put some of your business profit into an IRA or a SEP-IRA, and not pay income taxes on the profit until you withdraw the money. You have until April 15, 2010 to set up and contribute to an IRA or a SEP-IRA for the 2009 tax year.

Tip #7. Finally, and one almost sure way to reduce your taxes, is to re-examine every purchase, every expense you made in 2009. Make sure you’ve taken all the business tax deductions you are entitled to: expenses you didn’t record in your ledgers, expenses you didn’t think were deductible, “personal” expenses that qualify as business expenses. Neither the IRS nor your accountant is going to know about a deduction you forgot to take. It’s entirely up to you.

About the Author
Seven Tax Tips for Business are excerpted from 422 Tax Deductions for Businesses and Self-Employed Individuals by Bernard B. Kamoroff, C.P.A., 9th Edition, 2010. www.bellsprings.com. Toll free 800-515-8050

Categories
Entrepreneurs How-To Guides Online Business Operations

How to Create a Sales Policy That is Fair to ALL of Your Clients

When you start developing your multiple streams of income business by adding products and programs which are available on your website, there’s a very specific policy you need to have in place … and that is a clearly defined Sales Policy.

Before we get into what this is about and why you need it, let me just take a minute to ask you how you would handle the following scenarios:

* You offer a discount to prospective clients of either a dollar amount or percentage off the price of your product/program if they purchase before a certain date.  A client comes to you after the deadline and says they didn’t read your email in time, can they still receive the discount?  What do you say?

* You are offering quite an expensive program so decide to make things easier on your clients by offering a payment plan.  Part way through the payment plan one of your client’s credit cards gets declined.  What do you do?

* You offer a guarantee on your product/program and a client comes to you asking for a refund that is outside of your guarantee period.  What do you say?

As soon as you start selling products and programs online all of these scenarios (and others) become very real – and, yes, I have found myself having to deal with all of the above!

Your Sales Policy is simply a statement which lets your clients and customers know what they can expect from you and how you handle your sales processes.  How your sales policy is structured is entirely up to you; it’s your business and you’re the business owner, but once you’ve decided what those policies are you need to be strong in your implementation.  Having a central page that clearly lays out your sales policies will make the implementation of them far easier (for you) and smoother, and will ensure that you’re being fair to ALL of your clients.

The sort of things you would include in your sales policy are:

* How you handle discounts and coupons that are requested after the deadline.

* How you handle coupons that should have been processed at the time of purchase, i.e. via your shopping cart system.

* How you handle declined credit card transactions (and you will get them when you start offering payment plans).

* How you handle your regular holiday sales.

* How you handle requests for refunds, especially if that request happens after the guarantee period.

These are all situations that you have to consider and assume will happen in your business and therefore you need to plan accordingly.  The best way to do this is by creating a Sales Policy page that is linked to from all of your own sales pages.  You should put it at the bottom of each sales page, but also reference it on the area of your sales page where your customer is just about to purchase.

For example, a great place to link to your Sales Policy page is right underneath where you have your ‘Click Here to order’ button.   Then simply have a sentence underneath that says, “Please see Sales Policy for full details”.

Tip:  Make sure your sales policy page opens in a new browser window so your customer doesn’t lose the sales page when going to review your sales policy.

Once you have your Sales Policy page all set up then should you find yourself in one of the scenarios outlined above, you simply direct your client to your page.  And when you have to say “no” to your client it makes your response a lot less personal and more graceful – especially if you’re having to respond yourself rather than having a team member do it for you.

Having a clearly defined Sales Policy in place eliminates a lot of the stress and frustration of having to deal with these situations, and allows you to be fair to ALL of your clients.

Categories
Entrepreneurs Online Business

Increase Product Sales with These 3 Types of Special Offers

When you’re an online solo service professional (solopreneur) it’s crucial that you move away from the hours-for-dollars business model and create a multiple streams of income business, i.e. your income comes from a variety of different sources:

  1. Passive income through the sale of information products.
  2. Leveraged income by creating and running group programs.
  3. One-on-one client income; this is your highest level service and you only work with a few clients at this level.

Creating passive income in your business through the sale of information products is at the heart of a multiple streams of income business. And once sales are going well you can be generating a consistent income each and every month.

Sometimes, though, you need to give sales a little helping hand, particularly if you’re launching a new product. Today I’d like to share with you three ways in which you can increase your product sales through using special offers.

1. Create a coupon. If your shopping cart service allows you to do this, coupons are a really quick and easy way to offer a discount. You have lots of options when it comes to creating coupons; you can set them up for a dollar amount, a percentage amount, a specified time period, or even a minimum purchase amount. Simply create a coupon in your shopping cart, give it a name (which is the coupon code), and then tell your customers the code they need to input at the checkout in order to get the discount.

2. Create a time sensitive discount. This follows on from the point above and involves creating a coupon; however the reason that I really like this special offer is that you can set the expiration date on your coupons too. This is really handy if you want to run a special promotion through to, say, midnight on a certain date (you know the type of offer I mean – this is very common). But what’s so neat is that you don’t have to be sat at your PC at midnight to switch the pricing over – the coupon will automatically expire and your pricing will revert to normal – completely automated!

3. Offer a bonus product. For a certain period of time you could also offer a bonus product; this could be another one of your lower-priced products, or a special teleclass or report, or anything else that you think will add value to the product you are currently promoting. Very often someone will buy your product because they’re getting your bonus too. Also set a deadline on the bonus to encourage your customers to take action. This could be purchase before a certain date or offer a limited number of bonuses.

Don’t just save these ideas for when you’re launching a new product; use them when you want to re-launch an existing product, get sales moving for one of your other products, or you simply want to give your business a boost.

Categories
People & Relationships

Business Opportunities With “Team” Mentality Can Help Ensure Success

Article Contributed by Tami Stodghill

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, my husband and I researched countless opportunities before landing on the one we finally decided on. For years we hesitated to make a move to be our own bosses. I suppose, at the time, some of that was fear of failure. However, a large portion of why we were afraid to move forward with our dream was that the opportunities we looked into somehow didn’t feel right or didn’t seem to fit. To a big degree, it was the free continuing training and mentoring that helped us finally make a decision, but it was also the “team” mentality that our mentors brought to the table that helped “seal the deal” so-to-speak. The comradery that a team offers in and of itself is valuable. But there are far more advantages to that approach in a business than the obvious.

Our team participates in nightly calls Monday through Thursdays and during that time, we accomplish a great deal. We are able to pose questions, get opinions from other business owners and offer input of our own. My husband and I call these valuable phone calls our B.S. sessions—Brain Storming Sessions. And out of those calls, we bring away a feeling of being part of a great company with top-notch people.

Additionally, we bring away beneficial insights as to how to more efficiently run our business, ways to market for low or no cost, ideas of new ways to gain exposure and recommendations for great websites and other information such as books or videos. If a member of our team is done with a particular book or movie, they offer to make it available to other members. That way, we all can share materials with a minimum of investment. We also role play with one team member being a prospect and another being the business owner. This lets us get genuine feedback on what we might say in a particular situation with a potential client.

We discuss important aspects of the company we all are members of—things that separate it from other opportunities out there. This also gives us added value in what we can share with prospects. The members of our team, obviously, all have different backgrounds, come from different places and possess different levels of experience and skills. In a lot of cases, this is just what we need as new team members are coming aboard all the time and it gives them the opportunity to hear many owner’s thoughts and experiences and what has and hasn’t worked for them. It also gives the team members a chance to be exposed to additional uplifting attitudes and serves to reinforce what is important in any small or home-based business.

Each team member pitches in in different areas. Some will offer to speak on an area of marketing they are exceptional at, others will offer ways they have managed to be successful with advertising and still others will lead a call on how the program that we sell has helped them personally. We also discuss co-op marketing opportunities and any of us who want to be a part of it can opt in. This can extend your reach with minimal investment in many areas of marketing. All of the input is priceless to us in our day-to-day operation of our business and we are always happy when we can bring something to the table as well. I should state that these calls are not mandatory in our business. They are strictly on a participate if you want to basis. But there really isn’t a single team member who misses out on those calls barring some emergency or prior important family commitment. We all look forward to them and have come to think of the team members as friends as well.

If you are looking for an opportunity, I highly recommend you choose one that offers this same “team” mentality. If you are already a home business owner, maybe you can suggest this type of participation from others who are working in the same business. It is incalculable in it’s value and presents a fresh mindset to you daily. If you can add this to your home business experience, you will find that being able to touch base with others and share experiences, ideas and approaches, as well as the sense of comradery, is a bonus you will find immeasurable.

About the Author

Tami Stodghill was the Press-Relations manager, for a world-wide extensible-technology distributor based in London and the US for 20 years. She was also a freelance writer for several industry publications and is now a home-based business owner with WMI. She makes her home in Page-Lake Powell, Arizona, in the summers and Palm Harbor, Florida in the winters where she enjoys boating and reading, camping, hiking and meeting new people. She runs a blog site exclusively to offer tips for success for any small or home-based business.