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Recommendations

Recommendations: Business Magazines App

Entrepreneurs need to learn from fellow entrepreneurs. One of the ways to do this is to devour business magazines and periodicals – picking up the best business lessons and inspirations from other entrepreneurs who have had the experience of successfully built up sustainable business.

You can easily pick up business magazines in digital format on your smart phone or tablet. No more stacks of heavy magazines lying around the house!

Zinio is the oldest, most mature magazine platform on the iPad, and as a result has the largest selection. The business, music and photography sections are well stocked. Pad-toting magazine lovers will find a lot to like in Zinio, a free app that acts as the gateway to a wide range of digital publications. With it, avid readers can purchase single issues and subscriptions from dozens of magazines (such as ESPNShutterbugHigh Times, and more), share articles, and manage their libraries on multiple devices.

To try out Zinio service, enter a sweepstakes organized by the company today at http://bit.ly/givealittlegetalot and win great prizes:

Grand Prize

Apple iPad (Delivery time based on availability, which is currently 2 weeks)

2nd Prize

To spread some holiday joy, everyone that enters will receive $5 in Zinio Bucks, which can be used to buy any of the 5500+ magazines. After submitting the sweepstakes, you will be brought to a page to sign up for your $5 voucher.

Sweepstakes starts November 13, 2012 @ 03:52 pm (EST) and ends December 01, 2012 @ 07:52 pm (EST)

Zinio is also giving away 10 free business magazines subscriptions – to enter this contest organized in association with GetEntrepreneurial.com,  send your name, email address and any one magazine title of your choosing to contact@getentrepreneurial.com. Lucky winners will be contacted by email.

Categories
Newsletter

BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 149

BIZNESS! Newsletter

 

Cover Story

Antistress For Free

The street artist conceived a brilliant idea to hang square sheets of bubble wrap for transit patrons to enjoy as they wait. The sheets are positioned under a cardboard placard reading “Antistress For Free!”. People can choose from three differentiating plastic sheets that take from three to ten minutes to pop…

Continued in BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 149 >>>

 

Top Stories From CoolBusinessIdeas.com

– Vermicomposting By Worms
– USB Bracelet
– Onefinestay in Someone’s Home
– Slim Housing
– Pee-Powered Energy Generator

Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

 

Top Stories From GetEntrepreneurial.com

– Basics Of Healthy Sales Relationships
– Business Ideas – Need a New Idea? Try Changing Your Perspective
– When to Avoid Using “You” In Your Copy
– How to Achieve Successful Business Growth

Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

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Can’t stand your demanding boss anymore? Start your own business! Before that, be sure to subscribe to our free informative newsletter. BIZNESS! is jointly published by CoolBusinessIdeas.com and GetEntrepreneurial.com What you get in BIZNESS! – the latest new business ideas, small business advice, business tips and info and entrepreneur resources. Everything you need for your brand new business!

Free 29-pages PDF ebook (worth $38) – “Awesome Business Ideas of 2011” – included with your subscription. This is a special feature report on the smart and innovative business ideas that the world has seen last year. Learn more here.

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Categories
Sales & Marketing

Basics of Healthy Sales Relationships

Nothing can bring more satisfaction to a business owner than knowing they have a healthy relationship with their customer and vendors.

And, of course, as many people find out, nothing can bring so much pain as a broken relationship.

Yes, relationships make the world go ‘round. For better or for worse. There are basics that govern most human relationships, and these basics are what I want to cover below. So here is my list of the three essentials that I believe make up the basics of healthy business relationships.

1.      Honesty. Honesty is the backbone of a great business relationship. If you do not trust your customers how can you expect them to trust you? I recently had an experience where the vendor really messed up and instead of telling me the truth and letting me decide how to respond, he kept the issues from me. Things got progressive worst until we split on less than friendly terms. I would have preferred to salvage the relationship if possible.

Communication is so important because it is the vehicle that allows us to verbalize what is inside us and enables it to connect with another person. Isn’t communication amazing? One person is feeling one thing, and through communication, another person can find that out and feel it, too—amazing. And this is a vital goal in good relationships—to communicate, to tell each other what we are thinking and what we are feeling. It enables us to make a connection. Sometimes we are the one speaking, and other times we are listening. Either way, the central tenet is communication for the sake of building the relationship and making it stronger. And here’s what’s exciting: If we just communicate, we can get by. But if we communicate skillfully, we can work miracles!

It helps if we can communication our message in a way our customers understand. There are six questions our prospects wants answered before they buy from us. Go to the Business Growth Experience web site  and download this report. This report documents the basic communications our prospects and customers want from us.

2.      Integrity. Do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. Nothing is more frustrating than making a plan based on the action of someone else and then at the last-minute finding out they did not do it. Be respectful of your customers and business partners and expect the same in return. People make decisions on what you say and do; sometimes very important decisions. We need to respect that.

I once had a vendor who never returned calls. I could not make any plans and any decisions that were made always changed because of his lack of follow through. Needless to say that relationship did not last long. If he had only responded and followed through things would have been great.

3.      Common Sense. Every relationship must have a win-win component. If either person in the relationship feels taken advantage of, feelings are hurt and rash decisions are made.  Jim Rohn calls this common purpose. Think about how many friends you have met through the years while working on a common purpose. With common purpose there is something in it for everyone. You had that strong common bond of purpose that brought you together and held you together. Working together, building together, failing and succeeding together—all while pursuing a common purpose—that is what relationships are made of. Find people with whom you have common purposes and sow the seeds of great relationships, and then reap the long-lasting benefits.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Product Quality vs. Marketing

Running a successful company is about bringing different factors together, one of them being the product. So yes, the product isn’t everything. It’s not the only thing that can and will keep the company afloat. But if you look around, you’ll find that some businesses claim that having a great product is enough to succeed, while there are others say that nothing works without proper marketing.

The fact is that there are many huge companies that support both sides of the argument. There’s Google which became one of the biggest brands online with almost zero marketing. And then on the other hand there are companies like Pepsi and Coke that spend a good amount of their corporate budget on feeding their marketing campaigns in order to win the “brands war” and become the leader in their market.

However, there is no denying the fact that having a healthy balance between your product development and marketing efforts can boost your chances of success.But finding the right balance is the difficult part, not impossible though. Companies like Apple have figured out because they not only have a great product but also know how to market it well. They have cracked the holy grail of business success on a large scale, without ignoring the fundamentals.

Now, the question is – can one survive without another in the real world? It’s not difficult to answer this question since it’s clear that both are interdependent on each other. If you build a great product but nobody knows about it, you won’t get sales. The basic marketing rules are the same. The more people know about your product, the more sales potential you have.

The only difference today is that you may just get away with bad marketing if your product is worthy. Why? Because before people would look at ads and buy products not knowing there are better options out there. However, with the advent of Internet customers have gone more vocal. They are expressing their views by writing product reviews and doing their research before buying anything. So even if the product is poorly advertised, it may have an upper hand because of the positive word of mouth.

At the same time, things have changed on the advertising front too. You can no longer get leverage for a bad product by simply throwing money into advertising. Your product will fizzle out in no time because people want quality, and if they don’t get it, your ads won’t do much. The focus of your business should not only be about spreading the word about your product, but spreading it in a good way. And you do that by creating a “customer experience” that is complete in itself.

The conclusion is that as times are changing, you will have to keep up. Company accolades and promotions are great, but they need to be supported by a great product and even greater marketing for the company to really move forward. It may not easy to find a balance between product quality and justified cost of marketing, but once found, the overall business of the company will definitely improve.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Categories
Business Ideas

Business Ideas – Need a New Idea? Try Changing Your Perspective

One definition of creativity states that creative people look at the same thing everyone else does, yet they see something no one else does.

But even creative people (which includes all of you, of course) can run into roadblocks every now and then. Sometimes it’s not possible to see something different. Sometimes you’ve just been staring at a problem for so long it’s now impossible to look at it in any other way.

So what do you do in these situations?

Why not try changing your perspective?

Consider this: A friend of mind who does needlepoint has a design that’s mostly black. Rather than simply stitching the design on white canvas with black thread, she’s using a black canvas and is stitching the negative aspects of the design instead of the positive.

She changed the way she viewed the problem. And now she has a really cool-looking needlepoint design that’s different from most other ones out there.

Or what about this: An art teacher has her students turn a photograph or object upside down and paint what they see — not a picture but an arrangement of shapes.

By changing your perspective, you’re changing what you see. And when you change what you see, you’re more likely to create something completely different.

But — I can hear you all saying right now — that’s art. That won’t help me with my business problem.

Okay, so here’s another story from the book “Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko. Back in the 1950s, experts proclaimed the ocean freighter industry was dying. Costs were skyrocketing and delivery times kept getting pushed back later and later.

Executives at the shipping companies kept focusing on ways to cut costs while ships were sailing. They developed ships that went faster and needed fewer crew members to run.

It didn’t work. Costs continued to spiral out of control and it still took too long to get the merchandise shipped.

Then one day, a consultant changed the perspective. Rather than ask the question: ” In what ways might we make ships more economical while at sea?” executives asked: “In what ways can we reduce costs?”

Ta-da!

Ships are big money-sucking machines when they aren’t at sea actually doing their job — shipping merchandise. And when aren’t they working? When they’re sitting in port being loaded and unloaded.

So, the industry came up with way to preload merchandise on land. Now a ship comes in, the container carrying the cargo rolls off, a new container already loaded with cargo rolls on, and the ship heads back to sea.

That one innovation saved an entire industry. And it happened because shipping executives changed the way they viewed their problem.

Exercise — Change your perspective

So, how can you change your perspective and solve your business/marketing problems?

Try what the shipping industry did and change the question.

Instead of looking at a narrow part of the problem (“In what ways can we make ships more economical while at sea?”) broaden the question (“In what ways can we reduce costs in general?”)

Here’s another example.

Maybe your question is “how can I land more clients?” What if you started broadening the question like so:

How can I land more clients?

How can I grow my business?

How can I make more money from my business?

How can I make more money period?

How can I be happier in my life? (I know, I know, money doesn’t buy happiness. But it’s certainly nice to have.)

Maybe one of those questions is a better place to look for a solution. Because maybe one of those questions is the “real” question you want to solve, but since you never took a step back to look at the big picture, you’ve never discovered the right question to ask.

And if you don’t ask the right question, your muse will never give you an answer that actually solves your problem.