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Business Ideas

101 New Business Ideas for Retirees: Services for Seniors

You can’t read any magazine without seeing some reference to the effects of the coming retirement of the baby boom generation. That is just the type of opportunity that entrepreneurs are looking for to create a new business around.
Think of all of the services these people will need. Some of them will need to have more of the work around the house or apartment done for them and they will pay a fair price if you make it convenient for them. This group of clients will also be loyal to businesses that provide good service to them and can be trusted for being on time and sending reliable people to do the work. They also favor the same person coming each time to help them and do not care much for services that have a high turnover in personnel. This is ideal for the sole practitioner. This group will also refer you to their friends if they like your service.
Routine services such as laundry, house cleaning, shopping and driving these people to their medial appointments, are all highly desired. Non-routine services are also needed for when these seniors move to a new location requiring sorting, packing, furniture layouts, running garage sales to sell off the excess materials. But servicing this client base requires additional care to receive their satisfaction. Even the Real Estate industry has training courses devoted to teaching agents how to work with the senior population and achieve high customer satisfaction.
This group is also easy to reach with your advertisement. There are a number of publications in each city for this group of people. There are also community events directed to this group where advertising can be directed. Bulletin boards can be used for your business card with a message at many of the living situations where these people live.
But before entering any of these businesses check into licensing requirements in your city and state to determine if licensing, bonding or special insurance is required for the service you are going to provide.

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This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector. View all articles in this column by Stan Spector.

StanSpectorPhoto.jpgStan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income – Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book’s website can be found at StanSpector.com.

Categories
Networking

Measuring Your Referral Networking

Entrepreneur: Anyone who has ever tried to keep an accurate count of how many “cold calls” led to actual, cash-in-your-pocket sales knows it isn’t an easy task. The good news is that measuring success from referrals is actually quite easy. We know this because we’ve designed a networking scorecard for tracking referrals and the business that results from them. You might want to develop a similar one for your own use.
On this card, record the nature and source of each referral, how you followed up on it, how you handled it, and how you followed up with your referral source–through a thank-you note, a phone call, lunch or business. It’s not hard to look back at what you did and analyze how successful you were in getting business from your referrals.
The referral process is about committing to a series of actions designed to create a result not only for you, but also for the other people involved. It’s about measuring the results and improving the system. As long as you track your activities, it’s not hard to measure the results.
Is Your Referral Networking Working? [Entrepreneur]

Categories
Customer Service

Dealing With Angry Customers

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BusinessKnowHow: Nobody makes mistakes on purpose, but they do happen. If you are working in a call center, behind a counter or in any capacity that directly interfaces with customers then you are going to encounter an irate customer at some time. The most common response is to evaluate the merit of the complaint while your are listening to it. Try to curb that common response and replace it with the assumption that the customer has a right to be angry, even before you know the details.
Perhaps the customer feels betrayed because the product or services did not meet expectations. The customer may be angry because he or she made incorrect assumptions that led to improper expectations. The customer may be angry because of previous experiences, previous contacts with your company or simply because the problem occurred at a very inconvenient time in the customer schedule. Regardless of the circumstances, acknowledge the customer has the privilege to be irate. Listen carefully to how the anger is expressed so you can find the root cause of the emotion.
Listen to the inflections and emphasis that the customer places on specific topics to identify the emotional catalyst. Listen to the emotion as well as the words. This will help you to identify the specific item or items that need primary attention. Resolving a technical issue may be only partially effective if it does not also address the customer emotional concerns. It may not be possible to completely resolve the emotional distress, but it is appropriate to acknowledge it.
How to Respond to Angry Customers [BusinessKnowHow]

Categories
Recommendations

How Long Is Your Business Plan?

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About.com: One of the many questions about business planning I receive is how long is a typical plan? The length of a typical business plan can greatly vary from 10 pages to a 100-page document. It depends on the intended use of the plan and its audience. An internal business plan for your company will exclude areas such as management team experience and be heavier on the implementation side. A basic plan for the banks will usually run 20or more pages. The executive summary shouldn’t exceed 3 pages.
Business Plan Length? [About.com]

Categories
Business Ideas

101 New Business Ideas for Retirees: Specialize, Specialize, Specialize

There are a lot of businesses out there that are competing for the customers. You are looking for a way to attract a loyal few customers for your small retirement business. You are also trying to attract them with some unique feature of your business instead of doing a large amount of advertising and the billing that comes from advertising. This approach of specializing will keep your business small, which is one of our goals, but will differentiate you from the pack.
An example is auto repairs. There are hundreds of shops in your area that will work on almost any type of car. They stock some frequently used parts and work with auto parts dealers to get immediate delivery of common parts for commonly owned vehicles. But it is not so easy if you have a 1960’s Porsche or Corvette. People taking these cars in for repairs may have to wait a long while to get some parts shipped in and some of the young mechanics may have never seen the insides of these vehicles.
Specialize in repairs of one of these vehicles and you can gain a loyal clientele if you perform good work, have many of the common parts that they use on hand or at lease on overnight delivery from a specialty auto parts dealer, and you have experience in problems with these older cars. You may also have an inexpensive advertising media in a fan club for one of these vehicles since you will only be paying for exposure to people who own the vehicles. Each of these specialty cars has web sites devoted to them where you can do advertising.
Think of your hobby. Look on-line or in catalogues for tools of that hobby. Everyone is carrying the low cost, mass produced tools. But there is always some specialty hand made tools that are available if you know where to look for them. You can specialize in selling these or produce your own like of tools that are more specific to your hobby.
The secret is specializing your business to keep it small and to grow your business through word-of-mouth advertising.

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This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector. View all articles in this column by Stan Spector.

StanSpectorPhoto.jpgStan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income – Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book’s website can be found at StanSpector.com.