Archive for the ‘General Business’ Category
When presenting your work before, team member or costumer your communication and your presentation skill are the two most important aspects of your presentation. It is crucial that you know what you are going to present and make sure you are prepared.
How to improve your presentations…..
Be prepared
The most important point when presenting is to be prepared. Preparation helps you to feel confident because you will know what you are talking about and are aware of the reason why you are making some key points. For many people the presentation part may not be so difficult because they know what they are going to say and have practiced this, however they don’t prepare themselves when it comes to answering tough questions and therefore they hesitate to find suitable answers. Therefore when you are preparing make sure you have a basic outline of what you may say to people when they ask you questions.
Know what you are presenting
When preparing the firstly ask yourself: What are you going to say and why do you want the audience attention? Firstly you need to be clear of what exactly you are presenting and then make the message clear to your audience and find possible ways to make your message memorable.
Know your audience
You need to know who will be listening to you and how much knowledge they would have about what you are presenting. More importantly it would be a good idea if you knew what their interest and concerns are, otherwise it is nothing but a waste of time when presenting your work to someone that may not even be interested. By gaining good knowledge about your audience then you should also know what kind of presentation they would like, whether it should be quick to the point, well detailed or even precise.
Practice
Many individuals make the mistake of nt practicing what they are going to present. It must be noted this is a mistake that many people make at first. By practicing your presentation you become more comfortable with what you are going to say, therefore when you are actually presenting you work you are able to focus on the audience and understand their response, rather than concentrating what you are going to say next. Remember when you present don’t talk as if you have memorized all your words because then you will just sound as if your are reading a book to your audience, you want to sound natural.
Present
Make sure you are prepared and arrive early to make sure that everything is set up, as you wanted it to and if it is not you have enough time to make these changes. Before you presentation if possible talk to people that will be in your audience, this will help you to feel more confident around them. When you are presenting don’t forget to make eye contact, this is allows the audience to know that it is them you are talking to and not yourself.
Communication is the most important factor for a business to be successful, therefore it can be argued that clear, effective business writing is more important than ever. For the reader to understand what you want, he or she must first understand precisely what you mean in your writing and then take action.
What many writers don’t remember while writing a business letter, is that when people read business letters the readers do not have the opportunity to interpret body language, tone of voice or signs. For that reason it is vital to be precise while writing a business letter. Once the reader has a clear understanding of what you are asking from them then they take action.
Here are some points to help reinforce good business writing:
- Be aware of what you want from your reader (e.g. buy your product, confirm a decision or advise etc)
- Avoid using long boring sentence that will loose your reader’s attention
- Sentences should be short and sharp
- Be clear about what you are writing
- Aim to use positive language rather than negative
- Use a good writing structure (This helps the reader understand you more as a person)
- Use correct punctuation
Moreover you can read some information on the software’s that can be used for business writing.
ESL Business Writing Software
This software can be useful as it analyzes your text through identifying any grammatical or spelling errors and editing and correcting.
All around the globe small businesses have been hit by the recent credit crises; if you have not already been affected then it will still come. Some analysts say that this will be a hard time for small business owners as they will find it difficult to find credit and continue their daily operations. However this is predicted to be a short term problem. While many big banks in USA and Europe go bust the ultimate affect will lead to many more small businesses going bust. The truth is harsh but it will happen. The main problem is that at this time investors and banks are scared of letting go of their money due to the uncertainty in the economy, investing in a very volatile economy is extremely risky. Furthermore as the banks go bust it means that they don’t actually have enough money to lend because investors have pulled their money out of the markets.
Unless you are selling in a very specific niche market and you do not need large amounts of credit you will be affected. Either your sales will fall as people stop spending and start saving or the bank will not give you the much needed loan. If you live in UK or the USA you probably have noticed how the banks advertisements have changed from advertising their "great" mortgage deals to advertising their "great" saving accounts. This demonstrates how the banks have anticipated the change in the economy and are preparing for a recession in the economy.
Many of the big players fall during a recession because they are too dependant on a growing economy and fail or refuse to accept that the economy will not keep growing for hundreds of years without also major falling just like major increases. Being small during a recession can also be used as a major advantage because it means you are more flexible in your operations. What I mean here is that if you see that you are unable to meet mortgage re-payments then sell off and downsize, don’t use all your savings up and then before you know it you have gone bust. Another example is that if you have two warehouses and your customer base has decreased then downsize to one warehouse.
My main point for small business owners is that do not go against the flow but with the flow. While in a booming economy you expanded in a failing economy you downsize.
I have been thinking for some time about this and I have looked at a few small businesses that are currently doing it. Well my idea is that small businesses should use opportunities better and get their business to operate on an international scale. While it is always good to supply a certain market in a certain region I believe that some small business should look into supplying the international market. While this may not happen over night it could work if you give it a go. For example if you are selling washing machine parts in your local area why not put some of these parts online and try and sell them to people all over the world. You could try it out on eBay and slowly open your own website and build your customer base. You will be surprised to see how much interest you will get from people in other regions of your country and other foreign countries.
EBay enables people from all over the world to find your product easily. I used to sell on eBay myself and at the beginning I was only shipping most of my products to UK customers but over time this changed and I was suddenly shipping most of my products to customers in Europe and the US. But eBay prices are very competitive as there are many sellers selling similar products so it will be tough at the beginning, but even on eBay people look for service so once you have satisfied a buyer once s/he will come back to you if they need more.
Operating on a international scale does not mean having to get bigger it just means that you could get more customers. Ebay was one of the examples but the problem with Ebay it can only work with specific products and a lot of small businesses may find that the prices people sell there are the prices they buy their goods themselves. All that means is that you need to find cheaper suppliers. Another way you could serve an International market is by taking part in forums that fit your business people there are always looking for help.
There is also the option of getting your own website online to sell your goods but I would not suggest this if you don’t know what you are doing because you could end up spending a lot and not getting any results, this is why I was suggesting the cheaper methods to start with.
In order for a business to grow and be successful there is nothing more important than actually employing the right people for your business. Employment recruiting therefore helps you to find the perfect fit for your business. There are various steps that need to be taken to recruit these right individuals.
1. Create a profile of the ideal candidate
Firstly you need to do a job listing, explaining what you exactly are looking for. This attracts the qualified individuals to give an immediate response and discard the unqualified. Therefore you must be clear when you do the job listing and define your expectations of the job. As a result you can list the key duties as well as details such as salary and hours.
2. Search tactics
You need to decide on the strategy that you want to use to employ people. There are different strategies that can be used:
• Recruiting services
• Recruiting firm
• Job sites
• Job center
Of course it is important to remember whatever tactic you decide to use you need to determine what will make it work. Therefore it is crucial that you try different things and see what works the best and throw the rest out.
3. Shortlist and interviews
For some vacancies there may be hundreds of candidates, in this case the applicant forms may be useful. This would allow you to investigate who has the qualifications you need and who don’t. Maybe you could draw up a shortlist of only the best candidates to call for an interview.
4. Understanding Candidates
It is important that when you have interviews with the candidates you think are suitable for the job you understand them. Normally successful candidates show passion, knowledge of the industry, and most of all desire to succeed and learn. A good candidate should be hard working, compatible with other employees and a good fit with the other organizational culture.
Overall you must remember that finding the right person for your job increases the value of your business and helps to ensure your future.
Starting a small business can be hard work and preparation is vital to the success of your small business. In this post there will be five tips on helping you start and run your business efficiently so that you don’t fall into any traps at the beginning.
1. Have a business plan. It is very important that you have a plan for your business, as the famous quote goes "Failure to Plan is a Plan for Failure" and this is particular true when you are starting out in business. You may have the best business idea in the world however not having a plan could mean you will ultimately lead to failure. So make a business plan work out the numbers such as the brake-even analysis, profit and loss forecast and cash flow projections. It may be that you sell a product to a large customer who will only pay you in 120 days, that’s 120 day without any cash and if you do not have a plan it could mean that you are will be out of business within the first few months.
2. Save as much money as possible before you start. Now the reason you need a really good business plan is because money is short when starting out, once you start getting paid then this problem will start to disappear up to a certain extend. So make sure you save enough money or have enough financing to overcome any problems.
3. Think big but act small. This is the key to success, if you think big it means that you plan for a successful future however it is important that when starting out you act small and try and run your business in the cheapest possible way. If you do not have money to rent big modern offices then old offices will have to do considering that they are also much cheaper and do the same job more or less. Keep the big offices in mind for when your business becomes bigger and more successful.
4. Employ people better then you. Having people who are better then you in a certain field of business means that you can learn something from them and at the same time the business can benefit from their knowledge, so always look for people with experience or who are really skilful in a certain area as they will bring your business to the next level.
5. Protect your personal assets. Ok you could do everything right but sometimes in business things just do not work out, so it is important that you are not personally liable as otherwise you could end up losing all your personal assets which you may own such as your house. What you could do to overcome this is register your business as a Limited Liability Company (Ltd), this will protect your personal assets and it will mean that if the business goes wrong you can always try again without having to lose all your personal assets.
Now these were five elementary tips that you should know before starting any small business, so keep a note of them because a lot of people miss out one of these points and end up running into trouble.
Customer complaints are a part of any business in general. The internet made it possible for the traditional transactions that used to be conducted in person such as purchasing and payment to be carried out online. Taking into account the fact that billions of transactions take place everyday you can also expect errors to occur. I have written some tips on how to approach customer complaint:
1. Enable the Customer to complain
What I mean here is that you should make it possible if not very easy for the customer to complain in the following ways:
- On Your website make sure the customer can have a contact form or telephone number where they can call up and make a complaint, you do not need to have a specific number for complaints but the customer needs to be able to contact the business.
- If there the complaint is specific for a certain department in the business then put the customer through to the department, it will show them that you actually care about their complaint.
2. View complaints as free advice
It is important that you view complaints as free advice for your business, it could be that via a complaints you actually improve your consumer service. So question the customer and takes as there will probably be something you can improve in the service somehow.
3. Apologize to the Customer
Even if the customer is wrong it is important that you apologise for the company and for the person who may have made a mistake. However try not to apologise too early as it will lead to further irritation for the customer, let the customer speak and explain first.
4. Identify and Fix the problem
At times you may be able to identify a problem from a customer complaint and it is important that you fix it as soon as possible to reduce further dissatisfaction from more customers.
5. Follow up
After sometime get in touch with the customer and tell them that their complaint was important to you. You could use this follow up to show the customer that you care about their complaint and that you value them as a customer.
This is a question that many small businesses may ask at time to deal with a problem or overcome a problem that just will not go away; well in this case hiring a consultant may just be the action you may have to take. At first it may seem a bit costly to do but if you think ahead then this would actually be saving you money for the future and at the same time you get the right expertise to overcome a current obstacle in your business. Generally a good consultant will be able to come up with a solution to a problem and implement this much faster than you or any of your staff would be able to. A consultant is a professional in a particular area of expertise such as law, marketing, human resources or accountancy. So basically you would be hiring someone who really knows that particular field well and has probably dealt with many different and similar situations in the past.
When hiring a consultant you need to clear a few things up before you do so:
- You need to identify the problem and what the symptoms are, this is important as you are requiring a consultant to help you resolve an issue in a particular part of your business.
- You also need to think about what you are really expecting from a consultant and at the same time consider your organisations needs.
- It is also important to know what you expect when the consultant accomplishes their task, so think about the results or particular changes that you may want to see.
- As mentioned above consultants are professionals in a particular field so you need to know what type of consultant to contact.
- Set a time frame about when you want this task to be accomplished by.