Archive for March, 2010

Hiring a Project Management Consultant Instead of a Project Manager

March 31st, 2010 admin


By Nadine Stowne

The job of a project management consultant is to look at your company’s projects and help get them in order. A great many companies today are leaning towards hiring management consultants instead of using project managers. This can save companies substantial amounts of money as they do not have to hire additional staff. Companies that work in four season climates often use management consultants as they can be contracted to work on construction projects during the construction season. These project management consultants are hired to work on building construction, road construction, and other outdoor planning. The vast majority of management involves the construction industry.

Before your company hires a management consulting firm, they need to know how project managers are screened. The firm should have significant experience in the construction industry and should have a proven track record, providing a company with references of completed projects.

Those who work for consultant firms should be trained with the methodologies that are consistent with the firm.

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Why small banks are not lending

March 29th, 2010 admin
We had been hearing that banks were not lending because they are under very tight government scrutiny. That seems to be the case based on a great article from USA Today called “Small banks say they can’t win in small-business lending”. According to the article, while Washington continues to urge banks to lend, Bank examiners from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are devaluing small bank portfolios based on the declining values of the commercial properties banks have taken as collateral.

According to the Article:

“Rep.

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How a Business Consultant Can Help You Grow Your Business

March 29th, 2010 admin

Most people mistake professional business consultancy as a troubleshooting exercise that a company undertakes to manage crisis. Even the business owners, especially the small and relatively inexperienced ones, have similar notions and avail of their services only in cases where management looses control. However, services offered by professional consultants need not be bound by such limitations. Business consultants, in fact, are third party experts who influence how businesses, as well as governments and institutions make decisions.

Business consultancy services must be availed to look at issues related to business in a broader perspective. Consultants, helped by their expertise in a particular field, as well as being from outside the company, can see things from a point of view which the owner or the top management may fail to see, because of their being deeply involved in the business. Here, business consultants would weigh the pros and cons of the strategy and the situation, often with a fresh perspective, and advice accordingly.

Often staying out of the main picture, business consultants provide resources, which the clients may not be in a position to provide for them. Usually, this resource is expertise, which may come by experience, knowledge, creativity or special skills.

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Ten Ways of Reducing Your Crisis Vulnerability

March 29th, 2010 admin

No organisation is immune to crisis. That’s a fact. But it’s wrong to assume crises are always random, unpredictable or simply “acts of God”. The truth is that there are things you can do to significantly reduce the possibility of your organisation suffering a crisis. And when you consider that a mis-handled crisis can have a major financial impact on a business, why wouldn’t you take the following steps to make your organisation less vulnerable to crisis?

Here are the ten ways of reducing you crisis vulnerability.

1. Conduct a reputational risk assessment

Conducting a regular – at least annual – reputational risk assessment not only reduces your chances of being blind-sided by a damaging incident, it also provides the stimulus for actions to reduce their likelihood and/or impact.

2. Conduct a reputational risk assessment – with a difference

A conventional risk assessment is an essential first step in risk reduction. Inviting your people to think the unthinkable by role playing tabloid journalists, disgruntled ex-employees, competitors or pressure groups, results in a changed perspective and a much more comprehensive set of risks to be managed.

3.

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Small business incentives move to Senate for consideration

March 26th, 2010 admin

There appears to be more small business incentive legislation afoot. It is called the Small Business Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act, which just passed the house on Wednesday.


Highlights of the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act include:

· Extension of successful Build America Bonds (BABs)

· 100 percent exclusion of small business capital gains

· Small business penalty relief

· Increase in deduction for start-up expenditures

This looks pretty good to us. Lets see what the U.S.Senate does with it…

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How To Avoid Investing Pitfalls

March 25th, 2010 admin
How To Avoid Investing PitfallsThe majority of us will, at some stage, have to make a decision on how to achieve the financial goals we set for ourselves. With rising disposable incomes, there are various options of selecting the best avenues for investment. While there is always the lure of making windfall gains, there are also stories of investment decisions having gone awry and investors losing all their capital and more. There are some rules to follow as you go about making investments from your hard earned income.

General Guidelines

  • Have a Plan: Set realistic goals before you even set out to invest your first dollar. The plan will depend on factors like your income, age, risk appetite, and expected return on investments. The higher the risk, the higher the return on the investment. Obviously, you would not like to put all your capital in high-risk investments. A balanced allocation of funds across all available asset classes will best serve your interests. This plan should be your guide for investments in the future.

  • Delay: Once the plan is in place, try not to delay the investment process while forever waiting for better opportunities to emerge.
  • Employer’s Matching Contributions: Employers generally have matching contributions towards some plans.

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10 Sales Tips for Small Business Owners

March 24th, 2010 admin

Sales Tips for Small Business OwnersRunning a business is easy compared to the act of selling. As a small business owner you started your business to deliver a superior product or service, not to become a salesperson. None-the-less you must master basic sales skills or risk losing your business due to lack of clients! Here are 1o tips to help you turn those inquiries into sales.

  1. Define the benefits to the customer. You’ve found their pain, now you need to come up with a cure by answering their question, “What’s in it For ME?” For instance, if you are pet-care provider you “make it possible for a couple to enjoy their honeymoon in Hawaii without feeling guilty about leaving their pet.”

  2. Qualify before you present. Okay, you know their pain and can cure it. You now need to know if the person on the other end of the phone or e-mail query is likely to buy from you. Take time up front to ensure this a good prospect for you. When you qualify your prospect you want to know:

    A.    Is this person the decision maker?
    B.Does this person have a real need for what I’m selling?
    C.Does this person have the budget necessary to pay for my product or service?
    D.When does this person wish to start using my product or service?
  3. Only sell to the decision maker.

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Are you in Control of the Destiny of Your Business?

March 23rd, 2010 admin
Are you in Control of the Destiny of Your BusinessFor busy entrepreneurs, finding the time to measure business performance is not always easy, but it is vitally important. The reason why so many businesses – particularly high performing businesses – measure things is to have more control over the destiny of their business.

To Avoid Knowing Too Late

In a training business, decision makers were evaluating whether an end of year revenue target had been met. No it hadn’t, and they had lots of excuses, like how the market was changing and their competitors faced similar revenue downturns. If they’d had this conversation more frequently throughout the year, perhaps they would have had time to better understand what was happening in their market and find new avenues of revenue generation.

Annual evaluation is too late to give us choices about changing our course. Measuring frequently, even daily or weekly, can provide early warning signs about whether what we are doing is making the difference it’s supposed to, so we have enough time to modify our approach if positive results aren’t materializing.

To Avoid Knowing Too Little

My friend works in a wholesale technology company that employs about 25 people and has around 50 product lines. The Directors only measure typical balance sheet items.

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Starting A Small Business And Profits

March 22nd, 2010 admin
Starting A Small Business And ProfitsMany people decide to become entrepreneurs to improve their financial situation. Unfortunately, some people believe that they become wealthy overnight. So how long does it actually take to make money? There is no definitive answer because it depends on various factors. Learning about these various factors will help you get a rough estimate as to when you will begin to see profits.

What Is The Nature Of Your Business?

What type of business are you starting? This will be one of the most important factors to estimating how long it will be before you see profits. Are you planning to sell services out of your home? Generally this requires very little investment if any at all. Thus you should see a gain in profit much quicker than you would with a service based business where you have to purchase a lease on commercial property.

Complex businesses such as department stores and the food industry can take months if not years to actually launch, and then add the time it takes to see profits. You will need time for license, equipment, personnel, and other needs.

Creating And Implementing A Marketing Plan

When you first start your business creating and implementing a marketing strategy is crucial.

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Advantage of having a Virtual Assistant for Small Business Owners

March 22nd, 2010 admin

A lot of home-based business may not hire an employee to work at its home, therefore outsourcing your business task to a virtual assistant is a great way to solve this problem. A VA can lighten the workload to a home-based business owner with various task that you do not like to do or task that you simply do not have the time to do it yourself.

A VA only charges on the hours consumed on the time required to do such work. Except for the general administrative task such as general work processing, a VA can help you on the following 14 tasks to make your business run smoother and lighten your workload.

1. Desktop Publishing, using desktop publishing software to produce eye-catching documents such as business cards, newsletters, brochures and email champagne.

2. Transcription, if you have a recording of a meeting or an interview, ask your virtual assistant to transcript it into a document.

3. Writing, whether it is writing business letters or writing up articles to submit to directories to expose your business, a VA is ready to do the job.

4.

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Business Reputation in Marketing

March 21st, 2010 admin
Business Reputation in MarketingYour business reputation is the most potent aspect regarding the long term success of the entirety of your business efforts. You reform your reputation each day with everyone your business interacts with. However, you have not one business reputation, but many reputations which are created in the minds of people who meet you in the execution of your business movements. Equally important to comprehend that you have a reputation with those who have no experience with your business but have grown aware of you from others.

A tune from Joan Jett from the old days is called Bad Reputation. Joan was a great musician of her age, but she also had good marketing sense. She positioned herself as the bad girl of the rock world, and the song Bad Reputation was a great success. In the ever edgy scene of alternative rock, a woman glorying in her bad reputation was a hot commodity. She probably bent the truth a little when singing I don’t give a darn about my bad reputation as she obviously thought a good amount about her bad reputation, it was her marketing strength! She harnessed that reputation to achieve lasting fame.

Unfortunately for most of us, a poor reputation is not a viable marketing goal to develop our business.

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Sell Your Knowledge Turning Your Hobby Into Profits

March 19th, 2010 admin
Turning Your Hobby Into Profits
Everyone has a hobby of some kind – most people have several. There are people who collect stamps; people who make scrapbooks or create graphic designs with their digital photos; people who love horseback riding, hiking or bicycling. Maybe you do something that you don’t even know is considered a “hobby”. Technically, anything that you engage in for fun that is outside of your occupational activities is considered a hobby- so chances are you have lots of hobbies!

Have you ever considered turning one of your hobbies into a business? You may be surprised at how virtually any hobby can be converted to profits, and without tremendous overhead or ridiculously high start up costs. What’s even better, you aren’t required to have a specific product to sell! In fact, you can make your knowledge your product to sell.

If you participate regularly in some sort of hobby, you are bound to know quite a bit about it. If you make scrapbooks of your family and friends, then you probably have extensive knowledge about where to get the best deals on your scrapbooking supplies, and how to create special effects on your photo album pages. Maybe you have magazines and websites that you refer to all the time for inspiration.

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