Business Tips – Maximize Performance and Business Development Results

Strategy Plan One

August 1, 2012

Business Tips for the Entrepreneur

As you are midstream through harsh economic times, take the time to reflect on your current business operations.  Think about the small things that could be tweaked that can have the maximum positive impact on your business.  Here are some helpful business tips to maximum the output in your organization and in your business development.

Business Tips – Maximize the Use of Your Time

Time is definitely considered an asset when you are a busy, mult-taking entrepreneur. Delegate operational tasks to staff and area specialists as much as you possible can.  Free up your time for business management functions, business development, planning and implementation.  Institute shorter, more concise meetings and communications as much needed time savers for all.  Cut the slack time and concentrate efforts in a condensed shorter period.  Incorporate that into individual and team goals.

Establish Priorities

Clutter can occur in many ways from physical bunched up clutter to the mental clutter of massive workloads of relevant and non-relevant tasks.  Take the time to sort this out.  Getting organized on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis should be a standard part of your business and of the action plans across all employees.  Encourage organizing and priority setting as part of the valued added side of your corporate culture.

Business Tips – Create a Constructive Environment

Feedback is necessary on all aspects of your business.  Ensure that you develop a culture of encouraging and valuing input from all levels in the organization.  Constructiveness is essential … when everyone puts on their constructive gear and behavior, everyone is “building” towards a common goal.  Feedback can be critical nature, but as team members put on the constructive hats, criticism turns to positive alternative idea and solution generation.  Problems and issues are better solved when the collective can feed into the solution.

Be Social

This business tip is not necessarily focused on spending massive amounts of time on social media.  Being social in business means networking, partnering, collaboration, team work.   Every business, every entrepreneur venture is vastly stronger when you and your team get out there and communicate and network with everyone.  Not all deals, partnerships and customers will automatically fall into your lap … you need to get aggressive and make the moves to communicate and network with others.  Remember that social media is only one form of communication and engagement with other businesses and customers.   Communications, marketing and business development occur in many ways outside of normal office functions and social media.

Business Tips – Be Helpful

As a leader, entrepreneur and community member be helpful to all and it will eventually return to you in spades.  Being a business leader is not a one-way street…. you need to not only receive but to give.  Your valued staff give their efforts and their time to helping you achieve your success.  You need to help your staff become successful through employee development, encouragement, recognition and in your acceptance of their needs professionally and in their personal lives.

When developing products and services for customers, remember this two-way street.  It’s not about just gaining revenue from clients.  You should be developing your business around how your products and services can first help the intended market, and meeting the needs of the consumer.   Revenue then potentially follows after successfully meeting the needs of the customer.

Plan well for maximum benefits and results!

Relevant personal and business development blogs and articles

• Customer Retention Strategies and Tactics
• Strategy Plan One – Entrepreneur tips

• High Performance – Star Qualities to Get You Noticed

• Small Business Tips – From Mashable
• Business and Economic Impacts of the Games
• Business Issues Faced in the Summer Months
• Young Entrepreneurs – Business Tips
• Business Intelligence – Keeping you Wired In
• Business Plan – The Next Steps
• Capacity Building in Business

• Marketing Tips for Better Customer Engagement and Results

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Marketing Tips for Better Customer Engagement and Results [infographic]

Strategy Plan One

July 12, 2012

Marketing Tips

In business it is critical to interact and communicate with customers to get the sense of what customers want and if your business is meeting their needs.  The more frequent, valuable, and genuine your interactions and communications are, the more trust you will build with your potential and existing client base.

Some simple marketing, business tips produced in an infographic by Mindspress, highlight the small things you can do to build better rapport with clients.  By making small adjustments and improvements in activities, you can achieve greater exposure in the environment and communities, and better results with customers.

• Communications – gather customer contact information such as email to give you an avenue to engage and offer to the customer frequently.
• Asking for feedback – the ability for customers to provide a feedback and reviews will create buzz around your products and services.  It also helps in creating traffic and in spreading the word through multiple sources and Google searches.
• Community involvement – according to this article, giving back to the community, such as volunteering, sponsoring, and donating creates greater exposure for your business.  It helps improve morale for those who feel good with their involvement in communities.  Customers will take note!
• Revised Marketing & Business Planning – it is extremely important to review your marketing and operational activities, to measure and to analyze the results of anything you are doing.  The global, domestic and local markets and business conditions change frequently … so should your marketing activities, marketing plan and business plan.  Stay on top!
• Continuous Learning Environment – you need to keep a pulse of customer feedback and to incorporate the constructive messaging back from the customer.  When the customer is telling your something after their purchase, they are informing you (as an added benefit to you) that they invested in you, and in order to keep them you need to improve the experience, product or service.  Listen well and incorporate changes based on feedback.

Source: Mindspress.com

More on Marketing:

• Digital Marketing – Conversion Opportunities for Business
• Product Mix – Designing Products and Services for the Consumer
• Content Marketing – Targeting Local Markets [infographic]
• Color and Design – Factors Influencing Commerce [infographic]

More business blogs of interest:

• Business Plan – The Next Steps

• Business Intelligence – Keeping you Wired In
• Online Retail – Strategies That Lead to Better Sales

• Franchise Opportunities – Industry Outlook 2012 and Beyond [infographic]

• Retail Industry Heating up for Summer and Back to School

• SEO Guide to Higher Conversions with a Few Steps [infographic]

• EService, Social Media and Customer Service Trends [infographic]

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Use of Social Media for Marketing, and Other Marketing Activities

Strategy Plan One

May 4, 2012 

Use of Social Media for Marketing

Gone is the traditional method of advertising in the newspaper and radio and in with current social media marketing and advertising platforms.  Or are those methods gone?

For sure social media is in and it continues to grow exponentially.  Just when you thought user bases were leveling out, a new interest in a platform keeps the level of growth consistent.  It seems every week a new wave of more interesting social media platforms emerge.  However, business owners must not forget the other forms of marketing that would add value to the marketing mix.

Social media marketing involves the promotion and attention of your business, and engagement between users of social media platforms and your business’ products and services.  The use of social media for marketing would be the purpose of gaining traffic and attention to your business.

Whether through short bursts of information using Twitter or detailed Facebook or LinkedIn pages, the absolute benefit to businesses using social media, is that information can be shared quickly across massive audiences.  It has been a business to consumer and business to business trend over the past era, but not known if this marketing trend will be long-lasting.  If it will be long-lasting, social media marketing may evolve as fast as the whole social media industry itself is evolving.

Marketing Activities – Considerations other than Social Media

Marketing plans could be chalked full of a mix of marketing activities, new and traditional forms.  An entrepreneur should dig into developing activities that would be applicable to promoting and getting out the appropriate message on their own product and service mix.  Yes, social media may work to a certain extent, but may not be the best avenue for local, personal marketing for example.  Entrepreneurs may have to consider forms of advertising and that promote products and service in person, such as trade shows, and promotional events.  Differing from social media marketing, trade show events give you the ability to showcase products and services to masses of potential customers, with colourful, interactive displays manned by representatives (actual people) promoting the business.

Marketing Plans

When developing detailed business and marketing plans, consider the mix the marketing activities based on your intended audience, and what type of method you will use to effectively engage with your audience and raise attention.  You may find social media works well in junction with other forms of marketing activities.  Carefully weigh your options for marketing activities and measure results from activities.  Best results may occur when revising your marketing activities mix.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One