Category: Entrepreneurs

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10 Simple Yet Powerful Business Goals to Set This Year

Business Goals

We often think of the goal-setting process as something done when we first start a business or a new job. However, the reality is that we need to regularly set new business goals as well as monitor the progress of past goals.

I think it’s best to assess and establish business goals during the first quarter of the new year to stay motivated and commit to your goals. This allows for both you and your employees to have a clear understanding of what the expectations are over the coming year.

When deciding on what goals you will have for the year, don’t get bogged down in the minutia of figuring out every last detail of how you plan to get there. This is big-picture stuff, your vision for what the organization should look like in a year.

This long-term goal-setting will serve as an overall framework for your short-term planning. Short-term planning is where you will lay out the individual steps necessary for achieving the goals.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that you first need to figure out where you want to go before you plan the trip.

While no list could apply to all businesses or situations, these 10 business goals have been a part of every successful business I’ve been involved in.

1. Maintain a Healthy Budget

This trips up a lot of entrepreneurs, and I’ve seen many people start businesses without a financial plan.

Academics have coined a new technical term for this type of financial plan: they are calling it a “budget.” And if you don’t have one, then that’s your number one goal for the year.

Having a budget not only helps with tracking where your money is being spent, but it also allows you to analyze things, like what type of advertising is working best for you.

How do your payroll expenses compare to the industry average? Are you spending too much or too little on commissions and bonuses? Are you lacking funding?

Going anywhere for funding (banks, Investors, VC firms) without a professional budget will get you booted out of the office without a second look.

2. Hire a Certain Number of Employees

If you don’t have any employees, now is the time to consider hiring some as part of your business goals. Trying to do everything yourself is the curse of the entrepreneur. We all try being the Jack-of-all-trades, but we forget the rest of that saying: “But master of none.”

You can start by hiring someone to do all of the little tasks that have to get done but don’t contribute to the bottom line. These tasks take your attention away from growing the business, so delegate them out to others to save yourself time and energy.

3. Reduce Expenses

Running a lean business should be the goal of every entrepreneur. After all, every dollar saved in business expenses is an extra dollar in your pocket. The problems arise when you begin to cut into areas that affect the bottom line.

For example, it’s always tempting to look at payroll first because it’s such a big expense in most businesses. But will cutting sales staff hurt sales? What about the shipping department or customer care? You might not feel the effects of those cuts right away, but if you’re not giving the customer the experience they expect, you will feel it down the road.

Try looking for other ways to reduce expenses. Try new software, change the implementation of your processes, and most of all, reduce debt!

4. Refocus on Your Customer

You should always be re-evaluating your relationship with your customers when setting business goals. You need to know what areas are working right and what areas need improvement.

Look at the entire customer service experience. Are your customers happy with the product or service? Is your refund/exchange process easy to understand and use? If they have questions or need help, is it easily accessible? Are you delivering your products promptly?

No matter how good you currently are, vow to make the customer experience even better with short-term goals and a detailed business plan.

5. Get More Traffic to Your Website

Even if you’re not generating sales from a website, increasing traffic is great for brand awareness.

If you haven’t updated your website recently, take some time to give it some attention. Make sure it’s pleasing to the eye, easy to navigate, and constantly updated with all the latest information and helpful hints.

6. Evaluate and Refine Your Social Media Marketing

This dovetails nicely with the previous suggestion. Social media marketing, when done right, will generate traffic, leads, and sales for your company.

I see a lot of companies (especially smaller ones) using a shotgun approach to their business goals related to social media marketing. They end up throwing a bunch of stuff up on their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and hope that something works.

You need to have a strategy for social media. Your posts need to be consistent and on-message. It can be a lot to handle all at once, and if you’re not sure what you are doing, some companies and individuals will set up and manage your social media marketing for you.

7. Conduct a Marketing Audit

Marketing, along with payroll and rent, are the biggest expenses most businesses have. You want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your marketing buck[1].

Analyze and evaluate every aspect of your marketing budget. Eliminate the worst performing (in terms of ROI) 20% of your marketing efforts, and use that money to expand the top 10% of your best-performing assets.

8. Develop or Improve Your Employee Incentive Program

Your employees are the lifeblood of your business. Employees are the ones implementing the company’s policies and procedures. They are (usually) the ones interacting directly with the customer.

Keeping happy and motivated employees is the only way your business goals can thrive. Unfortunately, too many small businesses neglect this issue because of the perceived expense involved.

And while money is certainly a motivating factor for your employees, most people will respond to other types of incentives as well[2]. Things like public recognition, lunch with the boss, or flexible time off can all be used as incentives. Check out this article for 17 Proven Tactics for Motivating Employees.

9. Evaluate Your Company’s Mission Statement

This should be done every year. Depending on how long your company has been around, you may not have even looked at your mission statement in years (if you even have one).

Take the time to get it out, dust it off, and make sure that it’s still relevant. I’ve consulted with companies that, when asked to do this, discover that the original mission statement described a completely different organization!

Over the years, as the business climate evolves and technology changes, there’s a good chance that your mission statement needs to be updated.

10. Strive to Create a Better “Work-Life Balance”

Being a successful entrepreneur means making sacrifices. You sacrifice the stability of a regular paycheck, time with your family, sleep, and more, and while the rewards can be great, just make sure the costs aren’t too high.

Things like stress and anxiety will take a toll on your physical and mental health. Time away from spouses and family can cause tension that only adds to the stress level. You need to take evasive action before it can cause irreparable damage. This is why including personal goals within your business goals is so important.

If you’re not eating right and exercising, start taking an hour out of your day.

Whether it’s one day a week, or an hour a night, your family needs to know that they are a priority. Have a scheduled “date night” with your spouse. Chances are you’re not the greatest company after working a 12-14 hour day, and making your spouse a priority is just part of the deal.

Making a conscious decision to prioritize your home life is like brushing your teeth. If you do it, they stay strong and healthy, if you ignore it, they go away.

The Bottom Line

Setting, evaluating, and reassessing goals is a constant theme in business. Knowing the right places to allocate the right resources will keep your business thriving in an ever-changing world.

Lou Holtz, the famous football player and coach said,

“In this world, you’re either growing or you’re dying, so get in motion and grow.”

That statement is certainly true in today’s business climate. You need to be constantly on your toes looking for new and better ways of doing things.

Technology is moving at a light speed, bringing new, better, and faster ways to deliver products and services to the consumer. If you’re not innovating with specific business goals, you can be sure your competition is.

Source: lifehack.org ~ By: David Carpenter ~ Image: Canva Pro

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7 Ways to Bootstrap Your Business to Success

Bootstrap Your Business to Success

Most first-time entrepreneurs seem to believe the myth that they need a minimum of a half a million dollars to start a business. At least that is usually the lowest number I see requested from our local angel investment group. In reality, over 80 percent of successful new businesses are self-funded for much less — often as little as $10,000. I’m convinced this also reduces risk.

Starting a new business on a limited budget without investor involvement is called bootstrapping, and it’s the only way to go if you don’t want to spend months on the investment pitch preparation and delivery circuit. Also, with bootstrapping, you won’t have the added pressure and risk of an investor boss hanging over your shoulder and second-guessing your every move.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated a list of common startup practices from entrepreneurs who have managed to avoid the ironic pain and suffering of comfortably starting a business with a large cash stash from a rich uncle or a vulnerable investor.

1. Stick to a business domain you know and love.

Starting a new business in an area where you have no experience, just because it appears to have great potential, is a recipe for failure. There are unwritten rules in every business, and your lack of insider’s knowledge will cost you dearly. Good connections can get things done for very little cash.

2. Find team members to work for equity rather than cash.

People working with you need to understand their failure means startup failure, rather than expect money up front. Managing employees and contracts is difficult and expensive, and new entrepreneurs aren’t very good at it anyway. Equity is your best assurance of commitment and focus.

3. Build a plan around your budget, rather than around your wishes.

Entrepreneurs who start without a plan spend more money. Likewise, those who feel compelled to keep up with the popular media will spend most of their time courting investors. Most investors agree that too much money leads to poor spending decisions and lack of controls.

4. Defer your urge to find office space until you have customers.

Remote startup team members are the norm today and can be very productive with smartphones, video and the high-speed Internet. Office space costs money up front, requires equipment, staffing and travel expenses. With a website, your business can look as big as any competitor.

5. Ask for advance on royalties and vendor deferred payments.

If you solution has real value, future partners will jump on discounted future royalties, and many vendors and existing partners will understand your cash flow challenges. You may also be able to barter your services to offset theirs. It never hurts to ask. Practice your sales skills early.

6. Negotiate inventory management with suppliers and distributors.

For many products, suppliers or distributors will direct ship your product to eliminate your inventory. For services, don’t be afraid to ask for a retainer up front to offset your costs. Business terms are negotiable, but new entrepreneurs with plenty of cash don’t bother to ask.

7. Choose a business model to optimize your revenue flow and timing.

Popular examples include monthly subscription fees and optional service fees, versus one-time product sales. Another is the use of an ecommerce site, rather than retail, to facilitate product sales seven days a week, around the clock and around the world.

One of the biggest ways to reduce your budget and your risk is to use social media, which essentially is free, to find our whether you have an attractive solution, before you invest your time and limited resources in creating the product or service. Social media is also an invaluable and inexpensive marketing approach, since no one buys a solution they can’t find or don’t know anything about.

A limited budget can be viewed as your biggest constraint, or as an incentive to do things more creatively. With startups, there is a big premium on creativity and innovation. Big competitors are quick to copy a conventional solution with minimal risk. Let a limited budget be your driver to winning, rather than a curse.

Source: entrepreneur.com ~ By: Martin Zwilling

Updated 7/21/23

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8 Musts to Start Your Business with Little to No Capital

business startup

Entrepreneurs will often have amazing business ideas, but they put them on hold due to a lack of capital. They assume that their idea will never get far off the ground unless they have major funding behind them.

It seems that every day there is a new startup receiving millions of dollars from venture capital firms, but what you don’t hear about is the several startup failures that burn through millions of dollars only to fizzle out and shut their doors forever.

If your idea and plan of execution aren’t well thought out from the beginning, no amount of money can turn it into a winner. Have a great idea but very little money? Don’t let that stop you! Yes, there will be ridiculously long days with little to no sleep. Yes, you are going to be stressed. But those that want it bad enough will make it.

Here are eight tips that can help you get your idea off the ground with limited funds.

Don’t let unforeseen circumstances leave your business in a bad place. Here are a few helpful reminders to keep your company on the right course.

Build your business around what you know

Instead of venturing off into uncharted territory, make sure that you build your business around your skills and knowledge. The less you have to rely on outside sources the better. When your business is built around your own personal expertise you can eliminate consultants and outside assistance.

Also, having that knowledge is sometimes all that is needed to successfully take the plunge into entrepreneurship.

Tell everyone you know what you are doing

Inform your family, friends, business contacts and past colleagues about your new business. Call, send emails and make your new venture known on your social-media profiles. Your friends and family members can help you spread the word, and past business contacts can introduce your brand to their professional contacts as well. This type of grassroots marketing can help introduce your company to a much larger audience.

Avoid unnecessary expenses

You are going to have plenty of expenses, and there are some that just can’t be avoided. What you can avoid though is overspending. Take something as simple as business cards. You could drop $1,000 on 500 metal business cards that give off the “cool” factor, or you could spend $10 on 500 traditional business cards. Being frugal in the beginning can be the difference between success and a failed business.

Don’t get buried in credit card debt

There is a smart way and a suicidal way to use credit when starting a business. New computers, office furniture, phones and supplies can all quickly add up. Instead of purchasing everything at once and throwing it all on a credit card, use your company’s revenue to finance your expenses. Eliminating the stress and burden of debt will greatly increase the chances of creating a successful business.

Make sure your receivables policy won’t sink you

If your business is a retail operation then this isn’t going to apply, but if you are providing services such as consulting or products to retailers you need to make sure that your payment policy is well thought out. Can you remain above water with net-15 or net-30 terms? Don’t base your receivables on what you think your customers will want. Base them on what is going to make your business operate successfully.

Build up sweat equity

When I first started my business I worked around the clock, handling every aspect of the business as well as the marketing and growth. All of the hard work and long days that you put in isn’t for nothing. You are building a brand and your hard work is essentially increasing the value of your business. Your sweat equity will come into play if you ever decide to sell off a piece of your company or take on a partner.

Take advantage of free advertising and marketing

There are several ways to generate a buzz for your business without breaking the bank. Social media is a great way to gain exposure and interact with potential customers. You can also reach out to local media and offer your expertise.

Make as many local media contacts as you can and be extremely responsive with their requests. This can lead to them to branding you as the local authority, generating plenty of free press for your business.

Get ready to hustle

Hard work is an absolute necessity, but when you are starting a business with little to no capital then you must be prepared to dedicate everything you have into making the business a success. This might mean cold calling, handling customer support, dealing with billing and accounting, and every other working part of your business. You will wear many hats and it will require the majority of your time and energy if you are to make it.

Don’t let limited capital prevent you from taking a great idea and running with it. Will it be difficult and will you have some stressful situations? Of course, but that is part of entrepreneurship.

Have you started a business with sweat equity alone? If so, let us know about your experiences in the comments section below.

Source: entrepreneur.com ~ By: ~ Image: Canva Pro

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7 Tips To Properly Manage Your Sales Funnel

Whether you’re just getting started in business, or have a successful business up and running the fact is that sales are your company’s lifeblood. In today’s digital world, creating a website that converts visitors into leads is only the first step. The inbound marketing/sales process is exactly that… a process, one which involves moving a lead from first contact, through to the close in a series of steps. 

Lead nurturing requires management. Using various methods to continue to build trust, keep your business top of mind, provide prospects with specific valuable information, and finally offer solutions, takes time, tools, and proper management for success.

Here are some tips and tools for properly managing your sales/lead funnel in order to maximize conversions and gently guide your best prospects from first contact to the close!

What is A Sales Funnel

Ok, so this was probably covered in inbound marketing 101, but let’s recap. Your sales funnel is a “visual” representation of how you generate leads and nurture them through the sales process. If you imagine the nurturing process as a funnel, the widest part is at the top. This is basically the earliest and broadest approach you take for generating leads.

As you move through the funnel and the opening gets narrower, you are taking those original broad-based leads and further defining them. By refining your approach as you learn more about your prospects, the information you provide becomes more directed and personalized. This builds trust and guides your prospects through their buying process as they gather information and seek solutions.

Managing your sales funnel is about providing exactly the right information at exactly the right time in the process to move prospects forward, towards the sale.

Improving And Managing Your Sales Funnel

There’s often more than one right answer and different solutions to common problems, some may work better for different organizations depending on their structure. Here are some tips for managing your sales funnel more effectively.

1. Don’t Lose Focus!

Many organizations center their sales funnel management on their need (sales) rather than on the customer’s wants and needs (solutions and results). Effective nurturing centers around asking the right questions, at the right time, to the right people. Sales managers need to ask their team the right questions, and salespeople need to be comfortable asking tough questions of their customers.

Once a lead has moved through the marketing process to “qualified” status and been passed to sales, nurturing needs to continue. The right questions can lead to the right solution, but the focus needs to remain on the customer, not the sale!

2. Don’t Neglect Payment Options!

Adding a simple way to purchase your product or service once your prospect has gone beyond the initial stages of contact can accelerate the buying process. By giving customers the option to buy early, using technology like PayPal or GoogleWallet can sometimes trigger sales.

Once you’ve established the lead as qualified, (second or third contact) offering an easy way to pay can often bypass the later stages of your funnel and prompt a sale earlier in the process. Of course, avoid the hard sell! You’re still providing information at this stage, but a customer may make an impulse purchase early if the email content is targeted and a payment option is offered!

3. Don’t “Turn On” Your Sales Team Too Early!

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is “releasing the hounds” too early! The first two-thirds of the nurturing process belongs to marketing! At this point, your funnel should be called a “marketing/sales funnel!” Your two teams need to work together during the nurturing process. Aligning the tasks and goals of marketing and sales can increase your close rate significantly!

Have a logical transition point. Marketing’s job is to provide useful information and guide a prospect through your funnel until such time as they indicate that they’re ready and willing to buy. At this point, the “qualified” lead should be turned over to sales for the close!

4. Your Marketing/Sales Funnel Doesn’t Address A Prospect’s “Fears”

This is related to item one and item three. Your job in the initial stages of contact is to understand your prospect’s fears, needs, and pain points and then work to address them. Their fear is what stalls them from pulling the trigger. Each step of the process needs to be well thought out. Is your team:

    • Talking features and benefits too early instead of addressing your customer’s pain points and goals.
    • Not actively listening to a prospect’s concerns.
    • Not mirroring the customer’s words and instead using long sentences and jargon.
    • Avoiding their objections instead of seeing them as opportunities to offer solutions!

Like item one, this happens when your sales team loses their focus on the customer and instead focuses on their own fears or goals.

Tools To Help Manage Your Sales Funnel

We’ve all heard the phrase “the right tool for the job!” This applies when managing your sales funnel too. Providing your sales and marketing team with the proper tools is a key element for aligning your team’s efforts. Here are a few great tools to help manage your sales funnel.

5. CRM: Customer Relationship Management System

A good CRM is the most important tool to manage every stage of your sales funnel. Using it can help you to track leads, open deals, and your current customers. By cross-sharing CRM data between marketing and sales, you can effectively track customers from the marketing stages of your funnel and turn them over to sales when they meet certain pre-determined thresholds.

6. Email Tracking Software

Today, it’s getting harder to reach decision-makers and get their attention. They’re probably receiving hundreds of emails every day, and you need to make yours stand out! You need a strategic approach with your content to provide maximum value in every email, but you also have to be creative enough in your approach to get your emails opened.

The best way to accomplish this is by tracking your email’s open and click rates. This is pretty standard from a marketing standpoint, but these numbers were often segregated from the sales team. Part of aligning your sales and marketing teams is information sharing. By notifying sales each time a piece is opened, you give them the ability to structure their approach by understanding customer triggers. For example, offer A is generating 50% more opens than offer B. Your sales team can then focus the proper offer to the proper prospect, showing how your product can meet their needs and provide viable solutions.

7. Scheduling Software

This is a great tool. It used to take multiple emails to get a meeting booked. You sent your availability, they sent theirs and it went on and on. A scheduling tool can help you sync directly with your client’s calendars and scheduling a meeting is as easy as clicking a button.

With the proper focus, alignment between marketing and sales, and the right tools you can effectively manage your sales funnel to create more leads, better-qualified leads and close more sales. Aligning your marketing and sales efforts is an important step. Share data, goals, and processes, and watch your conversions turn into customers!

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5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur

Traits of an Entrepreneur

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? Is it being born a prodigy? Is it having a Type-A personality? Is it being an extrovert who spends all their time tinkering around on projects?

While some entrepreneurs have those traits, they rarely define the characteristics that make up a majority of entrepreneurs. Not everyone is born with an intellect that will change the world. A student who couldn’t make it through college, like Bill Gates, is more likely to succeed than a lifelong overachiever.

So, if you’re not a born genius or overachiever, what personalities actually make up entrepreneurs? Here are our five common personality traits that entrepreneurs possess.

1. Passion

For those uninitiated, entrepreneurs are not in it for the money. While there have been some icons who have made more cash than most of us we’ll dream of, think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, the reality is that most entrepreneurs work an insane amount of hours for little or nothing. Why would they put themselves through this? Because they are driven to either solve a problem or make it easier.

How passionate are entrepreneurs? According to research conducted by Tony Tjan and co-authors Richard Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh, 65% of founders have been identified as driven by “heart.” Tjan also added that most entrepreneurs are fueled “by an unshakable sense of purpose.”

Throughout all the trials and tribulations, entrepreneurs reward themselves internally by realizing that they’re on a mission for the greater good. No matter how bad it gets, it’s their passion that motivates them between paydays and during all the times when everyone else tells them to quit.

2. Resilience

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” As an entrepreneur, you’re going to fail. That’s just an unfortunate fact. While something that drastic would be too much for most people to handle, an entrepreneur has the uncanny ability to get up and dust themselves off. Instead of giving up, an entrepreneur will learn from their failures. What went wrong? How can I long from my mistakes? How can I succeed next time? These are the type of questions an entrepreneur will ask themselves. An entrepreneur doesn’t stay down when times get rough. They’re resilient and thrive off of negativity.

If you need proof of the resilience of entrepreneurs, just look into the stories of successful entrepreneurs like Walt Disney, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Food, or Thomas Edison. They all experienced setbacks at some point to only become some of the most well-known and successful entrepreneurs in history.

3. Strong Sense of Self

Any entrepreneur will tell you that there are numerous problems to overcome. Whether it be not securing enough funding, proving the naysayers wrong or facing the competition head-on, it’s not easy being an entrepreneur. And, being passionate and resilient can only go so far. This is why entrepreneurs also have an extremely strong sense of self.

For example, being self-confident and self-motivated are also key traits for most entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs don’t think that their idea could be good. They know it’s good. And, they’re going to be motivated enough to illustrate to others that it’s worth the time and money to go forward. While they also understand that they can’t do everything on their own, they realize that they are the only ones to make their idea a reality.

And, just how confident are entrepreneurs? According to a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on behalf of LegalZoom, “91% of entrepreneurs are confident that their businesses will be more profitable in the next 12 months.”

4. Flexibility

Being able to adapt to changes and challenges is crucial for any business. In fact, most entrepreneurs will inform you that their idea or business plan is drastically different than when it began. An idea may be brilliant, but in reality it isn’t effective. Entrepreneurs are flexible enough to make the adjustments to make that idea feasible. Furthermore, entrepreneurs are prepared and willing to modify their plans when new information arrives and when there are changes in circumstances.

A great example of being flexible would be the recent story behind Hyungsoo Kim and his company Eone, which is short for Everyone. Kim initially develop a wristwatch that featured braille. He quickly discovered that people want to be included and not have attention brought to their disability. So, he trashed the original plan and came up with a watch that would not only be worn by the blind but even by people with sight.

5. Vision

Entrepreneurs see opportunity everywhere. They’re innovators who are always on the lookout to either develop a new idea or improve an existing product or service. And, chances are that’s the main reason why they became an entrepreneur in the first place. At some point in their lives they noticed something that could be better. But, instead of just saying that something could be better wasn’t enough. They actually put a plan in motion. In other words, entrepreneurs have the ability to see the future before it happens.

I always say Entrepreneurs are inspired by things that have never been seen before, things yet to be discovered. You must have the vision that nobody else does. Then the vision to see it through.

Source: Forbes.com ~ By: John Rampton

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