Business Development

In my 25 years of being in and around sales, marketing and advertising, it surprises me how many small business owners don't have someone working on business development. Many owners and managers I've met should be the "biz dev" person but just don't have the desire or truly understand what to do. I think this comes back to a few things, fear of sales, pride, and/or social interaction. In other words they look at themselves as the President of their small business and are unwilling to go out and pound the pavement for a few hours every week. Some even use the excuse of being tooo busy, but constantly whine about how bad business is.

Many a sales person I come across is caught up in chasing after the next sale, wasting so much time during the day instead of constantly developing and cultivating a large pipeline of prospects. I see them reading the paper, surfing the internet or standing around yackin' about the weather and recession. These actions show laziness, lack of focus, and desire or unwillingness to venture out. In other words they aren't hungry enough. If you work around people like this, I would recommend that you step away from the pack and make a positive change.
Whether your business is online or offline, business development should be an integral part of your sales and marketing plans.
What can you do to enhance your business development skills? Consider implementing these 6 steps:

• Learn the art of cultivating relationships. Read books, listen to MP3's and then take what you learn to polish your people skills. Develop and use personal relationship marketing to better your relationships.


• Get involved in the industry, not just the companies you are looking to engage with. If you are tuned in, the opportunities might come your way. If you're tuned out, then they'll pass you by.


• When an opportunity comes your way, take action immediately. Communicate. Pick up the phone, send an email, and get the process moving in a positive direction.


• Learn and engage in different kinds of online social media. It's great for networking, market research and keeping a pulse on what's happening in your industry. But make sure to test what you do and don't get too caught up in socializing.


• Plan the work and work the business development plan on a weekly basis. This way you stay consistent and persistent all year long. To many people give up or don't stay at it long enough to get traction.


• Find a mentor to guide and counsel you. This last step is crucial and I believe will truly make a difference if you'll find someone who is willing to help you in your endeavors. It might take a month or even up to a year to find the right person and/or persons.

The bottom line with business development is that it starts with you. So start where you are, make a plan, take action, and stay focused on a daily and weekly basis.

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Small Business Marketing: Tips and Strategies That Are Proven Effective

You may have been operating a dental clinic in your neighborhood for some time and you have realized that you can make some use of expansion. This will require you to employ small business marketing tips on how you can pull off such stunt. If that phrase hits the nail on the head, you ought to look no further as this article contains what you are dying to find. This will provide you a number of marketing strategies that are proven effective as it has stood the test of time. What's more, the techniques you will find below will enable you to make more profits without drying up your marketing budget.
• Press releases -more often than not, this is used to make important announcement. For instance, you want to make it public that you will be moving your dental practice into another state. However, this tool can also be employed if you intend to invite the key people that can improve your client base especially when you would open a new dental clinic or if you like your market to be knowledgeable on your most recent accomplishment. You can publish your press releases into your website. People who would visit your site would also be interested on what's going on to your business aside from your operations and promos.
• Article marketing -there is no problem with posting articles in your website. However, make sure that the content is relevant to the needs of your target market. Otherwise, people who would take time looking up your site on the internet will not have a good impression on you and your practice. Anticipate their needs and make them believe that you have what they need and that there is no need to find the solution of their dental problems to your direct rivals. Make certain that you see things from their perspective as well. in order to increase your web presence, you may make an agreement with other relevant sites so you can publish your article including the link to your site.
• Blogging -this is another powerful platform that you can use in promoting your business. One upside of this tool is that you have the power to decide what you will write. There are thousands of topics that you can write about that you will not run out of ideas to share with your market. In addition, you can subtly sell your services without appearing too pushy. There are people who do not appreciate being badgered into something. If you will make them feel like you are pressuring them into your business, you can easily lose them. You can maintain blogs without spending a single penny.
• Newsletters -this is entirely different from spam as it is solicited. You can only send copies of your newsletters to the people who agreed to receive things from you. If you find the offline marketing strategies to be too expensive, you can try this instead of direct mail. Sending newsletters will not ask you to pay for postage fees as it would be sent electronically. However, you will need to have not just a knack in writing but the knowledge as well on how you can make it appear neat and thorough yet catchy. Newsletters can be lengthy and there are a good number of people who don't read much so you have to find a way to hold your reader's interest.
• SEO -there are only few persons left who have not heard of search engine optimization. In a nutshell, it links your website to other sites so that yours can be more visible. If you are not that knowledgeable on the tricks of this trade, you mat take into account the hiring of an SEO provider especially if you find structuring links with HTML codes confusing. They will be able to give you a hand in generating web traffic by increasing its rank on the search engines.
• Video marketing -with just a camcorder, a persuasive speech and an account, you can promote your dental practice without paying any fees. Use the video to make the public know about what you can offer to them. Ask your family and friends to like what you posted and to ask their own circle of acquaintances to do the same so that you can have a head start on increasing your chances to improve the number of hits of your video.
With the abovementioned tips, you will be able to generate bigger profits without the need to spend more than you need to. Bear in mind though that you can use these strategies with conventional marketing tools for optimal results.

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Top 10 Home Based Business Ideas and Opportunities For a Beginner

Small Home Biz --Kudos to the small home biz segment that brings into a significant number of the educated, senior and entrepreneur work force from the masses. This section comprises of the people who cannot resist the temptation of working in niche areas and utilizing their creative skills without the corporate intervention and hypes. The small home business sector provides them the essential opportunity they are searching for. No fancy skills like web designing, computer programming and scripting are required for these top 10 home based businesses. It is a small leap from a full-time office job to a full-time "working from home" which eventually gives way to flexible hours when there is a steady source of income.

My choice of  "Top 10 home based businesses" that will give you an edge and expedite earnings to break even quickly with your investments are the ones that produce results and have ways to measure your incremental success in steps, however small. A birds eye view of the systems that will make you a self employed home biz owner;

Plug-In Profit Site (PIPS)

Niche Profit Classroom (NPC)

Ewen Chia's Super Affiliate Inner Circle Club

Internet Marketing Centre (IMC)

Strong Future International (SFI)

Empowerism

Global Domain International (GDI)

The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs (IAHBE)

Warrior Pro

The Reverse Funnel System

Plug-In Profit Site commonly known as the PIPS program comes with a complete money making system that runs on auto-pilot. The package has everything - a professional website, reputed 5 affiliate programs, pre-written sales letter and automated emails by an autoresponder. It is all about earning a residual income from the internet. The advantage of the program is that it gives a kick-start to a newbie who is readily equipped with a useful internet product. A small disadvantage of the system is the initial cost of the membership programs and a 30 days training series that may end up in a total spending spree for an inexperienced marketer.

Niche Profit Classroom is a membership program that I have found very helpful from my personal experience. NPC provides one-to-one support, premier web hosting for 15 domains and ready made high quality niche websites that are very easy to customize and deploy. The video tutorials are very educational and are made keeping the view of a novice who is new to the internet with no expertise in computer skills. Every month, you get instant access to two ready made businesses and a step by step approach to implement the blueprint. The membership fee is slightly on the higher side for newbies who have just come in but worth investing.

Ewen Chia's Super Affiliates Inner Circle Club is a monthly membership program in which the super affiliate shares the secrets, strategies and resources on how to make a fortune from affiliate marketing and various other online techniques. The membership provides 5 modules out of which three of them provide new content every month. One of the modules contains products that you have PLR (Private Label and Resale Rights) that alone is worth your investment in the program.

Internet Marketing Centre has 12 modules and each module contains a number of lessons, resources along with bonus materials that are broken down into small steps so that you can follow the time-tested, proven business building techniques in order to make profits. There is an action plan for you to follow once you read the lesson. You should join only if you are serious and ready for investing a significant amount of the one time yearly fee. With the latest upgrade, it comes in different options of quarterly payment as well.

SFI for more than ten years is successfully showing masses how to build a highly profitable internet business from the comfort of the homes. By promoting TripleClicks, an online store, the affiliates can earn commissions by simply referring the people to store. To grow in SFI, you need strong referral and sponsoring skills that can be easily built up with the online SFI training.

Empowerism is a great web based home business that provides state-of the art website, powerful SEO tools to help drive free traffic to your site, comprehensive training with full access to resources and free "Excellence" magazine that is filled with latest online success tips and strategies. The only thing which may deter one's online business is that one needs to be good in referring and building network.

IAHBE is an organization that champions the home-business opportunities and provides access to an unparalleled, one-of-a-kind business building arsenal of your own. You will have at your disposal, dozens of exclusive reports, interviews with the internet's most successful entrepreneurs, and much more!

GDI Fight the recession with the most powerful home business, an easy program to build an income from home. GDI offers a great product - domain, web hosting and it is 100% free to sign up for. This eliminates a lot of objections that prospects have when they are looking at online business opportunities. There is absolutely no risk involved.

WarriorPro comes with a subscription to Host4profit, membership to the world famous Warrior Forum and a complete Ad tracking system. It pays you for each person that signs up for a Host4Profit hosting account either through your PIPS site or individually and is a great way of earning residual income.

The Reverse Funnel System is an extremely profitable business built in the PIPS website where you get 100% commissions. It is not a scam but requires a significant money amounting to $2K to $5K for the membership schemes that are quite expensive. Hence it isn't for all and does not provide a launching pad for people who are not prepared to invest.
Today there are thousands making it big with their home based business. Success is certain for tenacious people who are there for the long haul. Just take up some or all of the above and give your best shot.

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Content Marketing Tip for Small Biz Owners

As the owner of an SEO content writing service, probably the number one reason clients say they use our services is that they don't have time to create content regularly. This is why you see many small business blogs updated so erratically.

A Common Content Marketing Strategy for Small Business Owners
The trajectory usually goes something like this... content will be uploaded regularly for a week or two (maybe three), then nothing for a month or so, then a sporadic post or two over a few months, then -- complete silence.

Does this sound like you?

Create Content in Less Than Half an Hour - Every Day!
If so, here's an easy way to come up with fresh content for your blog, Facebook page, LinkedIn account, etc. And, you can do it all in less than 30 minutes a day - really!
Comment on a Posts from Your Social Media Accounts
If you use Twitter, for example, find relevant posts to comment on and post that on your blog, website and/or social media outlets.

The quickest way to do this is to search for content via hashtag. For example, as a company that provides (SEO) content writing services, I frequently search for #ContentMarketing. Then, I'll see what pops up. I may skim through a few articles, then pick something that I think can help my clients to comment on.
Note: Be sure to choose content that benefits your customers/prospects. Remember, content marketing is about sharing; not selling.

This took me all of 15 minutes - the longest part was actually reading the article, which was very informative.
If you don't have time to create content on a regular basis - but want to stay top of mind with your target audience - this is an excellent "content marketing shortcut." It keeps you in the know, your audience in the know, gives you a chance to share some of your knowledge - and most importantly it keeps you top of mind with your customers and prospective customers.

The Importance of Content from You
While this content marketing tip is great and can be used regularly, at least once per week (more depending on your niche), you should write --- or hire a content writing service to provide ---- some original, in-depth content to share. Because if you're not, you can bet your competition is.

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