Selling Yourself As A Freelance Business Writer: Skills, Or Knowledge?

You know the secret to a long-term, and profitable, client relationship is delivering effective communication tools. But you may not realize that the impact of your writing has more to do with your skill as a writer than with your knowledge of the subject.

And unless you help your clients understand the value of your skills, you limit your opportunities to sell those skills again and again.

Every business has its own specialists, people who know more about their products and services than you'll ever know. So why can't they produce great marketing copy, clear user guides, or truly effective training for their employees and sales reps?

Because they don't have the skills that you do, the talent for communicating with impact to achieve specific results. We've all met experts who "know their stuff" but can't share their knowledge -- perhaps your math or physics or French teacher, or an engineer or programmer in a company you know, or even your doctor, lawyer, or insurance agent.

At some point, a company realizes they need help communicating, educating prospects, customers, and their own employees about the benefits and best practices associated with their products and services. They go looking for outside help . . . and then they forget why!

Your long-term success depends on reminding them of that need for communication skills. Most of these experts, whether clinicians or programmers or engineers or legal experts, are more comfortable talking to people just like themselves, rather than creative types like artists and writers.

Left to themselves, they'll hire someone who knows a lot about their area, but perhaps writes only a little better than they do. And a year or two later, they'll be looking for someone else to help them when they realize that all the copy and training content and documentation they have churned out has produced mediocre results.

Help yourself and help your clients.

When you get an opportunity to talk to a prospect about creating effective communications for them, keep pushing the conversation toward the skills they need to pull it off. Make sure they understand their own need for someone different from the resources they already have in house. Help them recognize that your skills complement their knowledge, that it is that combination that produces results in the form of higher revenues, more customers, or enhanced employee performance.

Even if you know their subject matter well, your skills are more important. After all, should their product line change, or new markets open, they may be dealing with a new body of knowledge in a year or two.

But their need for effective communication will remain, and, if you've positioned yourself as the "communication expert" of their team, you'll continue to have opportunities for business from existing clients even as their business practices and markets change.

Computer Consultant Startup: Identify Your Business Skills

Since you're taking the time to read this article right now, it's a good sign that you have what it takes to become a computer consultant. You're in the small minority of people who have recognized that this is a business and needs to be run like one.

A Good Computer Consultant Has More Than Just Technical Skills

It's not about playing with the latest routers or wi-fi device or VPNs or firewalls. Sure, you have to have a certain amount of skills to make a successful computer consultant because people are buying your expertise. At the end of the day, though, it's a business.

In order for the business to be successful, you have to know a few things about getting revenue in and keeping your expenses down. You also need to forecast and be able to bill, negotiate, and network properly.

There are a lot of stubborn techies out there who think that studying the Windows Server Resource Kit is going to tell them what they need to know about running a business. Not true. It's going to teach you about registry keys and directories and things like that.

Even a Computer Consultant Needs a Good Resume

If you're currently self-employed, you may not have an up- to-date resume, but for most people looking to transition into the business to become a computer consultant you probably do have a resume. Take out a copy of your resume and a yellow highlighter marker and go through and highlight every sentence or phrase in your resume that describes a project or a job or a skill that you think would be relevant or marketable to the owner of a small company.

Categorize the Items on Your Resume

Go through it and look for all the phrases and the jobs and the projects that you've worked on for the past couple of years and think about what's going to catch the eye of a typical small business owner or manager. Once you've done that, go back through each highlighted item and mark whether it was IT related, whether it had to do with understanding how to run a business or whether it had to do with being able to communicate effectively.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Biz Tech Talk. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Business Skills Training Can Help You Succeed in Your Career

New Horizons Learning Centers offers a complete, simplified learning solution that focuses on knowledge transfer, retention and skills development. Our training programs are based on the market's needs. With our clients' input, we tailor our training programs to the needs of the industry, giving our students a distinct advantage. You will be trained and prepared to pass the industry certifications required by employers, setting you apart from the competition.

Business Skills Training

The Financial Risk Manager (FRM) - Certificate has been adopted by companies as a benchmark to ensure their risk management employees are well versed in the latest financial risk concepts. This course will cover the primary topics and sub-topics under the five risk-related disciplines in the FRM examination including theories, concepts & real-world work experience.

The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) - designation is one of the fastest growing professional credentials in the world and is a globally recognized standard for measuring the competence and integrity of investment professionals. This program is comprised of three levels, each culminating in an examination.

Project Management Professional (PMP) - In a competitive business climate, an organization's ability to efficiently align resources and business activities with strategic objectives can mean the difference between succeeding and just surviving. To achieve strategic alignment, organizations are increasingly managing their activities and processes as projects — in essence, projectizing their business — to monitor performance more closely and make better business decisions about their project portfolio.

- 74 of major IT project initiatives fail to be completed on time and on budget

- Every year $75 billion dollars is spent on failed projects

Source: Project Management Institute (PMI)

Multi-billion-dollar corporations, governments, and smaller organizations alike face challenges such as a rapid rate of change, the need for fast deployment of new technology and an unusually high level of skills shortage. Strategic initiatives to address these challenges are increasingly being driven through projects. Making your strategic goals a reality requires proper training, so your organization can gain visibility, insight, and control its portfolio of projects, as well as improve productivity, reduce cycle times, decrease costs, and increase quality.

E-Six Sigma (Six Sigma) - E-Six Sigma Foundation Course introduces the fundamentals of Six Sigma to individual process owners and operators who can then act as team members on Six Sigma projects. Not only do these members gain the skills necessary to identify, monitor and control profit-eating practices in their own processes, but they are also prepared to feed that information to Black Belts and Green Belts working on larger system projects.

For enquiries, please contact us for details at 2155 1855 or email us at info@newhorizons.edu.hk.

Building Skills in Information Marketing will Boost Your Business

Yesterday I was sitting on a train going into London when I thought I’d take a look around the carriage just to see what everyone was doing. I wanted to make a mental note because my five year old son always asks me ‘what happened at your work today Daddy?’ So I put my newspaper down and took a look around me.

The chap beside me was reading a book about selling, the woman on the other side of the aisle was using her computer and the two men opposite me were discussing a presentation they had seen. Then it struck me - everyone around me was an ‘information consumer’. Everything they were doing involved the consumption of information that somebody else had provided.

Now that shouldn’t have surprised me too much. After all, that’s what I do - I sell information to people. But it was the train journey that reminded me how much information people are buying. They are getting it from books, online, in meetings, via reports - all sorts of ways. We live in an information society nowadays.

That means there is an opportunity for you. Whatever business you are in, you deal with information - and people will pay you for what you know and what you have experienced.

Just six months ago my main business was speaking at seminars, conferences and running workshops. Now I’ve changed the way I earn my money by selling the information I used to give at talks and meetings directly to people who would otherwise be in my audience. And I am doing that online. People can download my talks, or they can buy ‘ebooks’ I have written about the subjects I specialise in (business psychology, if you must know). And it’s working.

In the past year, the Internet has gone from being just a source of referrals to my business, to being the prime source of my business. Last year about 2% of my income came from the Internet; now it's 95%. And the switch has been because I deliver information online.

Many businesses, however, do not take advantage of the huge consumer thirst for information. Instead, they just provide brochures and catalogues online. But what Internet users want is the information and the knowledge that exists within businesses.

So, to enhance your business and to ensure that your company succeeds online, make sure you provide information and knowledge-based products, such as ebooks and audio files. That way you'll be tapping into the consumer demand for information. You will be able to make money out of selling the information you normally keep only for your customers. With the Internet you can now sell that information to anyone.

12 Business Skills You Need To Master

Developing a small business into a successful enterprise demands more than passion. Unfortunately, facts speak for themselves. Over half of new businesses fail mainly because the entrepreneur is unable to translate their passion into practical business skills. Success demands more than hard work, resilience, and expertise in your field. In order to succeed, you need to understand and to become proficient in a set of fundamental business skills.

Running a small business requires that you become a jack-of-all-trades. It is important to know early on which skills that you have and those that you will have to learn or delegate to others. When it comes to the skills that you lack, you can learn these skills over a period of time by yourself, you can hire employees who are strong in specific areas, or you can engage the help of a professional business advisor.

Here are the essential soft skills (people skills or anything that is not a technical skill) that you will need to learn or import to help you to succeed in your business:

• Delegation Skills -- Delegation involves assigning responsibility to other people for the completion of work. The ideal position that you want to obtain is one where your staff carries out all the routine activities of your business. Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between effective controls and allowing people to complete their job effectively. The key element is knowing how to make your business work, rather than your business working you!

• Communication Skills -- Communication is an important part of life and is one that is often taken for granted. When you think about it, almost everything you do requires improved communications. To be effective in business, you have to communicate well. When you hire a new employee, good communication skills help you select the right person. When you communicate with your various stakeholders, you need to be clear about your expectations and to be sensitive when dealing with problems. The key is to know how to effectively communicate your vision with passion and conviction.

• Negotiation Skills -- Almost everyone negotiates informally on a daily basis without even being aware of it. Formal negotiation is a skill that can be learned through experience and practice. People who negotiate frequently tend to be more skilled at it than people who have not participated in many formal/informal negotiations. Experienced people are more likely to know what to say, when or when not to say it, or when or when not to make concessions. The key is to know how to develop a win-win approach in negotiations with all parties, but at the same time keeping in mind that you also want to obtain the most favorable outcome possible for yourself.

• Strategic Planning -- Strategic planning is a very important business activity. Strategic planning is a process of defining your company's strategy or direction and making decisions on allocations of resources of capital and people. The key is to know how to project your company's future performance, within a three-to-five year framework or more, supported by your well-defined business plan.

• Leadership Skills -- Leadership is a process of getting things done via people. Leadership, a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of people toward a common goal. Leadership is also the ability to take charge, assemble, mobilize, and motivate teams. The key is to know how to forge long-term relationships with prospects, customers, suppliers, employees, and investors.

• Team Building Skills -- Team-building and teamwork skills are essential for an entrepreneur in today's workplace. People working at their potential in teams generate better solutions and more productivity than individual members working independently. The key is to know how to build teams of employees, partners, advisors, and investors that will help you take your business to the next level.

• Analytical Skills -- Today’s workplace is becoming more technologically advanced and complex. With this rapid increase of technology, the need for analytical thinking also increases. Analytical thinking is the ability to objectively assess the present state of your business, to determine where you want to be in the future, and what to do in order to close the gap between the present and the future growth of your business. The key is to know how to gather, review, and evaluate data that is necessary to formulate and express compelling arguments.

• Sales and Marketing Skills -- Establishing successful sales and marketing methods and policies - from pricing and advertising to sales techniques - are essential in growing your business. The ability to analyze your competition, the marketplace, and industry trends are critical to the development of your marketing strategy. The key is to know how to craft and communicate a compelling message to the right target audience that generates new business, and in turn, builds profitable revenue streams.

• General Management Skills -- Management involves directing and controlling a group of one or more people for the purpose of coordinating activities that will accomplish a goal. Management encompasses the deployment and direction of human resources, financial resources, and technological resources. The key is to know how to develop and implement a workable management system that will manage daily operations, nurture stakeholders, and support business growth.

• Cash flow Management Skills -- Cash flow is generally acknowledged as the single most pressing concern of the small and medium-sized businesses. In its simplest form, cash flow is the movement of money in and out of your business. Cash flow is the life-blood of all growing businesses and is the primary indicator of business health. The effect of cash flow is real, immediate and, if mismanaged, totally unforgiving. The key is to know how to monitor, protect, control, and put cash to work.

• Financial Management Skills --The activity of finance is the application of a set of techniques that individuals and businesses use to manage their money, particularly the differences between income and expenditure and the risks of their investments. The need for timely budgeting and reporting of financial performance is of the upmost importance. The key is to know how to interpret and analyze your financial statements, in such a way, as to identify the items that are adversely affecting your profitability.

• Time Management Skills -- Time Management is a set of related common-sense skills that help you use your time in the most effective and productive way. Time Management is a very important skill to master. Learning this skill will empower you to achieve more and to use your time wisely. The key is to know how to manage your time efficiently and to focus on the activities most likely to deliver value to your business.

Copyright © 2007 Terry H. Hill You may reprint this article free of charge in your newsletter, magazine, or on your website, provided that the article is unedited, and that the copyright, author's bio, and contact information below appears with each article. Articles appearing on the web must provide a hyperlink to the author's web site.