Do You Need A Strategy For Your Home Business?

Strategy is something for the big corporations. Why all this talk about mission, vision, long term goals? Many companies do not have any strategy or they are just in the head of a few people within the company. So if that is the case, does a Home Business owner really need a strategy? To answer this question let¡¯s first define what strategy is.

When thinking about strategy think about terms like long term plans and goals. A strategy guides you to a certain aspiration. These do not need to be defined in monetary values. Actually, the mission of a company is rather a short and inspiring description of what it should aim for. When a company knows in which direction it is headed for, the goals are formulated and the strategy turns long term measurable goals into short term goals.

A strategy has many functions. It is used as a form of communication and it gives the company a direction. Without it decisions are made ad hoc and without any purpose in mind other than short term goals.

Having defined what a strategy is does a one-man Home Business really need a strategy? Definitely it has no real value to have a thick book describing the whole strategy of the company. But parts of it could help the Home Business owner. Decisions are made on a daily bases, so a strategy could help taking the right decisions and see if the dream the owner has comes true. Without a strategy a company operates ad hoc, from day to day, without knowing what it wants to achieve in the long term.

A succinct strategy would include at least the following:

1) What should your company be in 5 years ¨C give a short description.

2) Translate the description in a few measurable long term goals.

3) Break down those long term goals into a few steps ¨C these short term goals should also be measurable.

4) Decide a time table what to do and when to reach what goal.

Now that you have a summarized version of a strategy you have a good guideline. But always revisit your plans every year and see if you need to update it. When you notice that you are not reaching your goals, examine why and take corrective action.

With the strategy in place you are more on top of your business and are likely to make better decisions and reach the thing you aimed for.

Business Strategy: Clarify Your Purpose And Vision

Whether it's the beginning of a new year or we're half way through, you want it to be your best year ever. You are no doubt doing some planning for how to make that happen. You are doing some planning aren't you?

I'd like to recommend you take some time to really clarify your Purpose and Vision.

Clear purpose and vision are the keys to giving you a focus and direction. Unfortunately, that's something that is all too often lacking from small businesses. What you need to do is quite simple, but may challenge you if you've never taken the step before.

Here are a few ideas to help you make this your best year ever.

A clear purpose describes what you are out to cause with your business. Have you lost track of your purpose? Do you remember what led you to start or get into your business in the first place?

* Three questions to ponder as you seek to re-ignite the purpose in your business:

What do you really want out of life?

What do you really not want in your life?

What would you be willing to give up in order to live the life you want?

Answer these questions honestly and build your business around the life you want to live. Talk about a purpose that would set you on fire.

* Here's an idea for creating your vision. Think of the absolute greatest outcome that you can possible imagine that your best clients would really want from your service. Build your vision around being "the resource" that works to deliver that.

* Examine your values and principles and then determine what you want your business to be in the future. Find your favorite way to relax quietly and let your mind open to dwell in what's possible.

* Imagine yourself in a private movie theater watching a movie of your future self in 10 years. As the movie ends you notice you've been joined by the star of the show. Ask them any question you want about how they got to that place of great success in the movie. What was your future self's purpose and vision.

This may seem silly to you at first, but if you open your mind up to accept that the visioning process will work, you'll be amazed at the answers that will emerge.

Creating a Business Strategy

On a scale of one to ten, having a good business strategy rates about a fifteen!

No matter what kind of business you have -- whether you sell products or a service, as the saying goes, "if you fail to plan, then you're really planning to fail."

Creating a strategy can mean the difference between you working 60 to 80 hours a week all year long -- and then breaking even, or worse, losing money.

On the other hand, many successful entrepreneurs who have a strategy work fewer hours and make piles of money -- and they usually attribute their success to having a strategic plan and following it.

So what is strategic business management? Very simply, it's the process of defining the goals and objectives for your business, creating an action plan so you can reach them and then following the plan.

How do you create a strategic plan for you business?

1. First, know what your vision for your company is. If there were no barriers, nothing stopping you from taking your company as far as you could -- what would that look like?

2. Next, what are your company's core operating values? What are its guiding principles? In other words, why are you in business and how do you do business?

3. Now create a 3 to 5 year plan. Your long-term plan is based on the broad objectives that will help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be.

4. Develop a plan for this year. These are the specific objectives you plan to accomplish this year that will lead you closer to your long-term goals. Remember to be "SMART" when setting your annual goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-oriented). Include a list of the barriers that are stopping you from getting where you want to go. Figure out what resources you've already got, and what resources you need to get you past those barriers. And then create an action plan that clearly lays out how you will achieve your goals. Involve key employees with this part of the planning process.

5. Create a set of milestones or benchmarks. This is very important, so that you can measure your progress.

6. Share the plan with your employees, and anyone else who will be involved in the process. Your annual strategy is the roadmap that will make sure everyone ends up at the same destination -- but to be effective, everyone needs the same map!

7. Put the plan into action. Now that you have the roadmap, it's time to begin the journey.

8. Check your progress. Just like any trip, you need to check the map every now and then; to be sure you're still on the right road. If something isn't working, the sooner you figure it out and make the necessary adjustments, the sooner you'll be back on track.

9. Follow the same cycle next year. (Dream, Plan, Act, Check).

Creating a business strategy and following it will ensure that you enjoy the journey as much as getting to your final destination.

Developing A Document Shredding Strategy For Your Business

Creating a document shredding strategy is an important aspect of almost every business. Not only are there lots and regulations that require businesses to shred documents, but it is also part of running a trustworthy, excellent business.

Why do business is need to destroy documents?

Practically every business is creating and managing new paper documents every day and the list of documents that legally need to be shredded is constantly growing.

Bills, customer order information, contracts, employee applications, in-house memos, receipts, piles of mail, insurance documents, old tax records, payment records, account records and balance sheets, personnel files and bank records… Practically any document that has a first name last name address, and other information probably needs to be shredded.

What can happen if this information falls into the wrong hands?

Well, aside from forgery, credit card fraud, con schemes, corporate espionage, there is of course the potential for bad publicity, loss of customers, lawsuits and fines.

It is important that all businesses shred or destroy certain sensitive documents. Law enforcement, legal industries, government agencies, banks, health care providers, insurance providers, financial brokers, and real estate are just a few industries where managing paperwork is crucial. Not to mention hospitals, insurers, doctor’s offices, retirement homes, drugstores, legal papers.

So how can a business manage their documents safely and effectively?

A detailed security policy for every type of document your business uses is essential and employees need to know these policies!

For example: What are the shredding requirements for the various document types that your company frequently uses? What are employees allowed to photocopy? Who has access to files with private information?

Signs can be posted in the workplace and next to trash cans and recycling bins were sensitive documents may inadvertently be thrown out, un-shredded.

Also, whoever is overseeing the destruction of documents should closely consult with the company’s IT staff and any other department that works with electronic records and files to ensure safe handling.

Training employees about disposing of sensitive documents and developing a very specific policy about how long to hold and went to discard documents will go a long way. Access to company read records should be controlled and restricted to a small number of individuals and there should be rules relating to records.

And finally, use a certified document destruction company that has a good track record.

For a more information about safe document disposal and list of document shredding services including mobile document shredding services, you can browse our services directory.

Business Strategy – Year End Considerations

you are undoubtedly hunting for gifts. While these are obvious year end considerations, you should also be reviewing your business strategy for 2006.

Business Strategy – 2005

Whether your fiscal year ends in December or doesn’t, the end of the month is a good time to take stock of how things went in 2005. While the old saying is “time flies”, it is particularly true for businesses. Business owners tend to be fixated on two to three month time periods. As a result, they can fail to see developments over longer periods of time.

After you’ve taken care of all your holiday gift purchases, you should have some down time in the last two weeks of the month. Business tends to slow down as people deal with the holidays, travel to see family and so on. This is the perfect time to go back and consider the business year. Specifically, you should focus on where your business was in January 2005. What were your goals at that time? Did you meet them during the year? If not, why? You will almost always be surprised when you realize how the business developed over the last year. This global view can give you a better perspective and evaluation of how things are going.

Business Strategy – 2006

After contemplating 2005, you should give consideration to what you want to accomplish and where you want to be by the end of 2006. Ask yourself the following:

1. What is a reasonable revenue increase for 2006 compared to 2005?

2. Are their products or services you should pursue?

3. Are their products or services you should drop?

4. If a strategy is underperforming, does it make objective sense to continue pursuing it or cut your losses?

5. What are your biggest frustrations and how can you deal with them?

6. Who are your most valued employees and have you taken a moment to thank them?

7. Who are your least valued employees and what should you do about it?

8. Which vendors or suppliers do great work for you and which don’t?

Many other questions will run through your mind. There are no wrong ones. What is important, however, is you write the goals and thoughts down and keep them somewhere private. Next December, you should pull them out and see how things are going.

Business Marketing Strategy

What is it and who needs one?

The term business marketing strategy might sound like it is esoteric or stratospheric, so let’s take the mystery out of it so you can devise and implement your own business marketing strategy that fits in to your small business plan.

Strategy comes from a Greek word “stratagein” meaning “to be a general”. Think of a strategy as an overall plan of action needed to win a war. The smaller, detailed actions are called tactics. You can have tactical plans which help you achieve your strategic marketing plan or overall business marketing strategy. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?

A business marketing strategy or strategic marketing plan is an overall plan of marketing actions you intend to take in order to accomplish a specific goal for your company.

Start with a goal: $2 million in sales this year; expand into new premises by a certain date; double the size of the company in 2 years… whatever the goal may be. Something realistic but challenging. That's the "war" you want to win. Guess who the general is.

Then work out a simple, overall plan of the major marketing steps needed to accomplish that (for example):

1. Publish a newsletter for all existing customers and mail out quarterly.
2. Work out 4 special offers in the year and promote them to all our customers.
3. Set up on-line shopping and expand the web site.
4. Direct mail campaign promoting the web site to all customers.
5. Get mailing lists of (target markets) and do a series of 3 mailings of postcards to them and follow up on and close all leads.
6. Etc.

You get the idea. Don’t rush this. Do your homework. What worked in the past? Read up on successful marketing campaigns.

Your business marketing strategy needs to be laid out in the right sequence and you should have some idea of budget when you write it. “Run a series of 30 second TV ads during the Superbowl” might sound like a good thing to do but can you afford it? On the other hand, when you build your business marketing strategy you mustn’t try and cut corners. If you don’t promote heavily, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, no one will know about it and you will go broke.

What really works when it comes to marketing?

Many business owners don't have a good enough answer to this important question. I learned by a combination of study and trial and error.

From my own hard won experience I have discovered that a real marketing campaign will take into consideration at least the seven points which are outlined below:


1. Target Your Market

Your marketing will produce the best results for the lowest cost when you target prospects with the greatest need for what you offer.
Identify the best people to send your postcards to. Design your postcards to appeal to their greatest need.

If you are able to break down your target market into sub markets you can then write postcards that specifically speak to the needs of those people (an example is breaking down your own customer list into customers who buy most often, customers who spend the most money with you, customers who have been your customers the longest and then making them special offers based on the category they fit into).


2. Create A USP For Your Business

USP stands for "Unique Selling Proposition".
It is a statement of what is different about your company and its products. Your USP gives the reason people should do business with you. It amplifies the benefit of doing business with you and your company. My USP is POSTCARD MARKETING EXPERTS.

Create your own USP and put it on all your promotional materials, invoices, shipping labels etc.

Use your USP to communicate the benefit of doing business with you and why you are better than any of your competitors.


3. Always Make an Offer

Make sure you ask your prospects and customers to do something when they receive your postcard. By offering them something you know they are likely to want and giving them a smooth path to respond on, you are making it easy and desirable for them to respond.


4. Create and Maintain a Database of The Customer Information You Collect From The Responses To Your Mailings

Most people who receive a postcard from you won't contact you the first time they receive one.

But once they contact you, you must create and maintain a database which allows you to repeatedly contact them with offers to respond to.

Fifty percent or more of many businesses' sales come as a result of following up with people who were previously contacted, but didn't buy right away.

No kidding, repeat contact does drive sales. One-time mailings can get response, but are bound to leave sales on the table. Those sales can be picked up with repeated mailings.


5. Take Away the Fear of Loss

People don't want to be fooled, plain and simple. Unfortunately trust does not run high today between customers and businesses in general. People have been disappointed too many times by being sold one thing and getting another.

A guarantee or warranty is a good way to reduce or eliminate the customers’ risk of getting something other than what they bargained for.

Guarantees and warranties increase response and sales by reducing customer risk.


6. Expand Your Product Line

Getting new customers is more expensive than selling to existing ones. By regularly developing new products and services to sell to your customers and offering these new products and services to them, you can expand your business efficiently and easily.


7. Test Your Postcard Promotions

Track the effectiveness of your postcard mailings. How many people responded to your mailing? What dollar amount of sales resulted from those responses?

Is the money you are spending to attract new business giving you a good return? What can you do to make your marketing more effective? Change your offer, headline, price, the timing of your offer. When you do track the results and improve your response.

These are the points to follow when designing your own marketing strategy. When you are done, you will have laid out the steps needed to accomplish your goal using existing resources to achieve a great marketing ROI (return on investment).

After that, you simply have to get those steps executed and that might require further planning but it is all in the context of your main business marketing strategy.

Business – Strategy and Execution

Every company aims to formulate good strategy and execute that strategy well. But many times it is found that it was either good strategy, bad execution or bad strategy and good execution. Why and how to avoid this?

Let us begin with what is a strategy? In simple terms, it means the plan to achieve the desired goals or results. If any organization has well defined goals, and can develop a strategy to achieve them, it should be half the battle won. But it is seen that execution fails. Why should that be so? It may be the fault of the team that executes the strategy, or certain unknown factors that unexpectedly or unknowingly creep in while executing the plan.

What should be done? Ideally the team that forms the strategies should consider the factors such as who are the people who will execute, does the company have the capacity to execute, what if any unexpected change or event occurs while executing, what are the risks involved, and so on. No strategy can be created without taking into account the ability of the people who will be executing it. One may create a great marketing plan but if the field marketing staff fails to understand and execute the game, it is bound to fail and then the blame game begins.

Can a company make a single team that not only creates the strategy but is also responsible to execute it? This will eliminate many such hiccups on the way. The problem is expertise. I am a good strategist and not a good executor. You are a bad strategist but a good executor on the ground. What if such arguments are presented by the team under formation? All right, how about creating a strategy and keep the execution team in the loop throughout the process of creating strategy? This creates another set of problems. The views of both the teams may be so different that no positive outcome will ever result.

I have discussed in brief about these factors above. In real life, more complications arise and especially in large organizations, the complexities increase. The only solution for the top management is to set goals and discuss them with every one. After getting every one in confidence, create strategies and let every one participate in the strategy formation. Decide about what is totally achievable and why may be achievable. Let the team that will execute commit itself to achieve what is totally achievable and promise them with rewards if they manage to achieve the other part also. The synergy between the strategy makers and the executors will ultimately decide the final outcome.

Approaching Business Strategy - Analysis

Many people talk about business strategy but have a great failure to realise exactly what this is - is it surprising that a great deal of business people have a huge problem discussing this when they do not exactly know what this is!

Questions that should be asked may include the determination of the fact that is there even a strategy in existence or if so, is this the correct one? Additionally, how do we determine what a strategy is and how does one go about developing one?

It is important when developing strategy to look at some of the issues and why a chosen path can go wrong-if one keeps doing the same thing, one will get the same results.

Many complaints about strategy range from the fact that it is difficult to determine, it gets messy and unfinished, and many people involved either do not contribute or attempt to dominate proceedings and a general feeling of the future and the failure of any future chosen path.

Broadly speaking, some schools of thought hold with notion that there are three main reasons for a failure of strategy.

Managers often fail to realise what these differences are; business schools talk about corporate-centre strategy and business-unit strategy. Business-unit strategy is for controlled organisations that may be part of conglomerates or single-business units whereas the other is for conglomerates planning growth through the use of single business units.

Another is often no clarity of purpose; for example there is no point in using models that are simply intellectually attractive when the purpose of the task is to discover options and directions and gather proof to support decisions about the future.

The business - unit level requires methods that are relatively straightforward and the only real obstacles are intimidation by "professionals" and their jargon. Most means of analysis are in excess of 35 years old but there is a general lack of understanding of them amongst business people and most of them do not know how to use them.

So how do we correct this anomaly?

Initially, the ground rules need to be set so participants need to arrive with open,clear minds. Strategy may be likened to seeing everything around, from every angle available and even into the future and the following requirements must be met to be successful: Customers are paramount and form the basis of market uuderstanding, practicality must take priority over theory, the business needs of now and the future need to be thought about and the strategy needs to be measurable.

It is worth at this point to touch on the philosophy behind a strategy.

The best place to start is to take the old adage of begin with where you want to be and work backwards to where you are now.

If, on the other hand, one believes that strategy is an analytical process then start with where you are and work forwards. However there is a difficulty with this approach as straightforward arithmetical thinking stifles creativity.

Perhaps, in the real world, a combination of both methods is probably a necessity.

This is all, of course, driving towards growth of the business and that is largely down to marketing. So why are not all growing firms good marketers and why have not they developed a good strategy?

Very briefly, this begins with a failure to understand the difference between selling and marketing - marketing is about developing products or services that customers will want where selling is about simply getting people to but the product.

The rest, for the moment, I leave you to ponder on.

Blogging – A Critical Part of Your Web Business Strategy

The methods by which we use to contact each other, especially in internet marketing activities continue to undergo dramatic transformation. In the not to distant past (only a couple of years ago!) we kept in touch with customers – existing or potential new ones, using the telephone, fax machines, direct mail marketing and even in-person meetings. Today, people expect more frequent updates, new information, and the latest of everything. So much so that it is literally impossible to keep up with this dizzying pace and certainly not on a continuing or ongoing basis with any consistency. Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a popular blog website. One example is called blogger.com.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

After a small amount of basic research and reading, you will quickly see, there are numerous advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. One of the biggest reasons is that search engines love them. This is because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely the thing that searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. What this means to internet marketers is that if you don't have a blog for your business, you are potentially reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

For all the reasons mentioned above (and many, many more), blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. All the marketing research you can find will tell you that regular contact with your customers is a vital component in retaining existing clients, as well as gaining new business. Don’t put it off any longer; it is time to get your blog going---today!

Business Mastermind Groups, the Forgotten powerful Business Strategy

Have you ever wonder what a mastermind group is and what makes it hold so much appeal for successful people? Dr. Napoleon Hill, most renowned for his classic "Think and Grow Rich", defines a mastermind group as "an alliance of two or more minds blended in a spirit of perfect harmony and co-operating for the attainment of a definite purpose".

In Dr Hill's book, he came to the conclusion that a group of like-minded, achievement-oriented individuals dramatically leveraging upon one another's strength provided the crucial platform for their collective success. This finding is based upon the research and analysis behind the achievements of no less than 500 of the most successful people in America, in a glittering list that includes Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

This is due to the fact that having a mastermind group allows one to tap into the power and wisdom of many, and put in place a support group to assist all in attaining personal and professional goals. This is in stark contrast with the individual who cuts a lonely figure struggling to build and shape an entire business by himself.

How can business Mastermind groups benefit you?

“Me” no longer exists in a Mastermind group, it's harnessing the power of “We” that is intriguing. Imagine have a Mastermind group of people that are fighting with you in the same trenches or people who have been that, done that! And you given access by them to this unique brain trust, so as to speak, to generate support and understanding and ultimately solutions from these people, allowing you to dismiss that temporary setback as an insignificant blot on your otherwise impressive CV in future...

How does that sound? A mastermind group does exactly that for you! You are able to leverage upon the skills, knowledge, experiences, ideas and abilities of others as though they were your own and in the process, create a synergy within your group and a precious compilation of thoughts which would otherwise possibly never be generated.

The benefits of being in a mastermind group are bountiful. It provides you with marketing contacts, sales referrals, and information about new business opportunities, as well as advice on how to improve the way your business is run. However, it's important that you realized that referrals and leads exchange is just a small part of what a Mastermind group does.

Being involved in a mastermind group also calls for accountability. There can be no excuses not to get things done as you are not only answerable to yourself, but to your other group members as well.

Once you have accrued the long-term benefits such as being able to sustain your business and being able to build lasting and deep friendships with the other members of your mastermind group, you can expect unbiased and non-judgmental advice from them, and over time, they will grow to become your most trusted business associates upon whose shoulders could be relied on should you run into any sort of trouble in future.

To be able to reach that stage though, you have to first learn to give and share, objectively. Sharing allows you to process things better in your brain as you are talking to a group of people who genuinely care and this allows you clarity of thought so as to be able to set more definite and realistic goals. To benefit the most from a Mastermind group, follow the credo- Givers Gain!

Finally, should you reach this stage, you can even rely on members of your mastermind group, people whom you trust, to help regulate your business and serve as a layer of protection against external threats.

About the Author

Alex Cheong is an expert author in the topic Mastermind groups.

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Copyrights © 2006
Alex Cheong @ http://www.mastermind-your-way-to-success.com

The contents of this article may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author's name, copyright notice and contact information are included.

Investment Strategy

Because investing is not a sure thing in most cases, it is much like a game – you don’t know the outcome until the game has been played and a winner has been declared. Anytime you play almost any type of game, you have a strategy. Investing isn’t any different – you need an investment strategy.

An investment strategy is basically a plan for investing your money in various types of investments that will help you meet your financial goals in a specific amount of time. Each type of investment contains individual investments that you must choose from. A clothing store sells clothes – but those clothes consist of shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, undergarments, etc. The stock market is a type of investment, but it contains different types of stocks, which all contain different companies that you can invest in.

If you haven’t done your research, it can quickly become very confusing – simply because there are so many different types of investments and individual investments to choose from. This is where your strategy, combined with your risk tolerance and investment style all come into play.

If you are new to investments, work closely with a financial planner before making any investments. They will help you develop an investment strategy that will not only fall within the bounds of your risk tolerance and your investment style, but will also help you achieve your financial goals.

Never invest money without having a goal and a strategy for reaching that goal! This is essential. Nobody hands their money over to anyone without knowing what that money is being used for and when they will get it back! If you don’t have a goal, a plan, or a strategy, that is essentially what you are doing! Always start with a goal and a strategy for reaching that goal!

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