Business Continuity Audit » Mindset

Attributes of Business Success

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:35:50 +0000

Cultivate Inner Networks

Entrepreneurs practicing the art of business success know the power of networks. They take the time to identify and build relationships with key peers, mentors, and advisors. This inner network provides support, direction, and an increased number of people to assist.

Customer Centric

Business success requires an unwavering commitment to the customer. This commitment encompasses a mindset of understanding the customers’ world. Understanding the customer’s wants and needs provides the business with a greater opportunity to earn a loyal customer base. Focus away from business and profits, and toward what you can do to improve the life of your customers.

Humble Honesty

Business success requires the ability to know your strengths and weaknesses. Being open and honest about yourself and your business creates growth as an individual and as a company. Don’t spend time developing weaknesses. Find help for weak areas, enabling you to focus on strengths. Building our strengths instead of fixing our weakness is the path to mastery and success. Take the time to know yourself and business.

Adaptability

Business success requires the ability to adapt to changing situations. Nothing ever goes as planned. The world of business is full of surprises and unforeseen events. Using the habit of adaptability allows business owners to respond to circumstances with the ability to change course and act without complete information. Being flexible allows us to respond to changes without being paralysed with fear and uncertainty.

Opportunity Focused

Problems are a regular part of business life. Staff issues, customer misunderstandings, – the list is endless. To achieve business success, look at both sides of the coin. Every problem has an opportunity. Being opportunity focused makes the game of business fun and energising.

Finding A Better Way

Productivity is the cornerstone of business success. Formulate the habit of finding a better way to make your business more productive. This will create more time to focus on the critical issues that drive sales and profit. Productivity can be enhanced by technology, automation, outsourcing, and improving business processes.

Balanced Lifestyle Management

A business can consume your time and energy. It’s easy to allow the business to take control of your life. Business success requires the attribute of balancing all aspects of your life. Separating time for daily business tasks, profit driven tasks, and free time is a attribute that will make your business and life more enjoyable. Take the time to plan each week.

Learning and instilling new ways in your daily business life can have a dramatic effect on your level of success. Review each of the attributes. Choose one to focus on for a month or until you achieve mastery. Gradually incorporate each of the attributes of business success into your life and attain your business dreams.

By: James V Chapman

Laminated Business Cards – Outstanding Features

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:14:20 +0000

Business cards are your most valuable and readily accessible tools in terms of marketing yourself and your business. That is why it is only fitting to spend money on the finest and most creative laminated business cards.

Make laminated business cards for your workforce and ask them to hand the cards out to whoever they meet – friends, acquaintances, a stranger on the street…the list goes on. You should take note of the fact that anyone you and your workforce meet is a prospective client! Having this kind of mindset will take your business’s employee-client relationship to the next level.

Your business card should act as your mini-business ad. Make it very unique and interesting in terms of fonts, color, and execution of message. Incorporating the logo of your company and your company name is not enough. You should also include all pertinent details.
It is extremely important that you remember to write more than five words of description about your business. By doing so, your prospective clients can particularly remember your company and what its principal nature is about. Additionally, business card deals are two-way streets. If you provide someone with your laminated business card and request his/her card in return, you will be provided with written details of that person’s business which would help you keep him or her in mind.

Since laminated business cards are very essential and functional, always be sure that they include relevant details about your company or business, such as: your name, company name, mailing and e-mail addresses, website, telephone and fax numbers, and all other data which you consider important to your company.

Do not request laminated business cards that are glossy because if you give them out, people will not be able to scribble their remarks about you on the card. Moreover, do not create atypical, double-sized, or folding cards because they look self-centered, and there may be problems on placing them in typical size cardholders. If this is the case, people will more likely dispose of them rather than keep them. Lastly, do not create cards that are made of plastic because their edges are sharp and can cause cuts.

Most of the business cards today are tinier than usual and use smaller-type fonts. This is something that you should not conform with because the last thing you want to do is damage the eyesight of the client reading your business card.

You want these people to be able to read the contents of your card. What you need to do is keep the most important details – your name and contact number – in larger fonts than the rest of the text in the card. Also, if you’re a big spender, you might take into account using raised ink for printing and letting an expert design your business cards.

Whatever you’re planning to do with your laminated business cards, always remember that they should be attention-grabbers. Through them, your business should be noticed and more likely to be “engraved” in people’s minds.

By: David Faulkner

Online Business Verses Traditional Business

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:00:06 +0000

What comes to mind when you think of Traditional Business? For myself I think of things such as large corporations and manufacturing companies with large overhead and many employees. I also think of the industrial age, an age of the last century. In that era you had to have vast amounts of land and big factories with hundreds of employees to be a millionaire such as Henry Ford.

In today’s day and age that we all live in and strive for success Is the information age. This age has brought a complete new set of rules along with standards in doing business. This amazing thing called the internet has brought the whole world within an arm distance to one another. It is easier than ever imagined to do business internationally.

Companies such as Amazon.com and eBay have been growing over the past decade and who is to say that it is going to stop any time soon. I am totally convinced that anything can be bought online with just a simple click of a mouse these days. Is online shopping or online purchasing in general going to become more and more popular as the years go on? Or is this whole Internet thing just a fad that will die like bell bottom jeans? The way that this trend is going proves to be a great time to start a online business of some sort. Statistics show that roughly 90 percent of recent millionaires have made there fortune online, with all age groups accountable. What does this mean? It is time for people to start to change there mindset when it comes to business, take a look at all options before purchasing a business of any sort.

There are many advantages in owning an online marketing or direct sales company. For myself the obvious difference was the start up cost, a couple thousand dollars is usually more than enough with most online companies. Compared to Traditional businesses where an investment of $500,000 is not out of the ordinary. So I must say that the feeling of not going bankrupt, if you don not perform as well as you intended is a relaxing feeling. The next biggest factor would have to be no employees. No more having to worry about them not showing up for work, payroll issues, leaving early, bad performance, and stealing from the company. I am not trying to bad mouth anyone and I know personally that there are many great employees out there, but the fact of the matter is that these are issues that will take place in any traditional business sooner or later. You choose, employees? Or no employees?

In any business I feel that the most important factor when starting out is to have good solid training. You see a lot of the time people start a business and fail because they don not have access to a mentor with the results that they want. To be successful all you need to do is find people with the results that you want and do what they did, repeat what they did every step of the way. I can not stress enough how critical it is to find a company with ongoing support and training in the industry.

The opportunity to create the life of your wildest dreams is no myth with online businesses, more and more people are achieving this everyday. Choosing the proper vehicle is your key for long term success. While doing your research on different companies, just remember to remain patient and do not rush into anything until your fully confident. Research things such as the background of the company and its founders, the products, and the training and support you will receive. Stick to these strategies and you can be living the life of your dreams sooner than you think.

By: Blake Martel