Can Anyone Become Competent At Business With The Right Resources?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |The Art of Business|Can Anyone Become Competent At Business With The Right Resources?We often think that running a business is something that must always be struggled for. We consider it to be a privilege, and something that can easily fail if the correct attention is not placed in the right areas. Of course, both points are true to an extent, but does that mean that only the most accomplished of people could ever hope of dipping their toes into the business pool? How does experience and education develop in the modern day? Is business still a hidden art that must be learned through great risk and peril, akin to a martial arts novice training on a mountain top, or can anyone learn essential business skills with the right access to resources?

We would like to think that providing the wisdom to succeed can help you not only enjoy your business life more, but give you more to think about and potentially avoid mistakes that others seem to walk in to. In other words, yes, we believe that with the right resources, most people can learn valuable business skills. After all, talent and privilege is different to skill and hard work.

Consider our advice below:

Business Blogs

Business blogs offer some of the best curated opinion-pieces, statistical analysis and news that you can find. Of course, perhaps there are some that are the most popular, such as the business journal of your most favorite news source, or something dedicated such as the Financial Times or Forbes. But if you only view these sources, you’re missing out on a lot of grass-roots understanding and inspiration, featured by people who have a true understanding of their industry and wish to express it. It’s true that business journalists often have a great understanding and research deeply into their output before publication, but would you rather only listen to journalists, or those who have current experience in the business landscape? The correct answer should be ‘a mix of both.’

Business blogs are essential to a digestible daily understanding of business. An understanding of an idea can be boiled down to its grassroots and most essential point, helping you learn the idea without having to defer them yourself from elongated business case studies. However, those are essential to consider too. You can be almost certain that there’s rarely anything new under the sun, and that if your business is in a unique-feeling position, there have often been at least hundreds of businesses that have found themselves in a similar one worth paying attention to.

Podcasts

Business podcasts are essential to listen to. Give a few of them a try! With topics as serious and interesting as these, it’s essential to find hosts that you could listen to for hours without a sense of exhaustion. Playing these during your commuting hours or downtime could help you continually learn when you’re otherwise mindlessly occupied. There are many excellent podcasts out there. Look through the iTunes store business or financial categories, or perhaps browse through Spotify to see what could be streamed. You might be surprised.

But of course, you needn’t only listen to business podcasts. There are many excellent audiobooks out there to help you gain the digest of a full book in your car, or when working out at the gym. These might include topics that aren’t directly business manuals, but still hold some water. For example, perhaps listening to the memoirs or autobiographies of a major business figurehead in retirement can help you gain some insight only gleaned from a lifetime of work and understanding. Perhaps listening to industry-led podcasts can help you gain a perspective on the industry. For example, if you’re joining a marketing team for a video-game developer, it might be worth listening to the IGN podcast, or the Giant Bombcast, both are regularly in the top 100 podcasts of any indexed listing.

There’s a wealth of audible information you can download for free, and it’s best not to take this for granted. You never know just what insights you might be given.

News Feeds

It’s essential to keep up to date. You might decide that a Twitter aggregate of accounts can be worthwhile to follow, but this just leads to an overtly busy timeline. Signing up to many RSS feeds from an RSS reader can help you assess when new articles go online, perhaps by certain writers from a publication that you enjoy, or perhaps when a new issue of your online newsstand is released. Many publications are offering digital conditions of their work, and this can also be worthwhile to read.

But these methods might be considered somewhat outdated. If you wish to get your internet marketing news in the most reliable manner, using resources such as the Amazon news services can bring. This can prevent you from having to collect everything yourself, because no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to truly collect all the worth around you and run a business at the same time, or fight to get your start. Sometimes help from the professionals can allow you to collate the most important news, and this can help you gain an advantage over those who do not use these services. Whatever you choose to do, it’s best to have it localized in one place, to prevent having to collect your information from way too many sources at one time. It can save you plenty of stress.

Consultants

Of course, despite our previous words, finding the right consultant can often help you avoid plenty of problems from the offset. They are perhaps the most valid and unique tool you can use to help you out of your personal situation, be that a PR nightmare you’re experiencing as a small firm or when struggling with how best to structure your departments. These fees are often higher than other solutions, but none are as customized, as dedicated to results, and as personally responsible as these. For that, they are worth their weight in gold, and that can be incredibly important to keep in mind. A little consultation goes a long way, it seems.

Past Employment & Operational Results

Sometimes, the best place to look for advice and future insight is to reflect on your past. Have you worked in industries before, at a senior level? Did you see many of the moves made by those who managed you? Did you have somewhat of a broad view of the various roles and how they functioned? While this might not give you a complete view, do not discard your experience in the past. It could potentially help you consider things you wish to emulate and discard in your effort to help yourself as an employee.

It might be reading your past business journals or project plans that help you see where mistakes were made, or where your successes lay. The more experience you gain, the further context you will be able to apply to that situation. Consider how you might have conducted the same events or tasks if you were given them to deal with now. It might be that the result could have looked much different. This will only work for some industries of course. But those it does work for will likely be incredibly supported by this view of the past. For example, events and people management, financial handling, marketing outreach and a range of other possibilities will likely be helped by this viewpoint, and that can be a truly powerful thing.

Attend Events

You would be surprised just how many business lectures, events, expos and other forms of attendable organized functions are either free or very cheap to enter. This way you can gain contact with the businesses operating today, or hear experts speak about their previous experience or current operational efforts in the industry. It’s not hard to see how this can give you a sense of participation, and potentially help you learn more than beforehand. With an online presence and the ability to network both digitally and in person, you might find yourself making friends with those who are having real effects on the industry, or at least becoming somewhat familiar with them.

Network, network, networking can often not only help you boost your presence, but learn from others. There’s something about the integrated social functions of the online space and reaching out at events that helps curate content and bring people together. Who knows? You might gain insight that you would struggle to find elsewhere through this effort alone, and that can be quite an important thing to celebrate. It only takes a moment to look for events that you could attend, also. A simple browse online should bring up many in your city this year, be that for disparate celebrations. The annual women in business conference might be held near you, or perhaps industry-specific offerings. They can all have a positive effect.

With these tips, you’re sure to find the right resources to help you gain and retain your business confidence.

Introduction to Business Proposals

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The business proposal is your key to winning work in whatever competitive marketplace you operate in. Get it wrong, no matter how solid the business or your idea, and you are unlikely to find partners or customers to work with.

Startups and entrepreneurs have found many ways to the stars and business success. But, the huge majority of them rely on the humble business plan to sell their idea and attract investment and interest. Once the company is up and running, the business proposal is used to win contracts, work or gain sales with clients or partners.

Talking the Right Proposal Language

There are several types of proposals including solicited (formally and informally) and unsolicited when reaching out to a company you wish to work with. This guide shows you how to write a perfect proposal. But before writing one, you need to understand that the key to success is to align your offer with their needs and play by their rules.

That’s easy enough when you are replying to a request for proposals (RFP), which is how much of the tech, business, government, and military world works. An RFP should have plenty of detail to base your proposal on. If you are responding to an RPF, ensure your proposal meets their style and responds to the key parts of their schedule.

Copy and pasting an old proposal, even a successful one, into their template is both lazy and likely lead to inaccuracies. Ensure dates and figures are accurate, in the right format and currency, and that you answer their questions first. Then dive into how you will solve their problem or meet their needs. If you don’t understand a question or detail, don’t be afraid to ask.

For informal or on-spec unsolicited proposals, you will need to do some digging to find out how your businesses can best work together, or how your products meet the need of the target. Look for previously published examples of RFPs or projects they have worked on, research any white papers or project blogs they have published, demonstrating in your proposal that you understand their needs and how your business can add value.

Even an unsolicited proposal should broadly follow the style of a typical response to an RFP, and maintain a total level of professionalism and detail.

Produce a Perfect Proposal

Any proposal needs to be based on realism. Even if there is plenty of competition, don’t go promising the moon with unrealistic deadlines or ludicrously low costs. That will only damage your own business, likely kill any possible relationship while giving your company a negative reputation.

When writing your proposal, start with key highlights from costs, dates, quality assurance providers and deliverables. Then, add in the detail of how your solution or work will benefit them, and, without diving into marketing spiel, how it can impress over the competition.

Finally, where possible, check who will be reading the proposal. If they have a social media presence or have written articles, keynoted events, or just talked at local business forums, read about them and get into their mindset and attune the proposal to that audience. They might be straight-talkers, like a bit of history or talk endlessly about figures.

Within the document, avoid dense text. Answer each question or explain your proposal in distinct segments. Reinforce them in the cover letter and any other parts of the proposal, saving anything that sounds like marketing (“our business is passionate about…” for the executive summary.

Finally, check the proposal a few times, get other people to read it, especially if you are a small company, and take on-board any advice. If you are working on your first few proposals, ask local business support groups to check them out, or see if they can recommend a friendly professional.

Finally, ensure it is sent digitally and by post (most RFPs expect this), and don’t bounce up and down expecting an instant response. The target company may get many proposals and take some time to weigh them up.

3 Things That You Should Consider Outsourcing

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As a business owner, there are many decisions that you have to make, and one of them is whether you outsource or not. Whilst some people are outsourcing converts – and get most of their work done by external companies – others are a little more skeptical, and would prefer to have control over every part of their business in-house. Whilst this is understandable, there are a range of benefits of outsourcing, and if you’re not utilizing it in your business, then you could be missing out on saving money, and having the job done, well… better by somebody else.

We’ve put together a list of 3 things that you should consider outsourcing in your business.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Outsourcing | 3 Things That You Should Consider Outsourcing
 
1. Your social media management

Social media seems like something that would be easy to manage yourself, because all you have to do is post out a few updates every now and again, to make sure that you’re drawing people in across the various platforms. However, getting social media right is actually a lot more complex than that, and outsourcing it means that you’ll be able to benefit due to those professionals that know the algorithms, and what works. On top of this, it’s actually harder than you think to come up with a few things a week to post, especially when you’ve got to think up those ideas that will cause a good reaction. Leave it to the professionals!

2. Your IT security

OK, so pretty much every business out there uses IT in some way, and we all enjoy the benefits that it brings us. After all, are there any people out there who aren’t checking their emails at least 50 times a day now? As people – and business owners – we are IT obsessed, but security is a complex and difficult thing to manage. Even if you’ve got somebody in-house to deal with issues such as networking monitoring, the truth is that most external cybersecurity companies are a lot more advanced, which means that you’ll be facing less problems in the long-run. It will probably be cheaper than hiring somebody in-house, too.

3. Your admin

When it comes to admin, there is arguably nothing more boring than dealing with these things. Whilst you want to be getting on with that good stuff, it’s pretty annoying that your phone is constantly ringing, and that you’re being bombarded with emails left, right, and center. There’s nothing that you can do about this though, right? You’ll be pleased to hear that you can get a virtual reception, where people answer your phone calls, and even deal with your mail, for you. This is ideal for those who can’t afford full-time admin staff, and it’s great if you just want to get rid of some of the pressure of office life.

So, if you want to take those first steps into the world of outsourcing, then consider handing over these 3 things to the professionals. You’ll be glad that you did when you’re saving yourself a lot of time, and money, in the process!

Starting a New Business and Want to Make It Look Professional? Here Are Some Steps You Should Take

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Turning a start-up into a professional business requires all sorts of different actions, approaches, and outlooks. You certainly need to be good with your use of financial resources, and you obviously need a strong work ethic. Networking with other people in your industry certainly doesn’t hurt either.

But, it’s one of those interesting facts of life that no matter how good your service or product may be, and no matter how much work you put in, it can all be made pretty much redundant by poor presentation.

We all know that, in principle, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and yet that is precisely what we all do to some degree or another.

Having a professional presentation is extremely important if you want your new business to be successful. Businesses that look amateurish in any obvious way present a red flag to prospective clients or customers, and this can be fatal for start-ups in particular.

Here are a few steps you should take in order to ensure that your business looks as professional as possible.

Get a high-quality logo to use in your marketing materials

Have you ever noticed how the biggest and most successful brands out there have logos that they display prominently, at every possible opportunity? This might not be the kind of thing that you necessarily think of a lot, but that’s just because those logos are so ubiquitous that they almost fade into the background after a while.

Still, everyone knows what the McDonald’s arches represent, or the Apple apple, or any number of other professional logos.

At the earliest possible opportunity upon starting a business, you’ll want to have an effective professional logo in place. That’s because, as you start marketing and putting yourself out there, your logo will serve as a shorthand psychological trigger to bring awareness to your business, and to help people to identify with who you are.

Images stick in people’s minds in a pretty profound way, and on a pretty deep level. So, look into using a service such as Instalogo.org in order to obtain a logo for your business, today.

Ideally, your logo will be something quite unique, and won’t be easily confused with any other logo that can be commonly found out there in society. At the same time, however, your logo should be quite simple and elegant. Simple logos stick in people’s minds well. Highly complex logos often seem like “clutter” and get forgotten about.

Host your own domain name, and set up a WordPress site (hire a web designer if needs be)

In the digital age, you absolutely need to have a high-quality website up and running in order to look professional, and even just to be on people’s radar at all.

An unfortunate mistake that some new entrepreneurs make, however, is to host their websites off free domains, which then make the fact that they are free openly known through their generic URLs and watermarks.

Instead, host your own domain name. This is achieved in mere moments with any number of online domain management services, such as GoDaddy.

The next step is to subscribe to hosting plan, and create your own website using WordPress or a similar platform. WordPress tends to be ideal for a number of reasons, not least of all the fact that it includes a huge number of potential plug-ins and themes that allow you to build your own website from scratch, with no real coding skills required.

Experiment with this for a while, until you’ve got a professional and appealing website up and running. If you struggle with this, however, hire a professional web designer. It will be well worth the investment down the line.

Get some professional head shots taken – it’s really a big deal

Prospective clients and customers look for certain markers of professionalism and authority when they’re browsing the market and weighing up their options.

If your website is going to include any photos of yourself (and there’s a good argument that it should) it’s imperative that those should be professional head shots, taken by an expert photographer.

People really can tell when you’ve just skimmed selfies from your Instagram profile, and this is an immediate red flag that screams that you’re an amateur who may be there today and gone tomorrow.

Including photos of yourself on your site, along with a well-curated “Our Story” or “About Me” section will help to build rapport, and make you seem like a real person rather than just an algorithm.

5 Simple Solutions That Will Make Your Business Bloom

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Managing Your Business | 5 Simple Solutions That Will Make Your Business BloomWe all know that starting a business is a big deal. It’s something that will change your life, your career, and even your bank balance. But, to get there, and to make that happen, you need to create a killer plan to get you there. And while we’re not going to delve into the basics on creating a business plan in this post, we are doing to consider five things that you can do, or use, or turn to, to support and encourage your growth. Whether you know that you need more website visitors, more time to work on your business, or you just need to make your first sale, you may find that one or more of these five points will help you to do exactly that.

1. Get To Know Your Audience Better

The very first thing that you’ll want to do here, is to make sure that you know your audience incredibly well. Because the more you know your audience and you understand their needs, it will be easier for you to create a product or service that they need to have in their lives.

2. Solidify Your Strategy

The next thing that you’ll want to do here is to make sure that you have a solid social media marketing plan in place. Because if you want more visitors, or to grow an email list, or to make more sales, you need to harness all of the tools you have. And social media can be vital for this. So creating a set plan or having a clearer vision on what you’re trying to achieve, will help you to get those results.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Managing Your Business | 5 Simple Solutions That Will Make Your Business Bloom3. Outsource

Then next thing that might help your business to blossom, is to consider outsourcing some of the areas of the business that you’re not all that experienced with. Maybe you’re not great at finance or IT? Then why spend your time on it? Instead, you might want to read more about this here so that you can see if doing so will benefit you. Because if you can free up time, and get more work done, it’s definitely worthwhile.

4. Line Everything Up

But then also, if you know that you need to boost your business, you have to be really objective and look at your daily tasks. At what you’re focusing on and prioritizing. Because if your actions do not match your business goals – there’s your missing link. But when you align your actions to your goals, you’ll start to see better results.

5. Bring In Experts

And finally, if you’re thinking about hiring, or when you do, you’re going to find that it really works in your favor for you to hire people that have a certain level of expertise in their area. Sometimes, it’s easy to believe that you ought to hire novices, or trainees, or just cheap labor – but really, what will they bring to your business? Experts can really add value. And it’s smart to hire people that challenge you or that are more knowledgeable than you.