Business Plan - Which questions should be answered

1) What is the need that your business exists to satisfy?

• Every business exists because of some noticeable opportunity that you have discovered within the market. So you must clearly define the need and/or problem you are solving with this business.

2) How will your business satisfy the need?

• Introduce and describe the business itself. Consider including a mission or vision statement with objectives detailing how the business satisfies the need in the market.

3) How does your company differentiate itself?

• Describe your business model and competitive advantage. This will help you to outline how the business will sustain its position within the market.

4) Who will be the key players in the business?

• Name the management team, board and advisers to the business. Highlight their expertise and experiences.

5) How big is the market you are entering?

• Only after understanding the industry you are entering – its size, attractiveness and profit potential – can you truly justify the opportunity.

6) Who will you be targeting as customers?

• Narrowing down your target customer will help enhance and define your marketing strategy.

7) What will be your most effective marketing and promotional strategies?

• Once you’ve identified your target client, you’ll need to develop and implement a strategy on how best to reach them (e.g. PPC, television, radio, social, etc). And this in large part will be influenced by where your target client consumes information.

8) What are the economics of your business?

• Define your revenue streams including pricing structure, costs, margins and expenses.

9) How much money is required to get your business started and generating revenue?

• Identify needed capital requirements by determining where your business stands today, and what is needed in order to move forward.  Also, if you are in need of outside funding, what will be the sources and uses of funds requested.

10) What needs to happen to break-even?

• Play around with financial projections and forecasts to determine the volume of sales needed to cover your expenses and to become profitable.  Include monthly breakdowns for the first two years.

Media - The Self-Made Censor Board

Regret to write that I have seen the speech of PTI Chairman live on TV and after the speech when I was gone through a Local so called No. 1 Newspaper's website they censored the basics of that speech. I have listened that Mr. Khan said that He have taken big and bold decision because his faith is La-ilaha illalllah and Iyyaka Na'budu wa Iyyaka nasta'een and in the whole paragraph of that newspaper's website not a single word like this had mentioned. I don't know why they have censored that.

7 Sales Skills to Improve On

Sales Skill #1: Qualifying Fast to Avoid Wasting Sales Time

Do you chase after your prospects until they tell you yes or no? Do you ever tell your prospects "No", as in "No, I am not going to sell to you"? There are many things in selling that you do not and will not be able to control. The one thing that you do have control over is your time and how you choose to use it.

To qualify fast you must have a set of criteria describing who you will and will not sell to. You want to sell to the prospects likely to buy your products, and drop the prospects unlikely to buy (so that you can find more good prospects). Sounds simple, but too many salespeople let sludge buildup in their pipeline, constricting the total revenue that flows out.

KEY TIP: Develop a list of sales qualifying criteria that prospect's must meet in order for you to invest your sales time with them.

Sales Skill #2: Motivating Prospects

Qualifying goes beyond budget, authority, and need. You want to sell to prospects who *want* to buy from you. Finding prospects that need our products usually is not difficult. Finding those who really want our products though can be very hard if we wait for them to come to us.

Products sold by professional salespeople are more complex and offer more value than commodity products offered through stores, catalogs and brokers. Prospects generally do not know they need such products, until they first discover that they have a problem. This process can take seconds or years depending on the nature of the problem (and the prospect!). Prospects get motivated to work with you when you help them to discover that you solve their problem better than anyone does
else.

KEY TIP: Determine which problems that you eliminate or solve for your prospects. Plan and ask questions to uncover and agitate those problems.

Sales Skill #3: Selling to People Outside Your Comfort Zone

Most salespeople who are "people persons", already think that they are good at this. Let me ask you a question. When you last lost a sale, how was your rapport with the key person who decided against you?

You can't afford to look away and ignore people that you don't have natural rapport with. The good news is that people like people like themselves. All you have to do to gain rapport is stretch your behavior outside or your comfort zone until you become like another person.

KEY TIP: Match speech patterns with people to gain rapport outside of your typical sports or weather conversation.

Sales Skill #4: Reaching Decision-Makers Through Voicemail

There's two ways to make more sales. One is to close more of the prospects you do contact. The other is to get more prospects into the pipeline. When prospecting, you can look at voicemail as either your friend or your enemy. With 70% of your prospecting calls going to voicemail, it is time to make friends with it.

Although you will never get even close to getting every voicemail returned, you can get a significant number of your messages returned when treat them as a one-on-one commercials.

KEY TIP: Prepare 3-5 separate benefit-focused voicemail messages that you can leave over a period of days or weeks for a single decision-maker before you give up on her. Each message should focus on a single unique customer-focused benefit.

Sales Skill #5: Delivering "I Gotta Have That" Presentations

Let's face it, a lot of business presentations are really boring. Salespeople talk about why their product is great, why their company is great, and the history of their company. Prospects don't relate to this. That's why they look so bored.

Great presentations get the prospect's imagination involved. The best way to involve the imagination is through storytelling. Stories rich in descriptive detail get the prospect picturing them using your product and evoke that "I Gotta Have That" reaction.

KEY TIP: Study 1-3 of your best customers and develop detailed customer success stories that will put emotional power into your presentations.

Sales Skill #6: Gaining Commitments Instead of Closing

Eliminate "Closing Cheese" from Your Vocabulary. You know what I am talking about: "Would you like that in gray or in black?" or "If I can show you how this will help you will you buy today?". Lines like these are why salespeople are down on the bottom of society's respect list somewhere near lawyers.

Learn the power of asking for incremental commitments from the beginning of your sales cycle. It is not an easy shift to make. First you got to get the prospect to show you what they most want (Hint: See Skill #2 above). Then you can negotiate incremental commitments in return for more of your time, information or resources.

KEY TIP: Practice asking for simple commitments once someone has expressed a clear want, pain, or desire.

Sales Skill #7: Have More Fun

Sales is fun when you are in control and closing deals. Selling is miserable when you are under pressure to close business.
Take the pressure off yourself to close and instead focus on qualifying and motivating your prospects.

KEY TIP: Shift the responsibility back to the prospect to solve his own problems, and the pressure to make the sale will be gone. Focus on selling at your best only to qualified prospects and you'll close more and have fun doing it.

Bonus Sales Tip

When you are giving a presentation, selling on the telephone or one-on-one in your prospect's office, picture your prospect as having the words SO WHAT stamped on his forehead. Imagine that for everything you say, the prospect is asking "so what, why should I care?".

Remember, prospects only care about how what you are selling can eliminate a problem that they have or help make their business or life better. The answer to this question is always what your product does for them (benefits), not what your product is (features).

Benefits of Outsourcing

Outsourcing — the practice of using outside firms to handle work normally performed within a company — is a familiar concept to many entrepreneurs. Small companies routinely outsource their payroll processing, accounting, distribution, and many other important functions — often because they have no other choice. Many large companies turn to outsourcing to cut costs. In response, entire industries have evolved to serve companies' outsourcing needs. 

But not many businesses thoroughly understand the benefits of outsourcing. It's true that outsourcing can save money, but that's not the only (or even the most important) reason to do it. As many firms discovered during the outsourcing "mania" of the early 1990s, outsourcing too much can be an even bigger mistake than not outsourcing any work at all. The flat economy caused many companies into huge layoffs and subsequently outsourced functions that were better kept in-house. Wise outsourcing, however, can provide a number of long-term benefits: 

Control capital costs. Cost-cutting may not be the only reason to outsource, but it's certainly a major factor. Outsourcing converts fixed costs into variable costs, releases capital for investment elsewhere in your business, and allows you to avoid large expenditures in the early stages of your business. Outsourcing can also make your firm more attractive to investors, since you're able to pump more capital directly into revenue-producing activities. 

Increase efficiency. Companies that do everything themselves have much higher research, development, marketing, and distribution expenses, all of which must be passed on to customers. An outside provider's cost structure and economy of scale can give your firm an important competitive advantage.
Reduce labor costs. Hiring and training staff for short-term or peripheral projects can be very expensive, and temporary employees don't always live up to your expectations. Outsourcing lets you focus your human resources where you need them most. 

Start new projects quickly. A good outsourcing firm has the resources to start a project right away. Handling the same project in-house might involve taking weeks or months to hire the right people, train them, and provide the support they need. And if a project requires major capital investments (such as building a series of distribution centers), the startup process can be even more difficult. 

Focus on your core business. Every business has limited resources, and every manager has limited time and attention. Outsourcing can help your business to shift its focus from peripheral activities toward work that serves the customer, and it can help managers set their priorities more clearly. 

Level the playing field. Most small firms simply can't afford to match the in-house support services that larger companies maintain. Outsourcing can help small firms act "big" by giving them access to the same economies of scale, efficiency, and expertise that large companies enjoy. 

Reduce risk. Every business investment carries a certain amount of risk. Markets, competition, government regulations, financial conditions, and technologies all change very quickly. Outsourcing providers assume and manage this risk for you, and they generally are much better at deciding how to avoid risk in their areas of expertise.

Corporate Identity - Dos and Donts

Your corporate identity is an important aspect of building your business into a successful enterprise.  Communicating the core values of your business to your customers and prospects is crucial to your success.  You may want to ask yourself a few questions to determine if you have a clear corporate identity?  Some questions include:

Do people really understand what your company is about?  Do I have a clear value proposition? Does my marketing collateral and website clearly define our vision.  What is our mission statement? Is the company’s core values listed on our marketing material?  Is all our marketing communication pieces consistent and convey a cohesive message? 

If you answered “No” to any of these questions…then you should start by understanding the definition of corporate identity and learn the steps necessary to improve it.

What is a corporate identity?

The corporate identity of a company refers to the external personality that is projected by a specific company to the public.  The corporate identity will help determine how others view the company as a whole and your public image.  It includes branding and logos, marketing and advertising.  These will all have a specific and consistent color scheme and design to assist in ensuring that the brand is recognizable and well known for years to come.

Some Don’ts

Don’t change your identity too frequently – remember your customers like and recognize your current identity….don’t start changing it every year and expect people to still like you.  It’s confusing to customers if you continual change your company’s vision and mission.

Don’t think you can do it all in-house – Hire professionals to help you brand your company and improve your corporate identity.  Remember….you are not a graphic designer and need to leave the creativity to the experts.  Professional marketing agencies understand the process of branding and developing a new corporate identity.  Once you communicate your vision to the agency…let them go and leave it up to the experts!

Don’t be too clever – Keep it simple and consistent.  To be remembered…it’s important to keep it simple…and not too complicated.  Don’t confuse people and make it more difficult then it is…..keep it simple stupid!

Some Do’s

Do communicate your corporate identity to all employees – Make sure your entire team understands it and can discuss your company’s vision and mission with customers.  The entire company needs to eat and breathe your company’s identity.

Do develop a logo/tagline that is used everywhere…..Once you approve a new logo/tagline…make sure you use it everywhere from your letterhead, invoices, websites, brochures, advertisements, trade show booths, etc.  Do not deviate from it!

Do fit the identity to the company – Make sure your corporate identity fits the personality of your company. Take your time and do it right the first time around.  You have to feel comfortable with it and embrace it!

At the end of the day, your corporate identity tells a story about your company and makes a statement.  By developing the right corporate identity the first time around, you will save yourself time and money in the future.

Why Social Media?

Ever wondered why social media marketing is such a huge deal for marketers today?

There are a lot of reasons why social media marketing is essential to any business. Its mere presence encourages many business owners and corporate companies to promote and market their business, products, and services through legal and cost-effective means. Aside from that, social media can easily acquire followers for your business. As a matter of fact, the more visible commendations a site gets from social networking sites or bookmarking sites, the more prospective clients it draws.

Aside from that, the internet makes the world a much smaller place for those people who are in business. This reason alone tells us why this type of business marketing is such a huge factor when it comes to increasing the chances of success for anyone in business.
Here are some reasons why social media marketing is effective:

• It helps increase and maximizes your online presence.


• It helps boost your credibility as a business owner and as a business.


• It can help you build a community and a brand loyalty.


• If used correctly, it can help you boost your profits.


• It generates more traffic back to your site.


• It helps you learn more about your targeted audience.


• It also allows you to focus on a very specific target market.


• It can help you strengthen your relationship with your targeted audience by providing transparency and by giving them a channel to see what other people say about your business; aside from that, it also lets you demonstrate how to resolve problems.


• It has the ability to reach a massive amount of consumers on a continuous time line.


• It lets you answer any inquiries or respond to any comments about your business, products, or services.


• It allows you to get quick results because the content you post can instantly be viewed by a lot of people.


• It provides you with incoming links that influence your website's search engine ranking.


• It is flexible. There a lot of different social networking platforms available out there, so just about every imaginable niche is covered in one way or another.


• The flourishing success that social media is getting these days can be traced through the launch of popular tools such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and many others.

Social media marketing certainly helps your business improve greatly. Creating a good social marketing strategy will help certainly differentiate your business from others.

Advertising Basics

If you want your advertising to resonate with prospective customers, it's essential that you appeal to their emotions in some way. Fail to do this and you might as well be throwing money out the window. 

Effective ads sell your message, company, or product. They may or may not be creative, but if you can package some good creative in with a message that appeals to a strong need or want within your target audience, it will certainly help. Effective ads are convincing. They engage prospects as if you were speaking directly to them, and when you succeed in making this connection your prospective customer's thoughts will become your brand itself.

Even if you achieve the enviable position of having a provocative ad execution with an effective message, your work is far from over. 

In fact, in the world of advertising, your work is never over. Continually exposing your customers, prospective customers, and suspects (those who aren't currently interested in your company or product, but who might be shortly) to the same messaging over a prolonged period of time will lead to stagnation. Eventually, you'll fail not only to inspire brand loyalty, but also to retain it. Even Coke, one of the world's most valuable brands, reinvents its messaging and image when it decides they have begun to lose effectiveness. 

Creating an Effective Ad Campaign

So how do you create an effective ad campaign? One way is to go with the single benefit methodology, which directly links your brand to a single benefit. If your deodorant lasts longer, tell the world about it. The characterization or personification angle involves creating a character that expresses the product's benefits or personality. The narrative methodology involves developing a narrative story with episodes describing a problem and its outcome. 

Again, aim to produce advertising that states not only a product's facts, but that also appeals to emotions. Using the deodorant example, you might accomplish this by playing off your customers' fears of having body odor at an inopportune time. 

Although a calculated and well thought out advertising campaign may do a good job of creating brand awareness, it may fall short of inducing product preference or, the end goal, purchase. For this reason, don't rely on advertising as a complete solution. Instead, support it with marketing and sales promotion to help trigger a purchase. 

Apply the following criteria to test the effectiveness of your advertising message:

1. The ad intelligibly and simply states a single message.
2. The ad evokes a specific, acute emotion.
3. The ad is being presented in a space where it will likely be noticed.
4. The overriding message is clearly evident.

Finally, understand that even a carefully thought out, highly creative campaign with a strong, concise message will fall flat if the product you're advertising just isn't any good. Be honest with yourself on this one. Solicit existing customer feedback. Then decide whether or not it would be a wiser investment if you were to spend the money and time on first improving your product. The better your product is, the less time and money you'll need to spend on traditional advertising. After all, word of mouth advertising is free, and it's often what ultimately makes or breaks a product, brand, or company.