There are many steps that entrepreneurs can take to help enhance their business success. There are also things you should stop doing in your business to help amp up your success and here are some that I recommend to my coaching clients:
Stop mixing business and personal funds. You need to keep your personal finances and your business finances separate. This goes for your expenses as well as your income. Set up separate bank accounts and deposit client payments into your business account.
Pay bills online when possible. Writing checks takes time and also costs you money. Also, if you’re waiting for the bills to come in the mail you may miss a payment date and incur fees.
Don’t get “lost” on social media. We recommend that your business have a social media and blogging presence, but you need to either hire a social media manager or if you’re doing it yourself, you need to budget for the time you’re spending online because it’s easy to go down a social media rabbithole and find that you’ve wasted hours online and neglected your business.
Turn off email alerts. Contrary to popular belief, multitasking is not a productive use of your time. If you’re involved in a client-centered task, devote your energies to that. Turn off email alerts and get on a schedule of checking your email at the top or bottom of the hour — chances are your email replies can wait an hour, right?
Don’t micro-manage your staff. If you hired well, let them do what you hired them to do. Trust their skills and expertise and let them do their jobs.
Take time off. Working 24/7/365 leads to burnout and if you’re a solopreneur, your business will suffer. Schedule downtime and time off. Schedule time away from the computer for lunch as well.
Owning your own business is a dream come true for many of the individuals with whom I work. I caution them to look at these top six mistakes and make certain they aren’t making any of them!
Being a business owner means that you have to be out shaking hands, knocking on doors and making phone calls. Once you get your foot in the door, what can you do to make certain you and the proposal you submit will be winners? Here are my tips to winning a proposal and they can be used in any industry:
Clearly understand your client’s needs. Remember you need to address and fix their unique pain points, not shoehorn them into the solution you provide. It needs to be a synergistic fit.
Ask whether the potential client has a budget under which he is operating. If you put together a proposal based on his or her unique needs only to find out that they cannot afford the solution you’re offering, you’ve been spinning your wheels. Ask for a budget to see if you can work within it.
Have a proposal template. This makes it easy for you to plug and play when you’re meeting with a client. Don’t reinvent the wheel with each client meeting.
List all of the deliverables in the proposal so your client knows exactly what he or she will be receiving. You will also want to list what they need to get to you in order for you to move forward with a relationship.
Be clear on fees and payment schedules. Don’t leave this vague because that could lead to misunderstandings down the road.
Put together a PowerPoint presentation as a way to visually enhance the proposal and to help your client thoroughly understand how he can benefit from working with you. Remember, keep your presentation short and sweet — you’re there to make a connection, not have them watch a long dissertation.
Do you have success stories with your proposal presentations? What is your best practice tip?
The benefits of being a business owner are, in some ways, immeasurable. Off the top of my head, here are a few: you are responsible for your own success, you create your own schedule, you are your own boss and the sky is the limit when it comes to your income.
Here is some advice we’ve gleaned from the entrepreneurs with whom I’ve working in my coaching business as to why they love their self-employed life and some tips to make it viable:
Put your life experience to work.
Share your expertise
Embrace a niche and use it for your business start-up.
Having a business plan helps visualize whether your idea is viable, who your potential clients are, what you can charge for your goods and services and your potential income.
Understand what you want your corporate culture to be before that first employee comes on board.
Determine your company’s core values and its mission. This helps with decision-making. Making decisions based on your values and mission will help you make better decisions.
Follow these steps, especially if you’re in the start-up phase, as a way to give your business a head start. If you’ve been in business for a while now, it never hurts to go back and revisit any of these items above and get back on track, if necessary.
Whether you run a business with a virtual team or you have a brick and mortar location, communication is key to a healthy workplace environment. As an entrepreneur who has virtual staff, I am highly cognizant of the need for effective communication, especially as the team typically “talks” via email and instant messaging. Without the body language to go along with the words, there is no tone or frame of reference and this can make virtual communication a murky water to tread. I believe my team and I understand each other well enough to know that if there is miscommunication, we will stop the conversation, ask for clarification and hash it out.
Here are my tips for good workplace communication:
Assess and define the problem. Without understanding the root cause of the misunderstanding, it is difficult to address it and communicate more clearly.
Work with the individuals involved in the miscommunication to get to the underlying issue and resolve it. Your managers may take this role on with their own staff, but if it cannot be resolved, you as the business owner, will want to step in.
Don’t design a solution to resolve the problem until you thoroughly understand what caused it originally. You will also want to get everyone involved as a mandate from management to “communicate better” will not be effective.
Evaluate the success of the solution you’re attempting to implement. Give it a time frame of, say 60 days, reconvene and see whether it’s been effective.
If the solution you tried originally is not achieving the desired results, you will want to sit down with all parties involved, open up a dialogue and not leave the room until it’s addressed. There are times you will find when personalities simply don’t mesh and there may not be a “fix” to the communication issue other than to reassign individuals — it is a drastic, last step measure to be sure, but one that shouldn’t be completely ruled out.
If you have a business plan, and if you’re in business, you should you know that it is a living, breathing document, right? You should review your business plan at least monthly to make sure you are on track with the goals you’d set and that you’re bringing in the income you had planned for. Think of your business plan as a “desired state of mind/business” as compared to your “current state/comfort zone” this may help you more fully and finely focus your efforts.
Here are my two best kept secrets for a successful business plan:
Name the new state of mind for your business plan. What does that mean? “Customer focused” or “increase use of technology.” What ever state you choose should have a metric to help you understand what “customer focused” or “increased use of technology” means to your business and to its profits.
Identify the activities you will have to perform to achieve your new state of mind. Does it mean you need to bring in X number of new customers, better use and follow up with prospects via your CRM technology? Remember to keep your goals SMART — strategic, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-sensitive.
Once you have looked over the business plan and chosen an area on which to focus your new activities and state of mind, talk with your team and your sales force. They need to buy in to your new plans in order to help them work. You need to align your people and your processes to assure highest success.
There are myriad reasons that owning your own business might be right for you. There are also reasons, other than making money, that might make entrepreneurship something you should pursue.
Here are some of the many reasons I went into business for myself:
I’m the boss. Plain and simple. Sure, I have to answer to clients, but at the end of the day, I am growing my own empire and am in charge of my destiny.
You get to take credit, and sometimes blame, for what you’re doing. If you’re building a successful enterprise it’s all because of you, your hard work and diligence. You aren’t riding on someone’s coattails nor are they riding on yours. Embrace your successes!
Depending on the industry you’re in, you’re helping people. As a matter of fact, whether you’re offering goods or services, you’re helping people. Your clients look to you for their widgets or your advice and you give them your best. That is gratifying.
Your schedule is essentially your own. Owning a business means you can set your own hours. You may have the flexibility you never had when you were an employee.
Your bank account may grow. Some entrepreneurs make boatloads of money, others make enough to pay the mortgage and pay for family vacations. As an entrepreneur you have the ability to be the master of your own bank account rather than waiting for your employer to offer you an annual raise or a bonus.
What are some of the other advantages you’ve found from being self-employed?
