Steps That Put You Ahead In Business

The followings are tips can help you grow your business. they show how you can use online diary as a sales tool.

Have your customers publish an online diary instead of giving you a testimonial. The diary would include regularly updated entries of how customers are using your product to improve their life. You could give customers a free product or a rebate in exchange for them publishing it online.

Your customers could write diary entries about goals they have reached using your product, the positive emotions it's given them, the fears and worries your product has taken out of their lives, how bad their lives were before they bought it, how it has helped other people in their lives, etc.

Your customers could update it daily, weekly or monthly. It will depend on how often they use your product. You could publish the diary right in your ad or link directly to the diary. You could provide the people with web space for writing the online diary or have them e-mail you the diary entries for you to publish.

You can make the online diary extra persuasive by also including customer's personal profile, pictures, online video of them using your product, net audio of them talking about your product, even scanned handwritten letters, etc.

An online diary would likely outsell the common testimonial because it's updated on a regular basis and reveals more personal information. A diary is considered private which would make people more curious to read it and believe its legitimacy.

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Most Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Starting Out

Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. What follows is the latest edited round of insightful responses. Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column.

Q: What are some of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when starting out? -- John Gachiri

A: Making mistakes is part of the process of building a company; quickly recovering from them is what's most important. It's all part of the adventure of entrepreneurship, which will require all of your stamina, drive and determination.

But your way forward is not entirely uncharted: When you notice an opportunity that has never occurred to anyone else, there are certain steps to turning your vision into reality. You must formulate an innovative business plan, find funding, hire the right people to carry out the plan, and then step back from your role in the business at exactly the right moment.

Let's take a look at these steps, and also at ways to avoid some of the most common mistakes new entrepreneurs make.

Step 1: Stay on Target

A mistake often associated with the first step is signaled by an entrepreneur's inability to clearly and concisely convey his idea. You have to be able to generate buy-in from investors, partners and potential employees, so nail down your "elevator speech" -- what you would say if you ran into an important potential investor in an elevator. Try using a Twitter-like template to refine the essence of your concept into just 140 characters. Once you've done that, expand your message to a maximum of 500 characters. Remember, the shorter your pitch is, the clearer it will be.

An associated error is lack of focus. If your start-up has been tagged as "the next big thing," the adrenaline rush that comes with building buzz can lead to impetuous decisions and a loss of a sense of purpose. Many entrepreneurs end up sprinting in many directions instead of taking assertive steps toward their target. Clearly define your goals and strategies, and then establish a timeline. Don't let the other possibilities or hazy dreams distract you from achieving your goal.

Getting too far ahead of yourself is also dangerous. If your product or service is still on the drawing board, don't get sidetracked by plans for future versions. As a general guideline, looking two or three years ahead is best, but the nature of your business and feedback from your investors will help you determine just how far ahead you should plan.

Be flexible, because just as lack of planning can be a problem, adhering blindly to your plan is a surefire way to steer your company off a cliff. A successful entrepreneur will constantly adjust course without losing sight of the final destination.

Step 2: Be Realistic About Costs

Don't shortchange your start-up when estimating the funds you will require -- you'll just diminish your chances of success. Keeping your expenses under control is vital, but don't confuse capitalization with costs. The playing field is littered with undercapitalized start-ups that were doomed from the outset.

In the late '90s, David Neeleman told me he needed $160 million in start-up capital for JetBlue -- a huge sum, far more than most entrants to the industry manage to raise. Most of the so-called experts scoffed at the notion that he would be able to find the money and launch a low-cost airline when established companies were failing one after the other, but he stuck to his guns and raised the money. As a result, JetBlue had one of the most successful airline launches of all time, and turned a profit only six months after its launch in 2000.

Step 3: Hire the People You Need, Not the People You Like
As tempting as it may be to staff your new business with friends and relatives, this is likely to be a serious mistake. If they don't work out, asking them to leave will be very tough.

When Virgin starts any new business, we always hire a core team of smart people who already know the industry and its inherent risks. Take full advantage of the knowledge pool you've created; when a problem comes up, remember that nobody has all the answers, including you.
One of your goals should be to find a manager who truly shares your vision, and to whom you can someday confidently hand the reins so that you can carry out the next step.

Step 4: Know When to Say Goodbye

A great entrepreneur knows when the time has come to leave the CEO role. It's seldom easy, but it has to be done: few entrepreneurs make great managers. In my own case, managing the daily operations of a business simply isn't in my DNA. (Or, as I've said to friends, "It's not bloody likely.")

Stepping back doesn't mean turning your back on your business. At Virgin, I'm always involved in the launch of a new business, and then I gradually hand over control to the new management team as it starts to jell. But no matter how long it has been since I was at the helm, if I see something that I don't like, I'm not at all shy about making my thoughts known and asking some very pointed questions.

Founders shouldn't hesitate to re-insert themselves into their businesses when necessary -- look at Larry Page, who temporarily returned to the CEO role at Google in April. That said, I had to laugh when I heard this news, wondering how many managers at Virgin businesses had thought, "Wow, I hope this doesn't give Richard any ideas."

To get more info check  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220743

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The Business Planning Process:

5 Steps To Creating a New Plan

Creating your new business plan involves a detailed process with a number of stages, some of which can overlap. Whether you are writing your plan from scratch or from a template, or working with an experienced business plan writer or consultant, you will find the following five steps through the process.

Research

Detailed research into the industry, customers, competitors, and costs of the business begins the process. A variety of resources can be used for research, ranging from databases and articles to direct interviews with other entrepreneurs or potential customers. Research should be documented and organized carefully with the information gathered and the source as there is a need to cite sources within the plan.

Strategize

Next, the information from the research should inform the strategy you choose for your business. Revisit the strategy you created even before your research and dig deeper into decisions on appropriate marketing, operations, and hiring for the first five years of the company's life. Strategy generally pulls from the best practices of the industry, but uses this only as a foundation on which to add very different activities that create a competitive advantage.

Calculate

All of the activities you choose for your strategy come as some cost and (hopefully) lead to some revenues. Sketch out the financial situation by looking at whether you can expect revenues to cover all costs and leave room for profit in the long run. Begin to insert your financial assumptions and startup costs into a financial model which can produce a first year cash flow statement for you, giving you the best sense of the cash you will need on hand to fund your early operations.

Draft

With financials more or less settled and a strategy decided, it is time to draft through the narrative of the plan's many sections. With the background work you have completed, the drafting itself should be a relatively painless process. If you have trouble creating convincing prose, this is a time to seek the help of a business plan writer who can put together the plan from this point.

Revise and Proofread

Revisit the entire plan to look for any ideas or wording that is confusing, redundant, or irrelevant to the points you are making within the plan. Finally, proofread thoroughly for spelling, grammar, and formatting, enlisting the help of others to act as additional sets of eyes. You may begin to experience burnout from working on the plan for so long and have a need to set it aside for a bit to look at it again with fresh eyes. 

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Personal Goal Setting

Many people feel as if they're adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere worthwhile.

A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!

Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.

The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.

Why Set Goals?

Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

You set your goals on a number of levels:

·         First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.

·         Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.

·         Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

This is why we start the process of goal setting by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.

Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):

·         Career - What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?

·         Financial - How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?

·         Education - Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?

·         Family - Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?

·         Artistic - Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?

·         Attitude - Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)

·         Physical - Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?

·         Pleasure - How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)

·         Public Service - Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants - however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)

To be continued……

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a smart way to live

Life demands that one is decisive. One must make up one’s mind what one wants. I encourage you to pick up a pen and a piece of paper and jot down the goals you want to reach. Look at each goal and evaluate it. Make any changes necessary to ensure it meets the criteria for SMART goals:

§  S = Specific

§  M = Measurable

§  A = Attainable

§  R = Realistic

§  T = Timely

Specific

Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen. Specifics help us to focus our efforts and clearly define what we are going to do.

Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model.

§  WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.

§  WHY is this important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?

§  HOW are you going to do it? (By…)

Ensure the goals you set are very specific, clear and easy. Instead of setting a goal to lose weight or be healthier, set a specific goal to lose 2cm off your waistline or to walk 5 miles at an aerobically challenging pace.

Measurable

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, this is success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal.

Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. How will you see when you reach your goal? Be specific! “I want to read 3 chapter books of 100 pages on my own before my birthday” shows the specific target to be measure. “I want to be a good reader” is not as measurable.

Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.

Attainable

When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. Your begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won’t commit to doing. Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it’s too much for you means your subconscious will keep reminding you of this fact and will stop you from even giving it your best.

A goal needs to stretch you slightly so you feel you can do it and it will need a real commitment from you. For instance, if you aim to lose 20lbs in one week, we all know that isn’t achievable. But setting a goal to lose 1lb and when you’ve achieved that, aiming to lose a further 1lb, will keep it achievable for you.

The feeling of success which this brings helps you to remain motivated.

Realistic

This is not a synonym for “easy.” Realistic, in this case, means “do-able.” It means that the learning curve is not a vertical slope; that the skills needed to do the work are available; that the project fits with the overall strategy and goals of the organization. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn’t break them.

Devise a plan or a way of getting there which makes the goal realistic. The goal needs to be realistic for you and where you are at the moment. A goal of never again eating sweets, cakes, crisps and chocolate may not be realistic for someone who really enjoys these foods.

For instance, it may be more realistic to set a goal of eating a piece of fruit each day instead of one sweet item. You can then choose to work towards reducing the amount of sweet products gradually as and when this feels realistic for you.

Be sure to set goals that you can attain with some effort! Too difficult and you set the stage for failure, but too low sends the message that you aren’t very capable. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement!

Timely

Set a timeframe for the goal: for next week, in three months, by fifth grade. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards.

If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.

Time must be measurable, attainable and realistic.

Everyone will benefit from goals and objectives if they are SMART. SMART, is the instrument to apply in setting your goals and objectives

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