Promoting Independent Businesses
If you own your own independent business, there are two organizations that hopefully your are already aware of. They are doing great work promoting small, locally owned independents by promoting community and government involvement. It takes all of us, working together, to improve our communities and the local business environment.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses helps individual business owners with planning, taxes, and legislative matters. They have representatives in all 50 states and in D.C. I visit their site often for advice and articles. I guarantee that you will find several useful items of information within their site.
The American Independent Business Alliance, based in Bozeman, MT, promotes independents buy helping business owners form IBAs, or Independent Business Alliances. These alliances in turn promote community involvement, the best example being the annual America Unchained Day, which takes place every November, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. They show their communites the power of “putting your money where your house is”.
I urge all independent business owners to join NFIB and look into starting an IBA. I am in the process of doing both. We need to team up for our communities and independent business owners.
Make a difference as a consumer as well. You do have choices. A good place to start is by watching Independent America, a documentary about a married couple searching for Independent America and filming the results. It’s a real eye-opener.
Presenting Business Plans: Why People Feel Nervous and What You
Presenting Business Plans: Why People Feel Nervous and What You Can Do About It
If you are looking for finance to either start up a business or expand your existing one you have to accept that if you want the Bank to say yes to your superb business idea, you are going to have to spend time preparing for the interview.
The chat with the Manager is your only chance to really sell yourself and your idea. It’s rare that you’ll get a second chance with the same Manager or Bank. So don’t deny yourself the opportunity.
But many people have a problem in presenting themselves in front of strangers!
So let’s consider why people find the idea of selling themselves and their business a daunting task.
Lack of Confidence
Some people just don’t feel confident when talking in a public situation. You may not consider communicating on a one-to-one basis as talking in public, but it is. Outside of your own “self-talk” (conversations you have in your mind with yourself) and within your own home, all conversations are essentially public speeches.
Lack of Preparation
If you haven’t prepared properly then this will show through in any stressful situation. Lack of preparation includes not knowing the ins-and-outs of your business idea or Business Plan and not anticipating the type of questions you’ll be asked during the interview. It’s comparable to going into an examination and knowing deep down that you haven’t put the effort in – do you remember that feeling?
Poor Communication Skills
Some people feel that they can never communicate their ideas in a clear and coherent manner; their thoughts are jumbled up and are not in any order; words and explanation of concepts come out in a muddle. As a result, their body language and voice begins to reflect the uneasiness, which leads to even more mental anguish. And so the cycle continues ever downward!
Poor Self Image
Some business people don’t see the interview as a meeting of equals in which both parties want a successful outcome. They see the Manager as some kind of ogre, someone, who given half the chance, will devour them up and cast them aside, just for his own evil pleasure! This enduring image stays with them right up to the start of the interview, dominating their thoughts and making the whole process a complete disaster!
Lack of Focus and Planning
On the day of the interview, some try to do a thousand-and-one other things before going along to the Bank. What happens? They get stressed out because something has not gone to plan – the man who was to come to repair the washing machine didn’t turn up until an hour after the agreed time; they forgot that the car would need fuel on the way in and so this has added 10 minutes to the journey time; a friend turns up at the house and they don’t have the courage to tell her to go, so an hour later she’s still there!
By the time they get to the Bank, their heart is beating faster than that of a marathon runner and their mind is a complete blank! They don’t see the day as having one job, that of seeing the Bank Manager, and so the day isn’t properly planned.
All these unplanned diversions and delusions can take your mind off mentally preparing for the important task ahead.
Do any of these situations sound familiar? What can you do to put yourself in a better frame of mind?
Here are 3 suggestions out of my 9-step Interview Preparation Plan
Have Belief in Your Future Success
Before someone else can believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. You must absolutely have no doubt in your own mind that you will succeed in setting up your business or moving your current business forward. It’s not about what you believe you are now but what you believe you can be in the future. You may have little in the way of money or assets now but you have to believe that in the future you will have all these things (if this is how you define your idea of success).
You have to be 100% sure that you are going to be one of the few people who will make a success of their life. You have to demonstrate an “I-will-get-to-the-top” attitude. If you don’t believe you can climb to the top of the mountain then it’s certain you won’t! People, and this will include your Bank Manager, follow the person who believes what he is saying.
Know Your Business Plan Inside Out
If you have organised yourself properly, the Manager will have spent time going through your Business Plan before the interview. After reviewing your Plan he will probably have a list of questions to clarify the areas he’s not sure of, or questions just to prompt you to give him a better understanding of certain parts of your business.
To deal with these questions confidently and competently you have to know your Plan inside out. In view of the time constraints people are under these days, it’s possible that the Manager may only have skimmed through your Plan (what! After all your work? After all those hours? Yep, it’s a fact of life I’m afraid!). The answers to his queries of course may actually be contained in the Plan. If this does happen, don’t lose your cool or answer with an “attitude”. Use this as an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of your Plan. Think how professional and organised you’ll look when you tell him to turn to page 10 and hell find the answer to his question right there! If nothing else, it will make feel humble!
Knowing your Plan means that at least during the interview you’re not going to contradict what you included in it. You have to be consistent. If you say something which doesn’t tally with what you stated on paper, what do you think will go through the Manager’s mind? “Does this person know what he’s doing? They obviously don’t have a clear direction or focus for the business if they keep changing their mind.”
Knowing your Plan will demonstrate that you are meticulous, organised and consistent, the type of person a Banker really likes!
Put Yourself in the Manager’s Shoes
One effective way of preparing for the interview is to imagine you as the Manager. Imagine you are seeing yourself and your plan for the first time; pretend you know absolutely nothing about you or your business. What would you ask? What would you want to know? What is likely to confuse an “outsider” about your business? What questions would you ask to get a better understanding? What challenging questions would you ask?
You have to get inside his mind so you can prepare well-researched and well-presented answers to his likely questions. It’s all back to being professional in your presentation, demonstrating that you know your business and that you are worthy of support. You won’t give this impression if you havent spend time thinking of possible questions you could be asked and preparing the answers in advance.
Banker’s favourite questions are “What if……” ones:
“What if your supplier fails you?”
“What if the price of your raw materials goes up by 10%?”
“What if you lose your number one customer?”
“What if one of your critically important employees leaves?”
Set some time aside when preparing for the interview to think like a Banker. What would you want to know if you were in his chair? The list of questions could be endless and there is no way you can pre-empt all of them but at least you will be prepared for the majority of them.
These are just 3 of the steps you can take to prepare yourself for your interview.
Preparing Your Business for a Bird Flu Pandemic
How would your business operate if half your work force were out sick? Would your business continue to function if several of your top key employees died? How many employees are cross-trained in other positions?
A recent study showed the threat that most preoccupies the world’s business leaders is a global influenza pandemic. This is why you need to start asking these questions now so your business can be prepared for a possible bird flu pandemic. A bird flu pandemic will not discriminate. Everyone from the janitor to the CEO would be affected. Worst-case scenario could leave millions sick and any where from 5 million to 1.5 billion people dead around the world.
The World Bank, which has estimated that a bird flu pandemic lasting a year, could cost the global economy up to 800 billion. The economic toll on the world economy will be catastrophic. There would be major economic losses due to worker absences and interruptions in supply and delivery chains. Even a mild pandemic would have lasting effects on your business. Because a global flu pandemic is such a threat, current business and disaster response plans may not be adequate to deal with it. What steps should you start to take now to prepare?
As with any worst-case scenario you should be aware of the risks and have a contingency plan in place before you need it. By planning now you will help keep your business running, your employees safe and head off possible legal issues. Some of the steps you may want to consider are:
Establish a pandemic coordinator or team with responsibilities for preparedness and response planning. Provide current avian influenza information to all employees. Identify and make available information on community resources.
Identify key essential areas and current employees responsible. Cross-train other employees in those areas so they are able to fill in for sick employees. Have written documentation for those employees filling in for others.
Identify key suppliers and alternative sources for critical materials and supplies. Increase raw material inventories to keep production going for several months. Plan for just in time inventory shortages. Products and inventory from Asian countries may not be available if Asian factories are shut down due to illness.
Play “what if?” What if Joe in accounting was out sick for a month? Or Sam in IT died? Who could fill in, how would the business run? It is estimated that between 30-60% of the workforce will be out sick.
Maintain a healthy work environment. Encourage hand washing, offer hand sanitizers, consider quality air purifiers. Limit face-to-face contact with employees and customers. Limit large group meetings, shared workstations and public events. Limit or eliminate non-essential business travel. Make use of conference calls and video conferencing.
Review employment policies to see if you can require employees to stay home if they are sick. Establish new sick time policies. Check employee agreement clauses for business closure plans, hours of work and position changes. Establish policies and procedures for sending staff home, staff leaving work on their own, unauthorized absences and returning to work. Plan to offer additional sick time pay or wage and salary advances to staff unable to work. Plan for family member illness, community quarantines, schoolbusiness and public transportation closures.
Offer telecommuting options to as many employees as possible. Offer flextime and other creative job options.
Back up essential files off site, provide access to a network of key employees.
Establish a communication plan for employees and business contacts. Include key contacts and tracking for employee status. Employees will be hungry for up to date information about their business, jobs and co-workers. Good communication with your employees is essential to avoid rumors, panic and misinformation.
To encourage employees to stock up on food and supplies for an extended home stay, purchase supplies for them in bulk to take advantage of discounts, offer the savings to employees. Or offer them a SAMs Club or Costco membership at no charge.
Taking these steps today will help your business be prepared for a possible bird flu pandemic, survive for the duration and return to business as normal faster than those who are not prepared.
Invoice Discounting : A Tool To Finance Your Business
Are your clients taking up to 60 days to pay their invoices? This is a very common situation and a significant cause of stress to many business owners. Unfortunately, having a profitable business does not necessarily mean that you have a reliable cash flow. Quite the opposite, many times a business may have great profits and a very unreliable cash flow.
How can this be? Simple. Your clients are paying you in 60 days, but you need to pay employees every week, rent and suppliers. Although the numbers may work in the long term, in the short term you are left with very little cash. This is unless you have a lot of money in the bank to cover the deficits.
But, what do you do if you are new, growing or just dont have a lot of funds in the bank? Get a business loan? Unlikely. Business loans are hard to get. A better option would be to use invoice discounting. Invoice discounting is a form of financing that is not offered by a bank its offered by a factoring company.
Invoice discounting, as it name implies, involves selling your invoices for immediate cash, at a small discount. Its value proposition is very simple. Are you willing discount between 1.5% to 6% from your invoices to get paid now? Consider that many business owners offer a 2% discount to businesses that pay within 10 days. So, invoice discounting offers a similar proposition.
Of course, invoice discounting (or invoice factoring as it is also called) is not for every business. It works best when your profit margins are above 15% and if you use the accelerated funds to pay for business expenses or to pursue new business opportunities.
Factoring companies always purchase your invoices in two installments. The first installment, referred to as the advance, covers up to 85% of the invoice. The remaining 15% (less the discount) is rebated once the customer actually pays the invoice.
Invoice discounting is easy to obtain and can be set up in days. The biggest qualification requirement is to have invoices from reliable clients. So, if you are sitting on a whole bunch of slow paying invoices, be sure to consider invoice discounting.
Internet Ecommerce Business – Internet Marketing
If you were to ask any www.businessmarketingagency.comInternet business owner about how well organized their operations are, they’ll more than likely say, Possibly not.
In fact, many organizations throw up an expensive website using all the latest bells and whistles, only to find it a generally unsatisfying experience. Apart from the technical versus sales and www.businessmarketingagency.commarketing issues of the website itself, many organizations, both in terms of appropriate behaviors, as well as of effective organizational designs has been sadly neglected by many established site owners.
You may have a business site with dedicated Web staff, yet it is poorly integrated within your parent organization and tasked with non-defined roles.
A simple question needs to be asked, Do you have a networking group directed by a chief Web officer and composed of dedicated staff for each business function? If not, then depending upon your organizations’ size and abilities, you’ll need to implement such a group or outsource those functions.
Typically, many conventional site owners have acquired organizational habits that are not well aligned to the needs of www.businessmarketingagency.cominternet marketing. It should be noted there are various undesirable traits or behaviors found in many organizations that must be guarded against.
You might find that increasing complexity in your company has resulted in inflexibility and slow decision making processes. There is also a tendency towards internal conflict and stratification, as well as a leadership that would tend to emphasize capital investment as a solution to all problems.
The movement towards networking with a specific group, which characterizes a typical consumer goods business, will carry with it limited coordination among your departments and divisions resulting in a weakened sense of market trends and increased dissatisfaction.
These features are in direct conflict with what you should know about the cultural characteristics of pure successful ecommerce businesses. An Internet business is predominantly a flat organization with quick decision making, where risk taking is encouraged and failure is merely an education.
Employees may tend to work long hours at the office by choice and are very self disciplined. Typically, such companies use guiding principles rather than procedures and tend to lead by example. When these two types of cultural environments are brought together, unexpected and perhaps dysfunctional behaviors must be expected to emerge.
Given the cultural and organizational differences between new and old ecommerce businesses, the way in which you, as an established site owner should set up and manage Internet operations, is therefore extremely important.
One factor to consider, is that small Internet businesses are more flexible organizationally. You should consider that ecommerce has provided greater electronic quality for smaller businesses in relation to their larger competitors.
You will need an increased willingness to seek appropriate alliances and partnerships, plus consider organizational designs, company spin-offs, etc., that will provide convergence to the integrated business model required to overcome these mismatches in culture and outlook.
The many advantages derived from the Internet must be exploited both within and between existing sectors of your offline business. With the ways in which networked organizations are evolving, it should be realized that only those retaining an Internet culture, in a parallel or networking group style of operation, closely identifies with the ecommerce aspects of a business’overall objectives will become more successful.
How to Write a Business Plan
There are many types of symbols. Money from investors, banks or financial organisations is one such kind of symbols.
A successful Business Plan (=a successful manipulation of symbols) is one which brings in its wake the receipt of credits (money, another kind of symbol). What are the rules of manipulating symbols? In our example, what are the properties of a successful Business Plan?
(1) That it is closely linked to reality. The symbol system must map out reality in an isomorphic manner. We must be able to identify reality the minute we see the symbols arranged.
If we react to a Business Plan with incredulity (”It is too good to be true” or “some of the assumptions are non realistic”) – then this condition is not met and the Business Plan is a failure.
(2) That it rearranges old, familiar data into new, emergent, patterns.
The symbol manipulation must bring to the world some contribution to the sphere of knowledge (very much as a doctoral dissertation should).
When faced with a Business Plan, for instance, we must respond with a modicum of awe and fascination (”That’s right! – I never thought of it” or “(arranged) This way it makes sense”).
(3) That all the symbols are internally consistent. The demand of external consistency (compatibility with the real world, a realistic representation system) was stipulated above. This is a different one: all symbols must live in peace with one another, the system must be coherent.
In the example of the Business Plan:
Reactions such as: “This assumption number projection defies or contradicts the other” indicate the lack of internal consistency and the certain failure to obtain money (=to manipulate the corresponding symbols).
(4) Another demand is transparency: all the information should be available at any given time. When the symbol system is opaque – when data are missing, or, worse, hidden – the manipulation will fail.
In our example: if the applicant refuses to denude himself, to expose his most intimate parts, his vulnerabilities as well as his strong points – then he is not likely to get financing. The accounting system in Macedonia – albeit gradually revised – is a prime example of concealment in a placewhere exposition should have prevailed.
(5) The fifth requirement is universality. Symbol systems are species of languages. The language should be understood by all – in an unambiguous manner. A common terminology, a dictionary, should be available to both manipulator and manipulated.
Clear signs of the failure of a Business Plan to manipulate would be remarks like: “Why is he using this strange method for calculation?”, “Why did he fail to calculate the cost of financing?” and even: “What does this term mean and what does he mean by using it?”
(6) The symbol system must be comprehensive. It cannot exclude certain symbols arbitrarily. It cannot ignore the existence of competing meanings, double entendres, ambiguities. It must engulf all possible interpretations and absolutely ALL the symbols available to the system.
Let us return to the Business Plan:
A Business Plan must incorporate all the data available – and all the known techniques to process them. It can safely establish a hierarchy of priorities and of preferences – but it must present all the possibilities and only then make a selection while giving good reasons for doing so.
(7) The symbol system must have links to other, relevant, symbol systems. These links can be both formal and informal (implied, by way of mental association, or by way of explicit reference or incorporation).
Coming back to the Business Plan:
There is no point in devising a Business Plan which will ignore geopolitical macro-economic and marketing contexts. Is the region safe for investments?
What are the prevailing laws and regulations in the territory and how likely are they to be changed? What is the competition and how can it be neutralized or co – opted? These are all external variables, external symbol systems. Some of them are closely and formally linked to the business at hand (Laws, customs tariffs, taxes, for instance). Some are informally linked to it: substitute products, emerging technologies, ethical and environmental considerations. The Business Plan is supposed to resonate within the mind of the reader and to elicit the reaction: “How very true!!!”
(8) The symbol system must have a discernible hierarchy. There are – and have been – efforts to invent and to use non-hierarchical symbol systems. They all failed and resulted in the establishment of a formal, or an informal, hierarchy. The professional term is “Utility Functions”. This is not a theoretical demand. Utility functions dictate most of the investment decisions in today’s complex financial markets.
The author(s) of the Business Plan must clearly state what he wants and what he wants most, what is an absolute sine qua non and what would be nice to have. He must fix and detail his preferences, priorities, needs and requirements. If he were to attach equal weight to all the parts of the Business Plan, his message will confuse those who are trying to decode it and they will deny his application.
(9) The symbol system must be seen to serve a (useful) purpose and it must demonstrate an effort at being successful. It must, therefore, be direct, understandable, clear and it must contain lists of demands and wishes (all of them prioritized, as we have mentioned).
When a computer faces a few tasks simultaneously – it prioritizes them and allocates its resources in strict compliance with this list of priorities.
A computer is the physical embodiment of a symbol system – and so is a bank doling out credit. The same principles apply to the human organism.
All natural (and most human) systems are goal-oriented.
(10) The last – but by no means the least – requirement is that the symbol system must be interfaced with human beings. There is not much point in a having a computer without a screen, or a bank without clients, or a Business Plan without someone to review it. We must always – when manipulating symbol systems – bear in mind the “end user” and be “user friendly” to him. There is no such thing as a bank, a firm, or even a country. At the end of the line, there are humans, like me and you.
To manipulate them into providing credits, we must motivate them into doing so. We must appeal to their emotions and senses: our symbol system (=presentation, Business Plan) must be aesthetic, powerful, convincing, appealing, resonating, fascinating, interesting. All these are irrational (or, at least, non-cognitive) reactions.
We must appeal to their cognition. Our symbol system must be rational, logical, hierarchical, not far fetched, true, consistent, internally and externally. All this must lead to motor motivation: the hand that signs the check given to us should not shake.
THE PROBLEM, THEREFORE, IS NOT WHERE TO GO, NOT EVEN WHEN TO GO IN ORDER TO OBTAIN CREDITS.
THE ISSUE IS HOW TO COMMUNICATE (=to manipulate symbols) IN ORDER TO MOTIVATE.
Using this theory of the manipulation of symbols we can differentiate three kinds of financing organizations:
(1) Those who deal with non-quantifiable symbols. The World Bank, for one, when it evaluates business propositions, employs criteriawhich cannot be quantified (how does one quantify the contribution to regional stability or the increase in democracy and the improvement in human rights records?).
(2) Those who deal with semi-quantifiable symbols. Organizations such as the IFC or the EBRD employ sound – quantitative – business and financial criteria in their decision making processes. But were they totally business oriented, they would probably not have made many of the investments that they are making and in the geographical parts of the world that they are making them.
(3) And there are those classical financing organizations which deal exclusively with quantifiable, measurable variables. Most of us come across this type of financing institutions: commercial banks, private firms, etc.
Whatever the kind of financial institution, we must never forget:
We are dealing with humans who are influenced mostly by the manipulation of symbol systems. Abiding by the aforementioned rules would guarantee success in obtaining funding. Making the right decision on the national level – would catapult a country into the 21st century without having first to re-visit the twentieth.
How to Write a Killer Business Plan
Writing a Business Plan can be a daunting task. You have so many ideas floating around in your head that it can be difficult to capture them all in a logical format. However, committing time to writing an effective Plan can help improve your chances of success. In this article I will be giving you some tips on how to write a killer Business Plan!
Tip 1 Understand the Need for a Plan
Without a clear strategy and long term objectives you may be reducing your chances of success and so its important to commit time to plan ahead. Having put in time, energy and resources to come up with the ideas, why spoil it all by not having a structured plan for the future? The benefits of business planning cannot be underestimated. There are some potentially business-changing reasons to prepare a Business Plan. You must view planning as a crucial investment of your time, which could mean the difference between success and failure.
Tip 2 Dont Go It Alone, Ask For Help
Picture this. You’ve never written a Business Plan before; you sit down at your table and end up staring at a blank piece of paper for 3 hours! Then, another 3 hours later, all you have is a bin full of scrap paper. However, in order to help you put a plan together there are a variety of sources of help you can tap into:
Professional advisers
Business colleagues
Advice agencies
Your staff
Books (see our free e-book offer at the end of this article)
Tip 3 Follow a Framework
Having a framework or outline to follow can make the task of writing a Business Plan so much easier. The 3 parts to your Plan are:
Where you are now
Where you intend to be
How you are going to get there
This is your framework which will guide both you and the reader through your business and your idea.
Tip 4 Tell the Reader Where You Are Now
In your first section you want to paint a picture of where your business is now. These are the main areas to cover:
Business history
Location and premises
Your product or service
Your market
Your customers
Your competition
Your staff
Equipment
Provide an insight into each part of your business so that the reader of your Plan knows how the business looks now. Obviously if you are just starting up, give an idea of how you see these parts of your business once you get going.
Tip 5 Tell the Reader Where You Intend To Be
Having given an overview of your business, the next step is to tell them where you want to be. The main points to cover are:
Your objectives and goals
State what you want from the reader a loan or overdraft for example
Explain why you need and what it will be used for
Tip 6 Tell the Reader How You Are Going To Get There
Its all very well promoting your idea and business but the important point to put over is how you are going to get there. Here are the key points to cover:
Marketing plan
Additional resources needed to meet your objectives and goals
Your contribution in terms of cash or equipment
Security you can offer to support a request for finance
Profit and loss and cash flow forecast to show that you plan to make money and that you can pay back the loan
Tip 7 Provide Some Supporting Information
Your Plan will have contained a lot of information, so it is helpful to include supporting documentation to provide more background. Placing these additional items as an appendix ensures that the flow of the Plan has not been affected by additional information.
What sort of items could you include?
Letter of support from your Accountant
Confirmation of pending orders from customers
If you are purchasing a property, you could include the sales particulars
Independent industry surveys showing that your sector is doing well
If you are buying machinery, include quotations
If you business main asset is you, include your CV!
Tip 8 Ask Someone to Review It
When you are totally immersed in a task you can easily miss obvious mistakes. Ask someone to review your Plan to ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors dont rely on Spell Check! Does it all make sense? Have you been logical in your arguments?
Tip 9 Get the Presentation Right
After having spent a lot of time and effort on the content you dont want to spoil it all with poor presentation! Here are some tips:
Get the Plan typed; it will make it look more professional
Make sure all the papers are clean and that there are no dirt marks or coffee stains! Buy some good quality paper
Purchase a classy folder or binder to put your Plan in (paper clips or staples may not portray the right image!)
dont forget to include all your contact details
Tip 10 Deliver Your Plan to the Reader in Time
Once you are satisfied that your Plan is a good representation of your business you can post it but ideally you should deliver it, at least you know it has got there! Prior to a formal interview (if your aim is to obtain finance) you need to give the Manager time to read your plan. Ask to make an appointment with him in 3 days so he has time to read it.
Enclose a covering letter saying that you have made an appointment and your Plan is attached for him to review and to prepare any questions.
All that remains for you to do is to turn up at the agreed time and present your case!