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The world’s environment is slowly deteriorating, and we must do everything we can to help reduce the harm being done to the environment. When you decide to make your business “green”, you’re not only helping the environment but also your business’s expenses by cutting down on the waste, which saves you money. The best part about going green is that you can do it with any type of business, whether it is a home business, a warehouse, or even an off-site enterprise. There are always things that can be done to have an environmentally-friendly business.

When asked about going green, most instantly think of recycling. True, it’s important…but it’s only a PART of the equation. It’s a small part as well. There are many different things that can be done on a larger scale, for example reducing the waste in your business operations. You’ll find out what these are as you read on.

Below you will find ten tips/ideas that you can implement into your business to become green.

1. Communicate by email : Try to encourage the communication in your company/business to be done by email. This can drastically save you some money, depending on how large your company is, and what kind of company it is. Also, emails can sometimes have quicker responses depending on how active the person being emailed is on the Internet.

2. Documents should always be double sided : Many companies waste thousands upon thousands of paper because they don’t double side. Print on both sides, this will cut your paper spending by 50%, which could be a lot, again depending on your business.

3. Dripping taps, DOUBLE CHECK FOR THEM : I cannot stress how important this one is. The best way to tell you how bad this is is to tell you a statistic. Let’s say you have a dripping tap somewhere in your place of business…every drop wasted per second amounts to 10,000 LITRES per year. Now take that statistic and apply it to the thousands of companies who do it…See where I’m going with this?

4. Unused Equipment : Many people just leave it on when its not being used. They think that it’s not working, so it probably isn’t using energy. WRONG. It still takes in a large amount of power to stay on. If you don’t believe me, leave in your phone’s charger on for 3 days straight next month and check your electricity bill. Even though your phone wasn’t taking in energy, and the battery was full, you wasted $20 just by plugging it in and not taking it out for 3 days.

5. Paper waste related to faxing : If you fax a lot, you probably waste a lot of paper doing so. Try to use a fax-modem. They all the document to be sent directly from your computer without needing a printed paper copy.

6. Toilet Reservoirs : Place 2 plastic containers with stones in them in your toilet’s reservoir. This will displace around 4 L of water every single flush, amounting to over 5,000 litres of water saved PER PERSON.

7. Paper : When buying paper, look for the ones that have the maximum available recycled content.

8. Buying supplies : When buying supplies, try to find a supplier that will take back the packaging for future use.

9. Use green product : Look for products that are environmentally friendly and try to incorporate those into your business.

10. Before purchasing new furniture : Check your existing furniture, or even hardware that you have lying around that needs to be replaced, and see if they can be refurbished. It is much less expensive that buying new ones, and it also helps the environment.

As you can see, you don’t need huge plans and actions to be green. Even the smallest of things will have a huge impact. If you’re consistent, you can be sure that you will reduce the amount of energy and water that your business uses, and this would help the environment a great deal. Just think how much you can save on paper by using doublesided copies every time, or how much water you can save by checking taps and reducing the water used in every flush by 4 litres. A small change, but a huge result!

1 Comment » Posted by pouya / Uncategorized

How come some companies are always on top with amazing profits, while others can barely make their investments back after months of hard work? What do the gods of business know about that you don’t? Remember Judson LaFlash? He made the famous point, “Marketing is doing the homework and the proposal is taking the test.” When you think about it, it all comes down to your decisions and how they will never be as good as they could be or as accurate as they should be. You’re just wasting a huge part of your budget, and mostly gambling with whatever you have left if you don’t find out about what you’re buying before you buy it.

There are many things you can find out that can help you make important decisions. The main one is knowing who you’re dealing with. Research can lead to a lot of new information about a client that you didn’t know, and it can possibly help you decide if you want to deal with them or not. Also, if you have time to research them you can also find out more about their organization and possibly other organizations that offer the same or similar service, and by doing so you can compare them and choose which one will be best for you.

What you need to know is information about your customer. This makes the decision of submitting a proposal way less of a risk. The more you know about them, the lower the risk. IF you want to make an accurate and intelligent decision, you need collect ALL of the following information:

1. Who’s the end user, who’s the buyer, and who wrote the statement for the work?
2. What type of a contract are you looking at, and is there any follow on potential?
3. Is there an approved budget schedule?
4. What will happen to the money if the schedule happens to slip?
5. Is the procurement schedule rigid? If so, how rigid is it?
6. Who is evaluating the proposal and whats the criteria for the evaluation?
7. Are you absolutely positive that there is a real and definite need with the customer’s organization?

It is absolutely critical to have every single of the information above because it will be really helpful and make your decision making a LOT easier. The more you know before-hand and the quicker the information is updated, the bigger the timeframe you will have when deciding to take action in the overall approach. It can also save you not only tangible costs but also intangible costs that would’ve been required to submit a second-rate response.

I hope you have learned a bit more about the marketing business, and know enough to help you make your future decisions wisely and thoughtfully.. Remember, if you research a little bit before jumping into a deal, you can save yourself a lot of frustration and regret in the future and possibly even have a better outcome to the deal.

No Comments » Posted by pouya / Uncategorized

In this article you will find some of the most common mistakes made by business owners in their planning phase. Business plans are the foundation of companies, and they are an absolute necessity. After reading this, you should be aware of these mistakes & never commit them or your business could fall right in front of your eyes :

1. Procrastination :

Don’t wait until the last minute. Businesses often delay their planning until it is absolutely necessary to do so. Unless their investors want a plan, it’ll probably never happen. Even if you’ve bought an already successful company, a plan is absolutely crucial to continuing its success.

The busier your life is, the more important a plan is. Many often make excuses such as “I don’t have time” or “I’m too busy with other things”. They don’t realize the importance, and this is the turning point of their business. An example of this is the person putting out fires. He was always putting out individual tree fires, but he was too busy to notice that eventually the whole forest would be burned down. Instead of working on 1 tree at a time, he could have stopped it all by simply building firebreaks.

2. Casual Cash Flow :

In terms of importance, a steady flow of cash is absolutely important to have, more important than things such as profits & sales. When starting a new business, the typical thing to do would be think about the cost of start up, cost of producing your products, how much it sells for, and the profits. We usually think about business as the sales – costs & expenses, which would equal a profit. Too bad we don’t spend “profits” in business. We spend cash. If you’ve only got time for 1 table, make it a cash flow table, because it’s the most essential part of a business plan.

3. Inflating Your Ideas :

People sell ideas to investors, not plans. Although necessary, the plans is merely a way to present your information. Your ideas alone won’t be able to get you investors.

Don’t make the mistake of making an idea the highest priority, especially trying to make it unique. A great business doesn’t require a great idea; it requires money, perseverance, research, common sense, and time. You won’t usually find businesses that are completely built off of their ideas. Selling an existing idea with a twist on it is far simpler than selling a completely new idea, because investors won’t understand your idea completely and often doubt its success.

4. Fear :

Fear sometimes drives people over the edge. Don’t be afraid. Business plans are easier than you think. Its not like you’re writing a novel or an essay. There are many available resources such as software & books to help you make a business plan.

5. Vague & Meaningless Goals :

When thinking about goals, try to leave out those pointless phrases that have to do with being the best there is. The purpose of a plan is to get results. You need to track those results, and make sure you’re succeeding. No matter how well thought-out a plan is, its worthless without results.

6. Priorities out of order :

You must keep in mind your priorities. Strategy is focus. If you have a priority list with 3-5 items, that’s focus. If you have a list with 30 items on it, that’s definitely not strategic, and often ineffective.

7 Comments » Posted by pouya / Uncategorized

In these days, entrepreneurs require much more than just desire and passion to make their companies grow. They need drive, determination, and to have a goal in mind that they want to reach and act accordingly to reach it. Today we’re going to learn about some strategies that you can apply to take your company or business to a whole new level.

There are a total of 7 main business growing strategies that basically give your company a boost.

• •Mass produce/Increase Number of Outlets : By having more outlets, your organization can profit in huge, massive amounts. This basically means if you offer more, the cost per unit of the product will be less, and therefore   you will have more profit.
  •Penetration Pricing : In this tactic, you put your products at the absolute lowest price in the market so that they become the most obvious choice for the buyers. This is usually done at the beginning of starting a business so that people will know about you and remember you.
  •Price Skimming : You want to ensure that luxury products or niche services have a price that is maintained and does not fluctuate. You need to be stipulating the market for yourself to be able to ensure the satisfaction of your customers.
  •Generating Unique Values : Investigate and find products that are rapidly growing / developing, and try to get your hands on them right away. By doing this, you will capture the market before it reaches it’s peak. Next you can place your product/service into the “psyche” of your client, developing a trust factor.
  •Having the upper hand in Tie-up/Alliances : Mutual understandings or “tie-ups” with other businesses/companies with products related to yours can immensely help develop your business. Not only will you be more successful, but you’ll also make a friendly relationship with the other company, so in the future there won’t be any rivalry that will cost you money. An example of this is a bakery working with a restaurant. This brings better sales not only for the bakery, but it also reduces the costs for cake production for the restaurant.
  •Internal Efficiency : Keeping the costs and overheads at the lowest it can possible be. Don’t take this the wrong way however. Pay the employees adequately, but also maintain the rest of the per-head expenses and try to keep them on the lower side of the chart. Also try to make sure that all available resources are 100% tapped. Each of your resources should be efficiently and optimally.
  •Location of production facilities : In the case of product-oriented business, ensure that the production of your resources happens close to the source of your low-cost raw materials. This benefits you greatly in  terms of transportation costs and also leads to far greater profit margins.

Those are the top 7 strategies for business growth, but there are also some other ones that have worked in the past that you might want to try :

• •Innovation : Try to innovate some new uses for the product or service that you offer. This can multiply your target clientele by a huge margin. It also adds value to your sales pitch because there is more than 1 use so people are more willing to buy it.
  •Staff Motivation : Make sure to have your staff as motivated as possible so they can work to the best of their abilities. If they don’t have a comfortable work atmosphere, their work will be sloppy & inaccurate and there could be many errors. One thing you can do is try to have a comfortable uniform-wear such as a personalized company t-shirt with your logo on it.
  •Loyalty Program : Offer discounts to the existing clients. You can also give them commission for referring your company to their contacts if it leads to a sale.

Like I’ve said before, small business have nothing to do but grow. You don’t need an immense amount of upfront capital to do that either, you just need to know how to work the market, think outside the box, and be able to make calculated risks I hope the strategies provided help your company’s growth and make you successful.

2 Comments » Posted by pouya / Uncategorized

Getting into the business of wholesale has become a very appealing and rewarding thing to do in our times, mainly with how easy it is to sell things over the Internet. It’s become something where you’re no longer required to handle merchandise. However, before making the decision to dive right into this, there are important things you should know;

What you need to do to start off is ask yourself why you want to get into the business of wholesale. Do you desire to work with various businesses and support individuals in getting money, or do you want to get into it because you think its an easy way to make a quick buck?

Believe it or not, the wholesale business is very involving. It requires drive, determination, and you need to stick to it for it to work. To be successful, you’ll most likely need quite a bit of up front capital to buy your bargain products, and you’ll also need to have a storage warehouse.

Starting off, you have to find out about your rivals. If you choose to embark on a market where there’s already decent distributors, you might have a really rough start. You want to try to get into a market area that has demands for a wholesaler if you want to have an opportunity to succeed.

Next, you’ll want to look at your finances. If you have a lot of upfront capital, you’re in good shape. Make sure that you have the resources to make something similar to a kinship with the producers. Also, if you’re able to afford to wait for 30 days to get the money from retailers, that’s a HUGE plus in the wholesale business.

After that, you’ll need an organization plan for your business. You’ll need to get together with attorneys to get advice from things such as referring services. If you’re completely unfamiliar with the wholesale business, you’re going to have a lot of instruction ahead of you.

Don’t forget to keep in mind the legality of tax for the wholesale business. You’ll need to be careful of the laws put for wholesalers, such as tax exempt status for the trade goods driven between the maker and the other retail merchants.

You’ll require a localization for the business organization too. As stated before, you’ll need a storage warehouse, a workplace, and you need to make sure that people are able to find out about you & your business. If you want to construct a warehouse, make sure that you’re aware of all the zoning laws for the area. The last thing you want is to have your warehouse torn down by the city because it is in a residential area.

Finally, the marketing. Just because you’re into the business enterprise doesn’t mean people will instantly recognize and know you. You need to post ads at a consistent rate, at various places. The main places to have in mind are newspapers, Internet, and magazines. The business of advertising is costly, so be prepared.

Once you get into the line of work and everything is set up, you need to have a customer support for your business. Having something that helps the buyers with their questions and helping solve their problems.

No Comments » Posted by pouya / Uncategorized