3 Signs Your Business Is Starting To Take Off

Starting your own business can be a tumultuous road which requires a lot of patience and tenacity. Often when a woman starts her first business she has high hopes of it taking off the first year and becoming a millionaire right away.

Business launch

Unfortunately the reality is that it takes years to get to a point of really reeling in the success. However, when success finally does hit you there is a huge wave of satisfaction knowing that your hard work has finally paid off.

Your Income Is Greater Than Your Debt

Getting your business going can often mean a lot more going out of your pocket than going into it in the beginning.…

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3 Time Management Tips for Small Business Owners

One of the toughest parts of owning and managing a small business is the feeling of never having enough time to accomplish everything. To reduce some of your workload, you add a few employees. But, having employees brings a new set of small business owner responsibilities, such as employee hour tracking.

Time management

There never seems to be enough time in the day to complete all your small business tasks.

Do these statistics resonate with you?

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How You Can Outsource Talent On a Budget

If you’re a small business or startup, or just simply operating on a small budget but you have a particular project that needs to be completed you might be considering outsourcing it. Outsourcing talent can be particularly valuable if there’s some level of specialization required for the project, and you don’t have the need to bring someone on full-time to tackle it.

Finding talent via outsourcing

While outsourcing is a more cost-effective alternative to the overhead costs of a full or even part-time employee, that doesn’t mean it isn’t somewhat costly.

One of the biggest reasons a lot of outsourced projects fail is because the company doing the hiring didn’t think about the budget ahead of time, and tried to hire the least expensive freelancer, rather than trying to balance quality and price.…

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Choosing a CRM That is Best Tailored to Your Needs

Small to medium businesses often do not have the need to use the most robust and expensive CRM tools. Nevertheless, even if you have just decided to become an entrepreneur, having one can help you keep track of your client relationships, attract new leads, boost sales and help with business process automation.

CRM

Of importance is for you to identify your business needs before going out in search of a CRM tool and choose one that can meet such. Here are some important features to consider when choosing a CRM that is best tailored to your needs.

1. Ease of use

It is important that everyone in your team learns how to use the system efficiently.…

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Can London’s Small Businesses Weather the Storm of Business Rates Increases?

London’s small businesses are expected to receive special bail-out fund to help weather the storm of business rates increases, but is it enough?

London busy high street

On Monday 6th March, The London Evening Standard announced plans for special bail-out fund for the capital’s small businesses, which are set to be among the hardest hit in April’s business rates revaluation. “Traditional retailers and firms facing crippling increases of 50 per cent or more are expected to be favoured in funds totalling ‘hundreds of millions’ of pounds” the front-page article reported.

For London’s small businesses, the overdue 2017 rates revaluation threatens to increase business rates by an estimated £7.5 billion.…

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How to Choose the Best Trade Show Booth for Your Business

Would you ever consider opening a dollar store on Rodeo Drive? Of course not. No self-respecting ‘Rodeo-ite’ would be caught dead walking into a dollar store after stepping out of their Aston Martin that only gets driven on Tuesday!

They’d instantly become the laughing stock of all their friends, and celebrity gossip columnists would have a field day, right? Location is important. Location, location, location.

Here’s how to choose the perfect trade show booth, to maximize exposure and brand impact on all who’ll attend your next event:

Study the floor plan prior

If you have no clue how trade shows work, find someone who does who can go over the floor plan in advance with you and your team.…

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Top 4 Tips For Making Your Customers Happy

When it comes to running a business any business owner will tell you that it is easy to make customers dissatisfied. Making customers satisfied, on the other hand, is a little bit more of a process which requires effort and attention.

Serving a happy customer

In order to keep customers coming back, the formula is usually the same regardless of your line of work. Here are some of the most foolproof ways to make and keep your customers coming back.

Be Responsive

When a customer reaches out for services or information, it is crucial to be available to answer their queries and requests. When you are not available or it is out of business hours it is important to have a reliable and organized messaging service where they can leave their details and receive a call back at your earliest convenience.…

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4 Business Insurance Tips Agents Don’t Want you to Know

There are many different types of insurance policies available to small and medium-size business owners. There’s so much to consider, much of it being industry dependent, and also depending on what risks you, your employees, and customers undertake while doing business together.

Of course, if you’ve done any research to this point, you’re probably interested in seeing if you qualify for a comprehensive Business Owner’s Policy (BOP), which is great if you qualify and in fact need all that a BOP policy can cover. However, a BOP only scratches the surface of what most businesses need in terms of coverage.

Business insurance agent

So, how to get the best insurance coverage for your business, given the facts that your insurance agents may know something that you don’t know – and might use that knowledge to take advantage of you?…

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Choosing a Domain Name that Works for You and Google

If your business is just starting out or going through a radical rebrand, you’ll be only to aware of the importance of choosing a domain name that works for both internet users, and search engines. This balance isn’t always easy to achieve. Humans respond better to domains that are short, memorable and unique, while search engines respond to domains that are semantically relevant to your service and industry.

Domain name

Whether through social media or search, the Web is where a huge number of prospective customers will first discover your business. In order to make the most of the opportunities afforded to you by these platforms, businesses must appeal to user psyche, while also supplying search engines with the topic relevancy needed rank highly in search engine results.…

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Money for Nothing? The Value of Consultants

They get a bad press, consultants. They’re sometimes thought of as being people who charge a lot of money to tell you what you already know. People worry if they’re getting any value from consultants.

Consultants

However, genuinely qualified and talented consultants can bring real value to your business. If you’ve wondered how, there are a number of ways they do it, and a number of benefits they bring.

1. Expertise

Typically, consultants have trained extensively in their chosen specialism. This means that they should have a level of expertise greater than is available to you in-house. For example, these days creating your own website is pretty easy using free and easily available software.…

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