5 Tips: Choosing the Right Team to Support Your Local Business

When we begin our journey as local business owners, we often go it alone for a bit and find that we wear a lot of the department hats ourselves. We’re the CEO, the accountant, the marketing team, the human resources team, and then some.

But at some point, we’re ready to hire a team of consultants, contractors, and/or employees to support our goals and vision. At this exciting and pivotal point in time, our business’ success largely hinges on whether or not we hire the right people to support us and our business.

Tips for Hiring Team to Support Your Local Business

It can be helpful to keep the following in mind when you’re recruiting a team to support your company:

Interviews Matter.…

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8 Factors That Determine Whether Your Company Would Benefit From a GSA Schedule

Regardless of your industry, if you do business or have thought about doing business with the government, there is a strong chance you have heard of the GSA Schedule Contract. However, if you are like many companies, you may be uncertain whether your company is eligible to participate in the program and if you should invest the time needed to obtain a GSA Schedule Contract.

would your company benefit from GSA schedule

So, how can you tell if your company would benefit from holding a GSA Schedule? Here are eight factors to take into consideration:

1. Does your company currently do business with the government?

If you have a D&B D-U-N-S Number, are registered on the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) website, and have already been contracting with the government, a GSA Schedule Contract is the next logical step.…

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3 Critical Financial Steps to Starting a Local Business

3 steps to starting a successful local business Starting a business is an exhilarating time. It can also be a very stressful and busy time. As a local business owner, you often end up wearing all of the hats (CEO, Accounting, HR, Marketing, etc.) in the beginning due to lack of funding early on.

In all honestly, this isn’t such a bad thing because it’s nice to know how things work and how all the pieces fit together if you’re the one running the business. At the same time, the goal is to be able to hire experts to handle other departments at some point in the future so you can focus on building and growing the business.…

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College To Work – Building The Leader In You

preparing for job interviews after college

I was recently asked to help a college student prepare for interviewing, and it reminded me of how important it is to be well-prepared when looking for a job, especially transitioning out of college. In this blog post I provide several tips for the earliest leaders – those entering the professional workforce for the first time. This is your first shot at presenting yourself as a leader to your desired place of work.

Make your resume “pop” with accomplishments and leadership.

It’s very important to show all of your work experience that includes summer and seasonal jobs and internships. Organizations look for good work experience.…

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Lead Nurturing to Maintain Contractor Leads for Local Business

When trying to increase contractor leads for a local business, it’s important to do whatever it takes to not lose them once you get them. If you did, then your efforts would be in vain! Once you’ve already intrigued them enough to visit your site, it’s important to consider how to keep those visitors coming back over and over again. Lead nurturing will allow you to do just that.

lead nurturing tips for local businesses

As we all know, many people like to look around, consider their options, and make sure they are making the right decision before finalizing any purchase transaction. Because of this, it takes a little time to gain a new lead.…

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Why Private Companies Need to Act Like Public Companies

Here’s a good tip for all private middle market business owners looking to improve the value of their business: Act like a public company.

Why Private Companies Need to Act Like Public Companies

According to Robert Slee, author of Private Capital Markets: Valuation, Capitalization and Transfer of Private Business Interests, private companies that structure themselves and act like public companies reap tremendous advantages regardless of whether they ever become a public company:

Here’s why: When performing a market valuation of a private company for new financing or other reasons, analysts tend to use public “comps” of like public company transactions. In most cases this is the only available data in the market.…

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Is 2012 The Year You Propose A Business Offer?

things to consider when composing a business proposal

As the clock winds down on 2011, you may be considering the idea of crafting a business proposal going into the New Year. If that is the case, there are a number of matters that will come into play.

In the event that the coming year is the time for you to throw a business proposal or two out there on a regular basis, keep several factors in mind.

Among them are:

When writing a business proposal, make sure that the documentation answers any and all questions that the client may have. Before you write the proposal, run through your head any and all questions you believe the client may come at you with, including funding, customer service, and quality of work and so on.

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