Business
Professional Lettings Agents for Landlords
February 22, 2012 | 
Author When it comes to advertising our property, there are several choices we can do. First, we should know that there are many people who are looking for a property to rent. If you own a property and you want to market your property, using a lettings agent is a good choice. Speaking about finding a lettings agent, we have several choices such as letting agents Newcastle. It is a good idea to find a good lettings agent who can manage the renting process based on our requirements. So what factors to consider when it comes to finding professional lettings Newcastle?
Finding a lettings agent who has a good reputation is a good choice. For example, we can find a lettings agent who has many years of experience. Speaking about fee, it is important not to choose a lettings agent based on the fee. What you should consider is to find a lettings agent who is able to manage your property professionally. There is no way you would choose a lettings agent randomly. What you need to remember is that the fee is not the most important factor when it comes to finding a lettings agent. All we need to do is to find a lettings agent with great services.
Posted in Business | 
Tags: Choices, Good Reputation, Landlords, Letting Agents, Lettings Agents, Newcastle, Property Lettings | 
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Contractor Mortgages UK
Over time the contractor mortgage industry has grown within the UK making it a confusing affair as to who to work with in terms of specialist brokers. To make the best decision it is important to ask the opinion of those who have charted this territory before. This way you get an unbiased position on who are the market leaders in this segment of mortgage business. It also helps to have a rough idea of what exactly you are looking for. This protects you from making decisions that could end up having negative repercussions on your financial status.
Depending on the goal you have in terms of getting a contractor mortgage, a good specialized broker will help you settle on a property that will suit your financial desires. The broker will need to know whether it is for personal use or for use as a source of income. Making this decision will help in determining where the property should be located. Properties for rent are best situated in areas whereby there is a great demand for rental units. These can be locations near public utilities like hospitals and schools. It should also be located in an area whereby commuting is not a problem.
When shopping for the contractor mortgages property it is important that you considered areas that are not so highly sought after to avoid expensive contractor mortgages. Remember the higher the demand a property attracts, the higher the price of sale which means the higher the contractor mortgage you require. To get a property that will get rental interest quickly it is important to consider what values your target customer has. This way you get to picture their ideal rental home from their point of view. You can do a bit of customer based market research to get a good idea of what would be most suitable.
Posted in Business | Tags: Desires, Hospitals, Making Decisions, Market Leaders, Market Research, Mortgage Business, Mortgage Industry, Mortgages Uk, Negative Repercussions, Personal Use, Point Of View, Properties For Rent, Public Utilities, Rough Idea, Segment, Shopping, Specialist Brokers, Target Customer | No Comments »
Business Acquisitions – Book Value Vs Fair Market Value
Book value is the accounting value of a firm and often bears little relation to an asset’s market value. It is a generally accepted accounting principal (GAAP) term that reflects the net dollar value at which the historical cost of assets are recorded on a firm’s balance sheet and represents the price paid for an asset minus the accumulated depreciation. Carrying value or depreciated cost are other terms that the financial community will use to reference book value.
Fair Market Value (FMV) is the most widely recognized and accepted standard of value for asset transfer in business acquisition and sales. The ASA definition of FMV is “the amount at which the property would change hands between a willing seller and a willing buyer when neither is acting under compulsion and when both have reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.”* The concept of FMV relates to the value at which a transfer of assets should be anticipated to occur under conditions existing at the time and date of a business valuation.
The easiest way to describe the two values is to understand that book value represents the depreciated value of what was paid for a particular asset, while market value represents the current price at which that asset can be purchased in the marketplace.
Fixed assets like machinery, equipment, buildings, and vehicles which are expected to last for more than 1 year can be depreciated as an expense on the profit and loss statement based upon the annualized usage cost of these assets. From an accounting perspective, depreciation transfers a component of the asset’s cost from the balance sheet to the P&L during each year of the anticipated life of the asset. There are a variety of depreciation methods that meet the GAAP standards and they are typically grouped into two classes: (1) straight line (2) accelerated. The fact that many owners choose an accelerated method to reduce their short term tax liabilities adds additional confusion when evaluating balance sheet values.
For example, let’s say that a business bought a piece of machinery or vehicle for $50,000 which had an expected life of 5 years. If the owner decided to use straight-line depreciation, the book value is decreased by $10,000 for each of the 5 years. If instead they opted for an accelerated method, like double declining balance, the book value is decreased by $20,000 the first year. In each of these cases the “book” value of the asset will be different and neither will have a bearing on the “market” value, as there is absolutely no way to calculate the market value of a business asset from a balance sheet.
According to the IRS, there is no simple formula to derive FMV. Depending upon the type of asset, there are many methods and industry resources utilized to value items, similar to “blue books” for automobiles. The original value of an item can also be irrelevant especially when considering that a variety of assets have appreciated in value during the very same period that the CPA has been depreciating them. This will cause certain assets being listed on the balance sheet at a fraction of their FMV value. Replacement cost is another indicator of FMV but even this process may not have a direct relationship to the assets true worth. When the FMV is in question, the recommended approach is to engage a professional firm who specializes in the valuation of each particular asset classifications.
*ASA Business Valuation Standards (Herndon, VA: American Society of Appraisers, 1997), p. 20.
By: Michael Fekkes
Posted in Business | Tags: Asset Transfer, Business Acquisition, Business Acquisitions, Business Valuation, Carrying Value, Depreciation Methods, Dollar Value, Equipment Buildings, Fixed Assets, Fmv, Machinery Equipment, Profit And Loss, Profit And Loss Statement, Relevant Facts, S Market, Tax Liabilities, Time And Date, Value Of A Firm, Willing Buyer, Willing Seller | No Comments »
Using Warrants in Your Private Placement Offering
If you’re in the market raising junior capital, you’ll need to understand how warrants are used in structuring your offering. If you are floating a Private Placement of preferred stock or subordinated debt, your investors will expect to have warrants attached to their security.
What is a warrant?
A warrant is a security that gives the warrant holder the right to purchase equity at a specific price, within a certain time frame. Without the warrants, the investor or lender would only receive the dividend yield or interest rate on his shares or loan, hardly compensating him for the risk of making the investment. This equity-kicker is what gets investors excited.
Warrants are usually expressed as a percentage of the “fully-diluted” common stock of the company, which then equates to a certain number of common equity shares.
Fully-diluted refers to the total number of shares that would be outstanding if all conversions take place; e.g. convertible securities, employee stock options, and warrants, including the warrants which are part of your offering.
Warrants will usually have a “nominal” exercise price, also known as “penny warrants”. In the context of a buyout where the majority of the equity capital is in the form of preferred, the common equity will only have a nominal value. In other situations, the common equity may be valued at a higher number in which case i) the warrants will have an exercise price at the market value of the common equity, or ii) the warrants will have a nominal price, but the number warrant shares will be less.
As you structure your transaction and write your Private Placement Memorandum, you should become familiar with some terms that you’ll need to include in your term sheet:
Anti-dilution rights protect the warrant holder from equity dilution from a subsequent issuance of shares at a price lower than what the investor originally paid.
A simple example – suppose an investor received warrants for 20% of the equity for a preferred investment $1 million. If the Issuer subsequently issued another $1 million of preferred with warrants for 30% of the equity, the first investor would be diluted from 20% equity to 14% equity if there were not any anti-dilution protection language.
There are a number of ways to address anti-dilution, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.
Demand and piggyback registration rights refer to the right of the warrant holder to register his warrant shares for public issuance. The difference between the two types of registration rights is that Demand registration allows the holder to initiate the registration of warrant shares for public issuance. Demand registration is usually reserved for majority warrant holders, or warrant holders who have a significant ownership. Piggyback registration means that the warrant holder may have his warrant shares registered along with another holder or the company if there is a registering of the company’s shares. Piggyback rights are for the benefit of minority investors, as only the majority investors will have Demand registration rights.
Tag-along rights give a shareholder the right to join in a transaction to sell his shares if another shareholder is selling his stake.
Preemptive rights give shareholders the right to purchase new securities being issued by the company prior to them being issued to new, outside investors. In the dilution example above, a preemptive right would have given the first investor the right to purchase a proportional amount of the new issuance to preserve their equity ownership.
Note: since there would be an anti-dilution provision in the shareholders agreement, the anti-dilution provision would require waiver by the shareholders to proceed with the new issuance.
A Put Option allows the warrant holder to “put” the warrant back to the company. When the warrant is put to the company, the company has an obligation to purchase the warrant back from the investor. It is a way for the investor to monetize the value of his equity stake. The price that the company pays for the warrant is the product of the equity value of the company and the percent of the fully-diluted equity represented by the warrant shares.
A Call Option is a way for the company to “call” in the claims on its common equity. A company may call its equity back from investors if it anticipates an increase in the value of its equity down the road. It is also a way for the company to consolidate ownership back to, say the sponsors of the transaction.
I had a situation once where an investor requested that we eliminate the Call Option. His rationale was that he wanted to ride the value and did not the equity value get called away from him.
There are no rules for the number of years for the investor to have its Put right, or the Issuer to have its Call right, except that typically the advantage is to the investor with the Put right occurring before the Call right. My experience is that Put/Call rights will usually occur in years 4/5 or 5/6.
The issue you will face will be determining the value of the equity if and when the Put or Call gets exercised (except if there is a sale of the company to an unrelated third party).
I have been in transactions where the equity value for the purposes of the warrant was negotiated upfront as the greater of i) a liquidity event (such as a sale) or ii) a formula.
For example, if the original transaction was valued at 5x EBITDA, then the valuation for the Put/Call was also 5x EBITDA. Keep in mind that the product of a multiple and EBITDA gets you to an Enterprise Value, which is not the same thing as the equity value. To get to equity value, you’ll need to subtract debt and add cash (unrestricted cash).
My experience is that if there is no predetermined formula, the value of the warrant is usually negotiated. The “fair market value as determined by a …” language is for when you can’t agree; however, you should always have this language even if you have a formula.
As the Issuer you may find that the formula is based on the just-ended fiscal year, but by the time the audit gets completed, there might have been a material adverse change in the business such that the agree-upon formula overstates the value of the equity. Conversely, if you are the investor, events subsequent to the audit may point to a significantly higher equity value than what would be indicated following a formula using the year-end numbers.
Warrants are just another tool that help you raise the capital you need. The trickiest part of the whole warrant conversation will be anti-protection. As the Issuer you will want to run through a variety of scenarios to make sure you understand how your value will be impacted when anti-dilution triggers kick in.
By: Nick Jevic
Posted in Business | Tags: Common Stock, Conversions, Convertible Securities, Dilution, Dividend Yield, Employee Stock Options, Equity Capital, Exercise Price, Interest Rate, Investor, Investors, Issuance, Kicker, Nominal Value, Preferred Stock, Private Placement Memorandum, Stock Warrants, Subordinated Debt, Time Frame, Warrant | No Comments »
The Definition of Sales – Professional Selling Defined
Before I define professional selling. Let’s look at some of the related professions. Below are some definitions of professions/occupations that relate to professional selling from Wikipedia:
Marketing is defined as an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations Advertising is defined as a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Public relations is defined as the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its audiences. Sales Promotions is defined as the pre-determined actions designed to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability for a limited time (i.e., contests, point of purchase displays, rebates, free travel, and sales incentives.)
What about the sales profession?
Notice in the above definitions, the profession is *not* defined as the individual. For example, marketing isn’t defined as “people who market.” Yet, the sales profession is often explained as “individuals who sell.” Therefore, selling shouldn’t be defined in this manner. Notice also, that the above professions are *not* defined by the activities of those individuals. In other words, the profession of advertising isn’t defined as “placing ads on television.” Therefore, selling shouldn’t be defined in this manner.
Academically, selling is thought of as a part of marketing, however, the two disciplines are completely different. Sales departments often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing individuals who specialize in sale specific roles. While the sales process refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, the definition of the sales “profession” doesn’t exist (until now with this article).
So the questions become:
Who is “in” the profession and who is not? How does selling relate to marketing, advertising, promotions, and public relations? What shared competencies do individuals within the sales profession need? How do these competencies align to roles in terms of focus and differentiation?
A definition should provide a meaning. To determine the meaning of the sale profession, it is useful to determine what the sales profession *must* contain.
The following three tenets are required for professional selling:
The focus of the sales profession centers on the human agents involved in the exchange between buyer and seller Effective selling requires a systems approach, at minimum involving roles that sell, enable selling, and develop sales capabilities A specific set of sales skills and knowledge are required to facilitate the exchange of value between buyers and sellers
Within these three tenets the following definition of profession selling is offered by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD):
Professional Selling is:
”The holistic business system required to effectively develop, manage, enable, and execute a mutually beneficial, interpersonal exchange of goods and/or services for equitable value.”
Note: this definition was published by ASTD in 2009.
What does this definition accomplish?
First, it creates a definition of world class selling. An organization wishing to benchmark its selling effectiveness can leverage the above definition to clearly understand strengths and weaknesses. Without such a definition, most adjustments to the selling team are arbitrary and subjective. By understanding the system’s view required for selling effectiveness, organizations can look at indidual sales team members as well as sales team processes and tools and how they align to the buyer.
Second, it allows for more consistent results in performance through the clear establishment of roles regarding who is “in” and who is “out” of professional selling. For example, if it doesn’t involve a human agent, it is not within the sales profession — it’s a marketing function with a transaction (i.e., a “sale”). For this definition, sales operations, sales recruiters, and sales trainers are “in” the profession because they possess unique skills outside of their regular job titles. They posses knowledge and skill that is unique to enabling the definition.
Third, the definition lays the foundation for sales talent management/people strategies. With such a definition, sales development employees can create learning solutions that fit the unique aspects of a sales culture. At the same time, front-end recruitment strategies and more clearly tie to retention strategies.
Fourth, it helps organization on exemplary performance. By setting a bar with such a definition, organizations don’t have to settle for mediocre sales effectiveness. They can use the definition to help bridge the gap between sales capacity and sales team competency.
By: Brian Lambert
Posted in Business | Tags: Audiences, Corporate Structure, Disciplines, Free Travel, Limited Time, Marketing Mix, Milestones, Occupations, Placing Ads, Point Of Purchase, Point Of Purchase Displays, Product Availability, Profession, Professional Selling, Professions, Rebates, Sales Incentives, Sales Promotions, Travel Incentives, Wikipedia | No Comments »
Real Estate Marketing Flyers; 24/7 Marketing
A real estate marketing flyer box is a “24 hours a day agent”, and is standard equipment among high producing real estate agents.
And what do you suppose you do with them? Stuff them with real estate marketing flyers, of course! And as you may know, real state marketing flyers are the bread and butter of the real estate indusrtry.
A good, informative real estate marketing flyer has enough information on it to get the most desireable response; a phone call or email message to you. The rest, as the say, will be up to you.
The flyer should at a minimum have your full name, address, and phone number(s), your photograph, a photograph or two of the listings, price, property description, and description of the location, neighborhood, and amenities.
A good real estate marketing flyer will also be attractively designed, neat and devoid of clutter. It should also be done in clear and easy to read type fonts. Although color copies are relatively expensive these days it is still a good idea to have at least a splash of color.
Perhaps your real estate marketing flyer can reflect the happenings in your community, such as a photograph of the local sports team, an attractive park in the area, or a scenic view. Let the flyer sell you and your listings for you!
And as implied above, real estate marketing flyers are no longer restricted to placement inside homes. Additionally, you can place them outside homes and have them market your listings 24/7.
Many real estate marketing flyer boxes come equipped with easy reach business card dispensers. Some all-weather-resistant construction boxes will hold over one hundred single sheet flyers in a upright fashion. No slouching, no bunching! The self-closing lid and ventilation system keeps the real estate marketing flyers just like new.
So, if you’re not marketing via real estate marketing flyers, or if you are not marketing with outside flyer boxes you may want to consider stepping it up a notch or two. Afterall, the more successful agents are marketing 24/7! Are you?
By: Lanard Perry
Posted in Business | Tags: Afterall, Attractive Park, Bread And Butter, Business Card, Card Dispensers, Clutter, Color Copies, Flyer Boxes, Flyers, Local Sports Team, Phone Call, Property Description, Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Marketing, Resistant Construction, Scenic View, Splash Of Color, Type Fonts, Ventilation System, Weather | No Comments »
11 Things Small Business Owners Can Learn From Will Rogers
1. “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” – As the saying goes, you never learn anything while you’re talking. Make sure to listen more…to your customers, employees and advisors.
2. “If you’re riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.” – Always remember, the definition of a leader is someone who has followers.
3. “You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes, because that’s where the fruit is.” – Always playing it safe will keep you from achieving all you’re meant to in your small business.
4. “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” – What’s done is done. Learn from the past, then let it go, so you can accomplish greater things tomorrow.
5. “You must judge a man’s greatness by how much he will be missed.” – Obviously, America missed Will Rogers tremendously. If tomorrow never comes, what will friends say about you?
6. “Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‘n puttin’ it back in.” – New initiatives. Great opportunities. More products/services. Consider them all, and never lose your primary focus.
7. “Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.” – Many small business owners get trapped in “Ready, aim, aim, ready…,” and never fire. Don’t just sit around. Go flyin’ instead.
8. “We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” – This is a good lesson for you and your small business employees. Somebody has to do the work.
9. “An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out.” – Knowledge is an advantage, especially in selling, where you should always know more than your competition.
10. “It’s not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.” – Hiring someone for less than market value sounds like a good idea…until you hire the wrong person entirely.
11. “We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.” – Everyone should see life as Will Rogers saw it…finding humor in all we observe, and still making a difference in the world.
Copyright ? 2005 by Success Handler, LLC. All rights reserved.
By: David Handler
Posted in Business | Tags: Business Employees, Cat Outta, Clap, Followers, Friends, Good Chance, Greatness, Herd, Heroes, Humor, Inaction, Initiatives, Laughs, Ready Aim, See Saw, Small Business Owners, Whole Lot, Will Rogers, Wrong Person | No Comments »
Advantages of a Branded House or a House of Brands
If you want to win by growing your market share — there is a better way, a smarter way, than the traditional advertising and marketing strategy and tactics. However, it requires looking at your business and brand from a very different point of view. This different point of view is hard to grasp because old myths die-hard and old expensive myths seem to die hardest of all.
If you need to steal share, it does not require underhandedness (as the name might suggest) it requires smarts. If you think that “stealing,” as it relates to taking market share, is a short cut to success — a means to cheat your way to success — you are dead wrong. Winning requires great effort and hard work because it means you must outsmart your competition in order to achieve success. In our book, you must learn how to be different and smarter. You must stop seeing the “marketing game” as you learned it in college, even if college was just last year. Things are changing and the future belongs to those that recognize and use change to their advantage.
It is All about Scarcity
Start with the idea of scarcity. Encapsulated within scarcity is the entire concept of value. We only value scarcity. If we discovered a heretofore hidden mountain range made entirely of gold, the owner would not be rich because the abundance of gold in the market would make the metal a commodity, with all of the inherent value of tin. Everything has a value measured by its scarcity — the greater the scarcity, the greater the value.
The pharmaceutical industry today is a case study in scarcity because the profits they glean are in direct proportion to the uniqueness of the patent. They protect scarcity by patenting their concoction and then defending that patent as if their very lives depended on it. And they are right; their livelihood does depend upon it. Wall Street analysts will talk about these pharmaceutical companies in terms of product pipelines, FDA approvals, and waning patent rights. The mix of the three is the difference between a BUY, SELL or HOLD stock recommendation.
In the absence of any other reason for the physician or patient to choose which pharmacological compound to prescribe and use besides drug efficacy, these companies had better keep the pipeline filled with new drugs and new patents. Only when a product like VIOXX is pulled from the market because of troubling side effects, does the physician council the patient that the OTC available product, ibuprofen, has nearly the same efficacy.
The REAL problem here is a fundamental idea that it is a smart strategy to build your “business home” as a house of brands rather than as a branded house. If you don’t mind chancing your fortune by putting all of your eggs in the “R&D” basket then being a house-of-brands is not a bad idea.
Things are Not as They Once Were
Often, in the beginning of a company’s life cycle, companies differentiated themselves with one or two break through products. It was simply easier to market product efficacy than it was to dig deeper and understand just what the customer is buying (who the customer is buying is closer to the truth) and why. It was, and still is, the conventional marketing wisdom. In addition to requiring greater smarts and dispassionate intellectual vigor, being a successful branded house requires as a prerequisite the ability to see your customer, not as an asset to exploit, but as a partner to understand, and with whom one must empathize.
What is a Branded House?
A branded house, when done properly, has an overarching reassurance to the customer that those that choose this BRAND share an attribute. Not a product attribute but an identifiable personal attribute that not only sets them apart but is integral to their own personal identification. Choosing such a brand is not necessarily a matter of showing off or display. Rather it is absolutely a means of self-discovery and personal fulfillment instead of having to rely solely on product attributes like in the house of brands model.
So, when a branded house launches a new product or sub-brand, the new addition to their stable automatically gains a level of acceptance and importance because of the previous identification with the parent brand. Most branded houses make the mistake of believing (in this case a form of self-deception) that the parent brand equity is also about efficacy or category. We reiterate: this idea is corporate identity at best. More often, is it simply an acknowledgment of the commodity benefits — benefits of the category that comprises your business’s sandbox. Parent brands differentiate themselves not by their category or offering but by identifying the type of customer who chooses it. We use the word type very loosely because we are not talking about segmentation based solely on race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, or education. These may all play a part in identification of the target market but the real key is in understanding the belief systems that are shared as germinal, by your most coveted customers. The parent brand is how the customer knows that the brand is for them.
Efficiency is What Matters Most
Generally speaking, creating a branded house is a more efficient model than being a house-of-brands because it allows for a more cost effective means for new product launches and brand extensions. However, executing the house of brands strategy successfully requires uncommon diligence and hard work. Both of these are scarce — and therefore very valuable. It is just plain easier to launch individual brands or to try to differentiate your “branded house” by the table stakes of your category because all these require is an understanding of yourself — not an anthropological understanding of your most coveted prospects.
You would think that REAL “branded houses” would be common. They are not. Automobile companies like Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and the like are not Branded Houses in any real sense, rather, they are old vestiges of a business that has become more known for individual “brand models” and even more so by category descriptors of vehicle type like SUV, pick-up, and mini-van. These categories are identified as “integral” and then the shopper chooses from among the many offerings within that category. It is no wonder that the torch of automotive dominance is being passed from “the big three” to a multitude of others.
Want to Win
If you want to win in the market today, you must find the courage and wisdom to get out of your own way. The obstacle to success is often the company’s identification with what it believes is its importance and identification instead of what the target market believes is its importance and ID. Once we can bypass all the old ideas and beliefs, you can start your branded house on the road to steal share. Doing so is so rare, “scarce” if you will, and its value is almost immeasurable.
By: Tom Dougherty
Posted in Business | Tags: Concoction, Die Hard, Different Point Of View, Direct Proportion, Encapsulated, Fda Approvals, Livelihood, Market Share, Marketing Game, Marketing Strategy, Myths, Patent Rights, Pharmaceutical Companies, Pharmaceutical Industry, Product Pipelines, Scarcity, Strategy And Tactics, Traditional Advertising, Uniqueness, Wall Street Analysts | No Comments »
Coaching is Key to Home Inspection Marketing Success
There are many factors that are involved in marketing a business. The home inspection industry is no different when it comes to marketing your skills and services. Many who enter in to the business realm of experiences learn marketing as they go along. They learn what works and what does not work though trial and error. Many never learn to market as well as they need to to survive in business and find themselves as part of the 80-90 of new businesses that do not survive past five years. To help ensure that you will not be among those that fail you need to learn what marketing to do and how to do it.
You need to locate and find someone you can learn from. This does not mean that you need to find a local person that you can sit and talk to. Many people who are in your same field of business would never consider helping a competitor learn how to be successful. This should not be a big hindrance because there are experienced professionals that you can learn from in methods other than face to face interaction. Phone calls both one on one and in group teleseminar fashion are both excellent ways to learn. The one on one manner will naturally be directed to you and your needs specifically. This individual coaching will often result in quicker learning for the person receiving the coaching. Faster learning will of course translate into more money and a short length of time till a business is profitable.
Having a marketing coach will help eliminate the mistakes that many business owners make as they promote their business. Traditional advertising will try and sell these individual business owners on ads and various ways to market their business. Most of these methods have no value to the business owner. The smart business owner keeps track of results and has learned what words and what does not result in a profit for the business. Most people selling ads seem to have no clue about quality marketing and how to get ads to pull good responses. A marketing coach will help prevent you from making mistakes that will cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
A marketing coach also does not necessarily have to have been in the same field that you are in. Often a fantastic marketing idea comes from a different industry that can be altered in some way so as to work well in another type of business. Fast food drive though windows came from the banking industry. Hard to imagine a fast food place without a drive through these days.
No matter what business you are in find a person who is willing to provide you with some help. You will greatly be rewarded in increased cash flow and a greatly reduced learning curve.
By: Jim Troth
Posted in Business | Tags: Business Owner, Business Owners, Clue, Competitor, Experienced Professionals, Experiences, Fashion, Hindrance, Home Inspection Industry, Individual Coaching, Interaction, Length Of Time, Marke, Marketing Help, Marketing Success, New Businesses, Quality Marketing, Smart Business, Traditional Advertising, Trial And Error | No Comments »
The Definition of Lean Innovation
There are two trends today that are or should be on every entrepreneur and business leaders mind. Today’s market demands that every business at least evaluates how they react to the concepts behind those trends.
I’m referring of course to lean processes and innovation.
Over time, every business develops a certain amount of fat. These are processes, tasks and departments which do not directly serve a key objective of the organization. Essentially they can be trimmed without affecting the organization’s ability to deliver value to its customers. Lean techniques are intended to remove that fat from the organization.
Innovation is the life blood of most if not all organizations today. Being able to identify and determine new and better ways to do things is mandatory to survival. Mere improvement isn’t enough. You need to be able to radically improve or shift your value proposition in order to compete successfully.
There are many forms of lean innovation. However, the most frequent use of the term is to refer to the use of lean techniques on the Research and Development or R&D department. In simplistic terms, the presumption is that R&D is the primary source of innovation and that it – like any other part of the organization – has accumulated wasteful fat. Given those presumptions it makes sense that the fat be trimmed and the R&D become more focused on those tasks that bring actual value.
In this article, I’m going to intentionally not argue with the presumptions. Of course, most strategic consultants would disagree with their validity. However, for our purposes their validity is irrelevant – that they are being used is all that matters.
Given that, there are four main forms that lean innovation takes:
1. Substitution of information based research for experimental research. Experimental research is expensive and wasteful. It is also extremely risky. After all, you could spend an inordinate amount of time, effort and money on looking for a discovery and never actually find it. The lean attitude is extremely risk averse. Therefore, one of the first things that is focused on is finding an alternative to experimental research. Generally this takes the form of substituting information research. In other words, looking for someone else who has done the experimental research and using their data.
2. Elimination of non-critical tasks. Over time every organization collects tasks which either no longer or never did provide value to the customer. Lean techniques focus on the elimination of non-value-critical tasks.
3. Use of strategic or tactical partners. Just as in marketing, there are always organizations which are focused on researching in your area of concern. Not all of those organizations are competitors. Establishing partnerships allows you to share the cost and results of research – informational and experimental. It can also allow you to share the costs and results of development efforts and may actually identify a potential marketing partner.
4. Use of appropriate outsourcing. Establishing partners is based on the concept that you don’t have to do everything yourself. Unfortunately, not every non-critical task can be eliminated or shared. Outsourcing these tasks can prove to be less expensive and risky than doing it yourself.
By: Glen D. Ford
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