(Guest post from Brittany Evans)

It’s amazing how much small purchases can add up when they are being done by an office. That’s because of the volumes involved. For example, a house may have five or 10 lamps inside, but an office can easily have 50-100 bulbs running during operating hours. Therefore, it’s important to pay attention to these sorts of things so they don’t become stealthy profit killers. Here are a few ways you can lower your operating overhead without compromising operations:

Use a Thermostat With a Timer

To maintain productivity and health, the office thermostat should always be set to comfortable levels during working hours — but you shouldn’t bother heating or cooling an empty building. If your company is always closed at night or on the weekend, set the thermostat to shut down the climate control during those hours. Make sure to have everything come online about an hour before people arrive for the next workday so no one has to be uncomfortable when the shift starts.

Get Rid of Energy Vampires

If you’re using standard incandescent lighting, switch to compact fluorescent bulbs or LED lights. Fixtures that already use fluorescent tubing should be checked to make sure that bulbs and ballasts are working properly. If either component begins to fail, it loses efficiency and fails to provide the proper lighting. Flickering fluorescent tubes will also cause lower productivity among workers who are sensitive to the flashing effect.

Go Paperless

Buy supplies online. To ensure that you have purchase protection, get a business credit card at American Express. Online stores often have much better rates than their physical counterparts. Don’t avoid small businesses either — these often have the best deals of all.

Eliminate Disposable Cups

Make everyone bring their own mug to work. This will eliminate both the expense of the cups and the need to make someone do all the dishes. If someone wants to let his mug go until it looks like it’s tar coated, it won’t affect anyone but him.

Carry the Right Amount of Insurance

If your policy is too low, you can find yourself on the hook for unexpected costs — but most businesses don’t need a policy that covers everything, either. Pick a level of coverage that will take care of anything you couldn’t afford to pay for yourself, but no more. Also, make sure you’re covered against specialized, local disasters like floods or hurricanes. Remember, hurricane insurance usually doesn’t cover water damage — if you’re in a hurricane zone, buy flood insurance too.

Buy Nonperishable Supplies in Bulk Whenever Possible

It’s almost always cheaper to buy a big package instead of a small one, and the savings are even greater if you can get a truly huge package. For items like toilet paper, ear plugs or other things your company will always use, buying small units is just throwing money away. Use a business credit card to make it easy to buy wholesale quantities and keep track of the purchases.

By taking common-sense steps like these, you can save your company a surprising amount of money every month. Other tips include always seeking bids for contracted work and reviewing contracts for ongoing services on an annual basis. Even if you’re satisfied with your current providers, having competitive information handy can allow you to negotiate a better deal.

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Some analysts would argue that virtualization is either having, or getting ready to have its big moment in the data storage world. Companies in large numbers are starting to see the clear advantages of implementing sophisticated and basic virtualization technology into their data storage solutions. Even with all the tools that virtualization provides – IT simplification, boosted computing power and increased server management efficiency – there are some key challenges that will keep virtualization from advancing into the next phase of technological advancement. In this post, we’ll uncover five of the biggest challenges facing virtualization for businesses in the years ahead.

The Top Five Challenges Facing Data Virtualization

1.        Meeting the Demand of Virtualization Technology – 

The hard reality of virtualized server management is that the environment itself is highly dynamic. This is a complicated technology, which will require an advanced IT team to be able to understand and manage the virtualization system. Since the technology is always evolving, individuals maintaining the systems must stay informed on developments and breakthroughs in the industry.

2.        The Hard Reality of Server Management – 

According to a recent white paper published by Morgan Stanley, contrary to popular belief, virtual server management isn’t any more timesaving than a physical server. In most cases, a company is dealing with several virtual servers at once, which can put a heavy burden on the IT staff.

3.        Infrastructure Issues – 

There are several selling points that make a virtual server environment attractive. Developing a virtual server is fairly easy, and deploying applications within this environment is even easier. The problem is that most organizations don’t have the proper infrastructure in place to keep up with the demands of the constantly evolving virtualized environment that runs their servers.

4.        Economics – 

It’s hard to argue with the fact that virtualization has significantly lowered IT costs associated with server management in recent years. The problem is that as much money as virtualization saves companies, there’s the reality that hypervisor and virtualization costs take up a large chunk of the IT budget on the datacenter level.

5.        Virtualization Procrastination – 

Finally, there are many companies that continue to drag their feet when it comes to virtualization adoption. A large chunk of these virtualization procrastinators are perpetually stuck in the test and development stage, and they never really make that next step to implement. These companies are often afraid to make the switch because they feel that virtualization hasn’t “arrived” on the security and stability front. What they don’t realize is that virtualization adoption is more sophisticated and stable than ever.

While these are significant hurdles for many companies to get over, these are not debilitating for the virtualization industry as a whole. Companies can upgrade their infrastructure in a way that scales to meet the demand of their dynamic virtualized server solutions. They can also overcome economical barriers by rearranging their IT budget in a way that balances out costs. More importantly, they can leap right out of the test and dev phase, and fully adopt virtualization as their server management solution of choice.

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Midwest, and she enjoys following the business tech world. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often. Follow her on Twitter! @DawnAltnam

The post Five Challenges Your Company Will Face When Using Virtualization to Store Data appeared first on Building a Business.

By paying quarterly you can ease your yearly accounting process with less calculations, allowing you to devote more time to the important day-to-day aspects of your small business.

When paying quarterly, you pay your taxes in equal portions in April, June, September and January. This works best if you are self-employed and have few holdings.

You should pay about 95 percent of what you think you will owe during the year, split between the four paying periods. Even easier, you can pay 100 percent of what you paid last year, divided amongst the four payments.

For example, if you owed $2,000 last year, you can pay $500 dollars toward your taxes in April, June, September and January. By doing this you don’t necessarily have to estimate your current earnings.

Keep in mind the state of the economy and your business when deciding whether or not to estimate your current earnings for paying quarterly. You may want to estimate your current earnings if the economy is on a steep downward slope or if your business is declining.

In doing so, you can pay less than what you paid last year when your earnings were higher. Once you calculate your four payment amounts, you are finished with calculations. Just remember to pay the remaining quarters.

Paying quarterly requires planning, because you either have to calculate your earnings and/or how much you will pay each quarter. Typically, business owners prefer to spend more time running their business on the front end and less on back-end calculations. In this case, it is often beneficial to hire a reliable accounting firm for help. If you are looking for help with taxes or small business bookkeeping in Missouri, feel free to contact us.

Photo credit: Ben

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Regular quarterly board meetings can encourage a long term view.  In addition, it is extremely powerful to entertain different perspectives.  This results in a stronger strategy for growth.

Quarterly board meetings provide an opportunity to review the last quarter’s financials and progress towards company goals.  This gives impetus to pull the information together, synthesize it, and consider strateic implications.  Of course, it is a good idea to hold monthly internal management meetings to review similar information and stay on top of company and industry trends.

As owner of the company, you will be chair of the board and determine who participates.  Ensure you bring in the backgrounds, experience and viewpoints that will help you most.  It matters who you ask to be on your board.

First of all, you need to trust and respect your board members.  A lot of confidential information will be shared with them.  In addition, they need to be people you will listen to.

Be sure to determine the number of people you want on the board.  Six to ten in a private corporation is a normal range.

Select accomplished individuals from a wide variety of professions. For example, a lawyer and CPA are standard members of a board as are leaders in industries related to your markets or future direction.  It is a good idea to have a mix of board members who are internal and external to your company.  Usually a company’s senior management team will be on the board.

Choose external professionals with depth and breadth of experience.  You want board members with relevant experience to bring to your business.  Maybe they have been successful with a business model that is appropriate for your business. Or, they bring skills that your team is weak on.  For example, a marketing guru for a growing company is an excellent fit.

Finally, bring your board in as part of the team.  Bounce ideas off them between quarterly meetings.  Get them involved in board committees.  invite them to employee events.  Take them for lunch or dinner.

Then enjoy the added perspectives and improved strategies.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Andy Rennie

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Hiring, training and motivating employees is key to making your company distinctively superior.

1. Hiring. Be patient and hire the employees that are the best fit for the position and your company.  Ensure the skills and motivation to succeed are there.  Require references from a former boss, peer and director report, if applicable.  Very importantly, check the references yourself.  This ensure continuity between the interview and the references.

2. Training.

• Offer company orientation, with basic information on the company, as well as how business is done by the organization.
• Train on required, special or specific technical knowledge.  For more senior positions, provide an on-boarding sheet listing the basic knowledge needed, and ask employees to initial when they have found and understood the information.

3. Coaching. Pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of employees.  Be a cheerleader on their strengths and accomplishments.  Help them figure out how to shift the paradign on the weaknesses so they become strengths.  For example, being quiet is not a strength in sales – however, listening is key to selling effectively.

4. Set the tone for a fun, human work environment.

• Have some fun on the job.  Some moments of lightness
• Keep the interactions human; have a heart.  Take a genuine interest in your folks.  Caring goes further than knowing in so many ways.
• Help your employees succe.  Let them do their job, and give them the support and resources they need.  Be sure they are recognized when you reap the benefits.And do not throw them under the bus.
• Arrange some informal, outside activities: bowling, lunch off-site.  I even know an HR Manager who used to take employees to breakfast after an early meeting.  These events allow us to get to know each other beyond work, as people, which helps to build trust.

5. Throw down a positive, achievable challenge.

• Your competitors are the real challenge but some friendly internal competition can get the juices flowing.  Try competitions with low stake awards, such as taking the winners or team to lunch.
• Be sure that any compensation, evaluations are tied to achievable goals – or the goals will cease to motivate.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Brendon Connelly

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Think about pushing.  We have all had a pushy sales rep.  We don’t want the product, at least yet.  We don’t want to talk to them.  They are all sell, sell, sell.  Hard sell too.

Just get off my case!!

Turn your mind to pulling.  To being a magnetic force.  For this, the charismatic individuals out there have it made.

However, the rest of us can radiate sunshine, positive vibes.  We can connect on a human level.  We can listen.  We don’t need to talk all the time.

We can understand the customers’ needs.  We can focus on helping the prospect, rather than selling the prospect.  We can show we care about the struggle.  Caring matters more than solving the problem in many ways.  And, we can perceptively pick up on what is upsetting to the customer, what brings emotional hardship – the pain, so to speak.

Then we know what to solve.  Then we know what the prospect needs, and we can help them with that, if it is within our expertise.  If not, we can refer them to someone who does.

I know I prefer a soft sell, pull sales rep far more than a hard sell, pushy rep.  You may want to keep these two approaches in the back of your mind as you promote your product or service, and evaluate what you are doing – bringing the prospect to you, or pushing them away.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit

The post Are you Pushy? How do you Pull in Sales Instead? appeared first on Building a Business.

Selling may not be the issue.  Rather, as a business coach, I often need to point out that the sales issue may be the value proposition for customers.

According to an indepth study of 39 US and UK firms, “the key driver of sales growth was the innovative product or service idea.”  The key to business growth – critical stuff.

“Competitive strategies typically focused on product quality rather than price… ”

“For product based firms, competitive strategy focused on custom technologies, while for service based firms the emphasis was more often on a close understanding of clients’ needs and relationship building.”

The study was conducted by Kingston University, London and Babson College, Massachusetts for Her Majesty’s Treasury and the UK Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

In addition, high growth firms, often the high tech firms, were market creators.  They needed to create the demand – to invest in upfront marketing with no guarantee of a return.

Interestingly, the data also showed that growth was not a smooth upward progression – growth is “episodic and irregular.”  There were often dips in revenue between quarters or years.  As a result, the authors warn of relying on simple growth models.

Finally, the dominant marketing strategy was word of mouth.  So, businesses needed to consider other methods of promotion in order to continue the growth.

This is the reality of high growth firms.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: thms.nl

The post The Data-Backed Secret to Sales Growth appeared first on Building a Business.

The tips follow a logical sequence.  However, life can have its own flow.  So, you may find yourself going back and forth as you apply them – that’s normal.  As always, best of luck!

1. Create a compelling message.  Offer a product or service that is different than your competitors – where it counts to customers.

2. Check continuously that your advantages matter to customers.  Use market research as well as customer and prospect visits.  Be sure to ask good questions.

3. Motivate your staff to work together and to consistently deliver on the compelling promise.

4. Understand who your ideal customer is – that is, your target market.  Know what they want, how they buy, and where they look for suppliers of your product or service.

5. Promote your service via your compelling message.  Meet your prospects where they are.

6. Use social media as appropriate for your market, together with the free promotional tools on the web, including all the Google info.

7.  Monitor the effectiveness of your promotion – whether the activities are generating leads and sales.

8. Ensure the necessary resources are dedicated to selling – and that they have excellent relationship-building, value selling, closing and customer care skills.

9. Build a sales pipeline, with leads in each of your four or five selling stages.  Track where leads are lost or slow down.  Use this information to improve the efficiency of your selling process.

10. Offer excellent customer service to maintain customers and generate word of mouth referrals – always the best!

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Bev Sykes

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How do you get everyone moving in the same direction, like a finely tuned machine?

1 – Ensure your folks know the direction.  Sounds simple, but often this isn’t the case.  We give our employees the mushroom treatment..

2. Ensure the message on the company direction is relevant to your folks.  You don’t want them daydreaming through this discussion.  Make it real.  Give examples.  Give examples that involve your folks, the functions.  Make it a discussion.  Get everyone involved.

3. Set individual goals based on each person’s key role in delivering value.  Make those goals the primary ones.  Have the informal discussions to get your folks to buy into their role.  You want passionate people when it comes to delivering customer value.

4. Create and refine systems that support delivering the value.  Do Six Sigma FEMA analyses to understand the critical risk points, and address them.  Foolproof the system.

5. Listen to customer feedback, and ensure team members are aware of it.  The value to the customers may be shifting, and the company needs to change to address it.  Market research, customer visits help to gain customer insight here.

6. Have fun with your team.  Take some time to socialize, play bingo, bowl or just enjoy a BBQ.  The team works hard, and friendships go a long way on a stressful day.

As always, let me know what works for you, or where you need some advice.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Digital Money World

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So, the goal is growth.  Your company has its strategy in place, and it’s a good one.  There is value to customers, beyond competitors’.

Once that is defined, it is a matter of promoting the company to the target market, and ensuring the company delivers on the value to customers.  No simple tasks.

And, it is critical to keep your eye on the ball, that is, on the market.  Are market needs changing?  Is the competition catching up?  Then it is imperative to stay abreast of market trends, though it is better to set them.  Of course, staying ahead of the competition is the only way to maintain differentiation.

Just look at Pepsi and Coca Cola.  How much differentiation is there really?

Promoting effectively involves knowing where your customers are, and so, where to reach them.  If this information is not immediately available, market research can help.  Spending time with the market helps most here.

Ensuring the company delivers on the value is the complex internal task.  How are you going to be sure those in the company know where the added value lies?  And, how are you going to be sure everyone knows not only their role, but how important it is in achieving that value?

Think on it a little, and let me know.  I’ll write more on this in the next blog.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Carine06

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