Andover Commtech » Small Businesses

Great Work From Home Small Businesses for the Seasoned Entrepreneur

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:36:59 +0000

One of the major benefits of starting up a franchise business is that most do not require a franchisee to come with any previous knowledge of the industry, because the franchisor is willing and able to teach whatever is needed. But in some cases, entrepreneurs are interested in starting franchises precisely because they do know something about business, because they’ve spent years working for someone else and are now ready to step out on their own and turn a profit for themselves. Among all possible industries to enter, someone with a history of business success should seriously consider a business consulting franchise. There are different varieties of these, but the most prominent categories are coaching, financial consulting, staffing, and franchise consulting. Each approaches other companies with a specific service, but all are perfect opportunities for the businessperson with a long history of experience and success.

Coaching

Particularly in the world of small business, there are plenty of new business owners-franchise or otherwise-who are just starting out, just running into their first big problem, or perhaps even unsure how to best respond to great success. Like an athlete trying hard to perfect his sport and establish himself as someone to be reckoned with, what this budding businessperson needs is a coach. FocalPoint and ActionCOACH are two big franchise names in the coaching world that are able to help smaller businesses with almost any aspect of the company in which they’re struggling. With comparatively low startup costs, these two franchises will take the wisdom you’ve already accrued over your years in business and add to it proven teaching techniques that will enable you to maximize your clients’ success as they enhance and expand their own companies based upon your input.

Financial Consulting

Many small businesses primarily have a problem with finances. They simply don’t understand how to practically manage money, accrue money, or regain money when it seems to be lost. Blue Coast Financial Group is a great work at home business that is skilled at helping their clients solve these kinds of monetary problems. Covering all angles of company finance support, Blue Coast Financial Group franchisees help fellow businessmen with everything from equipment leases to workers compensation analysis and recovery. Particularly if your past expertise has been in corporate finance, there are too many small businesses out there that are more than willing to pay you to help them get back on track.

Unlike Blue Coast Financial Group, however, some finance home based businesses are even more specific in their brand of work, like L & W Investigations, who specialize in insurance fraud investigation. Though this franchisor doesn’t require any previous experience in the field, having a preexistent familiarity with business and/or personal finance can only add to the success of your franchise. It can be personally challenging and morally fulfilling to help insurance companies and legal firms unearth and stop instances of fraud; it helps the company recover losses and ensures that premiums stay just a little bit lower for honest insurance buyers.

Staffing

One of a handful of staffing franchises, Snelling Staffing Services’ sole purpose is providing skilled employees to the employers who need them. With over 50 years in the industry, Snelling Staffing Services has the ability to match your business intuition with knowledge and systems that will help your business succeed. Though this franchise may be on the expensive end of things, it’s the perfect work from home opportunity for any business veteran who knows what makes a great employee, which is a skill that will make a huge difference in the long run for any client.

Franchise Consulting

Another profitable opportunity is the business of franchise consulting: helping men and women through the process of finding and starting their own small business franchises. FranVentures and FranCorp are two of the industry’s leaders in this field, having spent the last 25 years connecting innumerable people with franchises matched to their skills, finances, and goals. This route is perfect for the entrepreneur who knows how to read people and connect them with the right business, no matter what it might be. FranCorp even comes complete with a built-in system to expedite selling your franchise in the event that you decide to move on to another field or retire altogether.

Anyone who has lived a life of business knows how difficult it can be, and they can see the warnings, pitfalls, and signs of potential success in another business far in advance, giving clients enough time to respond accordingly. This is precisely why business consulting franchises exist, and why it is so beneficial when seasoned businessmen and businesswomen are involved in them. If you have spent your time in business, purchasing a business consulting franchise will enable you to profit others and profit yourself just by lending a knowledgeable, helping hand.

Small Business 101

hanun — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:19:35 +0000

“Small businesses” is an economically term which generally related to the business scope and extent. The taxing authorities categorize “small business” according to their finance turnover in a defined time duration, in most cases: a year. Another aspect of specifying a business as a “small” one is its field of activity: a single barber shop, or a single “Pizza” parlor, or a single stand in a marketplace, are “small businesses”. When one of those becomes “a chain of…” it’s another story.

The behavioral sciences, especially Sociology, regard “small business” as a small organization. From the sociology point of view a business is a type of social organization. The sociology discipline classifies organizations by their internal human relations and interaction. No matter how many people are involved, what’s count is the quality of the inter-relationships among them. If everybody knows everybody, face to face, by each name, and the instrumental communication is informal as the social communication, then it’s a “small organization”.

Such informal relationships can function when we are talking about 2 to 100 workers, managers and subordinates all together. Probably when it’s a 100 people organization we’ll find formal division of labor, duties definitions and documented regulations. On the other hand – a 4 personnel store: the informality is extreme and there is no room for documentation and definitions, everyone is doing everything and if the boss, the store owner, will keep distance – he’ll lose the great advantage of potential warm instrumental relationships with his three salespersons.

Between the 4 and 100 personnel the most common are the 30-40 personnel small businesses. Even if the business owner will try to establish formal regulations he wouldn’t succeed. In such a small organization people will behave according to the informal habits which dominate the everyday activities. There is no way that a new employee will sit down and read a documented guidance book. What will probably happen is that he’ll be told orally what to do by a senior foreman and will complete his integration by imitating others in his close working environment. If he’ll insist to read written instructions he wouldn’t find it because it doesn’t exist in such small businesses and if he will – it wouldn’t be updated. This is the great fault of small organizations and yet their great advantage: it makes them much more flexible and adaptable to market real time changes.

The sociologist Max Weber claimed that the ideal desirable theoretical model of the most efficient organization is the ‘bureaucratic” model. Weber argued that this type of model will be the only social organization that will overcome human faults and weaknesses. His organization will leave much longer than the individuals who are working for it. People will have to adapt themselves to the organizational needs and demands and not the other way round. He wanted to fulfill the old cliché saying “The graveyards are packed with people who thought they were irreplaceable”.

Just for the sake of argumentation, I’ll point only two of the criticism on Weber’s model:

One – Bureaucratic organizations suffer of stagnation. When a “big business” wants to react to changes in its businesslike environment its got to be someone whose job is to detect such changes and to call a meeting of the right forum which is nominated in advance to take care of such cases and according to the firm regulations to make decisions which will be accomplished by those who will be appointed to the task. Such a procedure is taking a lot of time while small business are reacting immediately and move forward leaving the big businesses behind.

Two - The biggest enemy of the bureaucratic organization is the informal organization within the formal one. A lot of money, time and energy are wasted trying to overcome the influence of the informal organization. In small businesses, which are informal by nature, there is no such problem.

As a metaphor we can compare big and small businesses to a steam ship and a sailing boat. In the big steam liner, even if the crew members know each other personally, they operate a daily routine under strict regulations carried out by formally ranked officers and other commissioned lower ranked staff. If the weather will change and threat the ship safety, no one will react without a strict command issued by the captain. In the small numbered crew of a 40 feet sailboat there are no ranks or strictly defined jobs. Everybody is doing everything which is needed when it is needed to be done. There is a Skipper but in case of a sudden hazard you can carry on each sailor that he’ll do what’s necessary without waiting to be told what to do. In small teams, who are operating in a stressed environment, a small boat in the big blue sea or a small business in the jungle of the wild markets, crew members know that if they wouldn’t operate shoulder to shoulder they will be hanged neck to neck. The friendly commitment to each other is working for the benefit of the organization.

A online print shop is a classic example of a small business. It is organized by the following departments:

Management and administration (3)

Sales and marketing (3)

Accountants (2)

Customer service (3)

Graphic artists studio (5)

Printing machines operators (3)

Production and finish (7)

Shipping (2)

Business development and Internet support (2)

Those 30 workers are crowded in 100 square meters shop including machines and furniture.

The print shop is operating on line and off line.

On line, through the Internet, they offer the classical advertising and promoting printed materials like: Business cards, magnets, fliers, stamps, account books, envelopes, letterheads, invitations, stickers, bookmarks, and so on.

Off line, when the customer arrives in person and orders his request face to face. This is when the products are “heavy” like: books, catalogs, folders, small paper made packing materials, and such.

The small number of employees, operating under the right managers leadership, creates consolidation, unification, integration, and forging “team spirit” based on interpersonal relationship which creates an identification, involvement and empathy with the business goals. The lack of distance between managers, foremen and other employees do not harm discipline and high standards of working moral and ethics. Discussions, which are taking place from time to time, in open forums, enable all workers criticize constructively or suggesting improvements. Workers can express themselves freely in periodical interviews and all channels of communication, including internal E-mailing, are open unlimited. The closeness relationships enable flexible positioning workers in different stations according to various burdens. The outcomes of 30 workers is synergistic by nature and much more than just aggregative.

Have You Heard About the Small Business Bailout Program

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:49:55 +0000

mall Business Bailout Program

The Entrepreneurial Bailout

Most small business owners are accustomed to hard work, sacrifices, ingenuity, and last but not least building loyal repeat customers to survive. To make it during tough economics times entrepreneurs will need to continue to rely on their creativity to attract new customers, and keep their current customers returning. Entrepreneurs can not afford to hold their breathe waiting for the government help.

"Entrepreneurs can not afford to hold their breathe waiting for the government help"

Create Your Own Bailout Plan

If you own a business that is reliant on local customers (the majority of your sales are to people that live or work within 10 miles of your location), then you must carefully use any precious financial resources you have to let your current customers know you appreciate them, identify new prospects and implement a plan that will enable you to:

Identify New Customers

Communicate Effectively

Track Dollars Spent

Build Ongoing Relationships

Fortunately today the small business owner has tools that where not available in times past. Technology has made it affordable, and realistic for the small business owner to identify, target, track, and build an on going relationship with it’s primary customer demographic. The Internet can play a big part in helping small businesses connect with their target customers. It’s affordable, used by millions of people everyday to locate information on goods and services, inherently trackable and produces important measurable data.

The Magic Pill

The Internet alone is not the magic pill for the problems ailing small business. I believe the Internet can make any marketing dollars spent more effective and valuable in many ways. The cost of having a proper web presences can be less than the cost of a years supply of business cards. The information that can be delivered and received online is drastically less expensive, can be extremely more informative, and may ultimately reach more people than a television ad or print campaign alone.

How to Multiply Your Money

If you combine the right Internet strategy with your other marketing efforts it can multiply the effectiveness of your campaign many times over. When you use the wrong Internet strategy or no strategy at all the Internet will be just as in-effective as any other misguided marketing.

When someone can view your print or television advertisement, and then go to your website, voluntarily give you permission to start a relationship with them, view a video on your products, services, special offers at their leisure, and then help you market to others by sending information to family, friends and co-workers and have them to perhaps do the same that’s when your marketing efforts and dollars start to really multiply your return on investment.