Recession – The time is right to start a business

If, after reading the title you are thinking that starting a business during recession is a walk in the park then wait, that's not what the title indicates. Before we proceed, make one thing clear, recession maybe a good time to start a business but it's definitely not an "easy" time to start a business. Still, the true entrepreneurs would be rubbing their hands in excitement with the hope that this recession, like its ancestors will reshuffle things and make new in-roads to enter into the business world. Have you ever read the stories of all those "today's huge businesses", which got started during recession or even great depression? If such stories failed to motivate or even excite you, then probably you should stay away from this highly demanding venture of starting a business during recession. These are testing times, game is on and the one who'll emerge as a winner after defeating all odds will go home with huge awards.

Now you know the importance of saving:

When something is in abundance, we tend to overlook its importance; it's only the situations like credit crunch or recession that we are reminded of the importance, of every single dollar we save. Because of recession, we are automatically urged in that "saving mode" that is so crucial for new start ups, especially when you have seen how hard it can be to raise the capital for new business. You are bound to cut as many expenses as you can; you become more concerned about whatever you spend on marketing, management or financing your business. You want to make sure that every single penny that you spend, will add value to your business. That is an ideal state of mind for someone who has just started, many times business owners lose the initiative when they get carried away by the initial success and become reckless in their spending.

Going the extra mile:

News of downsizing coming from everywhere, big companies laying off thousands of workers in one go, businesses reluctant to hire, all of these are bad news, but they may have a positive effect on your staff. The fear of loosing the job hangs around, and it makes them work even harder. They are looking to prove their worth; everybody is on their toes including managers or senior staff. Also, because the jobs are hard to get, you can get employees with good qualification at a very reasonable salary packages (you can always pay back once the business starts to grow).

Choose your product carefully; try to come up with some inexpensive but equally good alternative. Make sure, you won't need big investment in the start. Internet or home based businesses (because of their low startup costs) are the ideal types of businesses that you should take into account.

Source:

Wholesale Suppliers

Recession - Reasons, Consequences and Remedies

You can be at variance about the definition of recession, but the chances are that present economic crisis (especially in United States) will make it to the list of recessions by any definition. It may not be that serious in all regions but news of credit crunch and bailout plans are coming from other countries as well. Recession is quite simple to understand; especially when you know the next stage of this economic turmoil is called "depression" (the word pretty much sums it up). Recession is an extended period of economic decline (a fall in GDP growth, employment rate, production and Personal Income, etc for two or more quarters). One or few of these problems are always there in most economies, however, we don't "cry recession" as soon as there's a drop in employment rate or GDP. Recession is a continuation of some economic crisis for a longer period.

Reasons:
There are many things that can trigger recession, wars, wrong government policies (of course the intentions are right, but some policies may not go as planned) or interest rates to name some of them. For instance recent recession is blamed largely on excessive "sub prime" loans. Contracting monetary policies caused that famous great depression back in 1929 and increased oil prices triggered a severe recession back in 1973. It's not that these causes always result in a recession, at some instances they are handled quite easily, at other times things get out of control. Mostly, when one trouble is followed by another and then another, the economy starts to cripple.

Consequences:
Although the reasons are different, consequences are often the same. High unemployment rates, financial markets failure, stock exchange collapses, businesses going bankrupt, downsizing in major corporations, low production, are just some of these consequences. Panic strikes in all segments of the society, working and lower-middle class might be afraid of loosing their jobs; large businesses will fear significant drops in sales, and government will be bothered by the public outrage. Investors are reluctant to invest in stuttering economy and consumers hold their money instead of spending.

Remedies:
A good thing about recession (or call it a relief if you think there's nothing good about recession) is that it takes time to develop and can be spotted way before it builds up into a recession. Ups and downs are a part of business or economic cycles and cannot totally be avoided; however precautionary measure at government or individual levels can cut the damage down to a minimum. On a personal level, you can prepare yourself better by saving more, keeping your expenditures to an essential minimum and when you feel too depress of the situation, remember the saying "In every chaos, there is an opportunity."

Source:
Wholesale Suppliers

Pros and cons of different approaches for decision making

Whether your business or professional career meets success or an abrupt failure, it is going to depend largely on your decision making skills. The difference between a successful entrepreneur and a failed businessman is basically the effectiveness of decisions they will make in critical situations. Some have this ability to hit the nail on the head while others waste time in pointless arguments and analysis. Making right decision is of use only if made at the right time, not after you have suffered the loss.

So how can you prepare yourself to make correct and timely decisions? Do your decision making style really affects the appropriateness of your decision? Read on to know the answers.

The importance of Discussions:
Discussions are very important, even if the point in discussion does not affect anyone else but you. Discussion is not about asking someone else to assess the situation and come up with a solution, because you are not capable to do so. It should be a dialogue between you and other concerned persons, where everybody comes up with their own viewpoints and ideas. A decision made after some healthy discussions and with majority's consent is supposed to be a more sound one, as it has been pored over and scrutinized by a group of people (and not just one person).

Democratic approach vs. the despotic style:
There are two ways to settle on a decision after sufficient discussions and arguments. First, asking everybody to vote and putting down an autonomous decision. Second, the manager concludes with his/her own verdict as the final decision after listening to everybody's viewpoint. Democratic approach works best when you need to motivate your employees by making them a part of the decision. However, you cannot cast off autocratic style completely, as it has its own benefits. For example, sometimes the manager has the vision and information to see things differently, or because workers or staff will be inclined towards a decision, which is more advantageous to them than the company. For all these reasons, manager have to make a decision that may not be well-liked by everyone, but in the end it is the manager who will be held responsible.

Analytical vs. Impulsive:
Analytical decision making approach is a scientific approach that involves mathematical, statistics, analytical software or any other mediums to examine the situation and finishing off with the most logical solution, whereas impulsive decision making works best when you have to make a decision, then and there. Both of these approaches are effective, problem occurs when somebody starts wasting time in analyzing when a quick decision is needed, or else when someone makes an impulsive decision when he/she was having all the time to analyze the situation and weigh different options.

Source:

Wholesale Suppliers

Planning for your business travel? - Read this

Business travels can be exciting, challenging and nerve-racking, all at the same time. There are people who love to travel around, and there are people who'd like to avoid traveling unless it becomes absolutely indispensable. If you belong to the first category (those who like traveling around) then good for you, but if you are one of those who reflect on traveling as a source of fatigue, you really need to stir up.

After all, you do travel from your home to the office and other places on daily basis, why lose sleep over traveling to some other state or country? Especially when you know that business travels open up a whole new set of opportunities. In most cases it's a wonderful experience where you learn so many new things, get the hang of new technologies, pick up new ideas and take hold of a completely new market.

Plan in advance:
No matter how much "in control" do you feel of yourself, last minute preparations are always risky because most of the times you'll end up missing out on some important items or documents. When you are traveling abroad, you need to plan in detail, from booking your tickets and hotel rooms to making a to-do list, trying to plan your journey in the nick of time would certainly make you overlook some of these.

Get as much as necessary sleep:
Business travels are quite challenging, both physically and mentally. You are constantly on road, moving around, meeting new people, making quick decisions and all. You may feel exhausted and worn out, especially if you are not getting sufficient rest. Good sleep is the biggest energy boost you can get and the most beneficial as well. It has an effect on your productivity, decision making capabilities and overall health. Give your body and mind adequate sleeping hours while traveling and they will take care of the rest. If you are undergoing JET LAG, drinking plenty of fluids can help.

Keep your luggage to a bare minimum:
When shopping or packing the accessories for traveling, you should try to come up with the lightest possible travel baggage (there’s no need to carry the best part of your wardrobe with you). A burdensome luggage will most certainly prove to be a hindrance at some stage of your journey. Make a list for all necessary items, give it another read and try to take out some non-compulsory stuff, do this a number of times, for example if you are traveling to a major city there’s no need to carry stuff like alarm clocks, compass, plastic bags, preventive medicines or toilet papers, etc.

Travel Safe:
Now days, security concerns are at an all time high, you are advised to be a lot more attentive and watchful irrespective of the city or country you are traveling into. Keep an eye on your luggage when on airports or railway stations; try not to wander around especially in less populated areas, try to hang around at some well reputed places, frankly ask for directions or guidance from your hosts or hotel staff.

Source:

Wholesale Suppliers

Part time business - Do they really exist

You must have heard about how part time businesses turned into large corporations, and how some business started as a hobby converted into a ground breaking company. These success stories are often considered flukes, and people brush aside ideas of having a part time business, knowing that no business can thrive unless you give it your 100 percent. They are not totally wrong but not entirely correct as well. Part time businesses exist and many of them grow into full time money spinning ventures, not merely by a twist of fate.

Businesses are like plants, they need your time, care, and patience before they develop into something fruitful. Some may need less time than others, but you can't just start a business and leave it to grow on its own. Ok, you are supposed to invest relatively less time into these part-time ventures but you can not completely ignore them.

Advantages:
When you have got an idea, but you are unsure about the outcome, you can always give it a try by starting on part time basis. Just to get a grip of the possible results. You can try something totally new, some interesting innovation; target some untouched niche or anything else like that. You can use your time in something productive instead of wasting all the time in watching useless soaps or motion pictures. Even if the business fails, you'll still end up having a lot of experience on your hands.

Disadvantages:
Part time businesses are not for everyone, only well organized and disciplined people can carry a successful side business. Otherwise they will just add into the list of your incomplete tasks. Another disadvantage is that your social life will be disturbed; your family members may also find it hard to adjust with your extra working hours. Your employer can also have some problem if your nature of business clash with their interests.



Do's and Don'ts:

Part time businesses should be related to some task that you enjoy doing. So much that you don't care about a lot for monetary gains. Make sure you are not putting too much time and investments into your part time business in its early stages, at the same time don't completely ignore it. Do not get over excited at earliest signs of success and dump your primary job or business for that, give it some time before you conclude on its fate and make decisions about your future.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Marketing for small businesses with low budget

If you are running a small/home based business, you are supposed to be low on budget. That's quite obvious; consider it an advantage or disadvantage, but small or home-run businesses can't spend fortunes on marketing that is not generating sales in real time. For this type of enterprises, this is just so important to ensure some return on all investments they make on marketing. Small businesses do not have the funds for unproductive marketing; they need sales to keep up. In this regard, first advice and the most important one as well, do some research and make sure that the product you are going to offer is already in demand. Remember, if you fail to do this, you are most probably in for a disaster.

Choose a market segment and stick to your niche market:

Targeting the whole market may sound more lucrative but that's not practical for small businesses, at all. They do not have resources, funds or skills for that kind of penetration, for them the best option is to choose a particular segment and design their products in line with this segment's needs and requirements. Remember, by choosing and serving some specific segment of the market, you can effectively kill half of the competition, straight away.

Be consistent and steady:

Don't judge the success of your marketing campaign on day to day basis, some days your cold calls, promotional e-mails or other marketing attempts may generate lots of leads, while on other days you'll find yourself not up to snuff. But you need to be consistent and patient, especially when the times are tough like recent economic crisis. Keep a note of your conversion rate, work extremely hard to put the required finishing touches if your conversion rate is somewhat below average. You can boost it up by working on minor things like your landing page copy or improving the quality of your follow-up calls.

Internet & Social Media Marketing:

Internet can prove to be a stroke of luck for small businesses, in particular with the inception and growth of social media networks. For many small businesses, Internet and social networking websites can prove to be so effective that ignoring them should be declared a crime, for their own betterment. Using these social networks and social media websites, with a little creativity can produce unbelievable results, and the best part is that it won't cost you a dime, as long as you can come up with something interesting, informative and valuable to share with your targeted customers.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Making use of your expertise to start a business consulting service

If you are an expert in some particular field, you like working with new people, love challenges, and you are keen on starting and running your own business (in other (and more appealing) words “be your own boss”), then working as an independent consultant is the perfect business for you, which accommodates all of the above mentioned features. Do you think your expertise is sellable in today’s business world? Well, what are you waiting for? Get your skates on and go, sell it.

These days, consultancy businesses are growing like mushrooms. Businesses may use their advice or services in many scenarios, for example to spot the fault, training the staff or helping the business coming to grips with a new market or technology.

Different types of business consultants include:

Management Consultant: Helps with issues related to management such as business planning, implementing new strategies, brainstorming, etc.

Marketing Consultant: Helps you in getting started with marketing campaigns, identifying the niche, making market penetration plans, writing marketing copies or creating the buzz for your business.

Human Resource Consultant: Deals in recruiting and training the staff, also helps when the business has to go through some downsizing.

Financial consultant: Financial consultant can help you in financial planning, budgeting or making some crucial decisions of financial nature.

IT consultant: Many types of consultancy services may fall under this category like networking consultant, Microsoft consultant or SEO consultant.

Legal Consultant: You may seek their advice on all of the laws and policies related to your business.

These are just few of the promising consultancy services, but of course, these are not the only options, the fact is that you can offer just about any kind of consultancy service that maybe helpful to some businesses. You may or may not need to obtain relevant degree or certification, depending upon the competition, but for the sake of outshining your competitors, it is always recommended to have sufficient educational background along with your experience.

Starting and advertising a consultation business:

If you have got the knowledge and expertise, starting a consultancy business is not much of a fuss. You can start from your home, and you don’t really need any staff in the beginning (though having an assistant or secretary can be helpful). Real challenge is to reach your potential clients and establish yourself as an expert, in your respective field. There are various methods of advertising, such as brochures, newspaper’s classified section or public speaking, etc. Then we have a relatively new but mighty effective method known as "Blogging", use the ever growing internet to start a Blog and write regularly on your specific topic.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Keeping an eye on your advertising effectiveness

Slowly but surely, majority of businesses now understand the importance of marketing. Even the businesses with minimum resources are aware of the concept and significance of marketing. But there’s one thing that still goes without being noticed by many of them, that is advertising effectiveness. Many businesses have no idea on how to measure the success of their marketing campaigns. As a result, they keep running advertisements and marketing campaigns without really knowing if it is effectively working or not. Keeping a check on your advertising effectiveness is very important, or you may be wasting your resources on something useless, without even knowing it. On the other hand, measuring the accomplishment of your advertisement or marketing initiative is not as simple as measuring the increase in sales or inquiries.

How do we know if a commercial is effective or not?

A commercial that turns out to be extremely popular, doesn’t guarantee to be effective. For the reason, that the effectiveness of a commercial can be judged by evaluating its achievements and not by the hilarity in it. Therefore, if a commercial or any other marketing material that was meant to bring in more customers or to build a strong brand image is not effective unless there’s a positive change in the number of enquiries or the brand awareness. In fact, sometimes the storyline gets so interesting that it overrides the intended message in customer’s minds.

Setting objectives:

It is very important to jot down goals or objectives before initiating a marketing campaign. Most of the time, advertisement is targeted at generating sales but other equally important targets could be customer loyalty, product awareness, persuading customers or brand recognition. When setting objectives, make sure these are unambiguous and measurable, especially if you are delegating the project to some outside company.


Evaluating effectiveness:

Many companies test their ads or infomercials on a sample group of targeted customers to see the reaction. For small businesses that may not be possible but you can get the help from your family members or friends and ask for their opinion, the earlier you spot an ineffective medium, the better. If, after spending plenty of time and resources the end result is not impressive, don't waste more resources in distributing, publishing or making it public. Getting the accurate feedback is the key to constructive evaluation. Also, if you are trying to asses on the basis of increase in sales or revenue, don't rush into the process as soon as the commercial goes on air; you need to give it some time to develop.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

International payments - Some commonly used methods for International Export

When trying to setup an export business (especially one that's intended to be operating at small scale), one has to make some vital decisions. One of them is deciding on a method for collecting payments from an overseas party. Ideally, as an exporter you'd like to collect payment in advance, but advance payments are hard to obtain in international market (in fact it's the same with local markets as well). Unless you have some large, internationally reputable business, you can't expect your seller to trust you with advance payment. But you don't need to worry; there are some other alternatives, though not as secure as advance payments, still reasonably safe. Let's take into account some regularly used ones.

Letter of Credit (LOC):

This is the most widely used and the most recommended method for international export. The biggest advantage of choosing "letter of credit" as your payment method is that it provides security to both buyer and seller; therefore it is equally acceptable for both parties. When all details are finalized between the buyer and seller; the buyer contacts his/her bank and asks for the issuance of "letter of credit". The buyer's bank sends out the LOC to seller's bank. Once the seller is notified, he/she will dispatch the items to the address provided by the buyer. The shipping documents are sent to the buyer's bank via seller's bank. Buyer then make payment to his/her bank, which is transferred to the seller's bank in due time.

Open Account:

Completely opposite to "advance payments" and advisable only if the buyer is extremely trustworthy, open account method allows buyer to pay after he/she has received the products. While at first it may sound like "a risk too big to take", the method is quite common when you are dealing with large established businesses as your buyers, because of their trustworthiness and business history. Still, the method is risky and not practical for exporters who are just starting, for example if the buyer defaults with the payment, you are left in dire straits, especially if you fail to provide sufficient documented proofs in the foreign court.

Document against Payment:

Safer than "open account" but still reasonably risky mode of payment, in this method the goods are shipped by seller, but the buyer can only take the possession when he/she has agreed to the obligation of paying the seller. Two types of collecting documents are normally used, known as "document on payment" and "document on acceptance".

There are some other mediums as well, like credit cards or online payments but those are normally used to make small payments.

Source:
UK Wholesalers