Tips For Overworked, Over-Pressured Small Business Owners

1. Get your Top Business Goals in writing. Have them in order of importance and jot down ideas on how to get them done more effectively.

Stop and have a think about why you are in business. Ask yourself the following questions?

What is the purpose of my business?

What service and/or products do I offer and what is my edge over my competitors?

What value will I give my clients?

Who are my Clients and How do I attract them to my business?

How will clients and prospects get a hold of me?

Once you have answered most of these questions, You’ll be able to pinpoint what needs to get done. To get off to a good start you must get organized. Yes, this seems easier said than done but technology allows us to make this a simpler process. We suggest using a Customer Relationship Manager or a CRM to get you off and running. There are tons of CRM programs in the market you can chose from. SUGAR CRM seems to fit the bill and it’s free. This will allow you to track your leads, track your clients, as well as organize your calendar and schedules. It also includes an email marketing feature that would make sending out emails to prospects just a click away. Getting organized will help you get your business running smoothly and ready to be mobile.

2. Learn how to run your Small Business from virtually anywhere.

In the past, visiting a business meant walking into a building. Today, it’s can be done without having to get out of your pajamas. People want information and answers as soon as they can think of it and sometimes faster. The Internet has become todays information source and is widely used all over the globe. Getting your business on the Internet would mean getting your business available to the world 24 hours a day, everyday. More importantly, your local clients will be able to get a hold of you from anywhere and anytime. Having web presence is like having a Customer Service Agent working for you around the clock. Also, the flexibility of this virtual office means being able to change it or update it whenever you see fit. Just how others can access your business anytime and anywhere, you too can operate your virtual office from anywhere. Aside from your website, you may also start looking into Voice Over IP (VOIP) and Internet Chat to communicate with your contacts. With the growth of SPAM emails, speaking to people have been getting more relevant in building relationships in business today.

3. Build relationships with everyone you deal with in your business. This includes vendors, clients, staff and yes even your friends. They might be able to lend you a hand in something.

With a reliable and well organized CRM System, an integrated web presence, VOIP and Internet Chat avenue, building relationships will be a breeze. Studies have shown that most business deals are offspring of word of mouth. Building a solid business relationship with everyone in your address book will greatly increase your chances of being referred by them to their contacts. Networking with your contacts and some new people with common interests is a great start in getting your business some exposure. Try getting a profile in business networking sites such as Ecademy, LinkedIN and Xing.

4. How you can save some money and use your available funds properly.

Business is about keeping your cost low and profit higher. How do we put your business on a financial diet? Try to make a list of all the expenses you currently have and ask yourself if it is actually helping your business grow and moving forward. How many items in that list are “empty” calories? If it’s making your expenses fat and your business weaker, then it’s probably wise to cut it out. Another way to do it is to find alternatives to services or products you are currently using for your business. To cut from operational costs, you might want to use “Open Source” software, which are free, instead of costly commercialized programs that get more expensive throughout the years. Another way is to get a VOIP telephone service such as Vonage, to reduce your long distance phone bills. Are you paying full time staff for part time work? Try to assess if your labor dollars are being spent wisely. Outsourcing some administrative tasks might better fit your financial objectives better.

5. Get some HELP.

A single person cannot handle everything in an 8-hour period, sometimes not even in a few days. Many of us feel that getting everything done ourselves means getting it done right; But doing everything alone can mean not getting anything done at all. You might be an expert in your business, but there are some elements of business which does not require an expert but requires continuous monitoring. What you need for this is time. More time for work usually means less time with family, friends or activities you love to do. Are you willing to give it up? You need to get outside help for these time consuming processes. Outsourcing or Offshoring might sound expensive and unmanageable but it is actually a lot cheaper and way easier to manage since you don’t have to deal with employees. Here are ways you can outsource :

1.Virtual Personal Assistant – it’s the person that handles your calendar, your emails, your phone calls and everything else while you’re out with a client. Since they work in your virtual office, they get you organized and sorted out on time without the hassle of personal issues. 2.Back Office/Administrative Officers – a team of staff that are assigned to fulfill tasks that require constant monitoring or repetitive type of work. These include but not limited to: data entry, generating and compilation of marketing reports, research and bookkeeping. 3.Telesales/ Customer Service Agents – you can have a team of experienced agents to do your telemarketing or sales calls for you. They can also answer questions regarding your products and or services. Setting up a system to do this in-house can be very costly. Why get bothered with starting from scratch when there are available packages for this type of service available and ready to go for only a fraction of the cost of one full time staff?

Once you get through these steps, you will immediately see the difference in your business. You will:

Have more free time with family, friends and things you love.

Spend your working hours with clients and important business processes.

Increased profits and reduced costs

Enjoy life and remember why you went to business for yourself.

Social media marketing sites are a great way to meet and network with other people. It provides you the opportunity to share your thoughts and for people to get to know you as a person rather than just another online entrepreneur. Sharing common interests often lead you to people that you can converse with and ultimately be able or have the opportunity to pitch your product. A few of these sites would be Facebook.com, MySpace.com and the many different forums that are available.

Video marketing is a very easy and free way to market your product or business. You can very easily produce videos with you talking about and explaining the ins and outs of your business. Another way to do videos is purely with words on the screen. Music can very simply be added. If you are going to video yourself I would highly recommend video’s with interesting backgrounds. The video with someone sitting at their desk is way over done and has reached the point of being boring. Pick an outside location that is interesting and eye catching. There are quite a few free sites to run your videos on. Of course the most well known is YouTube.com.

Another free marketing tool is Sqidoo.com. Here you create lenses and pages that act almost like a standalone website. The service is free. Your pages are the part of your account that remains constant and the lenses are unlimited in number and are created by you on any subject you choose. You can post comments on other sites and receive comments on your site. These lenses are searched by Google, yahoo, MSN etc. so you do get some leverage from these as well. They also work a little bit like social media but they can become the hub of all of your internet marketing.

Last but certainly not least are blogs. You can go to WordPress.com and set up a blog for free. You can do as many posts as you want and you can tie your blog back to your Squidoo pages if you would like. Blogs are another great way to make posts that are useful to other people and you can do posts about again, any subject you choose. This is not a site to go on and plaster people with advertising about your business but you can learn a lot here and share with others your knowledge which ultimately might get you business as well.

In conclusion there are many opportunities to include in your steps to starting a small business online. These are just a few of the many available free marketing tools that you can use. Social media has become huge in the last few years and YouTube is fun and user friendly as well. Blogs and Squidoo are great sources to claim some real estate online for your business and will serve you well.