The Great Thing About Virtual Offices


Imagine you decide to open a business offline, for example a store selling tools. You will have to find a location, commit to tens of thousands of dollars in rent and, most importantly, actually go to work everyday. After all, who else is going to open the front door each morning? On top of this, your pool of customers is limited to those willing to drive to your location. All of these limitations and aggravations associated with a physical store go by the wayside when you go online.

Having worked online for a very long time, I can tell you the freedom to work when you want to is by far the best aspect of the Internet. Here is the proof. As I am writing this article, it is 1:13 p.m. I am at home. I am wearing sweats. After being up all night on a project, I am thinking about going back to bed. This is all possible because I have an online business. In fact, our business is so virtual oriented that I have never physically met some of my programmers. They live in other countries! Sounds like a good excuse to travel, however.

Being online gives you massive freedom and flexibility because you are not limited geographically. Your business should revolve around your laptop. If possible, you should try to store every bit of information online. Taking this approach turns you into a virtual business with a virtual office and lets you access work whenever you want from wherever you want. What do I mean by this?

Assume you have an online business selling something on the web. Where is your physical office? To figure it out, take a look around you. If you are in an airport, that is your office. If you are at home, your office is there and so on. This flexibility is crucial because it gives you access to your business at all times. You will never get this with a physical location.

You are probably wondering about a business address and meetings with clients. Neither is a problem with a virtual office. You can use one of the various mail box services for your business address. Just make sure they list the box number as a suite. As to meetings, you just go to clients who will appreciate the fact you don’t make them come to you. If you must host a meeting, you can rent conference rooms in “executive office suites” in any town or city. Compare the cost of renting an office suite versus leasing a physical office for three or five years, and the virtual office advantage should be very obvious.

I love my virtual office and you will to. It saves you money, gives you flexibility and is one of the primary benefits of running a business on the net.

Whether this is on the web, at an ecommerce website or if it is in a retail location, the final look at what you have to offer is quite important to the customer. Point of sale products are in fact, likely to help you sell whatever it is that you need to if they are used correctly as a marketing medium. Here are some options that you may want to consider.


Point of sale often means the cash register, the cash drawer and the receipt printer. If you are one of the many that use these aspects, making them marketing materials can help you. For example, the placement of products that you would like to get rid of near the register allows customers who haven’t spent all that they planned to to have the opportunity to spend a little more. This is quite effective when the point of sale merchandise is “marked down” or “clearance” as they know they are getting a great price on the products.

To make this effective, you should use point of sale merchandisers such as toppers for the register or attractive dispensers. Regardless of what the price is for the merchandise, just because it is there, they will look and consider it.

Other options that you have include using your marketing dollars to present return coupons for your visitors. For example, on the back of their cash receipt is a coupon for their next visit. This will help encourage their return in a short period of time.

Whether you use point of sale merchandise, marketing materials, or even electronic options, taking advantage of the dollar at the point of sale terminal is an excellent opportunity many businesses miss.

1. A small open gazebo or pavilion.
2. A small structure, often open on one or more sides, used as a newsstand or booth.
3. A cylindrical structure on which advertisements are posted. The first recorded instance of the word “kiosk” was back in 1865 with reference to a newspaper stand. Kiosks are still known today as traditional freestanding retail booths. With the recent advent of low-cost pc’s and the internet kiosks are taking on a whole new shape and definition.


Computer Or touch screen kiosks have forged their way into main stream.

The technology used in interactive kiosks is basically the same as that used in computers. Touch screen kiosks are mainly operated with the help of a control unit and a touch screen sensitive LCD monitor. To operate a kiosk the user simply needs to touch the area of the screen to navigates the custom built show. The touch screen operation of the kiosk make the functioning very simple and user-friendly. Considering that computer kiosks are run via PC computers, the utilization of video, images and text with sound all combine to offer a truly interactive experience.

When the Kiosks are not in use they can act as a screen saver to serve up advertising or upsell in store items to increase revenue.

The Benefits of Using Kiosks

Now a days kiosks have a wide range of applications and can be seen in department stores, airports or in government offices. The different services provided by a kiosk are accessing of live news from the newsroom with the very latest news and information, accessing of popular galleries with stills and video clips, information on number of job vacancies, etc.

The popularity of kiosks are stated below:

1) The long lasting steel construction of the kiosk helps it to be rugged and secure and is suitable for placing it at any environment.
2) A kiosk helps a lot in saving the valuable floor space. Just by plugging them in they are ready to go as the hardware and software comes within a single unit.
3) Kiosks are very easy to maintain as all the components of the kiosks are easily repairable and replaceable.

4) With the help of remote administration options the tracking of kiosks can be done via the internet or via e-mail or phone alerts for low paper or power failure.

Kiosks can be used for an infinite number of applications, including: Gaming, bill payment, eCommerce, human resource, customer service, location and mapping, credit application, vending machines, sales and marketing, internet access and adverting just to point out a few.

A kiosk project typically has 3 main components: Hardware, Software and Post Production.

Hardware:

Any tangible portion of the kiosk project will fall into the hardware category. Depending on the type you require, this can simply be a metal enclosure with a touch screen monitor attached to it with a PC inside. More complex kiosks have hardware components inside such as card readers, printers, telephone handsets, ruggedized keyboards, ruggedness pointing devices and other specialized peripherals.

Software:

Depending on what your kiosk is supposed to do, there may or may not be off-the-shelf kiosk software available for it. Kiosk software typically does the following: displays the content you want to display, prevents users from making changes to the PC’s operating system, allows the owner to make changes remotely, make sure everything is working properly, and interfaces with peripherals inside the kiosk such as printers, card readers, scanners, etc..

Postproduction:

Depending on the size of your kiosk project, there are services such as kiosk site acquisition, kiosk installation, and on-site maintenance. For a small kiosk project, typically the owner of the kiosk does these things on their own. For larger deployments, a kiosk implementation company will be your best bet.

For business owners a kiosk can be used in a wide array of applications as seen above – the one point to consider is that a kiosk can deliver the right message at the right time, consistently every time. There’s no doubt kiosks are here to stay – watch for them next time you go out into your community!

While a well written business plan will assist you when you are seeking financing, it is far down on the lender’s list behind things such as your business management team’s experience, your past business successes and your “lending character “. Having a plan for accessing the business capital you need to execute your business plan is what is required to bring your business success. Not having a viable business financing plan is the direct cause of why 90% of all new businesses fail.


Your lending character means the lender sees you having the ability and stability to repay the loan. They also ask how far they believe you can take the business to maximize the potential earnings and therefore their chances of getting repaid.

The first thing a lender is going to look at is how did you structure the business and were you responsible and knowledgeable in that. Are you Incorporated or an LLC? If not you are declined for a business loan and everything becomes based solely on you as an individual. Did you do your EIN, State, business licenses and bank filings correctly? If not, you are declined because lender’s require attention to detail.

A simple business credit report check by a lender will quickly show whether or not you are even in the ballpark for getting approved for financing. If the lender finds that you haven’t bothered to insure that your business has active reports with all three major business credit reporting agencies, then of course you are immediately declined.

Next, the lender will look at the character of your business credit reports. What do they say about your business? What kind of payment histories have you had with debts that are easy to get such as vendor trade lines, small business credit cards, equipment leases, etc? If your business has no credit history or very minimal history then no lender will even consider your business for a larger loan when you have no track record of paying smaller debts.

If you pass these simple tests, now a lender will get to the heart of you business loan application and it is only at this point that you even get the opportunity to present your funding request. Unfortunately as high as 90% of all business loan applications never get to this point, because most business owners never take the time to complete the initial steps.

So you have made it this far, The next question you need to ask is what is a lender going to want to see? Debt service! Here is where the lender finally looks at your business plan (or at least the financial pat of it) to determine if your business can debt service the loan. To make this determination a lender will test the reality of your numbers. Basically this means do your numbers add up and do they make sense.

If you don’t know anything about accounting you had better get help. When a lender looks at your projected financial statement and finds simple accounting errors, then in most cases you will again be declined. They don’t want to lend money to someone who cannot produce a simple proof and loss statement; or someone that can’t balance a balance sheet. There is a lot of help out there, get some.

Next, a lender will look at the market niche section of your business plan. While most business owners think that this is the place that sets them apart from the competition, it actually is the part where lenders will compare you to your competition. Here is where lenders must see that you have done you market research. Can the revenue claims that you are making in your financial projections be backed up by the actual market demographics for your specific business industry, location, customer base, etc.? It essentially comes down to the need for your product or service.

All of this can seem overwhelming and in truth it can be. It is the reason that 97% of all business loan applications get declined. The overriding reason is that business owners are not taught this in school and typically only gain this knowledge through years of brutal experience that normally includes having one or two failed businesses under their belts.

This will give you plenty of information to get you started on putting together a business funding request.

2. You don’t make your ad copy attractive. Your ad lists features instead of benefits. The headline does not attract at your target audience. You don’t list any testimonials or guarantees included in your ad.


3. You don’t remind people to come back and visit. People usually don’t purchase the first time they visit. The more times they visit your site, the greater the chance they will buy. The most effective way is to give them a free subscription to your e-zine.

4. You don’t let people know anything about your business. They will feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from. Publish a section called “About Us” on your web site. Include your business history, profile of employees, contact information etc.

5. You don’t give people as many ordering options as possible. Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, and other forms of electronic payments. Take orders by phone, e-mail, web site, fax, mail, etc.

6. You don’t make your web site look professional. You want to have your own domain name. Your web site should be easy to navigate through. The graphics should be related to the theme of your web site.

7. You don’t let people read your ad before they get your freebie. When you use free stuff to lure people to your web site include it below your ad copy or on another web page. If you list the freebie above your ad they may never look to see what you’re selling.

8. You don’t attract the target audience that would buy your product or service. A simple way to do this is to survey your existing customers to see what attracted them to buy. This information will help you improve your target marketing and advertising.

9. You don’t test and improve your ad copy. There are many people who write an ad copy and never change it. You have to continually test and improve your ad copy to get the highest possible response rate.

10. You don’t give people any urgency to buy now. Many people are interested in your product but they put off buying it till later and eventually forget about it. Entice them to buy now with a freebie or discount and include a deadline date when the offer ends.

In fact, receivables factoring transactions in the United States, alone, exceed $60 billion per year, according to the Commercial Finance Association.


Benefits of Receivables Factoring

There are a number of benefits to receivables factoring. A major reason is that it gives you the ability to immediately access cash owed to your company. For some businesses, this minimizes the need to incur debt for operations while waiting for invoices to be paid.

Another advantage of factoring is that it provides a smoother, more consistent cash flow. Instead of wondering if or when you will receive payment from your customers, you can accurately predict when you’ll receive payment based on the terms of your relationship with the receivables factoring company. Businesses typically must wait 30, 60, or even 90 days to receive payment on invoices for products or services that have been delivered. During this time, these funds are tied up and inaccessible to the business. However, receivables factoring can eliminate long billing cycles and enhance cash flow.

Also, factoring eliminates the need for you to handle your own collections. Factoring companies are run by professionals who specialize in collecting and tracking invoices. This translates into an overall reduction in the amount of bad debts and fewer headaches for your business.

Receivables factoring can give you access to cash within 24 hours, which can help you effectively meet short-term cash flow crunches. It also can help you:

• Accelerate cash flow, making it easier to make payroll, pay taxes and fulfill new orders.

• Offer better terms to large customers and increase sales.

• Extend credit to large customers without asking for COD.

• Pay your suppliers faster; take advantage of early pay discounts.

• Purchase equipment, inventory and supplies.

Qualification for Receivables Factoring

Just about every type of industry that generates commercial invoices can and does use receivables factoring. In general, if you pay for labor or materials prior to receiving payment from your customers, factoring can help your business. Or if your business is growing faster than you can generate additional working capital—from private sources or from a bank—factoring can probably provide the cash you need for steady growth. Also, if you have a fairly new business that can’t qualify for bank financing, factoring may be ideal for you.

To qualify for receivables factoring, your company will have to meet to two basic conditions. There can be no existing primary liens on your invoices, meaning no other company should have a claim on the payments when they come in. Also, your customers must also be creditworthy. The factoring company will evaluate your customers on the basis of how quickly they’re likely to pay their invoices.

Prime Candidates for Receivables Factoring

Is your business a prime candidate for receivables factoring? Receivables factoring may be the perfect solution if:

• Long billing cycles are putting a strain on your business cash flow.

• You’re spending too much time collecting from slow paying customers and not enough time building your business?

• The bank has denied your request for a traditional loan because of your lack of years in business, profitability, assets or overall financial strength.

• Your business could increase sales by offering better terms to your new and larger customers.

On the other hand, receivables factoring may not be a good fit if your business is running on low margins—less than 10 percent. Receivables factoring also won’t make sense for your business if you have ample working capital and cash flow isn’t a problem.

How It Works

With receivables factoring, you essentially liquidate or sell outstanding invoices to a factoring company to receive immediate working capital. The company buys the invoice from you for a cash advance amount slightly less than face value, and then later collects the full amount when the receivable is due. Once the factoring company receives full payment for the invoice, you’ll receive the remaining amount—minus a fee. Generally, the receivables factoring fee amounts to three to five percent of the invoice value.

Factoring companies have different fee structures, but factoring fees typically involve:

• Advanced funding – When you send in an invoice to be factored, you’ll usually receive 70 to 90 percent funding of the invoice amount within 24 hours after the invoice has been verified. Then the advanced funding is wired to your business bank account.

• Discount rate or factoring fee – The factoring fee can range between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent per 30 days, or .1 percent for every day the invoice is unpaid after factoring. (Factoring fees can be customized to the individual needs of your business and customer base.)

• Remainder of the advance minus the factoring fee – When your customer pays the invoice, you will receive the remainder of the advanced funding, minus the factoring fee or discount rate.

Here’s an example of how receivables factoring works. Suppose you have a customer XYZ Company, which owes your business $100,000 for a shipment of your gadgets that were just delivered. XYZ Company is a large customer that has good credit, but they never pay their suppliers (you) any sooner than 45 days. Instead of waiting 45 days to receive payment for your $100,000, you decide to take advantage of receivables factoring. The factoring company verifies your invoice to XYZ Company and you receive 80 percent of the $100,000 ($80,000) within 24 hours, wired to your bank account.

If you have a discount rate similar to the one previously given and XYZ Company pays the $100,000 invoice in about 45 days, this equals a factoring fee of 4.5 percent of the original $100,000 ($4,500). Since you have already received an advance of $80,000 from the factor, you’ll receive the remaining $20,000 minus the factoring fee of $4,500 ($15,500). Ultimately, you’ll collect $95,500 of the original $100,000 invoice.

Keep in mind that the percentage charged by a receivables factoring company is generally more than you would pay for a short-term commercial loan. For that reason, factoring is best used to generate quick cash—not as a long-term solution. Also, receivables factoring companies make their money based on the volume of invoices they purchase. So you may have a slightly harder time finding a factoring company if you have invoices less than $10,000.

The price that must be paid is often too high and most people are not willing to pay it. That’s why they shake their heads in disbelief when supposedly others “get so much and do so little.” They cannot see the whole picture. Nothing worthy is ever free and the difference is not to work harder or to be smarter, the difference is based on what I am going to share with you bellow.


Ambition is good but greed is not. Snakes instinctively calculate how much time, energy and effort will take them to catch a prey and compare the hassle with the benefit. In other words they compare the risk vs. the reward before they “invest” anything on achieving their goal. Their purpose is very simple: to survive.

Your purpose is probably similar. You think that you need to make money, but what do you want the money for? Number one: to survive. Number two: to live a comfortable/luxurious life.

Then if some animals can do this instinctively, you sure can do the same and even more because you have reasoning abilities. Being rich is nice but it is not always the best thing for everyone. Let me explain . . .

Don’t get me wrong. I define wealthy by modern standards. I read somewhere that based on today’s standards a wealthy person/family is that one who makes one million or more per year. Of course some people would feel wealthy with much less than that, while other would need much more. I am one of those who feels wealthy with less than one million per year.

If you think about it though, these “statistics” are not too far from the truth. At the time I write this, one house costs on average 350 – 500 thousand dollars and an once of gold is priced at $650. You make your own math.

In the other hand I would say that chasing wealth is not the best thing for most people. I know you have to make money. I know you want to spend most of your time doing what you really enjoy. I know you may want to quick your job and retire already. I know more money may bring you the freedom that you may be desperate to get.

That’s exactly why I say that you should not chase wealth. People often don’t know exactly what they want. You may think that you want riches, but maybe you just want financial freedom. You may believe that wealth may bring you retirement, peace of mind, luxury, dignity, respect from others, comfort, freedom, joy, pleasurable environments.

I am sorry to tell you that it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that. Wealth could bring you hatred from the people around you. It could bring you the envy of your family and friends. Struggles from people that want to steal your fortune. Lack of peace because you can’t trust nobody. Fights with family members. Divorce, legal troubles and madness.

The sad part is that many people spend most of their lives trying to get wealthy and once they get it they say: “is that it?” Money should never be an end itself. The price to become wealthy may be higher than you think. It can leave you empty at the end.

That’s why I want to show you a better way to do it. Believe it or not, this is what people are often looking for and they don’t notice it. That thing is called: Financial Freedom!

It is as follows . . . You work whenever you want and however you want. You have different streams of income. So, if you stop earning money here, you are still earning money there. You work with company or alone if you want. You make money Online or Offline as you prefer. You make tens of thousands of dollars per month. You make enough to pay for a house cash within one year if you choose.

You work on average five hours per day, but you can work more or less if you want because you choose your own schedule. You do what you like. Work is more like a hobby for you. It is not a permanent hassle anymore. You have lots of free time to enjoy what you earn.

You are in a situation that if you work twice or three times harder than you are, then you know for sure that you will become wealthy, but you don’t. You don’t push the limits because you choose to take it easy and do what is really worthy.

You see you have choices, choices, choices all the time. So, you still have the choice to become rich, but you probably won’t force it into happening once you understand what is truly worthy and that is: experiences.

You buy a brand new car today and tomorrow you get used to it. Then if you are only after material things you will need a better car next week to feel high again. Then you will probably want a yacht and then an airplane, without forgetting about the mansions of course.

Once you reach the top, you may realize that it wasn’t there. Yes, what you was looking for wasn’t there. That’s because our senses get used to things too fast. We have a high adaptation ability, much higher than many other animals. It is important to have this quality in order to survive and evolve.

Then the secret is in the experiences. This means to change from one pleasurable thing to the other skipping most of the nonsense. In the long run this is what is going to contribute the most to your overall well being and happiness.

Focus on the intangible stuff. Meet people. Go out. Have fun. Travel a lot. Acquire knowledge. Diversify. Variety is the spice of life. At the end you will smile and say, honestly this is it.

Some people focus on doing/having something and once they get it, they need to do something else, and once they get it, they need to do something else and on, and on. The best path is to not try too hard to do something postponing your happiness for later, but to do everything today and diversify. That can be achieved mostly through Financial Freedom.

I have nothing against wealth nor wealthy people. The point is that I don’t try to chase wealth anymore. Why work more and enjoy less if you live only once? The idea is to work less and enjoy more. For those who believe in reincarnation, would you try so hard to amass fortunes in this life if you have to come back within a few decades and do it all over again?

However you look at it, wealth is good, it is tasty, it is cool, but working diligently to attain financial freedom is better. It is worthy too and it is more achievable. The Universe, God, First Creator Cause, or whatever you believe in will look at you with good eyes. After all you will be doing the same thing that all living things are doing: trying to survive, live better, grow and evolve.

The way I see it is that most people honest or dishonest, legal or illegal, dumb or smart, have a hard time trying to chase wealth. I believe there is a missing element that they don’t seem to perceive. It is luck. You need to be lucky too.

So, you can work hard and amass a large mountain of cash and gold, but material stuff probably won’t bring you the happiness that you strive for. Remember about the experiences. Everything material will stay here. We won’t be able to take it with us to the afterlife.

I perceive the situation this way . . . Most people work too much and get too little. If you have a job and you don’t work for yourself, you have to produce more than what you earn, otherwise the company you work for will go bankrupt. Many employees feel exploited because of this. The solution is simple. Work for yourself.

This is another subject that I don’t have time to discuss here, but if you read my other articles you can find ideas about how to start your own businesses. But what happen with most people. It simply comes the time when they are so frustrated that they get desperate to get rich quick. That’s when they fall victim of scammers who run away with their money.

That’s why I repeat: there are three levels of prosperity. Number one you have a good paying job. A job is a job no matter how you put it. Many people dream about being jobless and also able to pay the bills on time. But if you have a good paying job, you are on the first level of prosperity.

The second level is to be financially free. You will probably be working for yourself. You choose your own schedule. You make above average income and all the stuff that you previously read on this article. With most jobs you work a lot and get back peanuts. With financial freedom you take it easy and get back a lot. Still you will have to make an effort, but the difference is huge.

The third level is to be rich/wealthy. Nice. I think that everyone wants to be on this level (me included). The fact is though that to get here you need not only skills, but also some luck, patience, perseverance, dedication, discipline, etc. In fact many people won’t even look at the price that must be paid. Honestly based on my point of view the holly grail of a “trouble free” lifestyle could be found easier on financial freedom lands than on very wealthy people lands.

Can you realize that most people who want to get rich quick lose their shirt? They lose their money, time, joy, etc. If you are poor, broke, middle class, a hard worker, your next level will be to become financially free. Once you get to the financial freedom lands you may realize that you don’t even need to be extremely wealthy to be very happy. Because most of the things you thought that you would need to be happy, you won’t need them anymore.

If you can purchase everything you need plus most of the things you want your mood will change for the better. If you can wake up whenever you want everyday and have hundreds of pleasurable experiences every month you will be joyous. Freedom of choice is one of the most important things in life. It is important that you don’t be tied down to anybody nor anything. This can be achieved through financial freedom and multiple streams of income.

I’ve been trying to make money online for a long time. I had a few small websites, but they never made much more than a few hundred per month. It was easy money and didn’t require much work on my part, but I knew there were people out there doing better than I was and I knew I could do as well as them.


Now, I’ve seen a lot of “get rich quick” programs. Most of these people make claims about earning $2000/day with Google or something similarly insane. Almost all of these people are complete liars. Even if they were making $2000/day with Google AdSense, it’d be because they had high- traffic websites with a lot of quality content. I’d know, because in one whole month, I never even made half of what they promised I’d make daily with their programs. Maybe you’ve already been scammed by one of these fraudsters. Anyway, I finally got sick of what was being offered.

I decided I’d look through the all of the “get rich quick” programs I could find and see if there were any that were actually legitimate. I found that there were owners selling their programs for well over $100, but the information in them could be found almost anywhere online for free. Additionally, they all contained out-of-date information, had no e-mail support, no money back guarantees, and broken links in the downloads section.

In conclusion, almost all of the programs I found were completely useless. The owners knew it, but they couldn’t care less about their customers since they didn’t offer refund policies! Amazingly, while looking through all of the programs, I actually did find a few legitimate programs. They were run by ordinary people like you and me, and they had found some great methods of making money from their home by doing very little work.

I spent some time working with those programs, and my income is now ten times what it used to be. These programs provided a large amount of great information on how to make extra money on your computer doing very little work. Numerous customers had provided great feedback and reviews for their products. Many of them have started to make money just days after buying!

Their programs have excellent prices, and the authors have a group of paid staff who are dedicating to helping you or providing assistance if you need any. I must say I was amazed! If you do decide to purchase any of the programs listed below, I recommend you join quickly. Most of the owners tell me they are getting an overwhelming number of sales and plan on raising prices in the near future, so order while prices are still low!

• A Business Plan is a written document that you can use in your search for external financing.
• A Business Plan is a tactical planning and management tool for your business.
• A Business Plan is a document showing the capacity of your team to control and manage all the aspects of the company.
• A Business Plan brings you new ideas to refine your project by checking and estimating the induced hypothesis.


The necessity of Business Plans

The drafting or update of your business-plan is essential to the good management of your company. It can be used when searching for a business partner, for obtaining external financing, and for defining some stages of the development of your company, such as:

• The creation of your company.
• The launching of a new product.
• The establishment in a new market.
• The transfer, buy-out, or the structural development of your company.

Should you call in a consultant or write the Business Plan by yourself?

You should be the main (if not single) author of your business-plan, because the Business Plan is, so to speak, your own “baby”, it is a reflection of your personality; it is by this means that your investors will discover the person with whom they collaborate.

But your project may be too important and you may want to call in a consultant for help and consultation. Even so, you should stay in control of its development!

Tips for developing a quality business-plan.

1. To be credible, a business-plan must be coherent and each parameter in the Business Plan must be based on facts.

2. There are many methods to build Business Plans, but very few can help you correctly carry out reliable financial projections based on a preliminary commercial engineering and market study.

Indeed, one frequent mistake when building Business Plan’s is to first define the target in terms of market share, and then try to “find” the number of customers necessary to fill these objectives! This process should be reversed.

3. In addition, one essential point in a Business Plan is to define concrete policies and measures. This definition aims to gain a reasonable number of customers, based on a sufficient knowledge of the market. The quantitative estimate of this gain must be calculated on realistic monthly and annual increase rates. A well-founded pricing policy then makes it possible to estimate the sales turnover in the years ahead.

The calculation of the costs of the planned actions in your Business Plan are essential and make overall financial projections possible. In short, financial forecasts – including those related to the financing of the project – must be elaborated from the basic elements of the project. They should be proceeded by a commercial engineering study which projects a realistic estimate of sales.

4. In a Business Plan, the marketing plans as well as the financial forecasts require a basic understanding of how these important elements are calculated. You can use good software – some of which is free – to facilitate the development of your Business Plan.

5. The last point and certainly not the least significant: A Business Plan is never ended “once and for all”. A regular follow-up and comparison between the theoretical Business Plan and the reality of its execution are essential. You can then modify your Business Plan and adapt it to improve performance and achieve your goals.

The objective of increasing business profits isn’t only met by attracting more clients. There are several other reasons why a business doesn’t make as much money as it should besides not having enough clients.


Here are a few simple, yet effective business coaching ideas that will help you unlock the hidden profits in business and also some reasons why things aren’t operating at full potential as they should:

- Focus more time on the important matters – you may not have enough time available to boost your business, especially if you are the one who is serving clients on a regular basis. In this case, you should consider hiring somebody to help. Running a business takes a lot of work, so let the employees handle the day-to-day issues, while you take care of the important ones such as developing strategies for present and future growth. Set aside an hour each week to brainstorm ideas, implement strategies and nurture key business relationships.

- Carry out competitive intelligence on other businesses, especially the ones that are successful and emulate them. This doesn’t mean copying whatever they do. Take the best parts of your competitor’s business and apply them to your own. It is also very important to keep a close eye on the competition, regardless of the nature of your business. If you are running a restaurant, for example, you should inspect the services, the offers and the prices of the competition. By doing a little research on other businesses, you will be able to reorganize, improve your services, adjust the prices depending on the competition, as well as introduce new offers to your clients. By knowing what your competitors are up to, you will always be one step ahead of them.

- Spend less of your gross profit on overhead and ineffective marketing. Lease unused space in your office or warehouse. Track sales as a result of expense. Employ salespeople on a higher commission scale rather than a high base salary. Test and measure for effective marketing campaigns before dumping a ton of money on any marketing campaign that is doomed to fail from the start.

- Instead of competing on price, develop an ultimate strategic advantage™. Emphasize the qualities that make your business stand out and create a whole new positioning in the industry. Find out what really matters to your clients by surveying them and give it to them.

- Talk with clients and find out if they are delighted or not. Ask for suggestions. Dissatisfied customers will not return, while a delighted client will refer others.

- Nurture existing clients. Instead of focusing on acquiring new customers, concentrate on nurturing and maintaining the clients that you already have! Make sure they are pleased with the services you provide for them and pay attention to their needs, desires and complaints. It is very important to establish and maintain good relations with your clients, as they are the ones who keep your business running.

Many business coaching companies encourage selling more to existing clients because it improves a business bottom line by increasing the lifetime value of a client. It also brings new clients, attracted by positive experiences from your delighted clients. Referrals lower your acquisition cost through word-of-mouth marketing and this also adds to business profits.

- Up sell other products/services. Selling extras is known to be a great method of increasing profits. For example, grocery stores strategically place many magazines and snacks near the checkout. People browse and buy these while waiting in line raising the average dollar sale with these extras. McDonald’s is well-known for its up sell before a sale is completed by simply asking a simple question to add on more products (complete meal, fries, sundae, or apple pie).

- Increase your advertising - advertising is expensive but if things work well, the money will definitely return to you. You can also try to make the best use you can out of free advertising. Get the most out of promotions and limited offers, especially around holidays.

- Seek out business coaching advice. Having a comprehensive set of business strategies can help you further, by providing you with new efficient methods of increasing the profits of your business. To operate a business effectively long-term, most businesses will have to deploy several strategies in order to diversify their sources of leads and maximize their profitability through smart marketing, team building, and business process management.