8 Ways to Keep Your Homebased Business Running Smoothly

If you're well on your way to homebased business success, these management tips will help you stay on top of your game.

Written by Sarah Pierce

Leaving corporate America to run a homebased business is the ideal situation for many people: There's no boss breathing down your neck, no boring meetings to attend and no 45-minute drives in rush hour traffic. Working from home can be a rewarding experience, but it's easy to forget the basic rules of running a successful business when it's 10 hours of just you, your computer and the distractions of home.

To help you stay on track, we've contacted homebased business expert Rosalind Resnick, CEO of Axxess Business Centers Inc., a New York small-business consulting firm. Resnick is a former business journalist who has regularly contributed her expertise to Entrepreneur.com. She's put together eight helpful tips for keeping your homebased business running smoothly.

· Structure your day. The problem a lot of homebased business owners have is that they no longer have a boss standing over them making sure they get their work done, or a tangible start and end of each workday. It's easy to let time slip by as you head to the refrigerator, catch a few minutes of TV, or dive into a project first thing in the morning, neglecting the other tasks you need to perform to keep your business running smoothly.

Create a structure that mimics what you had in the workplace. Structure your day so you have a start and finish time, with certain hours set aside for specific activities. A general rule is to spend the first hour of the day prospecting for new clients. Send your emails, write your letters and make your phone calls first thing so you don't forget to do it later.

Use Outlook or some sort of contact management software to serve as a visual reminder of what you need to accomplish that day. Live and die by your to-do-list. Try to have everything crossed off by the end of the day. Even my own children know that if they want me to do something for them during working hours, they have to put it on my to-do-list or it will never get done.

· Stay connected. Carry an organizer wherever you go. If you're still using a day planner or similar dinosaur, consider upgrading to a Blackberry or other high-tech gadget. You don't need to go crazy and spend a lot of money, but invest wisely in something that will hold everything you need and allow you to instantly access it on the go. Another good idea is to not keep all of your information in one location, such as the hard drive of your home computer. Keep your data hosted on a virtual exchange server so you can access it anywhere that has an Internet connection. A big misconception about homebased business owners is that they stay at home all day, everyday. And as you know, that's just not always true.

· Organize your family time. Once your professional life is organized, you may need to consider organizing your personal life. Maybe you noticed right away, or maybe it's just becoming apparent, that you tend to work around the schedule of your family members. This is especially true if you have children. A lot of people, especially young moms, decide that they're going to quit their jobs in corporate America and work from home in order to care for their children and save on daycare expenses. But in reality, if you're serious about running a homebased business and earning a decent income, you're going to have to make arrangements for childcare in or outside the home. Otherwise it becomes too distracting. Consider hiring a babysitter so you're guaranteed five to six solid hours to get your work done.

· Motivate yourself. Sit down and set some goals for yourself. You no longer have quarterly reviews or progress reports, so it's important to keep track of whether or not you're making progress in your business. It's one thing to set small goals like completing your to-do-list--you also have to set goals to motivate yourself to succeed. Hopefully by now you're making as much, if not more, money at your homebased business than you were at your former job. If you aren't, begin by setting a goal to bring in the same amount of income you were, and slowly raise the bar to increase your income by a couple of thousand a month. Once you've met a goal, make time to reward yourself by doing something fun, which brings us to the next tip.

· Take time out for good behavior. It's not uncommon to find yourself working 60- to 70-hour weeks. But the good thing is, if you want to sneak out and see a movie at two in the afternoon, nobody's going to tell you not to do it. You have that freedom and flexibility as a home business owner. It can be tempting to work all the time when you start seeing how successful your business has become, but know when to relax. You've already established a smooth-running business. Take a break every now and then so you don't get burned out.

· Be a Jack-of-all-trades. There are a lot of roles you play as a homebased business owner: You're the CEO, president, secretary, office manager and tech support. Learn the basic skills of running an office, including how to troubleshoot some rudimentary technical problems. You don't need to become an expert, but make sure you have a basic understanding of tech support issues, bookkeeping, etc. Otherwise it will become too expensive to have to pay someone to do everything for you.

· Network. Network with other homebased business owners in either a formal or informal setting. This is a good way to find service providers, leads and potential clients. Surrounding yourself with people who also work from home will give you the support you need, and refer you to people who can help you grow your business.

· Consider moving out of your home. For a lot of people, working from home is a launching pad. In the beginning, many business owners work from home in order to keep overhead low. If you have more than one person with different roles working from your home office, you should ideally be working in separate rooms. It can be difficult having two people work side by side, even if those two people are spouses and love each other very much. It's distracting for anyone to have someone three feet away from you talking on the phone. Be prepared for expansion. At the point when your business becomes so successful that you cannot efficiently work close together, start considering moving your office outside the home.

Retrieved on 8^th October 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/homebasedbiz/worklifebalance/article76888.html

Grow Big by Selling Small

Go where the money is by catering to like-minded entrepreneurs.

written by Emma Johnson

It's an easy fantasy to nurture; you land The Big One. That one giant, fat account that will launch your business into the big leagues, put the kids through college and secure an early retirement on that Hans Christian 48-foot sailboat.

Give it up. Instead, build your dreams around a wide and varied customer base of other small businesses, experts urge. Success with this model is more likely, less risky and a smarter way to grow a solid enterprise. Plus, in most cases small businesses simply aren't equipped to respond to a whopper of a sale.

"Smaller companies often pursue the big guys and leave low-hanging fruit, which is other small companies," says Don Mazzella, a small-business consultant and co-author of The Janus Principle: Focusing Your Company on Selling to Small Business. "However, it's easier and more effective to sell to your counterparts than to larger clients."

Why Sell to Small Businesses?
If a single sale to, say, FedEx or Wal-Mart would exceed all revenue expectations, why spend your limited energy on lots of small accounts?

First, as a small business you talk the talk of other small businesses, and the learning curve for dealing with a small firm is much easier than breaking through the cinderblock walls of a global corporation, Mazzella says. "Small-business owners are often surprised to learn that other small businesses make decisions the same way they do."

Further, selling to other entrepreneurs is actually where the money is. The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that this country is home to 27.2 million small enterprises that represent a market of $7 trillion--a sum equal to more than half the U.S. domestic national product and greater than the GNP of all but eight countries.

Finally, it's simply safer for your business to have many small customers rather than a few behemoth ones. The Janus Principle authors underscore the maxim that no one client should constitute more than 40 percent of your revenue.

Evolve IP, a Wayne, Pa., based tech-management services provider, strategically targets small-business customers. "By having 10,000 customers each spending $500 per month, we have the ability to build a stable revenue foundation that will sustain over a long period time," says Tim Allen, chief sales officer. The loss of one of those thousands of clients barely dents the bottom line, while losing one of a precious few could force a firm to scale back, or even go under.

How to Find Them
Quaint as it may sound, experts say you should network locally to reach potential small-business customers. "Small-business owners often [maintain close ties to] their community," Allen says.

Indeed, a survey conducted by the authors of The Janus Principle found that 73 percent of all business is conducted within a 50-mile radius of the firm. This figure is down from 84 percent five years ago, but still remarkably high considering the perceived effects of the internet on commerce. One key reason small businesses like to partner with local vendors: They know where to find them should things get ugly, Mazzella says.

Allen looks to local business associations for networking as well as for forging formal partnerships to offer services and products to members--usually at a discount. Membership in civic organizations such as Rotary and Kiwanis clubs can be especially effective when combined with media coverage to maximize your visibility. Use article mentions and advertisements in local newspapers and on radio and TV to target a local customer base.

Likewise, trade publications are an invaluable resource for businesses whose customer base is national or global. The key is to find familiar connections between your and the other businesses' target customers. Referrals from peers are one of strongest ways to secure a first meeting.

"Getting Donald Trump to endorse your product is not as good as another small-business owner promoting your product," Mazzella says, because small-business owners trust their peers above national spokespeople. Again, entrepreneurs understand other entrepreneurs.

Cold calls are far from out of date, experts say--especially when it comes to approaching entrepreneurs. The Janus Principle notes one New York City salesman who claims a 25 percent success rate landing meetings with small-business owners by cold-calling them and offering to bring a corned beef sandwich from the city's famed Katz's Deli. "For 15 bucks I am in the door," he says. Do you think any variety of salted meat could get you a meeting with, say, Oracle's Larry Ellison?

The Meeting
So once that meeting is secured, what happens?

The first step is to find out what the customer's needs are. Then find a way to prove your product or service fits that need. Finally, establish your reliability.

Keep it real. Don't be shy about mentioning a mutual friend or colleague, and spend time getting to know that decision-maker as a person. Everyone likes to do business with people they like and trust. This may be especially true for small businesses, as it's usually just one individual who makes all the company's buying decisions, unlike large corporations that run purchasing through layers of cumbersome processes, says Edward Dolan, principal of EPIC Results, a business consultancy for entrepreneurs.

"They have to have a sense of connection and trust, which comes from a rapport or shared value," he explains. "People buy from people they know and like."

It's this combination of listening, then filling a need and being accountable that secures a sale to a small business, Dolan says. "It's that old saying my mother used to tell me: Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

Evolve IP's Allen says that producing copies of stories in national media outlets that have mentioned your company can help you sell yourself to another small business; it underscores your company's credibility to a customer who may not fully understand your product, he says. This probably isn't necessary with large businesses; the big guys will often be staffed by a team of research experts armed with detailed questions about your product.

Sales for Now and the Future
The first sale is often the easiest one. It's building a long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationship that often proves tricky for small-business owners.

The key is to identify customers' challenges and remain nimble enough to accommodate them. Perhaps you provide creative financing options or, like Evolve IP, offer a purchasing credit in exchange for replacing your product with that of a competitor to whom the customer has already committed – thus removing the financial hurdle to the sale.

Dolan notes a distribution company that, unlike its competitors, refused to administer a fuel surcharge during the gasoline crisis a few years ago. Instead, the company asked its clients to consolidate orders when possible--proving a win-win situation for both parties.

"If you always have your poker face on and are always negotiating, that's the kind of [adversarial] relationship you'll have," Dolan says. "But if you look at [selling to small businesses] as [building] partners, the relationship can be mutually supportive."

Retrieved on 16^th November 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/sales/salestechniques/article203948.html