Small Business Growth Strategy - "Keep it simple"

"Business Strategy" is being discussed everywhere - conferences, social media, professional networks, business management books, blogs, networking and coaching sessions. Everyone, everywhere is talking about business strategy.

Do you need to be a cost leader? Do you need to add more value? How to identify a niche segment?

There are questions and then there are answers. However, quite often, especially small and medium businesses lose their focus as they spend a lot of time planning a strategy. The complete plan often does not see the light of the day.

At an early growth stage, at times the mantra is to "Keep it Simple". Keeping it simple could be the best small business growth strategy.

Speed and flexibility are the major advantages every small business has when they enter a new market or compete with larger players. A lot of time, effort and resources spent in strategic planning tends to slow them down. This neutralises their advantage.

At an early growth stage, spend most of your time, energy and resources in execution. Talking to clients, visiting them, ensuring follow-ups and deadlines are not missed add more value and fuel a company's growth.

todo.vu - CRM for Small Business, Consultants and Freelancers

Small business owners, independent consultants and freelancers often look for FREE or budget friendly options for their business requirements. Software and tools meant for larger companies tend to be too complex and costly. Here, we give you an overview of todo.vu - an integrated CRM, task management, project management, time tracking and billing software.

todo.vu claims to bring all your customer management and project management into one place, with built in time tracking and billing. Check out the todo.vu intro video:

todo.vu packs in all the necessary features required by freelancers, consultants and small teams. Along with the features, it also meets the budget needs.

How to Retain Employees?

Small businesses, like all organizations, often struggle with their hiring and retention strategies. Owners and the Management spend a lot of their productive time dealing with human resource issues. However, unlike large organizations and MNCs, small businesses do not have dedicated human resource departments or executives to hire, retain and manage talent. The office HR rep is more often than not a shared resource. She is busy with other functions such as admin, purchase or client relations along with managing her HR duties. Hence, human resource management tends to be a neglected department. The need is felt when there is a sudden pressure to hire new talent or when an existing employee decides to move on. While hiring the right talent is very critical, our focus here will be on how to retain employees?

How can a small business create value for employees?

Tips to retain employees

• Fix your hiring process. Yes, the focus of this blog is retention. However, hiring the right talent is indeed the first step. Most small businesses fail to plan their hiring requirements. The result - they always issue urgent hiring requirements. The urgency does not allow adequate time to screen profiles, research and ensure the most suitable talent comes on board. It certainly is difficult for smaller companies to create hiring forecasts.

How to choose a CRM for your Small Business?

Sales in the last few years has become omni-channel and multi-channel. Businesses no longer rely on one or two sources for lead generation and new customer acquisition. The multiple sources or channels need to be aligned and synced for improving results and conversion. It has also become easier than ever before to interact with customers and prospects using multiple channels. Data collection, integration, analysis have hence become critical for success in sales. This has made CRM (customer relationship management) software immensely popular in the last one decade. There are plenty of options available, both free and paid. How do you choose the most appropriate CRM for your small business?

The first step when your start your research for a CRM for your small business?

While the overall lead management and sales process remains more or less similar for every business, each firm may have a few steps unique to the way their team functions. These steps and processes are usually the results of years of following a particular way of work. These steps also could be the best practices which cannot be ignored. One of the major reasons of failure for any new software or technology implementation is the non-compatibility to existing system and processes. 

New Business Idea: Cloud Call Center Solution

Traditional call center setup required high start-up capital and equally high maintenance costs as well as logistical complexity. Phone systems, computer hardware and software, data servers, routing systems, network infrastructure to name a few had to be setup before you could approach prospective clients to pitch your services. The lead times for setting up a call center solution center were as high as the cost. This made it difficult for smaller players to enter the industry and compete with established call center solution providers. Well, not any more. The business scenario has changed. A cloud call center can be setup within a few hours and there are no significant hardware, software or maintenance costs.

How does cloud technology help call center solution providers?

The availability of call center technology as software as a service (SaaS) enables service providers to start small with as small as one seat or agent. There is no huge start-up expense for buying or leasing servers, ACD, expensive phone systems etc. Almost all cloud based call center systems can easily connect to smartphones and provide multiple channels for communication - calls, email, web chat, SMS. 

3 Tips to Increase Sales for Your Small Business

A great product or service needs to be complemented with a dedicated sales team and innovative sales strategies. Usually, unlike large companies, most small businesses do not have the luxury of separate sales and marketing teams. The owners and the core team perform multiple roles. The basic sales rule for a small business is fairly simple – everyone has to SELL. Irrespective of the role or seniority, everyone in the organization needs to contribute to get new customers and increase the sales revenue.

Here are 3 tips to increase sales for your small business:

Small Business Idea for Fashion Entrepreneurs (#IdeaTuesday): Ecommerce Solution with Personalized Tips from Designers

Rahul wanted to surprise his wife on their first wedding anniversary. He was looking forward to gift a nice dress however was confused with the abundance of choices available and also was not quite sure what would look best on his wife. He knew he did not have a great taste selecting and buying gifts for women and did not want to put a wrong foot forward on their first anniversary.

Rahul for sure needed expert advice. Where does he get one?

The time is apt for fashion entrepreneurs, designers and stylists to provide a personalized online apparel shopping experience to customers. The first step is to launch your e-commerce store. You could sell your own designs as well as collections from other designers on your e-store. The key here would be to offer a personalized and customized shopping experience.