Successful Blog

Vertical integration and your business

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By Katherine Pilnick

You’ve probably heard of vertical integration, a trend to minimize middle-man work and bring products to the marketplace in as few steps as possible, and you may be wondering if it’s right for your business. Vertically integrated companies have control over more than one part of production. They may partner with companies that work with the product before or after them, or they may take care of more than one step of the process in-house.

Vertical integration gives manufacturers more control over their products, including reducing costs. Customers also benefit, as they can discover otherwise lost local business and may enjoy price cuts because of lowered production costs. However, vertical integration isn’t always the best option, and its effects should be considered for each unique set of circumstances.

Vertical Integration in Modern Markets

One of the most prominent examples of vertical integration is Apple, which designs and develops the hardware and software for all its products, and also puts out the final products. While specific parts of production may be outsourced, Apple’s overall vertical integration gives the company more control over its product. It also ensures that the company has unique products that customers cannot find elsewhere.

Amazon is another well-known example of vertical integration. Its online marketplace and its Kindle products act as book distributors, and the company has evolved to publish books, as well. In this way, it took over another piece of the production line.

Amazon and Apple are prime examples of companies that have become significantly more involved in their product lines than is typical at other companies.

Choosing to vertically integrate your business is a big decision, and one which involves a lot of thought. It requires access to resources that small startups often lack, but it expands opportunities for future growth and success.

The main advantage of a vertically integrated business is that it will make your product unique, so that no other company can offer exactly what you have to offer. That way, you can build a loyal customer base as your company grows.

Despite its pros, vertical integration won’t help every company, especially one that’s already on thin ice financially.

Key Considerations

Vertical integration requires a company to take on new responsibilities in production. While this can save money for business in the long run, it requires an immediate financial investment to pay for additional equipment and labor.

Likewise, entrepreneurs must be careful that vertical integration does not spread the company’s resources too thin. The company must set its priorities and stick with them, without allowing its new responsibilities to take over the core business goals.

Unless your business is already hugely successful, you’ll have to determine if vertical integration is right for your particular scenario by weighing the pros and cons.

Discuss it with others at your company to gauge how willing they are to take on the risk and responsibility. You can also seek professional advice at a bank, since the new endeavor is likely to require a small business loan. And remember that there is no need to rush the decision. In most cases, the opportunity to expand will always be there. If you don’t take advantage of it now, you can change your mind in the future.

Author’s Bio: Katherine Pilnick is a writer, blogger and editor for Debt.org, a debt help website.

What is Missing? Are you Working Smarter – Not Harder?

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By Deb Bixler

Entrepreneurs are a determined group of people. A home based business owner will work to the point of exhaustion to make her business successful.

The thing is that entrepreneurs who learn to work smart are the ones that find much more success than the ones who just work hard. When you know how to add what your home based business is missing to make it successful, you can spend more time growing that business and less time worrying about how much money you are losing.

Word of Mouth

The fastest way to make your business successful is to get other people talking about it.

The best way to do that is to talk about your business every chance you get without being pushy. If you do it right, you will get people to ask you about what you do and open the door for you to discuss your business.

For example, if when someone asks you what you did over the weekend, you tell them that you had a blast, made some money and met some wonderful new people at your direct sales event, then you may create curiosity.

Curiosity is what gets them to ask you how you did it. After that the door is opened for you to talk about your business.

The goal is to sprinkle one liners in your conversation all the time that are generating interest so that people ask you to tell them more. That is smart!

Create Your Business Internet Presence

Is your small business missing the complete internet presence it needs to make it successful? A complete Internet marketing program for your company should include your own website, a page on each of the top social networking websites and a blog.

Once you have all of these in place, you need to add new content and work on these sites every day. The more work you put into your internet presence, the more return you will get in the form of new customers and more revenue.

Even if you are affiliated with a direct sales company that is well branded on the web, you should be consistently putting time into using the internet to connect the web for YOU!

When an independent home business consultant connects the web they become more powerful.

Business Urgency With Seasonal Products

home business urgencyThere are a lot of ways to keep people interested in your business all year round, but the most effective way is to offer full lines of seasonal products that people need and want.

Everyone loves Christmas decorations during the holidays, so you need to carry them. During the summer, people want to cool off and things they can put in their yard or garden to make them unique.

There are many ways to establish your business urgency that you can tap into:

  • Do your specials reflect the seasonal urgency?
  • Do you have expiring products?
  • Is a new catalog coming out?
  • Is there a different business theme each month?
  • Or can you create a new theme each month?

Your Passion and Enthusiasm

Nothing spreads word of mouth advertising faster than a business owner who is enthusiastic about what she does. If you are in the home sales industry, then you need to be enthusiastic about each of your events.

It is true that enthusiasm is contagious and that people will talk about you and your business in a positive way to others if you make them feel good about what you do, but think about what sets you apart and how you can convey that passionately to everyone you meet.

Sometimes it can be the smallest details that make your business attractive to customers. If you want your business to be successful, then you need to analyze it to find out what is missing and then fill in the empty spaces. The more smart work you put into your business, the greater the financial returns will be.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler

Being There

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Editorial Note: This post deviates from our regularly scheduled programming because I thought it was timely as Liz kicks cancer’s butt. ~Rosemary

By Ric Dragon

Life plays math tricks on us.

First is diminishing time. Each hour and each day is still an hour and a day, but as we age, that passing day represent a smaller part of our lives. At two days old, 24 hours is half of your life. At 50 years old, it’s 1/18,250th.

When we were in high school four years seem to linger on interminably, whereas those same four years of our child’s high school seem to flash by. Tempus doesn’t simply fugit, but takes on the exaggerated swiftness of the Keystone Cops in a silent movie.

Another lesson in arithmetic is that in time, it’s only natural that we come to have more memories of people who’ve died. After living in my rural neighborhood for over 25 years, a drive down the road can be marked with remembrance of deceased neighbors in a house there, and another yonder – like a monk counting out prayers on rosary beads.

Of course, all life ceases, so certainly if you live to the outer rings of average life expectancy, you will experience many losses. Some people experience death early in life. I was fortunate in that I recall very few deaths until my twenties. The passing of a great uncle afforded me the opportunity to witness a genuine wake in the Deep South of Alabama. As the man was a stranger to me, my impressions are marked most vividly by the chicken farm and kudzu-covered forests.

Occurrences of life-threatening illnesses increase. Before your own chess game with the grim reaper, you’ll come to know many, many people to suffer from illnesses such as cancer. As you gather with any other two people, consider that there is a great chance that before you die, one of you will develop cancer. Before 50 years, though, only about one out of 36 men, and one out of 21 women. As we age, it’s only natural that we’ll know a lot of people to develop cancer, and so many more that are touched by it in their close circle of family and friends.

Sitting With Friends

When you’re given anesthesia for surgery, it can be the deepest dreamless sleep. Once, when I was under for a minor operation, I woke up for a few seconds, and saw my mother sitting at the bedside chair. I fell back asleep, but seemed to feel comfort that she was there.

In many cultures, it’s commonplace to visit sick people and sit with them. In Judaism, it’s called bikkur holim. In the very different world of the deep South, it’s just called sittin’ up with someone. I’m aware of the practice, but it wasn’t really passed on to me – it’s not something I did. As people I have known became sick, or experienced great losses in their own lives, I haven’t been a good friend. Death and sickness make me uncomfortable, and I’m overcome with a feeling of awkwardness.

Visiting Friends

I’m reminded of this sick-people-avoidance tendency as I have a front-row seat, visiting a friend in the throes of chemotherapy. I’m reminded of my own youthful reticence to encounter the ill. No one deserves to be alone in his or her struggles. But I can see that it isn’t easy for my sick friend to reach out.

People are social creatures. Other species may prefer to go off and hide in the tall grass when sick, but we humans draw sustenance and power from the presence of others.

Often though, our sick friends don’t ask for us. They might feel miserable and misanthropic. They might be restrained by the hundreds of unspoken cultural niceties, which we don’t even remember where or when we learned. As my friend said, “it’s poor form to show weakness, even with cancer.”

Yet another friend reminded me, though, that someone who is ill and depressed is going to have trouble reaching out to even her closest friends. She added that you shouldn’t wait for her to call you, but be proactive. “If you’re going to the supermarket, call and ask what you can bring her – not IF you can bring her anything, but WHAT you can bring her, because otherwise she may say, ‘oh that’s ok, I don’t really need anything.’ Call her and say, ‘I’m in the mood for a chick flick tonight – if you’re up to it, I’d like to bring over [fill in the blank] and watch it with you – it’s so much more fun to watch with a friend.’”

She said, “Don’t offer to be there when needed, just go and be there. If we can’t handle your visit, if we don’t want to watch a movie, if we don’t want your leftovers, we can tell you. It’s easier for us to do that than to reach out.”

I know that to pull away is only human. It’s frightening to be reminded of the inevitability of mortality, and of the fear of losing someone. But it’s human, too, to reach out and touch – and to let each other know that we’re scared, and that we’re here.

A recommended site: Invisible Illness Week

Author’s Bio: Ric Dragon is the founder and CEO of DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency with offices in Manhattan and Kingston, NY. Dragon is the author of the “DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual” and “Social Marketology” (McGraw Hill; June 2012), and has been a featured speaker at SMX East, Conversion Conf, CMS Expo, and BlogWorld, on the convergence of process, information architecture, SEO, and Social Media. You can find Ric on Twitter as @RicDragon.

 

How to Decide if a New Social Tool is Relevant to Your Business

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By Rosemary O’Neill

Remember how uncool bell-bottom jeans were 10 years ago? Then they became so uncool that they were cool again (they’re now uncool again, just FYI).

The world of social media works in much the same way. As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway, “one day you’re in…the next day, you’re OUT.” Facebook is the big kahuna right now, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay on top.

For that reason, it’s a good idea to at least take a glance at new or revived social tools once in a while. This post will give you some strategies to help you evaluate whether a new shiny object is “hot or not” for your online business strategy.

How to Evaluate a New Social Tool

  • Can I afford it? Remember that free tools aren’t really free. Your time is money too. Also consider whether you’d need to upgrade to a pro option to get maximum benefit from the tool.
  • Am I familiar with it? Unless your schedule allows time for training and learning curve, think about how hard it will be to get up to speed. Will it take priority over other, more important tactics?
  • Is my audience there? Try to find out the key demographic using the tool. Does that overlap with your own market strategy? A great resource for demographic information is this Ignite Social Media report.
  • Is it a relevant topic? Some social tools are topic-centric (like the new MySpace). Does the topic relate to your business in some way? Can you leverage it to support your marketing plan?
  • Does it work with the rest of my strategy/tool kit? Hopefully you’re making life easy on yourself by creating a cohesive set of tactics. You don’t want redundant or clashing applications in your portfolio. For example, you probably don’t need to use both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.
  • Is it stable/supported/funded? It’s good to take a look at new social tools, but don’t go “all-in” until there is some traction or proof that it’s going to last. You don’t want to be caught losing your data or content if a startup pivots or goes out of business entirely.

These are just some of key considerations for when you read a Mashable article about the “next new thing” in social media. It’s important to stay abreast of changing technology, but you don’t want to chase shiny objects!

How do you decide whether to jump into a new social application?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Stories sell and facts tell

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By Elaine Love

Information, information everywhere, but so much of it is such a “yawn” that readers glance and move away. If you want your prospects to become enthused about you and your company, tell them a story. Whether you tell the story orally or in writing, make your message come alive.

Paint a picture

Stories come alive and allow the prospect to see themselves enjoying a better life. Telling a story about when your product or service helped another person solve a similar problem gives them encouragement that your product or service can solve their problem. The more your make the story come alive, the more they see themselves in the successful outcome.

5 Senses

You can say, “You will be able to take that beach vacation you’ve talked about once we solve this problem.” Or you can tell a story.

“Picture yourself relaxed on the pristine warm white sand with the sun’s rays gently caressing your tanning body. Feel the soft ocean breeze on your face and catch the scent of tropical foliage as it drifts by on the breeze. Taste the cool beverage at your side and hear the soothing sound of the waves rolling up on the beach.”

Putting the five senses in your scene allows them to feel the relaxing pleasure and become part of the scene.

Adapt the success story to fit your individual situation. Different people have different learning styles and different triggers which appeal to them.

5 C’s method

Perhaps your particular situation works better with the 5 C’s.

  • Characters
  • Conflict
  • Cure
  • Change
  • Carry Out Message

Describe the current situation with another client as the main character.

Add the conflict (problem) which the customer was facing and build it up to a “need to fix” situation rather than a “nice to fix” situation.

Detail the cure provided by your product or service. Tell what the product is, what it does and how it is able to solve the problem.

Let the prospect feel how their life will change for the better by solving the problem in this way.

There must be a change in at least one character for the solution to have been a success.

Use a call to action as your carry out message. Create the urgency to act on the solution.

This story method adapts itself very well to selling a product or service in a non-confrontational and pleasing manner.

Now, then and how

You may have been using a portion of this technique without even realizing it. Describe how much better a customer’s life is now that they have used your product or service.

A young man is giving keynote speeches at $10,000 per keynote address and traveling all over the world. His business has expanded from a bankrupt solopreneur to employing twenty full time professional assistants. You may think he was a natural, but not so. He started out as a stand-up comic on open microphone night. His first time on stage, his hand was shaking so badly that he could not read his note cards. The only laugh he received was when he uttered a frustrated comment at the time he blew the punch line on a joke. What made the change from total disaster to successful professional speaker? He hired a professional comedian to coach him. Professional coaching brought him from disaster to success. (This story is used to sell my private speech coaching programs.)

Stories sell and facts tell

Numerous story telling techniques exist. Select the one which works for you. Adapt it to the precise situation for each individual customer.

Stories connect emotionally. You only have to connect with a person emotionally if you want them to remember you and what you said.

Author’s Bio: At home in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Elaine Love writes about small business and the mindset for success so essential for an entrepreneur. She is the author of Emotional Ice Water. Find her on Twitter @elainelove44 or Elaine4Success.com

Overcoming the three fears of telecommuting

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By Kelly Gregorio

home office space
Is telecommuting right for you?
In today’s digital world telecommuting is becoming more of a common practice. Increased productivity, a “greener” business approach, time and funds saved from a commute are just a few of the benefits. Still, as an employer there are some drawbacks to consider. Below are the top 3 fears of telecommuting and tips on how to overcome them.

Will Everyone Want to Telecommute?

It is important to remember that telecommuting is not the right fit for every employee. Positions that require constant supervision and collaboration are not ideal. However, independent positions that are results-oriented might make a good candidate for telecommuting. Another thing to consider: equipment. Someone who requires a photocopier, scanner and the latest software might not make for an ideal telecommute worker; however a job that simply requires a laptop and access to the internet could work. When making the decision to offer the telecommute option remember it will not apply to the entire company, decide first which jobs are the right fit.

Is Anybody Out There?

As an employer you might be hesitant to allow employees to work from home because of the potential communication gap. Luckily, instant messaging, emailing and texts can put you in direct contact with your virtual workers during normal business hours. Need the face-to-face? Skype is a great (and free) advancement that will allow you to look your employee in the eye while discussing upcoming and ongoing projects. Finally, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly trips to the office are a great way to reconnect and to allow your employee to still feel like he/she is a part of the office team.

How Can I Make This Work?

Before undergoing any telecommuting option it is most important to draw out expectations with your employee. Requiring your worker to send daily follow-up reports of productivity is a smart way to stay on the same page. Routine scheduled phone calls can keep the lines of communication open and objectives on track. By establishing clearly defined goals and checkpoints, you and your employee will be clear on what is expected to be produced in and outside of the cubicle.

Telecommuting is a viable option for the right company. If you feel like your business might be a candidate consider the benefits. Fewer interruptions make for a more productive employee, employee retention and job attractiveness are bound to increase, and temporary inter-office problems such as sickness or power outages are less of a problem for the at-home worker. By preparing for the possible downsides, employers can assess if telecommuting is a feasible option for their employees, creating a happier work environment both near and far.

Author’s Bio: Kelly Gregorio writes about relevant topics that affect small businesses while working at Merchant Resources International. You can follow her daily blog at http://www.cashprior.com/blog.

Image: Flickr creative commons – mccun934