July, 2013 | BizSieve.com

4 Small Business Risks and How to Reduce Them

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, there will always be risks involved. Whether you’re worried about financial struggles, safety issues, legal pitfalls, or simply the ability to stay afloat in changing markets, managing risk is part of being an entrepreneur. But how much risk is out there? And what do successful businesses do about it? The most important thing to know is that startups are more affected by risks than established companies, which is why 44 percent of small businesses don’t survive their first 5 years. The real strategy behind minimizing risk is to have a strong business plan from the very start. When business owners underestimate or fail to adequately research the potential for things to go wrong, they’re unprepared for both small and large crises. Here are 5 of the most common risks to almost every business and easy ways to make sure you can manage them.

Source:http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5186/5784440333_6a14905f9e.jpg

1. Lawsuits

It may seem like getting sued is more likely to happen to large corporations, but that’s actually far from the truth. Research by Bolt Insurance Agency states that nearly 60 percent of annual lawsuits are filed against businesses making less than $1 million annually. They say that over a third of small business owners has, at the very least, been threatened with legal action. There are many ways to reduce the chance of a lawsuit, including getting everything in writing and following through on customer complaints and feedback. But you may not always be able to avoid them, so finding further information on the right kind of insurance for your industry to protect against personal injury and property damage is essential. And professional liability insurance will pay your court costs whether you win or lose.

2. Overspending

It’s not uncommon for businesses to fall victim to the trap of trying to do too much too soon. Running through your capital too quickly is usually the fault of a bad business plan with too many large goals and not enough short-term ones, and where expenses may be underestimated. Estimating revenue, pricing your marketing strategy, and budgeting for staffing and operating expenses can be a tall order, which is why smart businesses hire great professionals. New companies sometimes think hiring an accountant or bookkeeper is extravagant, but it may be the most important decision you can make. You have enough to worry about with everything else that goes into running a business. Getting help for the complicated financial planning involved will actually save you a lot of money down the line.

3. Skipping Diversification

Most companies have a plan for growth, but not all companies have a plan to diversify. When your business expands, the range of products and services you are willing to offer your customers should expand with it, not only because your success will thrive off of new ideas, but also because the markets are constantly changing. Look at America’s most successful business, Apple. Now that the mobile phone industry is becoming more stagnant, where everyone has a cell phone and prices are quickly dropping, how do they stand out? They offer ipads, ipods, and other products that their competitors don’t offer, putting them at the forefront of expansion. You can take that simple idea and use it for almost any industry or size of business. You never know when prices will fall or a certain product will turn out to be a trend or lose public favor. That’s why it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket the second the can possibly avoid it.

4. Ignoring Warning Signs

Business requires a high level of proactive behavior from its founders, and no matter what kind of problem you are facing, acknowledging it will help you discover the root of where it came from. Often, businesses will gather customer feedback through surveys or other means, but they’ll ignore the negative responses. When your customers are complaining, listening to them matters. When your employees never last beyond a few months, you need to find out why. And when your sales numbers suddenly drop, it’s worth it to put the research into investigating it. Virtually no companies fail without ample warning signs, and if you can take the right action to solve minor crises before they become major ones, you just might ensure your business sticks around for the long haul.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward, isn’t that what they always say? In business, it can be much more complicated than that. Risk management should be a vital part of your business plan, and you should never more ahead with a company unless you have adequate insurance, accurate bookkeeping, and the right team on your side. There’s nothing you can’t face head on with the right preparation.

About the Author: Author Karen Boyarsky is an avid blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @Boyarsky_kareni.

From Arts To War Games, It is Time to Get Excited About Team Building!

What’s missing from team building today? Imagination! Don’t book your local sports hall and hire a load of gym mats or make chairs out of newspapers, do something exciting! Bring some thrill to your workplace and get the office enthusiasm kicked up a notch.

creative team building — photo credit: tim caynes via photopin cc

Adrenaline Pumping Extreme Sports

Give your team something to plan for and look forward to with a foray into extreme living. A sponsored event is a great way to get everyone in the office involved and invested and it’s a great way to raise money. Get a few enthusiastic go-getters together and send them off on a hike up a mountain or running a marathon, it’ll bring them together and anyone who doesn’t want to be involved can fundraise and sponsor. Give your staff an incentive: sponsor the athletes and all funds go towards that stylish new coffee machine in the staff room or a posh meal out for the whole team; alternatively, for the philanthropists among you, get everyone to vote for their favourite charities and send the money raised to a worthy cause.

Release Frustrations With War Games

Now we’re talking, they’ll be no groans in the office on team building Saturday if you’re taking them out for an afternoon of paintball! Pick their teams at random and get people mixing, the atmosphere gets very real very fast so they’ll have to start trusting each other and working as a unit to ‘survive’. Paintballing has always been popular and your team can let their individual skills shine, you’ll have strategists, defenders and people with a soldier’s spirit who will take the lead and bring their side to victory! At the end of the day get everyone together down at the pub for a wind down and a relax after a hard day in the trenches.

Having Fun And Keeping Costs Low

We all know it’s a recession but team building doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, gather everyone together in the boardroom and get them laughing and talking.

Little white lies: this is a great way to get everyone to know each other a little bit better. Have everyone in the office write down 2 interesting facts or stories about themselves and 1 lie, go around the room and have everyone read out their list of statements while the rest of the team votes on which one is the lie, the person who’s lie gets the fewest votes wins! Everyone learns a bit more about each other but do try to keep the statements office appropriate!

Minefield: give your team some time away from their desks for free. Place random objects around a field or car park, use: furniture, bags of rubbish, office plants, other employees, anything you can think of. The objects act as mines and your staff are put in pairs, put one in a blindfold and get their partner to direct them across the minefield without being blown up (it’s harder than it sounds).

Get Arty In The Office

For a unique team building experience that will stand the test of time have your team channel their inner Picasso. Get your team to express themselves by having them paint a group mural, you can split them into groups and have them each design a section or do it all together and once it’s done why not hang it in reception? Let your team de-stress and get messy! You can really find your own style, if you run a library why not paint Dickens? Or if you work in a city then get into some graffiti. Whatever your inspiration art is a great way to bring people together, whatever our differences we all appreciate the process of creating something. The beauty of it is everyone can get involved; whatever your age or ability no one is hindered and what you can do with art is limitless so you can really let your team run wild, you’ll learn more about each other, have fun together and create something you can enjoy every single day.

Team building should be something we look forward to, it should be like office Christmas, not something we dread. Do something special on your next team building excursion and do more than boost morale, make memories.

About the Author: This post was written by Emma Smith on behalf of Graffiti Pro’s, Graffiti artisis who want to bring some excitment back to team building!

Why Creating Your Own Corporate Training Videos Can Save Time And Money

Keeping your staff trained can be a very demanding thing. Whether it is a new piece of software you are rolling out or some new equipment, or training on a new policy, finding the resources to do it and then scheduling training for everyone who needs it can be a mammoth project. Even for a relatively small business, it will result in a costly lack of productivity while everybody sits through the training and picks up the new skills, and then of course there are the logistical demands of finding a place suitable to deliver it all.

If you have a training need in your company, there is often a lot to be gained by producing a training video instead of delivering training in the usual, classroom style way. Here are some of the benefits to making a video to fill your training gap:

You Can Outsource Production

Even if the training is very specific to your company, there is no reason why you can’t hire a video production company to make it for you. This means that you don’t need to tie up your own resources more than necessary to get the training done. You can meet with a production company, explain your requirements and review and approve the script using far less of your own people’s time than devising a classroom training course, sorting out the logistics and scheduling and having one of your own people deliver it. Professional video production may not be as expensive as you might think, and if you balance out the cost in terms of man hours saved you will find it to be very cost effective if your demands aren’t too complex.

You Can Let Staff View It However They Want To

Some people learn faster than others, and by making the video available and mandatory, you can let people watch it more than once if they don’t pick up on the details the first time. This makes things a lot less stressful for staff who find it hard to keep up in classroom training courses and worry they won’t come away with enough knowledge, and will make it less frustrating for fast learners or those already familiar with the content as they won’t be held back by others asking for things to be explained again.

No Logistical Issues!

Simply tell staff that they have to watch the video at least once within a certain time frame and let them fit it into their own working day, at their own desks! No finding times that suit different groups, no looking for suitable meeting rooms that are free, and no breaking up people’s flow of work and reducing productivity. If you are worried about verifying that everyone actually has watched the video, there are ways of checking this when it is posted on your intranet. You can even have someone in your web team create a quick quiz people have to fill out at the end to prove they have learned the salient points from the film.

Corporate video production for training can be a real time and money saver, and can also be more appealing to trainees, so next time you are faced with a training need, consider it as an alternative to a major program of classroom sessions!

About the Author: Phil Raymonds, an online marketing professional, prefers using the latest software and medium to get his ideas across. He is passionate about video photography and editing.

Investing In Public Relations Could Save You Money

Public relations (PR) is important for any business. Businesses are no longer completely separated from their consumers. They no longer just offer consumers a service. Nowadays, businesses have to build networks and personal connections with their consumers. PR is the interaction between your organisation and your target market. The interaction is achieved using online methods, the media, and direct communication. Competition between brands and businesses is extremely high (and getting higher), thus, it is always important to keep your brand a cut above the rest.

PR is important as it has a direct link to the amount of sales a business can make. Sales are largely determined by the number of satisfied customers. Thus, bad press can also be responsible for decreasing sales in many businesses. It is always important to keep an eye on how the public responds to your products, and that is why having a person responsible for PR is important, especially for growing businesses.

Relationships are important

Information spreads easily, so it is important to always make sure that the information being spread is vital and informative about your business. PR will ensure this happens.

The biggest public relations tool is word-of-mouth. When a consumer is satisfied with a service, they will tell a friend, their family, hairdresser, and anyone else who is willing to listen. Good service on its own is not enough, however. Consumers have to be made aware of your successful efforts; public relations officers take care of this.

If your business has a strong online presence, it is important to be consistent in your communication with your online users. For instance, if a customer lays a complaint online, it is best to have someone on stand-by to attend to them as quickly as possible. This helps build a strong relationship between the brand and the customer, and can be the difference between never having that customer again and having that person bring three more people with them the next time they visit you.

Because your PR department will also deal with the media, it is very important that they are consistent when submitting your promotional items to media professionals. This also fosters a good relationship with the media houses.

Making plans

A good PR consultant or department will have a PR strategy that plans a year ahead in terms of campaigns and activities. The strategy should outline the goals and objectives for the year, and show how they plan to keep people talking about your business. There should also be a focus on how the business aims to utilise social media to its own advantage.

Honesty is key

The relationship formed between customers and the businesses should be one of complete trust. The PR department should not be there just to cover up problems and represent the company in a good light. It should rather be there to put matters into perspective for current and potential clients.

New businesses

It is important for all businesses to have a PR department, but sometimes new and small businesses cannot afford the expense of hiring a professional. Doing your own PR maybe an option, but you will need to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to it. Make sure you interact with people on your social media accounts, and regularly update your accounts with interesting news, photos, and information that are industry specific. Contact relevant newspapers, magazines, and journalists, and start your own blog just to show your audience that you know what you are talking about.

The idea behind PR is to influence your consumers into buying into your brand. Good PR can help your brand shine above all others and bring you potentially loyal customers.

About the Author: Zimasa Mpemnyama is just starting out in the world of digital marketing and PR, but already she can see the important interplay between traditional PR strategies and modern techniques that use social media and other online forms of communication.

Why Your Promotional Flyer Is Going Straight In The Bin – And What You Can Do About It

You have spent a lot of money on a promotional flyer to advertise your business, you have printed it on good quality paper and you have paid a distributor to hand them out all over your city. Unfortunately, as soon as your flyer is pushed through the mail slot of 99% of doors, it will be headed straight to the rubbish bin or recycling box. All of your hard work has gone to waste to create something that will probably only used by your customers to line the bottom of their birdcages.

Why are your promotional flyers destined for the bin? Is there anything you can do about it?

Take a Close Look at Your Flyers – Are They the Best They Can Be?

Take a look at the flyers that you have been distributing and ask yourself whether you can really blame your customers for throwing them away without a second thought. Do they stand out from all of the other advertisements, or are they boring and ordinary? It can be difficult to look at your flyers objectively because you are emotionally invested in your business, but try to look at them from the perspective of someone who has never heard of your company or what you do. Would the flyer pique their interest?

Unfortunately when you are distributing flyers for your business you will have a lot of other promotional mail to compete with. Unless your flyer has a great offer or is very interesting and eye-catching, you can’t really blame most people for recycling it with the pile of other junk mail.

Tips for Improving Your Flyers

The good news is that there are a number of ways you can improve your flyers and make it more likely that your customers will pay attention to them and save them. Here are a few tips to apply to your flyers to help them avoid a one-way trip to the rubbish bin.

Make the largest text eye catching. The headline or the largest text on the page should be something that makes the reader look twice. Too many flyers simply state the name of the company, which won’t catch the customer’s interest.
Use a large and impactful font for this big headline, which will make it more readable and make it stand out in a pile of papers from across the room.
Most of the time, people look at images first and then read text. Use an interesting main graphic or a vibrant colour image to grab the attention of the reader. Make sure that it is obvious how the image is related to the text.
Follow up the headline with strong and simple points that outline what you have to offer. Focus on the benefit of your product or service for the customer… what’s in it for them?
Avoid too much text. People will get bored reading the flyer and you will lose their interest.
Include a call to action at the end. Perhaps you want them to visit your website and sign up, or request a free report, or order a free trial. A leaflet or a flyer with no call to action is a wasted opportunity.
Take a random sampling of all of the other common flyers that come through your door. Does your flyer look like every other one? Think about how you can make it stand out, such as using an unusual colour or printing it on a shiny or textured surface.

These are just a few of the main ways that you can make it less likely that your promotional flyer will end up going straight in the bin and instead be read by your potential customers.

About the Author: Paula Whately is a blogger and entrepreneur in London who recently had a new flyer designed for her business. With the new design in flyer distribution, London customers were calling her at a much higher rate than usual.