Being All Things to All People

You cannot expect a business plan to appeal to every possible audience. With this in mind, try to pick one business model, and to focus on one industry or one problem. Otherwise, you risk spreading yourself too thin, and potentially creating a sprawling plan that makes a bad first impression.

Being Boring

If a potential client gets two pages into your plan and is bored, that’s a terrible sign. It is important to have the reader interested right from the executive summary on the very first page. And don’t neglect your cover page: a well-designed logo never hurts.

Measuring the Size of the Market Too Optimistically

Although it may seem impressive if you project vast markets and the potential for huge sums of revenue, outsize financial estimates often appear gimmicky to investors. Worse, big numbers often make you sound as if you don’t know what you’re doing or how hard it will be to penetrate your target market. Don’t make big promises unless you’re absolutely sure you can keep them.

Lacking the Confidence to Sell Your Product

In an effort to portray confidence, too many business plans ignore the competition that a new business will face. Doing so betrays a lack of sophistication. Few if any ideas face zero competition. Even if your concept is completely original, you should take into account forces that compete with your product or service, including different solutions to a problem, different ways that customers might choose to spend their money, and inertia in the marketplace.

Repeating Yourself Too Much

Avoid repeating a few catchphrases and a few simple ideas in ten different formulations. Nobody wants to hear the same thing over and over again. Be sure to keep your plan’s fundamental message consistent throughout, but employ creative language and appealing imagery to flesh out your ideas.

Using Too Much Jargon

Remember that not everyone in business is familiar with cross-industry lingo. If you have a background in a specific industry – this is especially true in science and engineering – try to use simple, specific, and concrete phrases to describe your business. Rely on general terms that most everybody will understand.

Not Being Consistent

Eliminate contradictions. Make sure that the information in your plan is consistent — that, for example, a financial chart deep within the plan does not undermine a fact used in an earlier section. Make absolutely certain that every fact about your industry, the market, and key competitors is accurate and readily verifiable.

Failing to Incorporate Feedback

Presenting a business plan about which you have not received feedback is an easy amateur mistake to make. Remember: Presenting to a top investor a draft business plan that contains silly errors or gaps in logic is worse than presenting no plan at all. Try reaching out to a few friendly contacts who have vetted business plans in the past before you begin to share it with qualified potential investors. However….

Taking Too Many Perspectives Into Account

…Do not go so overboard in anticipating lines of questioning or identifying possible flaws in your thinking that a reader will have a hard time following the narrative thread. Make sure you address some likely investor objections, but balance the desire to be clear-eyed with the overall objective, which is to make a persuasive pitch.

The CORNERSTONE to every successful business venture is an active business plan.

It’s not a document that you prepare as a formality and file away in a drawer. It is the very essence of who you are, how you roll, and what you expect to see as the result of your efforts.

Your company was born from a dream. If you’ve been in business a while and your inspiration has dissipated or become dull, you may find that your dream has been intercepted by the realities of building and running the business.

Dig out your old business plan (or download the Better Alliance™ FREE BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE and build one), and you will notice that the first part of an active business plan is a section dedicated entirely to your VISION (another word for dream).

Dreams and Visions are obscure, surreal, and metamorphic. They cannot be shared concisely between people, but the essence can be transmitted as seeds to other minds. These right-brain collaborations provide creative energy and passion to our efforts, and add definition, security, and individualization to a business model.

Public business plans are a growing trend as consumers demand higher levels of performance from their discretionary spending. People prefer to do business with companies that shares their beliefs, and the business plan is an excellent way to communicate core values to the the public. Once you have your plan in shape, post it at publicbusinessplans.com and link it to your company website.

ACTION: Basic Steps to Build and Maintain an Active Business Plan

1. Record my Vision
2. Develop my Mission
3. Identify my Products and Services
4. Establish Market Applications for these products and services
5. Identify the Competition
6. Financial Analysis (Profit and Loss scenarios)
7. Establish pricing
8. Form/reform the organization (employees, overhead, etc.)
9. Record the business plan
10. Grow the organization according to the plan
11. Change the plan as necessary/desired.

Contact us today for information and materials that can be used to construct a concise, professional business plan, including strategic marketing, and in-depth financial analysis tools.

written by: Todd Bowser ~ Better Alliance™

Sometimes just the thought of putting the right words together is enough to trigger endless procrastination.

If you can relate to this struggle, then try using these 7 steps the next time you sit down to write a marketing piece:

Step #1: Determine what your prospects want. Use tools such as Ask.com, Wordtracker Keyword Question Tool and Amazon to determine your target audience’s needs. These resources will help you get an idea of your prospects’ most pressing questions.

Step #2: Write your headline. All marketing pieces need headlines. This essential component introduces prospects to your content and gives them a reason to continue reading. Once you figure out your prospects’ needs, address them in your headline. If you’re having trouble writing your headline, try following the words “How to” with one or two big benefits (e.g., How to Write Powerful Headlines That Attract Prospects and Get Them to Take Action).

Step #3: Express empathy. Your content must demonstrate you understand your prospects’ feelings and desires. This single step goes a long way in developing rapport with your readers. One of the easiest ways to write empathy into your marketing piece is by telling a story your prospects can relate to. Other options include admitting a fault/mistake or targeting a common enemy.

Step #4: Provide value. Humans are naturally self-centered and really only care about themselves. Use this characteristic to your advantage by giving your prospects valuable information (related to the needs you discovered in Step #1) they won’t find anywhere else. Your content should deliver value before you attempt a sale.

Step #5: Offer social proof. When you incorporate proof elements such as statistics, success stories, testimonials and guarantees, you validate to your prospects that your product or service can properly address their concerns. You also tap into your prospects’ tendencies to react in a similar manner to people who are just like them.

Step #6: Include a call to action. You should never assume your prospects know what to do next. That’s why it’s crucial you always give them a direct command and then explain what occurs after your prospects take that action.

Step #7: Communicate more than your competition. Don’t limit the length of your marketing piece or the frequency in which you contact your target audience. Give yourself enough space to properly provide value, explain your offer and state your call to action. True prospects will devour everything you write because they crave knowledge that addresses their needs.

Credit to Tom Trush blog at Writeway Solutions

When you properly execute a birthday greeting to a loved-one, the card arrives on time or a bit early in anticipation of the event. You achieved this by planning and executing a task from a position of knowledge, and in this case – care. Let’s break it down:

1. Knowledge: Birth date
2. Planning: Purchased card in advance
3. Execution: Sent card on time
4. Care: If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have made it to step #2.

If you don’t care, all the knowledge in the world won’t do you any good!

Care is genuine. It is a force that drives us from beneath our egos. You can act or pretend like you care, but if you don’t really care, your performance will be acutely diminished. This is a leading cause of failure for many in all industries, and certainly a cause of poor performance in sales departments across the globe. People simply don’t care about what they are doing because they are on their current path for financial motives. Are you in your current position because of the paycheck, or because you are getting something more…something more important from your work?

I can’t count the number of times I have dialed the phone and had a meaningful conversation with the person at the other end. I listen and I take some notes. I put myself in their position and think about what I can do to help them. Sometimes it’s provide a product or service, other times to give advice, or simply listen and plan a follow up call. I’m fine with any result. I don’t try to convert every call into dollars, but seek to provide value in any way possible. In the first instance, I stand to make some money and provide value in the product provided. In the second, I am enhancing my value to the customer by giving them free information. In the third, I am enhancing my value by showing that I am listening. The more they talk, the more I learn about their needs and personality so that I can develop a better relationship…a Better Alliance with the customer.

When I pick up the phone to dial a number. I know who I am calling, and why. The call was scheduled for today based on something I learned during the last conversation. I don’t hunt through my database for reasons to call people because my schedule is full of them. They were scheduled intuitively, and are rich with purpose, and bring fantastic results.

Cloud computing is simply resources or applications that are delivered over the Internet and accessible from any Internet connected device.

You’re closer to the cloud than you think…

…Think of all the information in your desktop computer or office server: software, applications, spreadsheets, even customer information. The cloud allows secure access to all your applications from any network device. All you need is a Web-enabled device and an Internet connection and your employees can stay productive even if they are away from the office.

Benefits for your business:

• Cost reduction. Software as a Solution, or SaaS, is possible through the cloud. So for example, instead of licensing a word processing program for each one of your employees, you can rent or subscribe to a word processing program as needed, resulting in substantial monetary savings.
• Scalability. SaaS also allows you to scale up or down depending upon workflow and business needs without purchasing expensive programs or hardware. Software on demand. SaaS is becoming more and more accepted as a delivery model for most applications that could benefit a business: accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), email management, human resource management (HRM) and more.
• Always current. Cloud-based applications and services available through the cloud are delivered in real-time. So you always have access to the most up-to-date information.
• Less maintenance time. Services delivered over the Internet often do not require manual updates but are instead updated constantly.
• Remote access. Your employees can access cloud-based programs wherever they are – even outside the office.

Contact Better Alliance today to learn more about how to improve your business by joining us in the cloud! (706-782-5522)

BatchBook

BatchBook comes with features like a shared company address book, custom data management by using tags, communication history, lists and reports, and more. A few features that can be especially useful for freelancers are the integration with social media (view blog posts, photos, and tweets of your contacts) and integration with FreshBooks, Google Contacts, MailChimp and more. It also offers customizable web forms that can be used on your website to send data directly to BatchBook. There are several different plans to choose from, with single-user plan available for $9.95 per month. There is also a free plan available with fewer features.

Highrise

Highrise from 37signals is a popular choice for CRM. It includes features like importing and exporting with Outlook and Excel, history of conversations with your contacts, instant reminders via email or text, and integration with email (forward or BCC your emails into Highrise). There are a number of different plans available. The price for the Solo plan is $29 per month, with a limited free plan also available.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM offers features like a plugin for Outlook, tracking of email correspondence with customers, sales and marketing campaigns/reports, and more. There is a free version available for single users that includes most of the features of the professional edition, which costs $12/month/user.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a full-featured CRM that offers a few different plans to choose from. The bigger plans are much more than most freelancers would need, but the group plan ($9/month/user) offers contact management functionality, as well as tracking of leads, and integration with Gmail, Outlook and Lotus Notes.

Big Contacts

Big Contacts includes features like an address book for all of your contacts, a calendar to track your meetings and events, file storage, custom reports, a detailed search, and more. An iPhone app is also available. When paid annually, the price is $14.95/month/user. There is also a 30-day free trial available.

Work etc.

Work etc. includes CRM, project management, time tracking and invoicing components. The CRM features include the ability to capture lead data through web forms, customer support requests, actioning a billable item and invoicing the customer, and more. Work etc. can be used by larger businesses, and as a result some of the features will not be relevant to freelancers. The single-user plan is available for $29.95 per month and includes all software, not just CRM.

Plaxo

Plaxo is kind of a combination of social networking and CRM. The site allows you to create a profile and connect with other users (free), plus it offers a toolbar that helps to keep contact information up-to-date from the members of your network (a premium feature for $59.95 per year).

Xobni

Xobni offers a free plugin for Outlook that adds additional CRM features, including enhanced search, online integration with sites like LinkedIn, threaded conversations/emails, and management of attachments. Xobni Plus is also available for $29.95 and includes advanced filters, integration with appointments and tasks from the calendar, and more.

Mac Address Book

For Mac users, Address Book can be a free and simple way to keep track of your contacts. You can store pertinent information and you can email, chat, or visit someone’s website directly from an Address Book card.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a commercial open-source option. The Sugar Express plan costs $9/month/user and the Sugar Professional plan is $30/month/user. The express plan includes basic CRM features, a plugin for Outlook, as well as the use of modules and custom fields for tracking data.

Splendid CRM

Splendid CRM offers account relationships, customer management, project management, lead tracking, and more. There are a few different plans to choose from, starting with the Community Live plan for $10/month/user.

vtiger

vtiger is a free open-source CRM that includes features for lead and contact management, trouble tickets, invoices, calendars and to-do lists, reporting and more. Plugins are available for Outlook and Thunderbird.

(UPDATE: additional option suggested by readers)

Daylite

Daylite is a full productivity suite from MarketCircle for the Mac. It includes features like project collaboration, shared, calendars, task delegation, and more. A single-user license costs $189, or you can pay $29 per month for a pay-as-you-go plan.

What’s Your Experience?

What tools and resources do you use for CRM? Do you have any recommendations that you would like to share with readers?

Examples of internal events would be an increase in funding for a special project or a change in management. External events might be a stock market crash, natural disaster, or change in regulatory requirements.

The key to leveraging triggered events:

1. have a strong working knowledge of your client’s interests
2. pursue relevant information
3. correlate impacts
4. create solutions that involve your products or services
5. timely promotion of the proposal.

Summary

Successful management of your leads, prospects, and customers will generate opportunity – particularly if your approach is relevant to the current needs of the organization.

Knowing when to act requires knowledge of the active needs of your prospects/clients. This knowledge can only be acquired by studious effort and investment of time on your part. The time you spend focusing on your clients is well spent – an investment of value in the future of the relationship.

Successful organization of this high-level involvement requires efficient utilization of a properly-fitted Contact Manager (CRM). Better Alliance specializes in fitting Contact Managers to small and medium-sized businesses. Call 706-782-5522 today for more information!

Whether you are employee or employer, you should have a vision for the future of your work. Being able to see yourself in the future is one of the most powerful forces of change available to a person. If the vision is anchored with purpose, it will begin to shape your decisions even without your awareness. You will be driven by an invisible energy and will gradually evolve into your vision.

Visual ideas usually require deliberate effort. Some people form images early in life and hold to them, while others see nothing at all. Most of us do a bit of dream hopping–and if we don’t get ambushed by negativity, eventually mature into a path that is compatible with our nature.

Rather than accepting a random destiny I would suggest building a long term vision for your life…and a great way to start is by building a mission statement related to your purpose and your work.

Discovering our Purpose

A wooden spoon makes a pretty good bat if you’re playing paper wad baseball in the kitchen. It’s also a handy disciplinary tool. But the spoon was created for a different purpose. If the spoon had human characteristics, it would probably feel most effective stirring a rich homemade spaghetti sauce, or tossing onions around in a skillet; it would probably sense that the occasional baseball game was a less important role than assisting with culinary creations.

By now we know, but are perhaps unaware of the specific talents we possess. Confused by a performance-driven perspective, we are encouraged to re-tool our self image to match what the world expects of us – or to reflect what we hope to prove to the world. Our innate characteristics and childhood aspirations are dulled and hidden away to provide a person more presentable to the demands of our society.

Go back to simpler times and create a pleasant vision without regard to financial motivations – if your vision is financially motivated, its power will be usurped by the overriding requirement for funding. Don’t worry about money. When your purpose and vision are in agreement, you will have all you need to succeed!

A Note About Work

Our culture has trained us to treat work and life as separate entities: Work is an obligation that we must perform until age sixty two (or whatever age the government determines as the official retirement age), and then we can retire and live the way we choose until we die.

In reality, work is a part of every day life. There is no end to it. Therefore, don’t delay living until you no longer have to work, because the two go hand in hand! Some love hard work while others prefer light duty, but everyone is coded for a task, and it won’t expire when you turn sixty two. Seek employment that is compatible with your traits(talents), and you’ll be headed in the right direction.

Building Your Mission Statement

A mission statement is a brief statement of your goals and a set of rules that will help you achieve them. It should be as simple or as complex as needed, and be adapted over time to drive you toward the evolving vision you have for your life. Though not necessary, I believe the most powerful mission statements incorporate both work and leisure in the same package.

Here are a few Examples:

• To apply myself in this job to the best of my ability for the purpose of affirming good working habits and for developing skills that will lead me to better opportunities in the future.
• To pay more attention to the needs of my children so that I will be able to instill a sense of compassion and have a better opportunity to affect their behavior in a positive way.
• To build respect in the organization by completely dedicating my energies to the current project, and improve my chances of becoming partner in the near future.
• To develop sailing skills and relationships through working as a deckhand on day cruises in my spare time, eventually obtaining a permanent position on a sailing yacht in the Mediterranean.

Sometimes a mission statement can be a concise list of values, defined in your own words. Read through Benjamin Franklin’s list of values and definitions to see if they spark any ideas for your own mission statement.

Summary

If you don’t plan your life…you’ll end up somewhere. Take a few moments to write down your dream. Then build your Mission Statement, update it regularly, and watch the road to discovery unfold before your eyes.

The first thing that comes to mind is “I don’t want to mix business and pleasure.” Rightly so – it’s a turn off when someone barges into my down time and tries to work me over, so why would I want to do that to someone else? I could, however, gather clues about ways to make an impression on them in the future, which could lead to some new business.

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care

Gathering information is easy because people enjoy talking about themselves. It has been said that ‘the sweetest sound to any ear is the sound of one’s own name’. Dale Carnegie wrote about how using someone’s name puts you solidly on track to establishing a sincere relationship with that person*. Listen when others speak and call them by name. Focus on what they have to say and keep them talking! By showing interest, you make them feel good and lodge emotional brownie points deep in their subconscious that mean more than any data you could transmit to them about your business. AND, you uncover reasons to contact them in the future!

Mentally review the conversation and schedule follow up activities in your CRM immediately (I like to use the recorder on my phone and transcribe later). How impressed will your client be when they receive the card and gift for their daughter’s college graduation in the mail?!

Decisions are made at emotional, not logical levels

People will be more inclined to think about you if they care about you, and they will care about you if they know you care about them. Take your sphere of influence into account. We run to them for help because we know (or at least believe) that these are the people that already care about us. Our brains steer us in the direction of comfort…and I bet the people you approach first are the ones that you believe care the most about you. (We always hurt the ones we love:)

The point is, somewhere just below our awareness we are keeping track of relationship value. If we are focused upon ourselves, we will run through all of the value very quickly…but if we seek to serve others, we will build a never ending supply of customers and friends.

Warning signs:

Forgetting someone’s name moments after you are introduced – a sign that you care more about being heard than about knowing the other person. (Forgetting it later indicates something different:)

Feeling that your market is too small or limited – you are focused too much on yourself. We know plenty of people who can benefit from our knowledge, and by pursuing those opportunities, our needs will be fulfilled.

Summary:

We are born selfish. It’s a fundamental instinct necessary for survival. In order to truly succeed in anything, we have to learn to care for others. The first step is to listen, then to act on things that are learned in those conversations. Over the course of time, our success will be revealed through a servant focus, for there is never a shortage of need and no act more appealing to our soul than taking time to help a neighbor.

LISTEN — WRITE IT DOWN — FOLLOW UP!

Take a look around your home. Just about everything you see is there because you (and/or your partner) decided upon it. Your life and your posessions reflect your deep desires and also that which you desire to avoid. Therefore, your physical world is shaped by the desires (power) of your mind.

Our Choices Define Us
I choose to get up early in the morning because I have learned the early hours are the most productive for me. My evenings are less hampered with empty pursuits because I am tired by ten o’clock and seek the bed. I used to stay up late watching television, but have learned that doing so eliminates the valuable early morning hours - so I make the choice. It becomes a habit and my life changes for the better. Out of that choice come many others…”What will I do with the extra income that I earn through my increased productivity?” (is perhaps my favorite.)

Choices are output. They are the result of internal analysis. As such, we can use them to better understand who we are. If we look back at choices we have made and listen to our intuition we may be inclined to change. If we just plod along in self-justification we are likely to continue on our current path – wherever it may lead.

Who I am
“Do I make choices because of who I am or am I who I am because of the choices I make?”

I say it’s both!

The urban sprawl of Atlanta is a great example of how a lack of vision will encourage what I call “leap-frog” development. It goes something like this:

People move a little further away from the city to find space and privacy. Developers build stores and offices because there are people out there who will become customers and tenants. More people move out into the “new community” because it’s new and peaceful. The new community gets crowded so people move a little further away…and the cycle repeats itself in every direction.

Wherever there is lacking vision, unplanned decision-making will create a haphazard environment that often accentuates our weaknesses. Therefore, the greatest way to control your own personal growth is to have a vision of who you desire to be…and to make important decisions with that vision in mind.

“Winds of Change”
Change is a hard word. The brain naturally resists the word because it suggests abandoning the known for the unknown, and interprets that as danger. Thus, our instincts become an obstacle to our progress. Yet change is occurring in us at every moment! Knowing this, we can train our brain to embrace change, and seek choices that inspire growth in a positive direction.

Here’s how to get started:

• Be grateful for everything you have (this is the cornerstone of positive change.)
• Develop a vision for your life
• Write down your vision and carry it with you in your wallet or purse
• Focus and meditate, even fantasize about your vision every day
• Let go of things that interfere with the vision
• Make “revisions” when necessary

The Money Problem
As a society, we have become dependent upon money for our survival. It is our only medium of exchange. We are deeply aware of its importance and often become confused as we seek it out as security – even though there is actually little security in it.

Money is a commodity that cannot be created by our will, but contains “rules of acquisition” that exert powerful forces upon us - requiring a certain performance, luck, and even moral sacrifice. It is however, supplied in exchange for goods and services rendered and let’s assume for our purposes that any vision you create will automatically provide adequate funding, as so much of our thinking is always penetrated by the need for it.

I say this to warn the reader to avoid including money as an object of the vision, for if our desire is to find our true center through forming our vision of the future, money can only bring a sense of fear and distraction. “Trust your heart - your mind will follow, and providence be your reward.”

Break the cycle,
“Things are the way they are because of the way things have been. If you want tomorrow to look different than today, you have to change today!”

You have the ability to control your future, but you must build a picture of what you want your future to be, for your mind will naturally drive you toward your inner desires - whatever they may be.

This is the true power of Psycho-Kinetics!