AC Interpreting

Archive for the ‘Business Development’ Category

When you start thinking about making money online, there are a few things you should do first. Before you put a website on the Internet, before you add your name to the Facebook crowd, before you stop at MySpace, and long before you tip off the Twitter tweeters, these first few things must be completed.

Acquire a Personality -

You probably thought you were born with one. That one will do in the real world, but if you’re going to make money online, you need something different. You’ll need an identifying trademark that gives you an edge toward making money online.

Get some Head Shots -

Pictures online are a great benefit. You’ll want to post your picture, so get some good ones. Professional is better than non-professional. But… there are things you can do that will make those snaps work well. Get close in and personal. Take a photo that says something about you without revealing too much. (READ: NO NUDES)

Create a Professional Bio -

One or two paragraphs that describe who you are, what you want, and where you’re going with your business online should include enough personality to make you shine with or without a picture. The picture is whipped cream icing. Give your bio enough polish to attract your market to make you money online.

Take Stock of Experiences -

Note all your own personal experiences that would benefit your internet business. Write these down in resume fashion and focus your experiences on a sure fire marketing statement that will attract market. This can be done in Elevator Speech format with relative ease. Focus on the positive and keyword elements. You’ll need them both later to make a profit online.

File it -

Put it all on screen and print it into paper format, you’ll need some specific information to start marketing, it should be readily available – both in screen and print formats. You’ll want easy access often.

If you look around the internet marketing websites and businesses there are a lot of me-too or same-as ones. For example, there are lots of membership sites selling internet marketing tools and materials for a monthly fee. Whether you’re just starting or have some sort of business set up, think of innovative ways to take it which will make you unique or original.

1 Tell and show them how to do it. The usual procedure for a buyer of a product is to be left with it to get on as best they can. This is particularly so if they’ve bought resell rights to a product and accompanying website and so on. Develop this further by providing a course on setting it all up. An upsell could be taking them further with another course on developing their business beyond the basics.

2 Give access. Allow people access to you after they buy a product to talk about its use and on-going business development with it. This could be in addition to a written, audio and video course. This, of course, all adds to the price. But would you rather have people on your list who are keen and willing to pay for serious advice or those just looking for resell rights on cheaper products over and over again?

3 Be first. If you can develop a product or method of doing something before anyone else has, then you have the obvious advantage. You could look at something as simple as information. Ask what information you could give which is different. How you could give it. Where you could. Who to? When you would provide it. Or any combination of these. You might come up with a text product, software, a method of creating information and so on. It hasn’t got to be world shattering, just different from other products enough to stand out.

Microsoft’s newest program, WebsiteSpark, was made to give web developers access to extremely helpful resources and tools. Web masters and developers can purchase access to WebsiteSpark and its resources through various hosting partners or choose to host their own WebsiteSpark program.

What comes with a WebsiteSpark account?

Microsoft has designed this program for web designers and developers that have small to medium sized businesses. Users have access to Microsoft’s development tools, products for servers and other platform tools.

Specifically, users will receive the following with a WebsiteSpark account: (1) Visual Studio (Professional Edition), (2) Expression Web and Studio, (3) Windows Web Server 2008 and (4) SQL Server 2008 Web Edition. These are just a few of the main benefits of WebsiteSpark.

Who is eligible for the WebsiteSpark program?

Microsoft has formed eligibility requirements for the WebsiteSpark program. To qualify for the program you must show proof that you have a professional web development business. Your business can have no more than ten employees, including owners. These are the most important requirements for the program. Microsoft also requires users to reach various milestones within their first six months of the program.

What kind of support comes with the WebsiteSpark program?

Microsoft has made it obvious that they care about their WebsiteSpark users with the support structure they offer. Web development experts, trained in all WebsiteSpark resources, are available to users 24 hours per day and seven days per week. Microsoft has a team of engineers that provide training and support for the program through a variety of mediums, including seminars, web conferences and telephone support. Training videos and tutorials are offered by MSDN technical support group.

Is there a certain length of time you are required to participate in the program?

A company is only allowed to subscribe to the program for three years. At the end of each year the user must verify that they still have their web development business and the number of people employed by the business.

My reasons for suggesting that a leadership coach should be at the centre of every company’s business development programme have two foundations. First, the world is constantly evolving, in order to survive and prosper a business must be alive to the implications of that evolution and itself evolving in order to be in sync with that evolution. Second, people, and therefore leaders, are naturally resistant to change. We like to behave as we have always behaved because such behaviour feels safe and it comes easily to us.

Neither of these facts necessarily makes the case for the involvement of a leadership coach in the evolution of a business. They are simply background information. The case for involving a good leadership coach, and I do stress that quality, about which more in a moment, is important, is dependent on the understanding that a good leadership coach will be the catalyst for the evolution of the leaders of a business.

Why a leadership coach rather than a training programme?

To understand why a leadership coach is a better option for the development of corporate leaders than other training options it is necessary to understand how a good leadership coach operates in the business environment. A good leadership coach is there for the long haul. In other words the leadership coach does not turn up for a single training session and then leave, but he or she becomes involved with the activities of the business and the people being coached.

The coach is present constantly for an extended period of time during which he or she gets to know and understand the business and the challenges it faces. The coach also gets to know the people and how they are performing relative to those challenges. The leaders in the business already know a great deal about their business and the environment in which it operates, but they have often become habituated in the way they behave. A good leadership coach will help them to analyse their own behaviour and how it is impacting on the development of the business.

The great benefit comes when the coach spurs the leader to develop his or her own unique solution to the unique situation that the business faces. Because the leader has developed the solution, rather than adopted a solution bought off the shelf or from someone else, they take ownership of that solution and implement it with greater passion and commitment.

What makes a good leadership coach?

Obviously to achieve outcomes such as the one I have just described a leadership coach needs skills, talents and experience. Top of my list of what is required to be a good leadership coach is experience. The coach needs to have been directly involved in a wide variety of different business situations and been personally involved in finding solutions. Unless you have been there and done it you cannot hope to understand the pressures and imperatives of business situations that demand evolution.

Second of my list is talent. This is somewhat more difficult to define, but I would list the abilities to think creatively, to solve problems and to understand and empathise with people at a deep level. Finally there are a number of learned skills that are useful in coaching. Because evolution comes about as a result of changes in behaviour it is useful to have training in behaviour change techniques such as NLP.

Personally I do not regard training in how to be a coach as being of much value. I have personally attended a number of coach training seminars and completed a coach training course. What I learned on these courses were procedures. But my experience of coaching, gained over more than ten years working as a coach, is that every assignment starts with a blank sheet of paper, it is the coachee who is the agenda. The worst behaviour I can possibly adopt is to try to push the coachee up a pre-selected path. Success depends on our travelling the road that the subject needs to travel and very often the subject does not know what that road is when the journey starts.

If you feel the need to make changes in your company I would suggest contacting a number of coaches and arranging for them to talk with different members of your leadership team.

Now you can integrate the internet with a personal development business and create the life you always knew that you wanted to have. Most people who are involved with personal development are also looking for a ways to increase their income while working on themselves. Believe it or not you can actually have both. The internet personal development business is a huge $60 billion a year industry and anyone with a pulse and a desire to change their current circumstances can get in on this incredible opportunity that people have found out they can be do have anything they desire.

There are several internet personal development businesses wherever you look; however when you make the decision to become involved with one you want to make sure they provide the training that will be required to become successful. Liberty League International utilizes the expertise from some of the top income earners to provide the training and coaching that is required to have the success you are looking for. However before anyone can assist you to reaching success online or offline; you must know exactly what it is you desire.

Now if you decide you do not wish to pursue an internet personal development business; and just want to become a better you. The programs that the company has put together is wonderful for doing just that. It is a very easy program for anyone just beginning their personal development journey. It is written in language that is easy to understand and is easy to follow along with. The best part about the program is that the more you work on the program the better you become and it can help you achieve anything in your life. If you do decide to become an entrepreneur and pursue the internet personal development business; the more often you go through the program the better your business becomes. It is a great program for anyone who has bought a self help program and gave up; because they did not understand it for one reason or another.

In my opinion it is the best way to become involved with an internet personal development business. However if you are not ready to start a business of your own or have not desire to become an entrepreneur then the program itself is a great way to improve any area of your life. It will help you reach any goal that you set for yourself.

Remember only 4% of our society actually knows what they want out of life; everyone else is just living a life that they are given. You have an opportunity to begin today to pursue and create the life you truly desire. We were all meant to live an abundant life in all areas of our lives. This program will help you set any goal and reach it; as long as you are willing to put forth the effort.

I wish you all the success in the world. You can be do have anything you desire and do not listen to anyone who tells you different.

In the business of selling business opportunities you must understand the power of image. And then you must understand who the business opportunity buyer is and why he or she buys a business. It is no secret that the image a buyer perceives is perhaps the single most crucial aspect in the sale of any product. All advertising is geared to this simple truth, and every good sales representative instinctively recognizes and uses it to his or her best advantage. What appears to be is more important than what is; this is fact, especially in the sales arena.

It is the nature of the human spirit to identify with a winner, and nowhere is this noble characteristic more effectively exploited than by modern advertising. Thus we have actors and superstar athletes selling everything from after-shave lotion to ladies’ pantyhose, or the car rental people who are always “Number One!” The list of examples goes on and on. Very few living Americans are totally immune or oblivious to the pervasive efforts of professional image makers. A good example of the power of image is what has recently happened in the world of golf. A broken image has taken millions of dollars of endorsements and the public has openly questioned a celebrity’s character.

It is important to understand that what a business opportunity program conveys is more important to the selling of that package than its actual contents. Perhaps this may seem like an irresponsible statement, but it is a true one, and until you recognize it and accept it as reality you might as well not continue.

But you must also recognize this — I did not say that image was always more important than content — only in the selling. It is the nature of the marketplace, and the mechanics of selling, that cause a natural division of every business opportunity program into two separate but dependent aspects — image, and content. Image may make the sale, but content will make you rich.

Whatever you are selling, whether sophisticated or simple, brand new, or many years old, you must heed the same advice in the first stages of your packaging activities. Start building an appropriate image for yourself, your company and your product. The kind of business you are selling will help determine the directions you take in your initial decisions, but the thrust will always be the same: strive to give yourself an image as an expert, a heavyweight in the business. Understatement is typically a good way to do this, using the following steps.

Get An Office – If you are dealing with an industrial product, locate in a nice office in an industrial park. If your package is more sophisticated and likely to appeal to more experienced investors, open up in a financial area. In all cases, furnish your office as well as you can. Get Stationery and Business Cards – Obviously you will need a business address and phone number before you can get stationery or business cards printed, so it comes second on the list, but it is equally important. In the same way your office location and decor help make a statement about you, your stationery should complement your business. Just remember — elegant, not gaudy!

As I have stated before, no matter what your product is, you are in the business opportunity sales business. You should know that people buy business opportunities for different reasons than they buy personal products. As a packager you must appreciate these reasons and develop your package to appeal to them.

The traditional theory says this type of buyer is looking for a job. It is a way to put their money (sometimes their savings, or the proceeds from a windfall, or even the equity in real estate) to work while remaining independent.

In today’s market this is more likely than it was in the past. Tens of thousands of professionals and middle managers have been laid off, or forced into early retirement. These people, many in their fifties and early sixties, are simply not ready to “hang it up” and retire to a non productive life.

This group has years of business experience, and good skills to offer. And, in most cases, the only way they can sustain the level of income they have worked so hard to attain is — find their own business.

The possibilities of high income for little effort, the possibilities of owning their own company, and the seeming stability of a business other people have conducted successfully, all help to neutralize the element of risk involved for these people.

They comprise a hefty percentage of the market for mid-range business that are priced around $100,000. They make up as much as 60% to 70% at $50,000 to $75,000, and are close to 100% at $25,000 and below.

Business buyers are a strange mix of people, every bit as different from one another as people in general. They should never be prejudged, never believed until they actually produce cash (or their check clears), and never be refused a chance to hear your story in all its glory.

A few years ago I was conducting a national convention for a Fortune 500 company’s VAR organization. We held a cocktail hour the night before the meeting officially opened, and during my rounds through the room I had an eye opening experience. I met a VAR that evening that the conventional business establishment would not consider very sophisticated.

He was a likable guy, but at first meeting he came across as a “down-home,” good ole boy that probably worked at the local factory. Now don’t misinterpret me, and think that I merely wrote him off because he was a laid-back southerner. I believe that I’m a tad more knowledgeable than that. I’ve known my share of country boys who were some of the most sophisticated business people that I’ve ever met.

No, this guy was just not the type of person that impressed you at first glance. And, my first impressions were bolstered by some of my colleagues from the company who had known the man for almost twenty years. Even after years of running a successful, and highly profitable business, they still clung to “what appeared to be.”

In fact, if he were to apply today to become a Sales Associate for the company he currently represents, he would not meet the standards it has set for its current VAR program. The lucky fact of the matter (for both the VAR and the company) is that this man has been representing this company’s product line in his area for about fifteen years.

Well, we were talking one evening and I casually asked him how much business he expected to do that year. He looked over at me and grinned, and said, “Well, I’m not pushing things this year, but we’ll do just over a million in total sales.” I can tell you that with the profit margin he makes, the man is not hurting for money. Later I checked his story with the company records and he was telling the truth. Never prejudge a prospect!

To come back to the original point, business opportunity prospects become buyers for a number of reasons. There are still investors who buy a business strictly as an investment. These people have the business actively managed by someone else. In the past you could not always tell which investors were buying because they intended to make a profit, or because they needed a tax write-off. Today it’s all profit. The tax write-off is gone. So treat every prospect you meet as if he or she were going to be your number one Sales Associate.