|
|
Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! |  |
|
The Definitive Guide To Choosing The Right Home Based Business - Part 4 of 6
Written by: Jasper SilvisArticle Overview: Around the world, tens of millions of people each year search for a home based business opportunity that will either free them from a job they hate, allow them to retire early, give them more time to spend with their family, divert their poorly performing investment portfolio into a profit generating magnet, or all of the above. Just as there are vast differences of opinion, even amongst friends, there are vast differences in business opportunities. Before you start on your due diligence when hunting for that one home based business opportunity that is right for you, take a moment to understand some differences in business models, their expectations, their commission structure, your current resources, and your personality. The following is Part 4 in a series of six (6) characteristics for choosing the right home based business.
 |
Free Download - The Definitive Guide To Choosing The Right Home Based Business - Part 6 of 6 By Jasper Silvis |
The Definitive Guide To Choosing The Right Home Based Business - Part 4 of 6
Around the world, tens of millions of people each year search for a home based business opportunity that will either free them from a job they hate, allow them to retire early, give them more time to spend with their family, divert their poorly performing investment portfolio into a profit generating magnet, or all of the above. Just as there are vast differences of opinion, even amongst friends, there are vast differences in business opportunities. Before you start on your due diligence when hunting for that one home based business opportunity that is right for you, take a moment to understand some differences in business models, their expectations, their commission structure, your current resources, and your personality.
The definite guide to choosing the right home based business opportunity simply boils down to the questions you ask yourself before you start your search. Understanding your goals for success, and how your perceive a home based business to get you there, will have a profound impact on your decision making process. In fact, knowing what you need ahead of time will make the process go much more smoothly, allowing you to weed out unsatisfactory business opportunities rapidly.
Note: There are no specific businesses listed in this article so your use of this guide is not hindered by a constant sales pitch. If you would like to discuss specific ideas, please contact the author within the profile area where you read this article.
The following lists distinctive aspects of a home based business that you should consider:
1. Primary Prospecting Source: Internet, Phone, or Direct Mail
2. Prospect Application Process: Free, Paid, Non-Existent
3. Commission Structure: Up-Front and Residual
4. System: Organization, Support, Accessibility, and Content <-- This Article
5. Leveraging Time, Capital, and Experience
6. Marketing Style: Anonymous Sales vs. Personal Branding
4. System: Organization, Support, Accessibility, and Content
Marketing is the lifeblood of every business. And for the home based business entrepreneur, you are personally responsible for your marketing efforts. Depending on your experience level with marketing, the system a business opportunity provides may be the most critical of all the characteristics. Like the commission structure mentioned in the previous article within this guide, picking the business opportunity with then marketing system that best matches your personality will be a tremendous help to your success.
What is a system? What do I mean by that? When it comes to internet based businesses in particular, a system is known as the "back office". A system is a collection of marketing strategies, advertising tools, marketing education (audio, video, and text), forums, recorded calls & webinars, live call & webinar schedules, call scripts, access to branded direct mail media (postcards, business cards, letters, etc.), lead tracking, commission tracking, sales reports, and on and on and on. It is the hub to your business and should be accessed nearly everyday for training or status, especially in your first 6 months in business.
For someone who is completely new to both online and offline marketing, the system that appeals to you should be heavy in training material for marketing on a budget, more affectionately referred to as "guerrilla marketing". There should be archived training calls recorded, a checklist of daily and weekly tasks, motivational calls to action, video training, and access to live support. The system to a new member needs to be presented cleanly and organized with specific action steps for the first week so that something can get marked as accomplished, paving the way to a successful start to the home based business.
The intermediate and expert marketers need a back-office that tracks their advertisements, provides very detailed marketing strategies such as keyword development and relevancy, holds frequent leadership and mastermind calls, contains a ready-to-plug-in set of auto-responders, and provides an extensive member communication tool set including call scripts, email broadcasts, and forums. The expert marketer is spending a lot more money on advertising as compared to the newbie marketer who is focusing on free social marketing and personal branding strategies. Therefore, the expert marketer is more interested in lead and source tracking to manage costs, as well as strategies to reduce costs will increasing both prospects and conversion rates.
Here are some important yet subtle tips you should consider when reviewing the system of a home based business opportunity:
- The organization of the back office should be easily understood with clear separations between education and training, call and webinar recorded archives, lead management and tracking, resource tracking, member communication and scripts, commissions and payout, access to support, and general setup and maintenance of your account and profile. Trust your gut; if you are instantly confused, then the content within may be confusing as well. Look for simple layouts pleasing to the eye with lots of content and tools.
- The system should have a tiered approach to support. There should be an extensive FAQ (frequently asked questions), a group forum or frequent group call schedule, a question submission feature to general support, and contact to either a team of mentors or a specific coach.
- Look for an active community. An active community where leaders welcome and personally train newcomers is an incredible experience. If you prefer to be involved in such a team and a system, be sure to look for frequent (almost daily) team calls and webinars. Some business opportunities actually have daily general team calls, business overview calls, and specific marketing strategy calls. People willing to check their egos at the door and openly share their knowledge with other team members makes for a successful journey for the budding entrepreneur.
- If the business opportunity is self-branding, where the name of the company or branded celebrity personality is the focal point, then access to the back office from a "Member" or "Admin" or "Affiliate" login link is appropriate and actually preferred. However, if you are personally branding your business opportunity, then prospects who view your lead capture page may be turned off by seeing such a link as they will think of your business as "typical" and part of a non-caring conglomerate. What works best for businesses that thrive on their members' individual personal branding is a separate web site domain for the back office system access.
- There was a lot stated regarding content of the back office already, so I just want to stress the importance of utilizing mixed media. Different people have different personalities and prefer different means to educate themselves. Therefore, the training materials should be a combination of text, audio, video, slides, webinars, and so on. Look for variety not only in content but in delivery methods.
Few business opportunities allow you to view the back office system before joining the business. This is where an application process comes in handy, as discussed in the second part of this guide. When a prospect completes and application (free or paid) some businesses provide a "student" or guest account to view the back office in its entirety or at least a smaller version to give the applicant a better idea of what to expect as a member. This is a nice feature and another reason I prefer business opportunities with paid application filters.
The organization, support, accessibility, and content of a back office system can either turn a newbie marketer into an expert success, or it can turn a positive thinking entrepreneur into a desperate unorganized mess. If you are looking for a home based business that has a high up-front and high residual commission structure, then the importance of a fully functioning back office system can not be overstated. If the system cannot hold your hand and guide you to success, how can you expect your members to succeed? A great system does not guarantee a great business opportunity, but a great business opportunity always has a great system.
Related Articles
Top Home Based Business Ontario
What You Shouldn't Do When Opting To Work At Home With Online Business Solutions
Do Not Fall Into These Internet Home Based Business Myths
How To Find The Ideal Home-based Business For You
Ideas To Make A Home Based Income Online
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com
|
About the Author: Jasper Silvis RSS for Jasper's articles - Visit Jasper's website  Click here to visit Jasper's website   How Do I Develop Attainable Goals The 3 Steps to Building an Online Business on a Budget Life After Military Service You Really Want To Help The Poor Get Rich A Mentor Is Important But A Coach Is Invaluable |
Related Forum Posts
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women
4. Pitch Like A Girl
5. Workplace Warrior
6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer
7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery
8. She Wins, You Win
9. Napoleon On Project Management
10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do
11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years
12. The One Minute Millionaire
13. Talking From 9 to 5
14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions
15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success
16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded
17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful
18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business
22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker
23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business
24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises
25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy
26. The Promotable Woman
27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it
28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home
29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
Elevator Pitch in 10 Words
- "Winning Business Design For Aspiring Entrepreneurs Based On Their Idea"
Re: How do you budget your life?
- Here is my financial management categories for today:
15% Long Term Savings;
10% Home Expenses;
45% Business and Marketing charges;
10% Friends (Meeting);
20$ Scientific and Law Books.
But this will change when it is August or September.
Orxan
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Top 19 Copywriting books
- 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley.
2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner.
3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill.
4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin.
7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books.
9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association.
11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books.
12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books.
13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books.
16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books.
17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall.
18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop.
19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley.
This should keep you busy for at least a year.
Enjoy!
Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.
Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.
by: 
Lesson #3: “Tell ‘em quick and tell ‘em often”
Searching for the Stars: How Yang and Filo Took Their Business to New Heights
Salesperson Wimp-Out: I Need Help 
February 2012 Top 100 Leadership Experts to Follow on Twitter
Please Stop Calling it Coaching!
Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Work at Home Moms and Their Bad Rap?
3 Health Insurance Misconceptions
How Many Buckets Do You Need for Retirement?
Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.