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17 Ideas You Can Steal to Grow Your Business Without Spending Money.

Written by: Liz Walker

Article Overview: In this article we're sharing what we call “ideas to steal”. They are all real-life ideas from successful businesses — action steps you can pick up and run with right away, without having to research, test or otherwise delay implementing. And, you don't need to spend money to do them.

17 Ideas You Can Steal to Grow Your Business Without Spending Money.

Pick three that you can sink your teeth into, and don't hesitate to contact us if you want more information or help implementing them — these days we all have to work together.

• Bill faster. Your receivables can count for 40 – 50% of your actual assets. Don't batch invoice: bill as soon as you can.

• Simplify your business. Weed out the unprofitable and the hard-to-sell.

• Simplify your marketing message. Read Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

• Get your business and your web site listed in relevant directories. To find directories, Google the name of your town plus “directories url” (e.g. “cobourg directories url”).

• Learn to delegate. Figure out what you do that turns dollars. Then delegate the rest.

• Encourage employees to explore more efficient approaches to their tasks instead of relying on their standard way of doing things.

• Don’t forget suppliers. They might not be on your payroll, but they are more apt to do a few things for you at no charge because you really take care of them.

• Work faster. If you can condense three four-month jobs into three three-month jobs, you can do one more job in the year.

• Reward your team for meeting budgets and time lines. A 5% bonus is cheaper than a 20% increase in costs.

• Cut overhead by automating most of the non-producing items like accounting, customer care, voice mail, sales reporting, ordering and record keeping.

• Make sure you’ve clearly outlined project scope, and don’t be afraid to charge your customer for changes.

• Offer to be a spokesperson on your specialty when your local media need an expert opinion. Send them a relevant press release every month.

• Give something valuable away on your web site; at your front counter; when you send out your invoices; when you deliver goods. This should be free to you, but valuable to the recipient, for example, coupons or a “How To”.

• Highlight offers, features, promotions and news in your email footers, invoices and letter signatures.

• Start accounts with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and post articles.

• Go where your audience is on the web. If your potential audience hangs out on forums, then post to those forums. Become a trusted advisor.

• Get your supporters to refer you.

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Article Tags: assets, budgets, coupons, customer care, google, invoices, local media, mail sales, payroll, press release, project scope, promotions, receivables, recipient, relevant directories, signatures, spokesperson, time lines, voice mail, weed
Referred by: http://www.makingprofitspour.com



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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.
Re: Which would you start: a Blog or Online Community? - It is a difficult decision to make. Lets start it this way - What are you more interested in? Money? or Friends? or Both? If its purely Money, then Blog might be an appropriate answer. But consider this - It will be people (visitors) that will bring traffic to your blog and then Money will follow. This will be possible after a time and during this time it will be your friends who will be the starters. If you are looking for friends only, then its true that not many will be interested in knowing how you have beaten them in the game or the other way round. So it will be preferable to have a Forum where they can share ideas with you and others. But you can share your insider knowledge with them and invite comments from your Blog. You can also put up information on what others (including your friends) don't know about Tennis. The blog you create can provide News, Inside Information and also Techniques that can be used by the new entrants in the world of Tennis.
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!
Making Money in 2011 - Hello forum members! As we draw closer to the new year I thought it would be appropriate to change the title of our forum category "Making Money in 2010" to "Making Money in 2011" - I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions and wish everyone a prosperous New Year!
QuickBooks vs. Microsoft Money vs....? - I have always used Microsoft Money to run my business - accounting, invoicing, etc. It came with my computer when I got it and integrated well with my online banking system so everything is a breeze. It only takes 30-60 minutes every quarter to do the bookkeeping (keep in mind that I have a very simple business - no inventory, very little invoicing, I do all my payments by credit card, etc). Is QuickBooks or Money the best accounting tool for small business owners? Or is there something even better?


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