Business Loan Option Blog

Having an active online presence can help drive traffic to your website, but how do you get it to drive actual feet to your door? Business owners should look at integrating their offline activities with their online social media activities, to create buzz before an event, help non-profits attract volunteers, or to direct customers to storefront businesses that rely on foot traffic to make most of their money. It’s not as hard as it sounds, as people are using the Internet like a directory or online phone book these days. You can even just piggy back ride on someone else’s event and save the cost of getting merchant funding to host the event. The key is to start with a particular strategy in mind, and develop useful techniques that will make people want to look up your business and visit you in person, when they’re in town.

Create Online Events To Advertise Offline Events

Are you holding a special event at your place of business, like a wine tasting, or an educational series of speakers? There’s no reason you can’t advertise this online on Facebook and Twitter, long before the event actually takes place. The nice thing about setting up a registration area online in Facebook, is that you can get a good idea of the number of people who might be attending your event, especially if you offer a link to an area where they can get a discount  for registering early. People will be more likely to register ahead of time, if they know they’re getting a discount and/or a freebie, rather than wait until the last minute.

Create An Event Sales Page

You’re selling the event, rather than a produce or service, but it should have it’s own designated sales page, just as if it were a product. This way, you can link to it in all your social networking sites, and people can view promotional details related to the event in areas where a full description may be limited, like Twitter. Include SEO keywords and make sure event place is listed, so that the search engines catch it when people search for it in your local area.

Even if you’re a non-profit, the event should be listed on it’s own separate page, as well as included within newsletters and email campaigns. Events are the perfect time to generate interest in new memberships, but if the only people who are notified are already on your emailing list, what’s the probability of that occurring. Having a separate page that you can publicize outside your membership will help you to get more people interested and showing up.

Start The Ball Rolling

The more people that attend, the more likely others will attend. It’s always good to publicize the number of people registered, especially if you already know many who are already coming. On Facebook, it will give a count of how many people are attending and how many may be attending. Try to get your friends to register there, and share the link with the friends on their lists too.

To Get Customers In Your Doors

Offer special limited time coupons for people wanting to visit your restaurant, or other offline business. Let them print it off your website, and bring it in to get credit. You can do that for any number of promotional items you want to give away too, to bring customers to your door. If you’re an office supply store for instance, you might want to give away some free office supplies for purchases over $50 or more. It’s up to you and your ingenuity to figure out what offer you can make online that will lead people to investigate you more.

Advertise On Third Party Sites

If you’re offering vacation rentals, you want to look at other regional areas to advertise, not just locally. Partner with other tourist or travel sites to give package deals that will entice their customers to visit you too. Where are your customers most likely to congregate online? That’s where you should advertise your events and specials, even if they’re not local. Partner with other big companies or non-profits that you don’t directly compete against to provide something for free at their events, and put your URL on it. If you want to get even wider attention, sponsor a local charitable event and then publicize your online presence there. This way, you don’t have to organize the event or even keep track of publicizing it. The third party non-profit does it all, and you just are there to show your support and gain some publicity for your own local offerings.

The recession may make it fashionably to count your trials, but it won’t help your business. Adopting a positive attitude is key to any entrepreneurs success, and whether you’re just starting out or simply struggling with challenging economic conditions, it pays to put on your happy face. This doesn’t mean you have to deny reality, like refusing to seeking out funding when you need loans for business to keep going. Be realistic, but don’t issue lies to your customers and investors, it just means that you can still count your blessings and help to inspire people to put in their best effort, even when things seem to be stacked against you.

Keep Track Of Praise

If a customer offers a glowing testimonial, or you get good press in the media, make sure to publicize it within your entire organization. Make sure everyone knows that the success of the company is a team effort, and that every customer and transaction is important. Whether you reward an individual or a team, the idea is to keep track of the things that going right, and focusing on continuing to provide the best customer service possible.

Don’t Be A Doom And Gloomer

Many a small business has predicted their own demise, simply by getting too negative and pessimistic that investors and employees alike depart for better pastures. Another way that negative expectations can play a part in failure is that it can sometimes influence actions that later result in the very result feared. For instance, many companies during the Great Depression held back their advertising monies due to the fear that spending it when they were predicting a lower consumer demand, was a complete waste of money. The act of reducing their advertising budgets actually predestined many companies towards failure, as their competitors ramped up their exposure on radio and print. The expected lower demand then did materialize, but only for the companies that had reduced their advertising. The other companies profited greatly, do to strategies that helped consumers to continue to make purchases and advertising that kept them at the forefront of the mass consciousness.

Be Cautious, But Hopeful

It is a time to re-evaluate your business and see where you can save money, and where you can invest it wisely for future growth. It doesn’t mean though, that you should stop spending all together or sit and do nothing to build your business until the recession is over. Business cycles between periods of recession and growth, and it’s only a matter of time before the picture gets rosier for everyone. If you do have a little extra money, now is the perfect time to invest in infrastructure and office equipment updates as there are many government incentives that can put that money back in your pocket when you’re done. Planning to succeed is better than fearing failure, and it’s also a sure path to eventual success.

Put On A Happy Face

If your employees are having difficulties, make sure they know about programs that can help ease their financial, legal, and health problems. If they can’t concentrate on their work, or walk around in a dour mood, it can affect their job performance and your business. Be the first to come into the office with a happy face, and be sure your customers see you smiling too. A smile is free, and it’s much nicer to walk into a store where the energy is more positive than into one where the smell of economic disaster is present.  As long as you continue to count your blessings, there will always be something to celebrate every day. It might be as small as a new product offering or as large as a great new customer or client. Either way, you can be sure that counting your blessings will re-orient your perception of reality to help you weather the downs of this recession. Keep the premises clean, tidy, and bright. Add a few plants to make your offices more human and friendly. Hire a receptionist who can greet your visitors and make them feel welcome. When you have people who’s job it is to be friendly and courteous to newcomers it can give a very positive impression to people who walk in. Get online and interact with people on social networks, and post uplifting information. Provide things of value to your audience and your customers to help ease their lives and make them want to come back to see you. The more you help others feel happy, the more they will be attracted to your company and your offerings.

You’ve probably heard the analogy that cash flow is the life blood of a business. Yet, it’s one of the most difficult things that a budding entrepreneurs to understand. Even seasoned business people can have lapses in cash flow that threaten the survivability of their company, and it can come from unexpected places, like a bankrupting client. There is always something new to learn about the cash flow of your business, but one of the ways that most business people try to manage it is to establish lines of credit to pull from when there is a cash gap. At some point their business education in cash flow, business owners will discover all sorts of lending from equity lines of credit to merchant cash advances.

Learning More About Cash Flow

Just like blood is pumped through the body and has to maintain an adequate pressure in the body, the cash flow in your business requires a steady supply to keep your suppliers and your employees paid, and to deal with financial emergencies. You can’t really use only your business receipts to supply all your cash flow unless you have significant investments and savings to borrow from on a bad day. Otherwise, most businesses will use cash loans to help support the activity of their company, when something happens to offset the delicate balance of receivables to accounts payable. If you are having trouble collecting your payments from customers, this in turn can affect the amount of money that you have to run your business. If you run out enough to keep you from paying suppliers, they may refuse to do business with you or levy fees for late payments. If you don’t pay your employees on time, you’re also in a great deal of trouble.

Keep Track Of Records

You should have some numeric evidence to how well your cash flow is doing, in the form of reports and bank statements, accounts receivables, and account payable ledgers. You should also be right on top of your debt collection practices to see how that is impacting your company’s cash flow. When it looks like sales and receivables are bringing in a banner month, you don’t have to use your credit lines. When you see one part of your cash flow equation going out of whack, make sure to pay special attention to getting it back on track.

Manage Your Cash Flow

Review your records for everything to manage your cash flow properly. If you find shortages occur frequently on a weekly payroll, consider changing to bi-weekly or monthly. Check all your statements on a weekly basis to see how you’re doing and plan ahead. You want to avoid shortfalls of cash that might crimp your business operations, whether it’s failing to do payroll on time, or not having enough cash for inventories. Try to keep track of demand for your products and services too. Keep those items that are flying off the shelf fully stocked, as they contribute to your cash flow. Try to reduce items that are just hogging shelf space, but not really attracting buyers.

Understand how much you are paying in late fees, for missed payments, or try to renegotiate debts with your creditors to help your cash flow. Try to reduce expenses as one way to increase your cash flow either by delaying payments on things that aren’t going to cost you too much, or by eliminating the expense all together, through automation. Make sure that you don’t invest too much in a technology that isn’t going to do what you need, but be sure to take advantage of technology that can get more done with fewer expenses in hiring. Opt to hire part-time or temporary, if you don’t think you can afford full-time staff, to keep your operating expenses low in times when the economy is slow.

Quarterly taxes can also affect your cash flow. You’ll need to have enough estimated taxes ready to pay Uncle Sam or face stiff penalties at the end of the year. You will have to plan those payments, just like they were your utility bill that came in quarterly. Having multiple bank accounts where you can set aside monies for taxes and other expenditures, like payroll, can help you amass sufficient funds in expectation of a big payout without affecting other expenses that are coming out of different accounts. When your operating account is low because of emergencies or shortfalls, use your line of credit to help offset the gap. When the operating account has a lot more money on it than you need that month, directly transfer that money to investments or accounts with a higher rate of return.

Small businesses can’t compete with the big guys by buying promotional spots on television. It’s simply not an affordable strategy for a small business. That doesn’t mean that a small business should forgo advertising all together, instead they should focus on creative advertising funded with spare cash or business loans. First, a business will need to assess their market. Is it regional or multinational? This will affect how they advertise and the strategies they invoke. Next, they will want to understand their demographic customer profile. Finally, they will want to set aside monies for creative advertising, based on their assessment of market and demographics.

Where Is Your Target Market?

Small businesses may not actually have to compete on a world stage, if they are a local business with local customers. Examples of these types of businesses are Mom and Pop stores that cater to a local clientèle found on Main Street. Other types of businesses that seek a local market can be home remodeling industries and local real estate companies. These establishments all have one thing in common: They are tied into the customer base that resides geographically close to them. It’s not important for these types of business to advertise world-wide, as their customer base isn’t there anyways. Instead, they want to focus on advertising that reaches their geographic area, whether it’s one state or a set of states in which they do business.

Who Is Your Customer?

Along with this information, small businesses should also consider who is buying their products, their demographic. If the typical buyer is a female householder within a certain region, ads should be created to appeal to demographic and advertised to reach the target markets. Both of these elements are very important when considering advertising formats. If your market does happen to be world-wide, or at least several different countries, but your demographic is teenagers, then you want to use strategies that reach this market, but narrow it down to traffic from teenagers.

Creative Advertising Techniques

Finally, here are some advertising techniques that can be used to help generate sales, taking into account target market and demographics.

Sign Spinning – This works great for a local business on a major thoroughfare where many people in their sales demographic pass by each day. It is relatively inexpensive when compared to television, radio, or print advertising and can generate a lot of attention from many different types of demographic audiences.

Local Coupon Packets – You can advertise locally with advertising packets that include a number of local merchants with discount offers. In general, these work for a residential homeowner demographic as they need a residential address to mail them out.

Affiliate Marketing – This has a global reach and the audience demographic is targeted by the publisher, not the creator of the ad. Therefore, it is much less highly targeted, and instead relies on a mass exposure to work it’s magic.

Social Network Ads – These are global, also, but you can limit them to specific demographics that are finely tuned to age and other social characteristics that are obtained upon registration. SocialAds on Facebook is one such program that creative business owners can use to get online ads that are highly targeted to their chosen demographic.

Print Ads – These can be limited to the audience of the subscriber base, and so you should choose the publication for its demographic and market reach, not for it’s popularity. A church bulletin, for instance, may work well in cases where you’re selling religious items, and cost far less than advertising in a local newspaper.

Blogs – You can sponsor a blog with a big targeted audience, but their reach may be limited. You will reach a world-wide base, in some cases, but the number of people is limited to how many people read the blog. The rates are also dependent on how popular the blog is with readers. You pay for a link back to your website or ads posted on the blog on a monthly basis.

YouTube Videos – You can also pay to be featured on a YouTube video in the URL as a sponsor, if the video is relevant to your market niche. Videos are very popular with tech-savvy audiences and can be a great way to reach many people, if the video goes viral.

Referrals – Some of the best advertising, both locally and on the Internet, comes from word of mouth. Give out incentives for people to share your services with others by offering a referral bonus. You only pay if you get a new customer and you can build a large number of independent representatives who are promoting your service, both online and offline.

The stimulus has had a positive effect on the economy, and the potential for future growth. While jobs are still scarce, this provides the best opportunity for entrepreneurs who are wondering if now is a good time to do a startup. Some of the best companies actually started during recessionary times, as these times afford opportunities for business owners that aren’t available during periods of growth. It can force new entrepreneurs to be creative with small business funding, while increasing the need for innovation. Take stock of your business idea, dust off your business plan, and think about getting started now, until waiting when things are actually on the road to recovery. You will be glad you started early and picked up some of the perks that are available for new business owners during tough economic times.

Financing Is Easing Up

A few short months ago, it would have been clearly impossible to raise funds for your new business. The markets are slowly thawing and investors are looking for great ideas and good companies that will be the next big thing. Some areas around the country are also showing signs of recovery in their housing markets. If you have a home, you can refinance and pull some funds out to start a business, assuming you have equity in the house. You may also be able to sell it now, and use the funds to help start your business.

Still A Large, Cheap, Labor Pool

While no one wants to be unemployed, the fact is that millions are unemployed and running out of benefits soon. As a startup, you have your pick of quality talent that may be having a bit of bad luck with the job market. Even if you don’t want to hire people full-time, there are plenty of people who would love a part-time or temporary contract position to help them make their mortgage payments or put food on the table. If you wait until the job market picks up and recovery is well under way, you’ll be competing with far larger companies who will snap up the best talent quickly. Right now, is the best time to check out who is looking for a job and trying them out. If you hire them as contract workers, you can take them on permanently once the recovery is well under way. This gives you leeway to scout out the best workers and train them before things start to really roll.

Best Training For Lean And Mean Operations

A recession is the best time to learn how to run an operation on a shoestring. This will help you develop a company that is lean and mean, efficient from the ground up. If you were to start later, when the awareness of the tight economy has faded, you and your employees would be more lax about everything and it your business processes would end up costing you a lot more over the life of the business.

You Can Get Equipment And Space Cheaper

When you start up, you need to rent premises, get equipment together, and all that costs money. However, in a recession the cost to buy space is often far less, due to people defaulting on their mortgages of commercial property or businesses shutting down. If you want a prime business location, lock in the lease now, while these offers are still on the market. After the recovery takes hold, more people will be jumping in trying to ride the wave up, and the rents will go up too. If you have the money to buy, the deals for commercial property are rock bottom.

Similarly, you will have to buy equipment to get your place of business up and running. You can get fantastic deals on office equipment and instead of waiting to depreciate it over the years, there are now some government incentives that allow you to depreciate 50% of it this year. If you want to buy vehicles for your company, this incentive can apply, and can be a smart tax move. As always, before buying something that you think will help you on your tax bill, check with your accountant to find out the pros and cons of such a move. With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 there are numerous rebates and deductions that have changed, and can help a new business get off the ground running with far less monetary investment. Take the time to find out what those are, and pull those expenses into the year where they apply and can help your business get off to a good start.

All the components of your business may be in place, but you’re still not attracting the level of sales you now you should have. Do you blame the economy or take a cold hard look at your sales strategies? It could be that just a slight change in your business strategy will yield the results that you know are possible. Lots of business are re-evaluating their operations to see what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. In tough times, it pays to look under the hood and review your finances, your sales strategies, and your infrastructure. Whether it’s checking out better business loan interest rates or revamping your heating system, there are ways to make any business more efficient with a little thought and planning.

Financing

Take another look at your books, even if you have someone doing them for you. Now’s the time to be really clear about your income, your expenses, and your credit lines. Are there ways to reduce high interest rates by converting the loans into something more manageable? How can you create more cash flow in a time when credit is tight? The recession is a great opportunity to stop doing business as usual and instead seek a higher level of performance. You probably wouldn’t be as motivated to find those savings or seek out creative forms of financing, if things weren’t as tough as they are now. The good news is that when the economy recovers fully, you’ll be happy knowing that your business is much more streamlined and ready to profit better than ever before.

Sales Strategies

Are you taking every opportunity to sell your wares? Do you have a website that is bringing in sales leads, not just costing you hosting fees? Is your staff trained to recognize when they can turn a small sale into a much larger one by up selling techniques? Does your website have programmed back end offers or are you just selling one thing at a time? Do you actively create sales campaigns online that can help bring traffic to your offline businesses too? If you don’t understand how to get your sales strategies to another level, get a mentor in business who can help you revise the problem areas.

Infrastructure

Now is the best time to take a look at your business infrastructure. There are multiple government incentives to help reduce your energy costs with rebates on heating and cooling systems, as well as insulation. Commercial real estate has never been a cheaper and moving your place of business to a better location can reap rewards in a higher traffic pattern to your door. If your equipment or cars are getting old, you can even depreciate more of these costs than previously on your taxes due to changes in the tax code enacted with the stimulus bill. It may mean you have to spend some more now, but the cost of doing it later is going to be much more, and it can make you far more competitive in the future.

Telemarketers may have stringent regulations that don’t allow them to bother you without your permission, and that’s a start. As a business owner, every minute that you spend meeting or talking with someone who is only wasting your time is also reducing your efficiency and impacting your bottom line. That’s why, even though they want to generate exposure for our businesses, they don’t want to spend so much time answering spam emails, fielding unimportant phone calls, or simply updating their social networking profiles. Business owners want to be available to their customers. Businesses want to maintain an online presence, creating massive exposure, but owners don’t want to spend their entire day hooked to an ear piece in our head, and a keyboard at our fingertips. There will not be enough time to do that and also run a growing business. To take control, they often hire others to field their communications, even acquiring a business loan, to fund the outsource with the idea of saving money in the long run.

Put In Spam Filters

There are a number of ways to make sure your blog and your email addresses aren’t harvested and spammed by email robots. SpamArrest is a popular online service that allows you to verify people before giving them access to your email account. This works well for an email address that you’ve reserved for particular clients or employees. The best way to keep people out is not to advertise that email address online, and not to subscribe to anything with it. That may not be possible, so the next best thing is to only offer permission via verification. Keep in mind that this can keep automated newsletters and other types of mass emailings from hitting your inbox too.

Outsource Your Communications

Just like people hire a receptionist to field phone calls, you can hire virtual assistants who will field calls, read email, forward important issues to you, even post on social networking sites to maintain and online presence. The problem is too many people are always trying to contact business owners as they are trying to sell them something new, ask for job, or provide information. It might be helpful for businesses, but it’s not necessary to look at that minute. Hire someone to handle these types of interactions and file them for later review.

In a way social networking has turned the rule of 100 to 1 response rate upside down. Now, you can log online, put in a social networking site, and get 100 followers or friends pretty easily just through online networking. They are contacting you, not you them. Instead of sending out 100 anonymous mailings, and receiving one response to follow up, you now have 100 follow ups to figure out the one that matters. It’s up to you to figure out which one is going to be a customer. In order to do that, they all expect some level of interaction, and if you’re stuck sitting in front of the computer to maintain a social networking presence, you’re wasting valuable time that could be spent elsewhere. You can hire social media experts or ask your virtual assistant to keep track of people who friend or follow you and give them a plan to follow to market these people. At the point they want to convert, that’s the point where you might want to be involved, or have a higher level of contact established.

Set Up Some Automatic Follow Up

There is a great deal of controversy over what to automate when following up with people and what not to do. No one likes the automated menu systems that businesses put in place, instead of a live person, but the reason they’re there is that they are cost-effective and generally get the job done. The same is true of tools that can automate Twitter and Facebook updating, return emails, deliver information products automatically upon payment, and autorespond to people via planned email campaigns. These tools exist because they work. They still have to be programmed and managed, and that can be part of the duties of your virtual assistant to help you manage a growing number of contacts, with less stress on your part. Every time someone joins you online or contacts you, the expectation is that you’ll respond fairly quickly, and automatic responders allow you to do just that. It may seem unrealistic, but those people that wait a day to respond can lose credibility in the eyes of the person contacting them. In this age of instant communication, a day of delay means you’re not as connected or with it as everyone else and that impacts your professional image. Sending an instant message confirming receipt and automating follow up is what most people expect these days.

In recent years the merchant cash advance business has increased.  Small businesses have found the alternative to business loans is a great way to get quick cash.  Surprisingly the industry of merchant cash advances is a decade old.  In the last two years more than fifty providers have appeared.  What is even more interesting is that the regular loans businesses typically go for are becoming harder to gain, thus more businesses are turning to the cash advances.
There is a small issue with the merchant cash advance.  For ten years there has been little regulation on these businesses, which means providers can charge high interest rates without breaking the law.  Many companies in the United States will charge 30 percent or more for the cash advance they provide.  The government at the state level has begun to regulate these businesses.  Unfortunately there is little the state can do since there are no laws.  Instead the cash advance company has to self regulate.
What you need to know about merchant cash advance is whether it can work for you.  There are ways to avoid the extreme interest rate charged.  However, most often the reason you seek out the cash advance is to have a loan for a long period of time.  You must examine the cash advance contract.  The contract will explain the amount of the loan, when it is due, and the amount of the interest.  It may also show penalties such as being late, missing the payment, or paying the debt early.
Cash advance businesses offer a lump sum to your company.  You can then take this sum and use it any way you wish.  The nice thing about the merchant cash advance is less restrictions on how the money is used.  The company does not delve into your business plan, history, or even your credit scores.  The merchant cash advance businesses tend to loan to companies with bad credit, little credit, or little to no collateral unlike a bank.  By using the merchant cash advance you do have the option of paying for goods and wages, or expanding your business without having to explain in detail why you need the loan.
Now, as we said above the interest can be extremely high.  The best way to avoid heavy fees with merchant cash advance is to look for a company that has the lowest interest rates.  The interest is going to be paid whether you pay the loan early or on time. It is how much interest that will vary.  When you compare the cash advance to a regular loan you can pay 60 to 200 percent more in interest on the cash advance.
One reason for such high interest is that the cash advance is not a loan. It is a deal to lend you money for two weeks, until you have the cash to pay back the money.  There are no limits to the interest rates that can be charged since there are no laws as of yet to regulate the companies.
The best way to avoid the high interest rates is to not use the cash advance, and if you must then shop around for the company willing to give you the best rate.  Not every company charges 200 percent more than a regular loan.  Another area one must look at regarding cash advance is the length of time you have to pay back the debt.  Above it was mentioned that you might have two weeks.  Two weeks is the standard for personal cash advances. However, with businesses there is a potential to have up to 12 months to pay back the amount.  The contract is set up so that there is no exact due date or fixed payment, yet no company will allow the loan to go past a year.
The earlier you pay the debt the more you will save in interest.  The merchant cash advance company can only charge you interest on the amount you have taken out.  Once that amount has been repaid with proper interest you are no longer accruing interest.  Merchant cash advance amounts have a larger amount to be borrowed over the personal cash advance.  The reason a business can borrow more is that they have the necessary means to pay it back.

Hiring is a stressful process that is time-consuming and expensive. Hiring the wrong person is such a costly mistake, that many small business owners try to do things on their own until they’re forced to hire someone. If cash is short, but demand is high, this doesn’t work as you can fall short of fulfilling demand, ultimately costing you money. Putting in a business credit application early to acquire funds for additional hiring can help you anticipate the need for a new hire, but it doesn’t keep you from making the mistake of hiring a bad hire, which eats up the money quickly. Luckily, today, some of the risks are easily managed, especially during a recession that has an abundant labor force available. The perks and benefits necessary to retain quality talent aren’t as essential and temporary contract workers and freelancers are becoming more the norm, rather than the exception.

Simple Strategies To Locate and Hire Quality Talent

Here are few strategies you can use to make sure the next time you’re getting ready to hire, that you have a set plan to weed out good from bad candidates, and ultimately choose the right person for your company.

Advertise in unusual places – The conventional wisdom says that you want to advertise where you get the most exposure, like Monster.com or your local newspaper. At a time where millions of people are out of work, advertising your job here will only accomplish getting completely spammed by everyone, regardless of whether they are qualified or not. Seek other avenues, like trade magazines, online groups, your company website, recruiters, social networking, and through word of mouth with your employees. Weeding out spam applications by advertising in the right places is going to do a lot to reduce the expense of hiring.

Use telephone screening first – Anyone can do an initial screening to determine how a person presents themselves on the phone and what talent set they have before asking them to do a live interview. It doesn’t have to be done by the hiring manager, although that is often the case. A personal assistant can help to screen candidates and forward only those that appear to be viable to the hiring manager.

Give them a skills test – It’s easy to lie in order to be hired, and in today’s competitive markets people are willing to say just about anything to get hired. The proof is in how well they perform, so don’t just look at their certifications and awards, ask them to complete a sample skills test. If you hire through a temporary agency, many of them require testing to ascertain the skill level of their labor force, and that’s one less thing you have to do yourself.

Hire on a temporary basis first – Use a temporary agency to locate quality talent, or look at a freelance board to locate people. These people are willing to work part-time, temporary, and don’t require that you provide health benefits, or unemployment compensation should they not work out. If they do work out, the negative is that they may not be available for subsequent projects, if they’re very popular. At that point, you can see what it costs to hire them out from under the temporary agency and offer them a full-time contract.

Reduce the interview process – It’s popular to make an employee go through many rounds of interviews, but this impacts the efficiency of your other workers. If there really is that much time to do interviewing, instead of adding to work that directly increases your bottom line, you’re probably top heavy already. There’s no need to hire someone else. It’s a waste of your time, and theirs too. Try to keep the interview process simple, and streamlined. Besides, if they’re brought on as temporary workers, you’ll find out from day-to-day interaction whether they’ll work out. If they don’t, they’re just not hired full-time. If you find you do need multiple experts to verify a candidates skills or demeanor, turn to professional recruiters.

Use professional recruiters - These people want to find quality talent that will net them a fat commission. If you are detailed with what you want, you can hire an army of professional recruiters to help you with your staffing needs. Make sure they have their own screening process, and how thorough it will be. Work only with recruiters who are knowledgeable about your industry and its specific needs. Check credentials, and don’t assume that all manner of background check has been run. Make employment and commission conditional on passing background checks, like criminal and credit histories, if that’s important in your industry.

If you’re used to selling offline, you can wow your customers with the actual products and services. You can set up glitzy displays and they can even touch the merchandise. You can carefully place small impulse buy by the register and trigger sales this way, but what do you do when you’re online to trigger those same sales? Do you have to take out a business loan and hire a special media company to create a sales campaign or can you just adopt a few good sales strategies? The most powerful component of your online sales campaigns is actually your sales copy. If you use that to press the right psychological triggers, you will be more likely to increase sales from your online ventures, even more than concentrating on the mechanics of the site.

Your Headings Count

Headings should be designed to create interest, spike curiosity, and literally push some emotional triggers that make them want to read further. Half the time people won’t even read the article or the sales copy of the heading isn’t very interesting. Pay close attention to your headings and subheadings, the content and the formatting.

The Content

Use sales strategies in your content that will light a fire under your readers! Here are a few:

Limited Time Offers – If you offer a special limited time offer to a new subscriber, it can be the perfect way to convert a reader into a buyer. If they understand that the offer is only good for a set time, it will trigger a fear of loss and that will cause them to step forward and close the sale. This type of offer works well in the back end, on a thank you page. You can thank a customer for subscribing, and then offer them a limited time offer for a trial membership at a discount, a value package that is not sold separately otherwise, or anything that you think will convert them.

Limited Quantity Offers – If you have a really great product, but only a few are available in your inventory, then you might want to try advertising it as a limited quantity offer. It’ll alert people that once this product is gone, they’ll have missed out on a great opportunity!

Exclusive Offers – Maybe you’ve developed a one-of-a-kind product that only you are selling. It’s an exclusive offer! You can do the same if one a few select people are licensed to sell the product and it’s a high status product, then it’s still exclusive. Another way to frame an exclusive offer in content is to suggest that only exclusive members of your site will have the option to purchase a particular product at a set price. Then, it’s exclusive to a segment of your audience. This sells on the trigger that people want to feel special and will love getting things that others just can’t have or afford.

Value Offers – When you contribute value to a customer, in price and quantity, they recognize it and it can increase your sales volume. The $5 foot long sandwiches at Subway is a classic example of a value offer that skyrocketed sales volume for the franchise in record time. Why? They provided a recognizable bargain and double the value of other $5 food offerings they were competing against. They could be cut in half, and used for both lunch and dinner! They could be shared and reduce the cost. Half the sandwich was filling enough to make an entire meal! Similarly, look at your inventory and see where you can create value offers that appeal to people in a recessionary climate.

Stacked Rebate Offers – This is a little like bribing your customers. You see this with phone companies who offer a free phone, for signing up to a two year contract. But, wait! You can also get the phone, digital TV, and Internet, and get additional rebates and discounts. Even if you’re not the one giving the incentives out you can stack them. For instance, if you sell appliances, you can advertise the federal and state rebates, and then add one of your own to get people to line up at your door instead of your competitors. It’s not that hard to figure out how to stack things without committing too much of your own money. Grocery stores advertise triple coupon days, and yet, they’re not fronting the full cost of that promotion. If you do it in the form of rebates, it’s pretty common for people not to even claim their rebates and thus you’re still not paying the full amount you plan to offer since not everyone even cares about the rebates.