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One of the major reasons that so many small businesses fail each year is that people assume that because they know how to perform a skill or trade, that they can run a business selling that skill or trade. Michael Gerber calls this the e-myth or the Entrepreneurial Myth. He argues that just because you are a chef it does NOT mean you should open a restaurant. He believes that you can succeed or even increase business profits doing something you know nothing about. When we have all of these people running off trying to run a business in a trade that they are very skilled in, a few things happen: One is that they begin to be overly focused on doing the work and not running the business. They slowly...

When you are running a small business you have to keep a very close eye on costs. The reason for this is that most cost increases occur in a very stealthy fashion. Unless you carefully graph your costs, you will be unable to see trends as they rise. The effect of this is to erode your net profit without you knowing it until it is too late. Raising your prices is a seductive way of increasing your net profit because your revenue increases and your costs remain roughly the same. However, there are many pitfalls in lifting your prices. Obviously the best time and the best way to raise your prices is when and how you can do it without losing customers. First of all, consider the opportunities that your...

In recent times the competition in restaurant business has grown at phenomenal rate. In fact, today the key to run a winning restaurant business and earning higher revenue is getting articulated towards customer-focused value propositions. Communicating effectively and offering best service to your customers have become more important. It's not only how your restaurant look and feel matter, but how you make your customers happy and satisfied matters more. When customers have good time over-all, they will surely come back and may even take new friends or relatives with them. Ultimately like any other business, offering best and effective customer service matters a lot in restaurant business as well...

Do you own a travel website? Does your website offers tips on where to stay for travelers? To ensure that your site is not penalized by the search engines, you must always be prepared to publish good content on your website. Here is how you can write quality articles for your accommodation website. 1) Focus on quality over quantity. It doesn't help to fill your sites with filler articles. Instead, such content will just degrade the overall quality of your website. Try to write articles that will provide useful information for travelers. Put yourself in the shoes of a traveler and try to come up with a list of problems you will face. For instance, as a traveler, you will need to be able to contact...

Some reports only available in PDF format need to be analyzed. But PDF is read-only and people have to retype all the data from PDF. However, it will waste too much time. Is there a PDF to Excel Converter which can convert PDF files to Excel spreadsheet easily? As there are many files such income statements and balance sheets in PDF format, you may have to copy and paste to Excel for further calculation work. Here is a step by step tutorial about how to convert PDF files to Excel spreadsheet. Firstly, you need to download a PDF to Excel Converter and install on your computer. Click the icon to launch the program. Step 1. Import PDF file(s): Click Add Files... on the top of the panel and import the...

Microsoft Excel is an extremely versatile piece of software. Even though it's been around for well over 20 years now, it is still under-utilized by most users. Excel has come into such widespread use that people take it for granted, and even many long-time users do not know how to leverage even a small fraction of what it can actually do. Some of the great "hidden gems" of Excel include its many functions and formulas. Speaking of functions: Excel sported no less than 331 functions last time I counted. Granted, you likely will never need to use many of these unless you are an engineer or are involved in certain types of statistics or high-level math (ever heard of a Bessel function? Excel does that...

What is it? A product, a service? A product is something that the mass market would like to know about, you need to have the product knowledge. The product is what you are focusing on, so make it like your need, your preference, your passion and of course, have the belief in the product. Do not veer of course. What you want, and what you intend to sell, is your brand of product. Customers see you as the distributor of this product. Do not go for too many product lines and lose connection with your initial commitment to your initial sales product. You want traffic, so make the customers feel the commitment you have in this product, they like to see what it is, and you want them to see you selling it...

Are your high priced coaching programs not impacting enough? Do you always get feedback that they are not worth their tag prices? Then, it's high time that you improve them. Here's how you can do that: 1. Clients. You will need to put your clients and their needs on top of your priority list. Remember, your goal here is to impress them and give them great value for their money. Make sure that your information, instructions, and directions are geared towards reaching their goals. Also, ensure that your coaching techniques are designed to help them speed up the learning process. 2. As a coach, you will need to give it your all on your coaching programs. You will need to give your clients enough time...

Formula Basics Formulas in Microsoft Excel begin with an equal sign. The equal sign tells Excel that the succeeding characters constitute a formula. If you don't enter the equal sign, Excel will treat your entry as text and the calculation will fail. Notice the formula bar shows the formula you just typed. What appears in the cell is the result; what appears in the formula bar is the underlying value, which is a formula in this case. Excel Order of Calculations When performing calculations in a formula, Excel follows certain rules of precedence: Excel calculates expressions within parentheses first. Excel calculates multiplication and division before addition and subtraction. Excel calculates...

Today at a local family owned restaurant I heard the young waitress (mid-twenties) tell a customer who had just apologized for bothering her make this statement: That is my job and your request is not a bother. Please always tell me what you need because my job is to make your dining experience the best possible." Wow! Does this server get it or what? Just imagine your restaurant having two, three or ten employees with this customer service attitude? Do you think your register would be ringing up a lot of receipts? So the question is how do you train for this behavior? First, you cannot train because this is truly a belief that needs to be developed. Therefore, the Human Resource Department may need...

Staff monitoring means recording all the activities of your staff and restricting their accesses to the computers. Nowadays, with the rapid development of science and computer technology, more and more computer software has been adopted in the company, especially those snoop-ware such as staff monitoring software, computer monitoring software, remote PC software and so on. Those company installing the snoop-ware in the office PC to spy on their employee insist that an employee monitoring solution will increase employee productivity, provide a safeguard in event of inappropriate employee behavior, and protect their company from leaking important company information. In a sense, taking the company' s...

One of the finest features in Microsoft Excel is sensitivity analysis using either a table (Excel 2003) or 'What-if' in Excel 2007. Suppose you want to start a cybercafe or a restaurant in a new mall. You have done a study on the footfall and the kind of people who visit the mall. You have also found out about the business atmosphere, security and rent or the outright purchase price. You also know the rates in the market that other businesses are charging, let's say, for surfing the net per hour. You then estimate your capital costs like doing up the cybercafe and the price of the computers. You also use the Excel spreadsheet to estimate and calculate the number of people you'll need to run the show...

In financial terms, the Present Value refers to the total amount that a series of future payments is worth at the present time. To calculate this value, you use the PV function which returns the present value of an investment. Syntax of the PV function is as follows: =PV(rate,nper,pmt,[fv],[type]) Rate refers to the interest rate per period, usually per annum. For example, if you invest in a fund, such as an education fund for your kids and the fund pays 10 percent annual interest rate with monthly payments, your interest rate per month is 10%/12, or 0.83%. You would enter 0.83%, or 0.0083, into the formula as the rate. Nper is the total number of payment periods in an annuity. For example, if...

Behaving professionally is the best way to go about conducting your business with your customers and suppliers. It ensures that you are seen your customers in a way that helps you to concentrate on doing your job effectively and helps the customers to know that they have the right person for the job. The word "Professional" is very powerful word. So powerful in fact that some occupations have tried to take exclusive control of it for their own use. Historically, it has been Medicine and Law that have tried associate the term "professional" solely with themselves. Nowadays, it is more widely used and is used to convey a certain type of image of a person who is expert at his or her work. So what does...

Though invoicing is an important aspect for any small business, it usually is a much hated chore for many small business owners. But it does not have to be a hated chore: Using the ideal software to speed the process up invoicing will be over in a minute, and your time can be spent doing other things. With invoicing software, any business stands to enjoy a couple of benefits. For starters, it gives your business a professional look and as such, attracts more clients. Using a customized invoice will also ensure your invoice will be noticed by your customers and put in the top of the pile when they make payments. Once the software is set up with your business information, your customers, and your...

When it is about programming you really have to choose from two roads. You will either study a lot, for years, in order to acquire programming skills, or you will choose the "easy" road with which you can create your own software without any programming skill! If you follow the hard road you have to have it in you. You will need to study a lot and expand your talent which God has provide to you. You will need years of patience and testing your powers. Your experience will grow as time goes by and your actual programming skills will start to become live through you. The down side is that, this will take time and as I said, you have to have it in you. The benefits for you will be great though...

Qualifying fact finding questions are directly connected to your industry, your products, your services and most importantly your customers. In consultative selling, I find that asking these 10 insightful qualifying questions early in the selling phase of the sales process saves me time. First, before you can ask these 10 questions, you need find the right people be them the decision makers, the project managers or even a centers of influence (sponsors). Invest some time building the relationships because relationship selling begins here with mutual trust and respect. During the fact finding meeting, here are 10 qualifying questions that I ask: Question #1: Where do they see their business or...

There is a saying that there are only two certainties in life: Death and Taxes. I think that you could add one more certainty which is: Problems! Everyday in our lives we are faced with problems which can be big or small. In our workplace we have problems which can be work related or relationship related. Likewise in our personal lives we are faced with problems with our spouses, siblings, in-laws and many others. Sometimes we wish that we could just wake up in the morning and face the day without any problem at all. This is wishful thinking as the very nature of our existence is based on our innate ability to solve problem. In fact our very survival is based on how good a problem solver we...

Here is a task that most of us have been confronted with in the past: 1. You have two documents, with slight differences between them. This happens, for example, when someone has edited a text but did not save any editing marks with the document. 2. You'd like to compare these two documents, find out the parts that have been changed without, however, altering any of the source documents. 3. Then you'd like to save only the changes in a separate third file. Can you do it? With Microsoft Word 2003, yes, you can. Here is how: 1. Open your Document 1. 2. Select Tools > Compare and Merge Documents from your main menu to display the Compare and Merge Documents dialog box. 3. Navigate to the appropriate...

Businesses will have to differentiate certain products in order to know the right price for them. Although there are other things that are needed to be dealt with when it comes to determining the price or the value of the product, the first step is to find out which among the categories the product belongs to. There are three standards that help a business owner judge the right price for the product. The first one is a product being billable, which is capable of being invoiced. The next one is its opposite, which is the non billable product and the last is the partially billable goods. These divisions allow you to not only determine the costs but also control them once you have verified them. For...

There are a lot of people who use the computer nowadays. Aside from using it for personal satisfaction, a lot are using them for their work. One of the most common applications being used for work is Excel. And because a lot of people depend on using it, there comes a time when they need to compare Excel files. But since they have so many files already, it can be hard to keep track of what specific file name they need to open. If you are a person who frequently uses Excel, you are not new to this problem. When you want to compare Excel files, you will need to go through your long list of files and open each one of them. For other people, they can easily do this if they are organized. But what...

The Why and How To of Business Cost Reduction As a business owner, manager, or executive, you know that minimizing costs is essential to achieving a profits increase. The ability to increase company profit is an essential part of driving success and growth. Your budget plays an incredibly important role in how profitable your company is able to be, and if you have not considered business cost reduction, there is a good chance that your company is spending funds in inefficient and ineffective ways. Think about the company's budget and goals. Expenditures that seem like a good idea for the company may not be financially possible, even if they're likely to increase profit in the long term, simply...

Let's Identify the Problem One of the fundamental aspects of decision making begins with being aware of the presence of problem. What is a problem/ According to Robbins, SP and Coutler, a problem is defined as '"a discrepancy between an existing and desired state of affairs". For example, when your direct supervisor notices that the daily sales figure (existing) is much lower than the target that was set (desired state of affairs) than it is a problem. I would insist we use the word challenge instead of problem. In other words when there is a variance between the set standards (the original standards was $10000) and the actual performance (the actual sales was $7000) and, the gap as a shortfall of...

PLC programming is becoming more and more needed in the business world especially when it comes to controlling machinery. PLC stands for 'Programmable Logic Controller' and is in essence a tiny computer with its own operating system. This operating system is what controls much of what the machinery that runs industry is capable of doing. Because the world of industrial machinery is constantly being upgraded and evolved there is a real need for individuals that know how PLC programming works. If you are in a position to benefit from PLC you may be asking yourself where you can go in order to learn PLC programming. Thanks to the high tech environment you now find yourself in there are a number of...

In all your actions with the customer, think about what their motives for making a purchase are. Saving time, saving money, making more money and on and on. If you focus on that, you can more easily find their sweet spots and get a deal. Much easier than if you focus on what you want and keep focusing on you making money and them paying it. When presenting your products show the customer how you can solve their problems. It will give them a reason to purchase them. They are not looking for a way to spend money and they are very afraid of making mistakes. In all human action we try to avoid "pain" and move towards more positive stimulus. Therefor a customer will not want to do something new that...

A clear definition of exceptional Customer service is important for any business. When is a Customer service experience exceptional, when is it BAD and when is it good, but NOT exceptional? Everyone knows that Customer satisfaction and keeping the Customer happy is important. To many people in business, however, these maxims are very vague and not clearly defined. A business, large or small, that is fuzzy in its approach to Customer Service, will have only a very small chance of achieving success. If you know what success is, and why it is important, then you have a much higher chance of succeeding, and delivering an exceptional Customer service experience is no different! Your staff will be...

Imagine you have an Excel spreadsheet that contains a list of values that appear in a single column, and lets say this column contains id numbers. It happens that the spreadsheet data was obtained from an invoices list of the previous month, and you are asked to obtain the number of unique customers from that list. If the list contains less than 20 or 30 rows that could be something you can easily do manually just by looking and counting them, but what happens when the list contains 200 or even 3000 rows? That's when you have to find a method to let Microsoft Excel do the hard work, and you can achieve that by following the steps in this example: 1. Lets say you have these simple values in column A...

MS Excel is an excellent application that allows you to compute and organize numerical data. You can also tabulate the data that you have without difficulty. Excel is very user friendly that most of the computer users today know how to operate the program. There are many helpful features here that enable the users to perform various tasks. Among them are the Excel macros. Now, you can automate job with macros in this application. You will surely see the need to automate job with macros in Excel if you have common tasks that you have to accomplish in this application. For example, if you often execute the same arrangement of formats or if you take delivery of data each and every week or monthly, you...

Invoice processing is the handling of all kinds of invoices from their initial arrival to their posting. Technological evolution and the current financial climate means that many companies are now seeking to cut out the 'middle man' and administration work. Invoice processing is an innovative way to reduce costs, whilst increasing efficiency and in turn, improving business relationships. The time it takes for an invoice to arrive with an organisation to eventually being processed is significantly reduced with this electronic method. This form of accounts payable automation helps to automate the people and paper-based processing invoices that sit waiting for approval to enter the accounts system. The...

Excel is a spreadsheet program. It's in fact the application of choice for the majority of business globally. Excel has therefore been primarily used for developing departmental budgets, expense reports and a host of other accounting or financial deliverables. What many long-time users of Excel do not know is that the software possesses excellent database tools built right into it. This article will reveal the database side of Microsoft Excel. In order to take full advantage of Excel's database features it is important to structure you data properly. In the example below you will see that the column labels are on the top row with the data directly beneath it in the following rows. For...

Investment in plot is one of the difficult investment decisions for any investor. The reason why it is considered as difficult owing to the amount of investment required. Apart from huge money investment, owning a plot has an emotional aspect. There are many instances where investors were cheated as they were sold a plot which had some issue or the other. Hence you should be very careful and cautious before you purchase a plot. Before you buy a plot, check these - - Whether the plot is non-agricultural(N/A) and has a clear title. - Check whether the seller has a right over the property. - Verify whether the layout has been approved by the City Development Corporation and the local body. (Copy of...

If you are looking for some type of job for the summer, you may find that getting started with yard maintenance will be of some use. At the very least, as you become accustomed to looking for customers and taking care of their yard, you can also start thinking about other things you can do during the winter months. Invariably, if you are going to start a business dedicated to yard work, then you will need to purchase one or more lawn mowers. No matter whether you buy new or used lawn mowers, you should make sure that the parts are interchangeable. If you are going to buy used lawn mowers, at least you will be able to exchange parts easily if one unit happens to break down. This will give you plenty...

For home owners who have large lawn to mow the riding repaired lawn mowers is their best choice. The mowers are provided with light duty engines that give the owners a chance to use the mower for long time. They are prices reasonable that make this the perfect choice for them. The MDT Company is selling its mowers through its subsidiary companies - White Outdoor, Bolens, Yard-Man, and Yard Machine. The riding mowers are also known as lawn tractors. Its horse powers ranges from 12.5 to 26 hp depending on the model. The deck sizes vary from 32 to 54 inches. The capabilities of the riding repaired lawn mowers depend on what lawn situation you are using them. They make a clean cut on your lawn and they...

As a home owner you'll find that a lawn mower will be one of those assets that you'll need to look into, unless you have the money to have someone else worry about taking care of your lawn. When it comes to purchasing a lawn mower, there are many options that you can choose from. This includes everything from the classic push mower to a zero turn riding mower and even some robotic mowers. Picking out the right one may be daunting, and hoping that it lasts more than one season before having to replace it can be highly stressful. These tips will help you maintain your lawn tractor so that you can maintain your yard for years to come. With older lawn mowers, it can be fairly easy to fix and maintain it...

Whoever said yard work is drudgery hasn't met the robot lawn mower. This amazing new creation literally takes all the work right out of yard work (or at least the mowing part). This new mower, also called a "robomower", literally does the work for you. Think of those new-fangled (and very popular) robot vacuum cleaners and you have the right idea. Automatic lawn mowers are available in a variety of sizes, so you can get the one best for your yard size. But generally, robot mowers are best for lawns up to one acre in size. Robomowers operate on batteries and charge within 24 hours, depending on the brand and model. The benefits of robot mowers are numerous. You don't have to push or ride a mower to...

ign="center"> Little known facts can be just interesting. Here are some of those: A typical lightning bolt is two to four inches wide and two miles long; A month that starts with a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th in it; Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21; Close to 50% of all bank robberies take place on Friday. Do you know the furthest point on Earth from the center? It's the peak of Mount Chimborazo, in Ecuador, near the Equator. The Earth bulges at the equator, making Mount Chimborazo even further out there than Everest. Then there are the little known facts that are funny. These include, for example, silly laws that are still on the books. Here are some of...

With spring just around the corner it is time to check the lawnmower to be sure it will do its job when the time comes. It has been sitting in the garage all winter and no one started it up or even looked at it. No matter what type of lawnmower you have, push, electric, gas, riding, tractor or any other the parts need to be cleaned and looked at. Whether your lawnmower is many years old or just a year old a lawnmower part will wear out and need replacement. For those that may be going out to buy your first lawnmower choose carefully. As in every other large appliance you would buy for the inside of the house, do your homework. Find out what is guaranteed and for how long. How long will that brand of...