NHSBDC Business Tips

Think you don’t need a business plan before starting your business? Think again.

In this Small Business Administration article, the author debunks some of the common myths about why small business owners sometimes decide NOT to undertake a formal business plan before launching their business.  Here are those myths, and the reasons you might want to reconsider them. 

1) Myth: It’s about the management, not the plan.

A good plan is what will drive your management. A plan steers you to set a strategy, track your performance over time and revise your strategy along the way. Effective management will follow because you'll have benchmarks to measure and know which strategies to implement next. 

2) Myth: A plan must include a detailed market analysis

If you’re writing your business plan without intending to seek outside funding, you may not need to do a rigorous market analysis, but only if you already know exactly what product or service you are offering and to whom.  You may come upon a reason to do one of these in your business’s future, say, for example, to determine your next strategies, but this is part of the plan you can skip if you’re clear about it at the outset.

3) Myth: Good planning will reduce my flexibility.

The reverse is actually true. A plan will help you know your cost projections, what your long-term versus short-term goals are, and whether your marketing and sales teams are in sync, for example. Knowing that data allows you to be flexible when the need arises, because you'll already have a clear picture of what's going on in your business.  

The NH SBDC has several resources for writing your business plan: 

• “Crafting Your Business Plan” is a free e-course available to anyone to take at any time. Click here: http://nhsbdc.org/crafting-business-plan. 
• Our business advisors are available to meet with you after completing the course. http://nhsbdc.org/locations
• You can find more tips in this resource section: http://nhsbdc.org/need-business-plan.

Taglines: How to write one

Maybe you’re just starting your business, launching an advertising campaign or you’re undergoing a re-branding effort. You might be thinking you need a tagline. This article from Forbes.com shows how effective a powerful and well-written tagline can be.  Do you know which product “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”?  That’s an example of a tagline—one of the most memorable in history.

Creating a tagline can be daunting, but here are a few things to think about.

1. A tagline should show your unique position in your industry.  Work out in your mind exactly what it is you provide for your customers that stands out from all other businesses of your type. Ask yourself these questions to get thinking: 

a. What benefit does your customer gain by doing business with you?
b. How does your product or service make your customer’s life better?
c. Why are you better than the competition?

2. Once you’ve identified your unique offering, use it to build a catchy phrase. It doesn’t have to be overly cute, but it must be memorable. Capture the personality of your business.

3. After coming up with some candidates, visualize the taglines on a business card. Would someone understand it just from that bit of information? Run it by some friends, family members and select potential customers.

Writing the perfect tagline can take some time and is not a task to be taken lightly.  The right one, however, can do wonders for your branding and long-term growth.

We've just written a tagline for the celebration of our 30th anniverary in November:  

Building businesses for NH’s future

Comment below with your own tagline!

 

Use Facebook’s powerful ad-targeting tools

If your company has a Facebook Business Page, you should certainly be using Facebook’s paid advertising options to promote the page or certain special posts you’ve made to it. Facebook paid ads can be highly targeted, meaning you’ll reach the Facebook users you most want to reach, and these ads can be relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of paid advertising. In fact, you set yourself a budget which can be as little or large as you like, and use the ads until your budget runs out. (Click here to read all about how Facebook paid ads work.)

Did you know that you can also create ads that are specifically designed to reach Facebook users who have recently visited your website?  This is an excellent way to capture people who’ve already shown interest in your business—they’ve clicked onto your website for one reason or another—but who have yet to discover your Facebook page in order to “LIKE” it.  Let’s say your website features a section in which you are selling several products.  That page has a specific website address (a URL) that you can program into Facebook and then, by adding a bit of code back at that selling page, customize an ad that promotes those for-sale items, or some other aspect of your business.  The idea would be to find those recent visitors to your website and, while your website is fresh in their minds, remind those visitors of what you do or how your company or products can help them. Don't worry.  The Facebook ad creator section will walk you through the process.  

Do you use any of these productivity apps?

As a small business owner, you know there are never enough hours in the day. This article by Lionel Valdellon gives a handy summary of 10 SmartPhone apps designed to make you more productive.  Here’s a summary of our favorites:

1) Distracted by Facebook or Twitter when you should be writing a marketing plan? Use TabZolo, a Chrome extension, to lock down every other tab you might have open in your browser, keeping you focused on the one site you might need to be using. Don’t worry. You can easily get back to all those other windows with one click.

2) “8tracks (browser): is a website for listening to (or assembling) playlists of audio tracks of every genre of music imaginable. Do a search for playlists with tags such as "focus+work," "study," or "productivity" to find curated music that may get you in the flow. Or check out our two favorite playlists: Relax to Infinity and Welcome to the Grind.

3) Hush—for Mac Users—lets you temporarily mute all the bells, whistles and notifications you might already have programmed for those rare times when you really just want to work and not know what else is going on.

The rest of the list contains some apps designed specifically to help you focus on writing, or to give yourself something to listen to if you’re one of those persons who concentrate best with some background noise.

What productively apps do you use? Share them here on Facebook.

 

Predatory lending happens to businesses, not just individuals

Charles Evans of the company Corporate Turnaround in New Jersey brought this phenomenon to our attention:

It can be tough to get a loan to your small business ever since the economic crash of 2008.  One among many unfortunate results of this tight market is a growth in the “merchant cash advance” industry, which has allowed businesses to “borrow” against future credit card purchases by their customers based on the company’s existing credit card sales.  The money was then paid back by the funding company taking a larger cut from future credit card sales and, sometimes, adding processing fees on top of that, thereby confounding the business’s need for cash. 

Today this process has morphed into cash advances against a company’s cash flow in the business checking account.  In other words, a company can “borrow” against its deposits into that account, and then pay that back through automated daily or weekly withdrawals back to the funding company. It can sound like a good solution, but often isn’t.

The interest and accumulating fees, etc. on cash advances can amount to 25 percent of principal! A business might need this kind of cash influx to bring in a new product for fall selling in early summer, and has high hopes for its success when the right season comes around. A construction company might need to purchase materials far in advance of the actual build and payment dates on a certain project. Both of these examples are good reasons to use this kind of cash advance method. Bad reasons to use it include when the company just has a need to “get by” or to pay other creditors. That sets up a vicious cycle and businesses who engage in this kind of borrowing too often or under very adverse conditions can find themselves deeper and deeper in a financial hole.  This article from Saddle River Financial suggests professional advice is best when a business finds itself in this kind of cycle.