Scandals involving bosses of major firms have no long-term negative impact on share prices and can even lead to better performance, University of Sussex research has found.The corrective measures put in place after a scandal translate into improved operating performance, often outstripping that of scandal-free rivals, according to the researchers. Nonetheless, the short-term consequences for shareholders are dire. Chief executives committing fraud or taking part in insider trading end up costing shareholders dearly in the days following the news of the scandals. In a study of 80 corporate scandals in the USA, share prices plummeted between 6.5% and 9.5% in the month after the misconduct was made public, collectively costing shareholders an average of $1.9 billion per scandal-hit firm. And it is not just limited to financial misdemeanours -- personal scandals such as having an affair, lies on resumes and harassment cases had just as much impact. However, the negative effects did not last long. Three years on, the share-price performance of the same firms matched those that had not been affected by scandals. If anything, the 80 companies in the study -- including Apple, Hewlett Packard, IBM, JP Morgan and Yahoo -- actually showed an improved operating performance in the years after a scandal. University of Sussex economist Dr Surendranath Jory led the research, published in the journal of Applied Economics. They looked at the Return on Assets (ROA) score of the companies in the study, as a measure of how efficient the firms are at using their assets to generate earnings. They found that those who had survived a scandal involving their Chief Executive Officer (CEO) had ROA scores up to 10 per cent better than other rival companies. Dr Jory says that this may be down to protections put in place following a scandal, such as appointing independent board members or capping severance packages for top executives. He says: "Corporate scandals can act as a catalyst to implement changes that benefit investors. The companies put in place safeguards to protect against future abuses, and they seem to work." Dr Jory was surprised, though, by the suddenness of the initial fall in share price. He says: "I thought that noise of corporate misdeeds would have leaked prior to official announcements and that investors would have already priced in the negative consequences of those crimes days before the announcements. But it seems that investors wait for something more tangible before reacting -- for instance, an announcement in the media." Dr Jory, alongside colleagues at East Carolina University and the University of Texas-Pan American in the USA, examined corporate scandals between 1993 and 2011 that were expressly linked to a firm's CEO. Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Sussex. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
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domingo, 8 de fevereiro de 2015
Scandals not bad for business in the long term, study finds
sexta-feira, 6 de fevereiro de 2015
Novel method projects growth potential of new firms: Which tech businesses will thrive?
| Mapping the entrepreneurial quality in the MIT ecosystem by addresses for ZIP codes 02139, 20141, and 02142. Each address with at least one startup is represented by a circle whose radius is proportional to the number of business registrants; the color is determined by the average level of entrepreneurial quality in that address. New businesses spring up all the time. But which ones have the greatest ability to become big? A method developed by MIT researchers, based on an empirical study, projects the growth potential of high-tech firms with new precision -- and could help local or regional policymakers assess their growth prospects. "A central question in evaluating the impact of policies toward business creation, startups, and innovation, is simply how to measure the kinds of entrepreneurs who are likely to build growth businesses," says Scott Stern, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who led the study. For all the theorizing about the subject, he adds, "There has historically been a big gap, in terms of how to measure and do analytics in a systematic way." But now, based on a uniquely comprehensive analysis of businesses in California, Stern and his colleague Jorge Guzman, a doctoral candidate at MIT Sloan, have created a richly detailed picture of what characteristics high-growth tech firms have, and where they exist. The study is summarized in a new paper -- titled "Where is Silicon Valley?" -- being published today in Science. Among other factors, firms that formally register, seek capital investment, and make news early in their lives have higher growth potential. That much might seem intuitive -- but even a firm's name, Stern and Guzman found, offers a solid hint of its growth potential. For instance, a business whose name includes the name of a founder does not generally expand as much as other types of firms. "That combination [of factors] turns out to be a very useful diagnostic for separating out the types of businesses that have a reasonable chance of growing, versus those that are much less likely to grow," Stern says. By assessing what it calls the "quality" of startups, and not just their quantity, the study also highlights which towns are home to startups with higher growth potential. In California, the municipalities of Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale top this list, in that order, with startups having characteristics that are associated with offering an IPO or being subject of a large acquisition, at about 10 times the state average. From Silicon Valley to Massachusetts Stern and Guzman are in the process of studying Massachusetts in similarly granular fashion; they are releasing a working paper, as well as initial data visualizations of Massachusetts, to complement the work on California. To conduct the study, Stern and Guzman used a comprehensive list of new firms from California's official business registry over the years 2001 to 2011. For 70 percent of the firms, they were able to correlate a series of features that characterized high-growth firms over the period from 2001 to 2006; they then used those findings to test their results against the outcomes of the other 30 percent of new firms in the same period. They also tested their model against new firms registered in the years 2007 to 2011. One thing Stern and Guzman observed is that even in tech epicenters, the majority of newly-registered businesses do not revolve around technology. "Even in a place like Palo Alto, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, most of the new businesses are retail-oriented small businesses that are not very likely to grow," Stern says. Stern emphasizes that the study is not meant to minimize the value of these smaller businesses, which are integral pieces of local economies -- pizzerias, dry cleaners, and many other types of firms. But in filling local niches, such businesses have an inherent ceiling on their growth. "All of those are very legitimate businesses and important for the local economy," Stern says. However, he adds, "The intention and potential of those businesses is different, and we can use analytics to evaluate that in roughly real time." Those local businesses, incidentally, are the ones most likely to bear the name of a founder, especially in areas like food and various services industries; the name implies a personal touch for regular customers. "That's almost declaring the intention of the founder," Stern says. By contrast, the study includes a list of hundreds of words commonly found in the names of high-growth, high-tech firms. Shaping policy While it might seem clear that a pizzeria will rarely grow the way an ambitious tech firm might, it is much harder to make aggregate assessments of the growth potential of a whole set of firms in a given place. But by using the methods Stern and Guzman have developed, local, state, and regional planners can make progress on that front, and evaluate whether they have a mix of business activity that offers tech-based growth potential. As such, other scholars say, the study can help inform economic policy design. Aaron Chatterji, a professor at Duke University who was not involved in the research, notes, "A lot of times in policymaking, we know how to count things. … It's much, much harder to delineate [in terms of] quality." Stern and Guzman, he adds, have "really tackled a question people care about. … I think it's going to go over well with the policy community." To be sure, many industries, not just technology firms, have growth potential. In another research paper Stern co-authored that was just published, he lays out findings that many cities and regions can achieve growth by establishing clusters of firms in a variety of industries. In both papers, Stern says, an important motivation is to provide policymakers with data tools to better craft new measures. "It is very difficult to manage the entrepreneurial ecosystem if we cannot measure the entrepreneurial ecosystem," Stern says. "While our work is a first step, we believe that policymakers and practitioners and researchers would benefit from being able to assess … the combined entrepreneurial quantity and quality in a given region. What we want is to really create new real-time economic statistics." |
domingo, 22 de junho de 2014
Building Traffic Through Search Engines
Internet Marketing Is As Easy As 1-2-3
Part 1: Building Traffic Through Search Engines
Internet marketing is easy but it isn't an overnight proposition; 1-2-3 could be weeks, months or years of Internet marketing before your web site becomes viable. Don’t stop reading yet -- I’m living proof that micro businesses can earn 6+ figures annually online, with little or no money invested in the early stages.
This isn’t about selling vitamins to your family and friends, nor is it any kind of network marketing type of company. I own a business that’s traditionally associated with walk-in traffic, not search engine traffic: postcard printing.
Over the 8 years I’ve had a Web site, I’ve accumulated a lot of tips on running an online business, and I’d like to share some of the Internet marketing search engine tactics I’ve learned.
If you like to do-it-yourself, subscribe to some of the good and free newsletters about Internet marketing available:
- Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch. There is both a free and fee-based newsletter.
- Adventive has, at last count, 20 discussion lists, from selling online to getting your site reviewed.
- The LED (previously known as Link Exchange Digest).
Yes, it’s a lot of reading, and yes, I continue to read many of the above publications. If your Web site is new, you’ll want to know how to create good titles, and learn what META TAGS mean. And these days, it’s important to know how to write good copy so your Web site will be found by the search engines.
Search engine submission is another important part of successful Internet marketing. On the next page are some search engine submission tips to help you build search engine traffic
Internet Marketing
By Susan Ward (about.com)
Definition:
Internet Marketing is an all-inclusive term for marketing products and/or services online – and like many all-inclusive terms, Internet marketing means different things to different people.
Essentially, though, Internet marketing refers to the strategies that are used to market a product or service online, marketing strategies that include search engine optimization and search engine submission, copywriting that encourages site visitors to take action, web site design strategies, online promotions, reciprocal linking, and email marketing – and that’s just hitting the highlights.
Online marketers are constantly devising new Internet marketing strategies in the hopes of driving more traffic to their Web sites and making more sales; witness the increasing use of blogs as marketing tools for business, for instance. (For more about creating a blog and how to use blogs as an Internet marketing strategy, see my Blog FAQ For Businesses.)
If you’re new to Internet marketing, I recommend focusing on web design and search engine optimization as a starting point; for most sites, the most traffic still comes from search engines and directories.
Also Known As: Web marketing, Web site marketing, online marketing.
Examples:
Once Tim understood the concept of keywords and how they can be seeded through a web page, his Internet marketing efforts became more successful.
Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies
By Laura Lake (about.com)
Internet marketing can attract more people to your website, increase customers for your business, and enhance branding of your company and products. If you are just beginning your online marketing strategy the top 10 list below will get you started on a plan that has worked for many.
- Start with a web promotion plan and an effective web design and development strategy.
- Get ranked at the top in major search engines, and practice good Search Optimization Techniques.
- Learn to use Email Marketing Effectively.
- Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs.
- Request an analysis from an Internet marketing coach or Internet marketing consultant.
- Build a responsive opt-in email list.
- Publish articles or get listed in news stories.
- Write and publish online press releases.
- Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your web site.
- Blog and interact with your visitors.
By following the above tips you'll be on your way to creating a concrete internet marketing strategy that could boost your business substantially.
6 Simple Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Business
A Marketing Mix is Best for Business
By Susan Ward (about.com)
Marketing is the most common problem that people running or starting small businesses ask me about. Typically, they say something like, "I've placed some ads but they just don't seem to be doing anything." – in other words, not bringing them the customers, clients or sales they desire.
Marketing is More Than Advertising
But marketing and advertising are not synonymous and 'placing a few ads' is never going to draw the kind of business a small business needs to be successful. Marketing is a process, not an event. It involves planning marketing goals and implementing (often a series of) marketing strategies to achieve them.
Now that doesn't mean marketing has to be a complicated process. But it does mean you have to know what you want to achieve and get out there and work at it. Here are six simple marketing strategies you can use to increase your customers and sales.
6 Simple Marketing Strategies
1) Offer some free classes/workshops related to your products and/or services - in your home, in a rented venue or through a local education institution such as a Community College. Target specific audiences or events, if appropriate. For instance, someone with a beading business might offer special workshops on Beaded Christmas Projects or Beading for Girls. A yoga instructor might offer a class such as Yoga for Men.
2) Join local business organizations and networking groups. Many, such as home-based business groups, are inexpensive to join. And the marketing benefits are huge. Once they get to know you and what you do, the other business people in your group will mention your business to others and may even give you referrals. Local business organizations are also great opportunities to create and participate in some cooperative marketing strategies, such as holding special Market Days or other events.
3) Create or become front and center in a charitable event. You can get huge amounts of press for events like this – which can translate into new customers. One local artist has painted paper grocery bags which he is selling with all proceeds going to a selected charity, for example. But you don’t even have to go to the trouble of creating your own event; many charities have established events that you can become a very visible part of by becoming a sponsor. See 10 Ways to Get Known for more on charity-based marketing strategies.
4) Create your own blog - and use it to build an audience of people who would be interested in your products and/or services. Creating a blog is easier than creating a website - and savvier too. How do I Go About Creating a Business Blog? tells how to get started. Then write regularly about topics related to your business and what your business is doing. You'll start connecting with other bloggers, business people and potential customers.
5) Join and use Twitter. If you have time to get to know and use a variety of social media, do. But if you only have time for one, Twitter is my pick of all the social media out there because it's so quick and easy to use. How to Twitter: a Get Started Guide will have you up and tweeting in no time. As for marketing strategies, be sure you don't use Twitter exclusively to promote your product but to find and converse with like-minded people who may be interested in what you're doing. Read How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Business for details.
6) Ask for referrals - If you operate a service-based business, you know that I have saved the best for last here, because asking for referrals is the easiest and least time-consuming of all the marketing strategies in this article. It really makes me wonder why it's also one of the least used marketing strategies. If you don't regularly ask your satisfied customers for referrals because you don't know how or feel awkward doing it, read my Ask for Referrals article; it provides scripts you can use to make it easier to do.
The Marketing Rope
Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with advertising. It's just that in most cases it won't be not effective marketing unless it's part of a coordinated marketing plan. Think of marketing as a rope and advertising as one strand of the rope. How strong is a one strand rope going to be?
A mix of marketing strategies, such as advertising in conjunction with the marketing strategies above, will get you the marketing results you want. None of these marketing strategies are going to draw hordes of customers overnight but, assuming you have a good product or service, if you do them and work at them consistently, you will see an increase in customers and sales.
6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales
Shift Your Sales Focus for Increased Sales
By Susan Ward (about.com)
Want to increase sales dramatically? Then shift your sales focus from attracting new customers to enticing your proven customers to buy again. The best sales prospect is a prospect that's already converted - in other words, one of your current customers.
Think of it this way; if your business is located in a small town with a population of 1000 people and you sell a sprocket to everyone in that town, man, woman, and child, you've sold 1000 sprockets – and saturated your market. Your sprocket selling days are over. Is it time to pack up and move on?
No! If you start focusing your sales efforts on your proven customers, you’ll be able to increase your sprocket sales dramatically. And these sure ways to increase sales will help build customer loyalty, too. Try some or all of these ideas to increase your sales:
1. Set up a sales incentive program.
Give your sales staff a reason to get out there and sell, sell, sell. Why do so many businesses that rely on their sales staff to drive sales have incentive programs in place? Because offering their sales staff the trips and/or TVs for x amount of sales works. See Paul Shearstone’s Creating Sales Incentive Programs That Work for how to make your sales incentive program “sweet and simple and attainable”.
2. Encourage your sales staff to upsell.
Essentially, upselling involves adding related products and/or services to your line and making it convenient and necessary for customer to buy them. Just placing more products near your usual products isn’t going to increase your sales much. To upsell successfully, the customer has to be persuaded of the benefit. For instance, when I last had my carpets cleaned, the cleaner noticed a pet stain. Instead of just cleaning it up, he drew my attention to it, and showed me how easily and effectively the spot cleaning solution removed all trace of the stain. Did I buy the spot cleaning solution? You bet. He persuaded me that buying it was beneficial to me and made it convenient to purchase it. Result: increased sales for the carpet cleaning company.
3. Give your customers the inside scoop.
Recently I was shopping at a retail housewares store. I had picked out an item and was mulling over whether to buy it or not when a salesperson came up to me and said, “I see you’re interested in that blender. We’re having a sale next week and all our blenders will be 20 percent off. You might want to come back then.” Guess what? I did – and bought two other items as well. Lesson: if you have a promotion or sale coming up, tell your customers about it. They’ll come back – and probably bring some friends with them too. (And don't forget - you can give your customers the inside scoop by emailing or calling them, too.)
4. Tier your customers.
There should be a clear and obvious difference between regular customers and other customers – a difference that your regular customers perceive as showing that you value them. How can you expect customer loyalty if all customers are treated as “someone off the street”? There are all kinds of ways that you can show your regular customers that you value them, from small things such as greeting them by name through larger benefits such as giving regulars extended credit or discounts.
5. Set up a customer rewards program.
We're all familiar with the customer rewards programs that so many large businesses have in place. But there’s no reason that a small business can’t have a customer rewards program, too. It can be as simple as a discount on a customer’s birthday or as complex as a points system that earns various rewards such as discounts on merchandise. Done right, rewards programs can really help build customer loyalty and increase sales.
6. Distribute free samples to customers.
Why do so many businesses include free samples of other products when you buy something from them? Because it can increase sales in so many ways. As the customer who bought the original product, I might try and like the sample of the new product and buy some of it, too. Or I might pass on the sample to someone else, who might try the product, like it, and buy that and other products from the company. At the very least, the original customer will be thinking warm thoughts about your company, and hopefully telling other people about your products.
Attracting new customers is a good thing. But attracting new customers is not the only way to increase your sales, and is, in fact, the hard way of going about it. Shifting your sales focus to enticing your current customers can make increasing your sales easier – and best of all, build the customer loyalty that results in repeat sales.
7 Ways to Increase Your Service Business’s Profits
Change Your Business Model and Watch Your Profits Soar!
By Susan Ward –(about.com)
One of the big problems of small service businesses based on one person’s talents or expertise is just that – the business depends on the talents and expertise of just one person.
For product-based businesses, growing profits is comparatively easy; such businesses can expand by exporting and/ or opening more branches, just to give two examples. But what if you have a service-based business?
There are only so many hours per week one person can work. And you can only raise your hourly or project rate so much before you price yourself right out of the market.
Which means your service business has a profit ceiling – a ceiling that may not allow you to make the income you need.
How can you break through and grow your service business’s profits? The answer is so simple that even Homer Simpson could see it. Change your business model so that your service business’s profits (and your income) is no longer dependent on you.
Here are seven ways you can do that and make your “solo” service business’s profits soar.
1) Add products.
There is absolutely no written rule anywhere that says that a small business has to be a product-based business or a service business. And for many small businesses, selling products that relate to the services they provide is a natural.
The carpet cleaners that sell stain remover products. Veterinarians that sell pet food. Look at the businesses around your community and you’ll see examples all over the place. Add the right products and your profits could increase exponentially!
The trick: Be sure to choose products that relate to/complement the services you provide. Selling unrelated products doesn’t work.
2) Hiring and training.
This is another obvious solution that many small service businesses have used successfully. If one person can only make so much money, then x number of people doing the same thing can make significantly more money.
If the service your business provides can be taught to others or is a talent that can be hired, hiring and/or training can work very well for you. For instance, if you are a designer, you could hire other designers, enabling you to expand your client list. Or think about the carpet cleaner again for a moment. It would be easy for him or her to train employees to provide the same service.
Learn more: How to Hire Employees in Canada
The trick: Never hire without training. Even creative types need to be trained in terms of the house rules and your business’s culture and standards.
3) Productize your service.
By taking the service you provide and turning it into a product package, you unchain yourself from charging by the hour and relieve clients of their fear of hourly rates stacking up endlessly as a project drags on.
An aspiring entrepreneur might want to have a business consultant create a business plan for them, for example, but be apprehensive about the expense of paying the consultant by the hour. But paying a flat fee for the consultant’s business plan package makes having the consultant create a plan more attractive and affordable – and nets the consultant a sale she otherwise wouldn’t have had.
Read C.S. Hayden’s Turn Your Services Into a Product to learn more about how you can productize your service.
The trick: Be sure to develop products with your target market in mind – and be sure to thoroughly test them before marketing them.
4) Change your market.
Right now there’s a fuss being made about differential pricing. But differential pricing has existed since the first homo sapiens made a sale; different people have always been willing to pay different prices for the same thing, so there have always been striated markets from low-end to high-end. Walmart and Holt Renfrew both sell clothes but at very different price points.
Take a close look at your market; you might be able to “move up” to a higher price point. And don’t limit yourself to thinking only in terms of a business to consumer business model; consider changing to a business to business or even business to government model. Governments, in particular, are notorious for paying more for products and services than other potential clients.
Learn More: How to Sell to the Government of Canada
How to Sell to the U.S. Government
The trick: Upscale clients often demand upscale surroundings. You may need to redecorate or even relocate your office if you have one.
5) Repackage yourself.
Just as markets have striations that have different price points for services, so do professions. And those striations can mean the difference between being paid as a lowly grunt and being paid as a star. Who would you rather be; the poorly paid public defender or the glamorous defense attorney that people are willing to pay huge sums?
Here’s a secret; there are many professions where you can move from one to another. The barber can become a hairstylist; the masseuse can become a massage therapist; the writer can become a content developer. Titles matter when it comes to fees.
Repackaging yourself is not just a matter of changing what you call yourself, of course; it may also involve improving your credentials or increasing your celebrity. (See The Top 10 Ways to Get Known for help with this.)
The trick: Repackaging, like rebranding, has to be complete. It may involve sweeping changes such as relocating or rebuilding a client list, so be sure you know what repackaging will involve before you do it.
6) Stop doing one-offs; sell the maintenance as well as the service.
Think how much more income you would have if, instead of paying you to do one thing, your clients or customers just kept paying you. That’s what this business model is all about. For example, if you are a web designer, you could offer a service of maintaining the website with monthly or annual fees, instead of just designing a website for someone.
Or if your business is installing irrigation systems, you could also offer a maintenance service to your customers that would involve turning off the system for the winter and turning it on in the spring – a truly brilliant idea because it would also give you the opportunity to check the system over twice a year and spot any repairs that needed to be made.
The trick: Focus on creating a maintenance program that solves a customer’s current or potential problem; that’s the kind of maintenance program that will be easy to sell.
7) Franchising.
If you are operating a successful business that can be duplicated to allow others the same potential for success, franchising your business can bring in big bucks. But before you start figuring out how much you can charge for each clone of your company, read Is Franchising Your Business for You? to see if franchising is a viable option for your business. Franchising isn’t just a matter of opening up branch locations; what you’re actually selling is not your service business but your business system and not all businesses are suitable candidates.
The trick: Open another branch office of your business before franchising; it will give you the chance to test your business model and work out the kinks in your system.
Your Income Level is Largely Up to You
You don’t have to settle for what you feel is a low income from your business just because you charge by the hour for your services and don’t have time to add any more billable hours to your week. Service businesses can make just as much money as the most successful product businesses. All you have to do is figure out how you’re going to break through the profit ceiling – and do it.
Top 10 Ways of Growing Your Business
Tried and True Ways of Growing Your Business
By Susan Ward (about.com)
Growing your business isn’t just a worthy goal; growing your business is a necessity for your business’s survival and your economic well-being. What can you do to get your business beyond the bare sustenance level? All of these ways of growing your business have been successfully used by other businesses and, with some planning and investment, will work for you.
1. Penetrate your existing market.
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of growing your business is getting new customers. But the customers you already have are your best bet for increasing your sales; it’s easier and more cost-effective to get people who are already buying from you to buy more than to find new customers and persuade them to buy from you. See 6 Sure Ways to Increase Sales for more.
Getting new customers is another approach to growing your business. One of the easiest way to do this is to ask your current customers for referrals. But notice the verb. Doing a great job and just assuming that your customers are passing the word about your business isn’t going to do much to increase your customer base; you have to actively seek referrals. During or after every job or sale, ask your satisfied customer if he knows anyone else who would be interested in your products or services.
3. Innovate your product or service.
Discovering and promoting new uses for your products or services is a great way to both get existing customers to buy more and attract new customers. Think petroleum jelly and duct tape – and how few of these would actually be sold if they only had one use!
4. Extend your market reach.
There are several ways of growing your business by making your product or service available to a new pool of customers. The most obvious is to open stores in new locations, such as opening a store or kiosk in a new town. New locations can also be virtual, such as a website with an online store. Another approach is to extend your reach through advertising. Once you’ve identified a new market, you might advertise in select media that targets that market.
5. Participate in trade shows.
Trade shows can be a great way of growing your business. Because trade shows draw people who are already interested in the type of product or service you offer, they can powerfully improve your bottom line. The trick is to select the trade shows you participate in carefully, seeking the right match for your product or service. Trade Show Tips will help you get the best return on your investment.
Remember the analogy of the big fish in the small pond? That’s essentially how this strategy for growing your business works. The niche market is the pond; a narrowly defined group of customers. Think of them as a subset whose needs are not being met and concentrate on meeting those unmet needs. A nursery, for instance, might specialize in roses.
7. Contain your costs.
Surprised? Bear in mind that when we’re talking about growing your business, we’re actually talking about growing your business’s bottom line. And the difference between pre-tax and post-tax money can make this a very effective growth strategy. There are two main approaches to cutting costs; liquidating your “loser” products and improving your inventory turnover.
8. Diversify your products or services.
The key to successfully growing your business through diversification is similarity. You want to focus on the related needs of your already established market or on market segments with similar needs and characteristics. An artist might also sell frames and framing services, for instance. Or a mountain bike rental business might switch to renting skidoos in the winter season.
9. Franchising.
The stories of entrepreneurs who have become both well known and well heeled due to franchising their small businesses are legion – and not just stories. If you have a successful business and can develop a system that ensures that others can duplicate your success, franchising may be the fast track for growing your business. See Is Franchising Your Business For You? for details.
10. Exporting.
Expanding into international markets can also be a powerful boost to your business’s bottom line. Like franchising, this is a way of growing your business that requires quite a commitment of time and resources, but can be extremely rewarding. 10 Steps to Successful Exporting outlines the process of getting into exporting if this way of growing your business interests you.
There you have it; ten ways of growing your business. Don’t let this list overwhelm you; pick one or two of these ideas that are suitable to your business and your circumstances and get your plan for growing your business underway. Quick-Start Business Planning will get you started. While you probably won’t experience growth right away, whichever way of expanding your business you choose, you will see progress if you keep at it, and will successfully transform your business into all you want it to be.