Sometimes, convincing a prospect to buy your product isn’t the hard part – structuring the deal is. Take Jim, a software developer who wrote a small program that he was selling for a modest fee via his website and through direct sales. A company contacted him after using his application to find out if they [...]
Does having competition make you uncomfortable? Perhaps you should consider making a strategic alliance instead. Competition can be a scary thing, but it can also be useful, if handled correctly. Few industries or markets are only large enough for a single player, which means that there is little reason for anyone to be afraid of [...]
I know a few business owners who do their own taxes, and many more who pay someone to fill out their corporate returns each year. Given that the cost of corporate accounting can be significant, some owners have shied away from that route for as long as they can, while others quickly push their books [...]
I’m fortunate in that I get little enough email that I can generally respond within a day to most queries. However, being in contact with many people who receive far more messages than I do, I’m familiar with the concept of dealing with vast quantities of mail. This week, I had to contact a company [...]
Continuing with the theme of basic pieces of advice, today’s suggestion is in regard to your learning. I left university having had enough of sitting in the classroom. My degree took 5 years to complete, having added and removed subjects several times. I was ready to move out into the real world, despite the messages [...]
If there was only one piece of advice I could give a business owner, this is it: Find a mentor who has been in a similar business situation before (though not necessarily in the same industry), with whom you have good personal chemistry, and with whom you can communicate effectively. The reason for this is [...]
When you hire a new employee in an area for which you have no internal measure to use as a baseline, you must decide how much to offer a prospect in terms of salary. If you’re hiring in an area for which there are industry statistics relative to your location, then that clearly can be [...]
Elie Kochman is the author of Advice for Small Business Owners and the founder of Optimal Upgrade Consulting. Using his experience working in the corporate world along with his exposure to the world of small businesses, he writes these articles to assist others avoiding common pitfalls of growing a business. His experience in the corporate world, building his own business, and working directly with other growing businesses has given him some perspective on the trials and pains of running a business.
