Are you struggling to generate a steady significant stream of home based business sales? Are you tired of not having enough home based business sales to offset your costs?What I’ve realized learned from some of the best retailers of home based business sales products is that you need to do this one thing really well to boast your revenues. It could be true that you may be an excellent one-to-one salesman and can probably sell ice to an eskimo. However, that is a very difficult skill to duplicate down an organization. Let’s face it: super salesman do not grow on trees, and very few amounts of people that you will come across will actively and passionately go out and sell for the sheer love of it.The truth is that most people are deftly frightened of sales.They don’t like it, they secretly feel embarrassed of the products they have to offer, and they feel sleazy for selling to people. So as a team leader, you must find a resolution that will take the individual pressure off of them but still be able to tap in to their networks. And what do the top retailers do?The best home based business sales retailers run events!OK… maybe that’s not a well-kept secret, but there’s a science to how you run events that determine whether or not you leave with a sale or empty-handed. Here is what separates a typical event from a selling event:1) You must provide value -Our most effective home based business sales events occur when we dispense valuable information to our target customer base. Case and point, my wife is a great retailer. She specializes in cosmetics, and as a company trainer, she is also a certified makeup trainer. She invested in herself to make herself in to a makeup expert and uses her expertise to boost her sales. She conducts general education classes and makeup workshops that target ladies who are interested in learning professional-grade makeup techniques that are simplified for everyday use.By providing this value, she is able to attract a larger volume of guests, which increases her chances of completing a sale, a powerful form of attraction marketing.2) Product Demos – If you’ve never done a product demo for your home based business sales events, you are losing valuable sales opportunities. One of the lessons that I’ve learned being in network marketing and seeing so many affiliate products, mine and others, is that most products are top-notch. Very few network marketing companies carry inferior products, but the downside is that they also don’t invest in mass market advertising, which is why you are involved in your home based business franchise. You are the marketing mechanism for them.Think about it: if demonstrations weren’t powerful, why would infomercials, Costco, department stores, and kiosks at the mall all utilize this strategy to draw you in?When you host your events, you should always focus on doing some sort of demonstration of your product after the general information has been covered. Make sure you pick products that have symmetry with the topic that you are covering at the event, else it loses its value.When doing your demonstration, be sure that if you are promoting a health and nutrition product, have a control piece as well. What that means is that you should have a demo without using your product to demonstrate to the audience the difference of using your product, and what it means to not use your product. For my website company, we have programmers sit down with the prospect and show them the capabilities of the website via live webinar to demonstrate the ease of use of our platform website builder.3) Have Roles -A well-run home based business sales event needs to have team unity where each team member knows their role in the sales process.- You always have a presenter who gives out the information. That person also does the demonstration.- Another team member sets up the demonstration while the speaker is engaging the audience.- A team member needs to greet the guests as they come in and help them get situated by filling out a questionnaire to extract extra information (i.e. “What question do you wish to address in terms of health and nutrition?”)- You need to designate a sales person. That person should be the “closer” that collects the payment and is responsible for upselling packages and promotional items.If you have a team that is well-versed in these tasks, then you will watch your sales revenues spike because it’s not reliant on one person doing everything.4) Build Packages and Promotions – Sales sell in a traditional business, and so too in a home based business sales event. Try to create promotional packages grouping several products together, or run a special on promotional items to entice customers to buy at the event. Make sure you stress that the sale is ONLY for this event so it creates a sense of urgency.Promotions that work best for us are bundles of several low-end items, as well as offering tiered pricing and incentives for purchasing a certain dollar amount. In comparison to events that don’t have packages, sales for packaged items always increase overall sales by 33-50% at our events.5) Always Promote the Next Event – We have a saying in our company: “Who’s the best speaker? The next speaker!”What that means is that one of the keys to genuinely strong home based business sales teams is that they always promote the next event before the current event is over. It opens up the opportunity for you to book your guests for the next appointment. It also allows your team to provide incentives for guests to invite their friends to the next event, which will organically grow your retail audience and increase potential of sales.Make simple, effective, and professional flyers for the next event and have them ready to distribute to the attendees. Give them a few extra to give to friends. If you use that incentive suggestion in the previous paragraph, they will no doubt be motivated to promote the event for you. We offer discounts for customer from the current who attend our next event.Conclusion: At the end of the day, it’s all about teamwork and commitment. When you have a group of entrepreneurs that are dedicated to generating significant revenues for yours and their home based business sales events, then you will have the beginnings of a fantastic lasting formula of success. If your speaker does a good job, they will have already done half the sale because they stressed the importance of why the product is needed. The demo moves the customer to want to buy, and the closer comes in and finishes the job. It’s a fluid sales process.Now that you have learned an effective mechanism to boost offline home based business sales, let me introduce you to a way to leverage the internet sales aspect too. Would you rather have only one channel of distribution, or two? Multiple streams of revenue are always a plus, especially if they work in unison.There are a lot more tips that we can share for running events, but to go on and on would take all night. If you can’t wait until our next piece for more retailing tips, then reach out to me via my blog and I will be glad to help.
Establish A Mechanism for Home Based Business Sales
Making Taxes Easy for Small Business
Many economic scholars see small businesses, to be the largest contributor to economic growth and employment creation on the planet. The ratio of small business, to big business in different countries varies. It is predicted that small business as a collective, will eclipse big business as a force in the economic landscape in future years. Be that as it may, fact remains that small business, is crucial to every countries economic development.Limited research however, has been conducted on a variety of issues affecting small business. The global small business failure rate remains high, at an unacceptable rate of 80%(some say 95%), within the first year of formation. Common concerns about small business are confined to only cash flow problems, and under capitalization. Whilst these two, are major culprits in business failures, they not the only factors. Weak marketing, skills shortages, bad management, capacity are other factors, contributing to business failure. Taxes can also be added to the list as a cause of business failure.Since many start-up businesses cannot afford to procure the services of a tax consultant/ advisor, they eventually fall foul of the taxation requirements of their respective tax authorities.
A small business is treated no different from a huge multinational corporation in many tax regimes around the globe. This treatment comes with its own set of problems. The one being the failure of the small business. Tax authorities, vigorously pursue errant taxpayers, be they big or small. In fact, it can be proven that harsher enforcement by tax authorities are reserved for small businesses!Governments have yet to honestly acknowledge the role of small business and stop paying only lip service to its promotion. The current tax system for small business, in most countries will have to be revisited. No one is suggesting that tax authorities should grant small businesses “special treatment” forever. Just a breather, so as to enable them to grow at a faster pace.To accommodate a small business and its growth, whilst being fair, a concept known as “thresholds tax”, can be implemented for small business. It is in place for individuals, and also known as progressive taxation. Simply put, it means, the more someone earns, the more they taxed. Many countries levy a fixed percentage tax on “profits” of businesses, big or small. This tax is not fair, and fairness is a prerequisite for a good tax system. Even the slightly different tax regime for “Small Business Corporations”, in most countries still does not address the problem.The controversial “profit” in business accounting, especially small business has not been thoroughly researched by tax lawmakers. Profit does not always equate to positive cash flow.
The working capital factors tied into profit, results in severe cash flow setbacks for small business. It is therefore unfair to tax the small business on profit, like the bigger companies, since bigger businesses finance their profits and/ or working capital via many methods, internal and external. These avenues are not available to smaller businesses.Herewith some suggestions on making taxes easy for small business.
Give small business a tax holiday of about two years after start-up.
Simplify tax legislation.
Tax small business only on “cash generated by operations”, up to a certain threshold.
Profit less working capital (debtors and inventory on hand) plus depreciation equals cash generated by operations, which in turn becomes taxable income.
Exempt small business from employee; value added or general sales tax up to certain thresholds. (Already in place in some countries).
Taxable income thresholds could be, 0 to $200 000; $201 000 to $500 000(for small business), depending on the definition of a small business in the respective country.
As soon as the taxable income exceeds $ 500 000, a higher progressive rate applies.
Taxes on “cash” income could also fall away at this level.
My suggestions are in no way exhaustive. More substantive research is needed. If we accept that we live in a global village, taxes will also have to be harmonized and standardized, between the different countries. What International Accounting Standards have done for accounting; can be suggested for taxation also.
Home Based Business! What Do Donuts Have to Do With it?
Internet World Statistics tell me that there are over 6.7 billion people living on this planet. The latest figures show over 1.6 billion of them use the Internet while in the year 2000 there were just under 361million users. That is a growth rate of almost 450%. In the US alone and back in 2005 there were 13.8 million Home based Businesses (info. provided by Entrepreneur.com) and in my own country, Australia in the state of New South Wales there were 254,000 in 2004. Today there is more. Tomorrow there will be more again!
The idea, concept, consideration of a home based business is for the most part is a noble and popular one. The reason so many people are thinking about or have already started a home based business is as varied as the individuals that choose it. However, for the most part it can be said that most home based businesses are borne out of convenience.
Single Mums find it convenient to work from home while they can still care for their children. Stay at home Dads are much more common in today’s day and can find it convenient to keep an eye on the “little ones” while they do business from home. Maybe commuting is a problem and navigating the hallway in ones own home is far more convenient than the city streets or country roads. Whatever it is though the thought is there – “work from home”. This doesn’t mean though that we have a “Home Based Business”.
Of course there is a difference between “work from home” and a “home based business” and often (I think) we get the two confused a bit. We speak “home based business” but think “work from home”!
The differences are considerable and may be found in the definitions themselves. You see when you research the word “Business” you will find something like this (depending on your source):-
Business: The purchase and sale of goods in an attempt to make a profit (Macquarie Dictionary).
We also see in association a Business Name:
Business Name: The name other than a surname under which a person carries on business or profession, such name being necessarily registered.
If we dig a little deeper from the same source we identify the people that do business are described as the following:-
Businessman /woman: A person who engages in business or commerce.
And
Businesslike: Conforming to the methods of business or trade; methodical; systematic.
And finally:
Business Plan: A formal statement of business goals, the reason why they are believed attainable and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organisation or team attempting to reach those goals.
Work on the other hand is something different. (According to Wikipedia) being thus:
Work:(1) Exertion directed to produce or accomplish something; labour; toil. (2) A productive or operative activity (3) Employment; a job; especially that by which one earns a living.
So this is what I’m getting to. Sometimes we focus on the hole in the middle of the donut and don’t look at the whole thing! We can say we have a home based business but we don’t see the big picture and therefore we are working from home instead. If we are serious about a home based business then we must see the whole thing. Build from the right foundations and bring clarity to our vision.
There is nothing wrong with work from home at all. In fact if we are to have a home based business we will indeed work from home. It will be an integral part of our business but, if we don’t have a business plan, a registered business name, or if we are not attempting to buy (or create) and sell something for profit, conform to business principles and conduct ourselves in a businesslike manner we don’t have a business at all… we are just working?
You may have started like a “bull at a gate”, you may be going “great guns” or you may be struggling to get your focus or organise your day. Don’t fret! Take a moment to reflect on your foundations. Have you got a business plan with goals and a systematic approach to achieve them? Are they realistic? Are you structured properly? If not then take a little time to get these things in order. Then get back into it and gain the rewards you deserve for having a go, not giving up and enjoy the lifestyle you have chosen.
Just a word of warning! If you don’t have a Business Plan you can lose your way. If you don’t have a Business Structure you may well have problems with taxation in the future and if you don’t have a business mindset you will struggle to enjoy and achieve your dream. I heard this saying today and can’t remember who quoted it but it goes like this “Goals are in concrete, plans are in sand!”
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