6 Things To Make Travelling For Business Much Easier

May 3, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Anyone who travels often for business knows how exhausting it can be. It’s getting harder in several ways, so we need to do whatever we can to make things simpler. Whether you’re travelling across the country or overseas, travelling for business can be stressful. From packing the right attire to making sure your transport is reliable, you may find yourself dreading a long journey. However, travelling for business doesn’t have to be like that, and here are some tips and tricks to make travelling for business much easier.

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Make hanging suits and dresses easier

Suits and dresses for important meetings simply can’t be shoved into a suitcase. However, with limited space (apart from the handles inside your car) it can be difficult to hang your smart clothes nicely to avoid creases. Investing in a car clothes hanger like this one will make your road trips for business so much easier.

Don’t risk running out of fuel

In theory, running out of fuel shouldn’t be an issue you’ll run into, especially if you’re keeping an eye on the fuel gauge. However, if you’re driving through towns and cities that are unknown with large amounts of countryside, you may not know when you’ll next be able to fill up. Keeping a gas oil fuelbox in the trunk will give you that peace of mind when you’re next travelling for business.

Keep a list of contact numbers in your bag

There’s nothing worse than becoming stranded with a dead phone. Even if you can find a payphone or borrow someone else’s to call for help, you still need to know numbers off by heart. Don’t risk forgetting important numbers by keeping a list of contact numbers in your bag. That way, if you’re stranded you’ll have a list of numbers from a mechanic to someone who can come and pick you up.

Pre book parking

Parking in an unknown city or country can be stressful, especially if you weren’t expecting to have to pay for parking. Pre-booking a parking space is now easier than ever thanks to Your Parking Space! That way you don’t have the stresses of trying to park up close enough to your hotel or event.

Travel earlier than rush hour

Nobody likes being caught in traffic, and if you have to travel to a destination in time for a meeting or seminar, you may feel a tremendous amount of pressure when you’re travelling. Take this pressure off by travelling earlier than rush hour to ensure you’re there in plenty of time. If you’ve got to make a flight, consider travelling in the early hours of the morning to give you enough time to arrive.

Call your hotel ahead of time

Finally, calling your hotel just as you set off on your journey will allow you to resolve any issues that might have cropped up such as double bookings or your room not being ready in time. That way you can work with your hotel to ensure everything is ready once you arrive.

How To Create Effective Sales Pitches

May 3, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Ideally, when you’re running a business and you have what feels like a thousand different things to do daily, you’ll concentrate on building growth oriented sales team to help you boost your business and take this one task at least away from you. A good sales team is crucial to any business, and it can spell the difference between success and failure, growth and stagnation.

Yet before you have this team, or when you’re looking for ways to train them, knowing how to create compelling sales pitches is vital. When you can pitch your products and services, or even your entire business, in the right way, sales will follow. Read on for some advice about creating an effective sales pitch and growing your business quickly and successfully.

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Offer Solutions

One of the very best things you can do when you want to sell something is to talk about the problems it solves. In other words, offer solutions for those problems. If someone can see how your product or service will remove a problem from their life and make things easier, they will be much more willing to try it out.

The old-fashioned way of selling was to talk about the features of a product or service, but this is not enough. People can already see what the features are; they need to know what benefits those features will give them.

Support Your Pitch With Facts

It might be unfair, it might not be true at all anymore, but unfortunately, salespeople have gained something of a reputation for exaggerating the facts or even outright lying. This has led to many people having an innate distrust of anyone whose job it is to sell. The best way to combat this issue is to prove that what you’re saying is true. In other words, support your pitch with facts and information that can be checked and verified should the customer want to do so.

Prepare your pitch in advance and provide plenty of evidence in the form of case studies and research that prove how effective your products or services really are. Customer testimonials are an ideal way to do this too.

Identify Objections

Before you even begin your sales pitch, before you go into the meeting or pick up the phone, you should think about what objections your client might make and already have the answers to combat them. In this way, no matter what objections the client might have, you’ll be able to allay their fears and show them why buying from you is a good idea.

Of course, you won’t want to be overly aggressive as this is a sales technique that really doesn’t work and will turn people away from you rather than make them want to buy from you, but if you can identify the biggest objections, you’ll be armed correctly for the sales pitch.

Ask Them For The Sale

It’s hugely important for any salesperson to be confident, otherwise that lack of confidence will be picked up by the client or customer, and they will feel less sure about buying from you themselves.

This is why, at the end of your pitch, you should always ask for the sale. This might be along the lines of asking what date is suitable for delivery, or what quantity they want, or even outright asking if they’re going to buy. Missing this step could make your pitch fall down at the last hurdle; often it’s what customers are waiting to hear to help them galvanize their thoughts and make a decision.

Watch Out For These Surprise Business Costs

April 30, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

It should be clear to anyone wanting to get into business that you need to have a strong head for numbers, and that you need to avoid a huge number of potential costs that can appear every year. In fact, there are a number of business costs which are somewhat hidden or otherwise surprising which often catch out business owners who don’t know better. In this article, we are going to take you through some of these costs, so that you can be better prepared for them in the long run.

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Overrunning Project

Whether it is a new construction job or something much smaller in-house, having a project overrun can often be one of the most devastating ways in which you run into surprise business costs. What’s more, often these costs are not going to be quite clear until you are some way down the line, which can make it a lot more difficult to plan for them and include them in your updated budget. The best solution is to use a decent project manager and to ensure that you are planning as finely as possible along the way. That way, you should find that you can avoid most of these issues.

Insurance Claims

There are many kinds of insurance that you would do well to have in business, but sometimes you are going to be the one footing the bill. A perfect example would be when you have to pay out for unemployment insurance. In situations like this, you are going to be in a much better condition overall as a business if you use the right service and the right software to minimize those costs and fees – take a look at https://unemploymenttracker.com/software/ for an example of how you can approach this kind of position head-on.

Supply Chain Demands

Sometimes the issue is with someone or something further on down the supply chains that suddenly makes demands on your finances. There are a lot of reasons this can happen, whether it’s due to breakages or a customer demand changing. But you need to make sure that you are making use of suppliers that you can trust, every time. If you do that, you should at least be able to avoid the worst of these surprise costs, and sometimes you might even be able to do away with the rest by coming to an agreement too.

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Shrinkage

Then there is shrinkage, which is simply the accidental loss of stock or cash through unknown means. More often than not, this is theft, and it can very often be internal theft, so you need to ensure you are running a tight ship in order to avoid this particular problem. Beyond that, just make a point of keeping your premises protected and looking after your stock and cash, and that is going to help things along nicely. This way, you should be able to avoid having to pay out for replacement stock, which can be a surprisingly big cost much of the time.

3 Ways You Can Make Serious Money from Your Land

April 29, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

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The only thing they can’t make more of is land, and if you just happen to own some you could be sitting on a potential goldmine. Around 60% of US land is privately owned and owning land can make you an excellent second income and apart from the obvious usage for building homes or expanding your existing property, there’s a multitude of things you could do with your own private land.

With the Covid-19 pandemic still hanging around then, some uses of your land might be temporarily limited to activities with small groups of people, if allowed at all, but infection rates are dropping, however, your land could be used for something completely passive as well.

Some of the best methods of making money from your land could include:

Lease to a company
Farming, hunting, or fishing

If you don’t want to be involved in anything but simply want to get paid then you could lease the land to a third party for whatever they need to do while camping activities or farming will open it up to the public.

Lease to a Company

Whether you are busy with a career, keeping a home, or just don’t want to be involved, making money from land that you own can be a very easy endeavor indeed. One of the easiest ways to use it for income is to simply lease the land to a third party for their use in whatever business they operate.

Depending on the size of the land and any geographical constraints, what the land can be used for will vary greatly, but one of the most common uses of land in the 21st century is to expand cell phone coverage. Verizon cell tower lease rates vary depending on what the company needs to do but they can provide very generous passive income.

As the 5G network expands Verizon is adding to their 2,000 cell towers and 4,200 rooftop antennas across the United States. However, to negotiate a contract with a third party such as Verizon you will need a specialized lawyer to make sure you get a fair deal and some landowners have seen a rent increase in excess of 300%.

Farming, Hunting, or Fishing

Most empty land is used for farming and should your land exceed 250 acres it is perfect for starting a farm. However, the hard work involved in farming means that you probably won’t be able to generate passive income and instead might have to become a farmer yourself. Pasture land is the easiest since animals are left free to roam, but for serious money, you will have to grow something, however, some people have found success with 2-acre micro-farms.

Even today, hunting is still a popular sport and in the US alone there are approximately 15 million regular hunters that hunt game such as deer, rabbits, and woodland birds. Only around 12 acres of land is needed for a deer hunting range, although this would be very small, however, it could be populated with other smaller animals used for cooking or crafts. Hunting rights can be leased for passive income so you won’t need to do much to make money from the land.

Additionally, should your land happen to contain a freshwater river or something similar you could charge people to fish the waters. Fishing can be fun for all ages, all levels, and at any time of the year, and as such fishing is an extremely popular hobby and a classic pastime in many countries, with over 100 million active and regular fishing hobbyists in America. Both hunting and fishing come with strict licenses and regulations however so legal advice should be attained before going ahead with any plans.

How Entrepreneurs Can Find More Time For Family

April 28, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Having enough time for your family when you’re an entrepreneur isn’t always easy. When your business is just starting out and you’re in the early growth stages, it can feel as though you need to spend every moment working on it it. This isn’t good for your family life, especially when you’re a parent. Here are a few hints to help you balance work and family.

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Lighten The Load

Learn to delegate some of your to-do list, both at work and at home. It can be hard to let go enough to trust someone else to look after part of your business for you. However, if you’re trying to do everything yourself, you aren’t going to have the energy to invest in your family life.

For your business, it can help to hire a professional agency to take care of things like your marketing, or accounting.

At home, you can delegate to free up more time too. If you want to prioritize time with your children, hire someone to take care of the chores, whether that’s a cleaner, a gardener, or a company like Labor Panes. Don’t feel guilty about doing this.

Set Boundaries

Set working hours for yourself, and keep to them strictly. You won’t lose a client (not one you really want anyway) just because you didn’t immediately respond to an email that was sent at midnight. If you make yourself available at all hours, even if you’re sick or on vacation, you’re setting a dangerous precedent. Have clear boundaries for yourself to avoid getting burned out.

A good way to keep these boundaries is to turn your phone off. If you aren’t getting the notifications of emails or other messages, you won’t be tempted to reply to them then and there. Have a separate work phone, and turn it off when you’re not working.

Fuel Yourself The Right Way

A lot of tips for entrepreneurs are all about tips like getting enough sleep and having an exercise routine. Start small and think about the way that you’re fueling yourself. If you’re working long hours, are you powering through the day on too many cups of coffee and sugary snacks? Try to keep yourself going with healthy snacks instead, and swap at least a few cups of your daily coffee for water. You can get energy in a way that won’t cause you to crash later.

Schedule More Than Just Work

You probably schedule everything in for work, like meetings and deadlines, and you can do the same with your family commitments too. Blocking time out in your calendar for family commitments like movie night or date night can help you to see these as just as important as your work commitments. If they’re on the calendar it will be easier to make time for them and fit them in around your working hours.

A better work-life balance is better for your stress levels and will help you to do both more effectively.