Tag Archives: Corporate Business Solutions

How You Can Turn a Passion into a Small Business

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Do you have a strong passion for something? Maybe it is a hobby that allows you to build things or have a love for animals that could open up different paths for you. Either way, many people will take their passion for something and turn it into a business.

Have you ever heard people say to do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life? That old saying can definitely ring true for those who follow their passions and make a career out of it.

If you truly love something and won’t lose that passion over time, here are a few ways to help you turn that passion into a small business.

Have a Vision and Stay Focused

It’s one thing to be determined to succeed. It’s another thing to stay focused on a clear vision and develop a plan. Coming up with that initial business plan may be one of the hardest parts of getting your business going. Narrow down your vision into something that is feasible for where you are in life right now.

Don’t Dive Head First

One thing you don’t want to do is dive right in before testing out the water a bit. Being a bit cautious could help save you a lot of money, and save you from losing this passion. Develop a business plan and ensure that it will honestly work. Speak with business professionals, like Corporate Business Solutions Consultants, to see if what you have in mind will succeed as a business.

Make Sure the Timing Is Right

Now, you don’t want to wait around forever to start your business. However, you do want to make sure that the timing will work with your current life situation. If starting your small business may lead you to bankruptcy, it may not be a bad idea to wait a bit. That doesn’t mean you’re giving up on your passion. It just says that you are thinking clearly about your decision and want to set yourself up for success.

Understand You Won’t Love It All

Even though you are passionate about what your business will focus on, that doesn’t mean you are going to love every part of it. When you start a small business, there will be things behind the scenes you will need to do. They won’t always be as exciting, but they are essential to the success of your business.

Find a good balance between doing the administrative duties and focusing on what got your business idea going.

4 Challenges Many Small Business Face

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Starting up and successfully running a business is not an easy task. There will be hardships and tough days, some worse than others. However, the owners that can keep their business moving forward through those challenges are the ones that are likely to succeed in the business world.

If you are a small business owner, here are four challenges many businesses like yours will face.

Exhaustion

Starting up a business is exhausting. Unless you can afford to have a large team helping you out right from the start, small business owners tend to have to put in the most amount of work with the longest hours.

It can be scary to leave your business in the hands of someone else for you to go home, especially at the start. So, quite often the owner will spend the majority of their time at work to ensure everything runs smoothly. All those hours can really run you down and lead to exhaustion.

Managing Money

The finances of starting a small business can be frightening. Will you have enough money to keep the doors open, or is your business close to bankrupting you? It may not always be easy. However, with good money managing skills, you can quickly get yourself into a position where there is enough income coming in for you to relax.

Building Up Clientele

At the start, a prominent challenge business owner’s face is building up their clientele. When you first start out, chances are it will be your close family and friends that know about your business. Expanding past them is difficult.

Although you want to grow your customer base, you want to do so at a speed your business can handle. Growing too fast and you may lose sight of the customers who helped start your business. However, expanding to slow and it could be difficult to make ends meet.

Losing the Passion

Quite often there is a burning passion behind the business owner that got them to start their company. It is really easy, though, for that passion to fade as the hours get longer and the work gets harder. That is the time, however, that you want your passion to really shine through. That is what will help keep you motivated to keep pushing through any obstacles that get in your way.

Every business owner will face a challenge at some point in their life. How you handle them, though, is what will keep your business thriving. As a small business owner, you can expect to have some difficulties come your way. By getting the help you need, you’ll be able to push through them. CBS-CBS.com is here to help.

5 Reasons Why Your Employees May Want to Quit

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Do you find yourself having to hire and train new staff members on a regular basis? If so, there is likely a reason why your employee retention rate is low. Whether it be from management, a different opportunity, lack of interest, or something entirely out of your control, employees will have their reasons for quitting.

When you can start to narrow in on those reasons, you then can make any adjustments needed to retain your current staff. Corporate Business Solutions Reviews came up with five top reasons why an employee may quit.

Bored and Unchallenged

Having a dull day at work will make time go by quite slowly. Employees want to be challenged and be passionate about coming to work. If they aren’t, it makes it quite tricky to get out of bed in the morning.

Check in to make sure your employees are happy and feel motivated to do their job.

Workplace Relationships

One of the biggest reasons an employee will quit is due to having a poor relationship with their boss. No one says everyone in the office has to be best friends. However, having a positive and civil relationship helps ease tension and create an environment that employees are happy to be in.

Lack of Independence

Your employees want to be empowered. Doing so means you must trust them and let them perform their job as they see fit, as long as it is within the parameters of their description and the company. Showing staff that you trust them to do their job will go a long way.

Acknowledgement

How would you feel if day by day you put in your best effort, and it never gets noticed? After a while, it becomes demoralizing and can lead to you wanting to go somewhere else. If employees never receive recognition for what they do, how will they know they are doing a good job?

Acknowledging your staff can be anywhere from a pat on the back to rewarding them for beating their targets.

Company Culture

It could be that the company culture is no longer in line with the employee’s values. That isn’t to say the company culture is bad. It could just mean that the employee had a shift in what they want out of life and it is time for something different. However, if it is because of the way the company is running, then it may be time to take a step back and re-evaluate your business plan.

It’s important to have meetings with employees who express frustration or are walking out the door. When you know why they quit, you can then make the changes required to keep the rest of your staff happy.

6 Ways to Help Keep Your Best Employees Around

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Business owners and managers can probably agree that trying to keep their best and brightest staff members around is highly important. You go through the process of scoping out the perfect employee and train them, all in hopes that they will stay loyal to your company.

Having to replace key staff members can be fairly pricey for the company. You can expect to pay at minimum, 20 percent of the positions wage trying to fill it. That is not a process you want to go through very often.

That is why it is crucial to the success of the company to maintain a steady team. Corporate Business Solutions recommends implementing the following tips to help keep your best employees around.

 

Trust and Respect Your Employees

One of the best things you can do for your staff is to show them that they have your complete trust and respect. Why? When team members feel respected in the workplace, and know that their manager trusts them to do their job as they see fit, it’s an empowering feeling. That is a feeling that will keep staff members happy.

Be Their Support

If your team doesn’t feel like they have your support, whether it be in workplace conflicts, client/customer issues, or even at home problems that are affecting their daily work, how likely are they to stick around? Having support from upper management is a key step in maintaining your top employees.

Talk to Them

Open communication between staff and management is critical. If your team doesn’t know what your expectations are, or they cannot talk to you, there’s a good chance you’ll be hiring new members soon. Communication, both private and in meetings, is essential to keep the work on track and to support your employees.

Listen to Them

Just as communication is important, so too is listening to your employees when they talk. Even if it is about something you prefer not hearing, it could be valuable to improving your relationship with them. They may also have excellent ideas to help the company.

Have a Competitive Wage

Loyalty to a company is only part of what will make employees stay. They also need to be able to support their family. Having a competitive wage that is fair for the work they do will help staff members be happy with where they are at.

Show Flexibility

It can be challenging for employees to remain happy and loyal to their company if there is no room for flexibility. Family emergencies will come up, stress days will need to be taken, or taking on a task in a different way that is better for the employee. You don’t want to fold over to every request, but you should show that you can be flexible and accommodating.

11 Genius Ways to Enhance Your Curbside Appeal

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You guessed right. Curb appeal IS critical to the success of your store.

Nearly 95% of customers say that the external appearance of a store is one of the primary influences on their decision about where to shop.

Having said that, how exactly do you improve the appearance of your store? Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following 11 tips to boost your small business’s curb appeal.

Add Some Greenery

Hanging flower baskets or planters at either side of the door adds elements of color and greenery to the entrance and makes the store look well-maintained.

Invest in a Welcome Mat

A tiny, affordable change that makes every customer feel super welcome.

Rebrand

If you’re revamping your storefront, maybe consider refreshing your branding at the same time. This is the perfect way to signal a new start for your company.

Refresh Your Signage

Peeling paint and faded colors show your customers that nobody cares about the store. As a result, why should they care about it? Invest in a new sign and change that impression.

Add a Splash of Paint

Akin to replacing your store sign, repainting walls and window frames give your store a new lease on life. It makes it look brand new, cared about and fresh, which customers will love.

Sweep the Front Sidewalk on a Daily Basis

This task should be part of every store owner’s daily routine. It takes just a moment, but instantly makes your store that much more appealing and desirable.

Inject Some Color

What better way to make your store stand out from the others from the street? Make your storefront vibrant and colorful.

Change Your Window Display(s) Regularly

Changing up your window displays can keep passers-by interested in your store and eager to see what the display will be next.

Make Your Business Clear

Any walker should be able to tell immediately what the purpose of your business is. If your signage or display doesn’t communicate this, you may need to think it through.

Remove Clutter

Clutter always looks unkempt and can be confusing for the customer. Take time to de-clutter and take out or down anything that detracts from the appeal and message of your storefront.

Clean the Windows

Every store owner should have a consistent cleaning schedule for their windows. Clean, sparkly windows make an enormous difference to the appeal of your store.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

10 Reasons Why Employees Stay With Your Company

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As you know, retaining top talent and unique employees is key to long-term productivity and team effectiveness. Thus, knowing what makes people happy at work is important. Corporate Business Solutions experts lay out for us the 10 most common reasons why employees stay with your company.

Benefits and Incentives

Some of the most effective benefits and incentives are more workplace independence, development opportunities, healthcare, commuting assistance, and performance-based bonuses.

Satisfaction with the Environment

A clean and organized workplace with a lively atmosphere, ample space, and sufficient facilities is essential to maintaining employee morale. People are also integral components of the environment. Opportunity to socialize and collaborate is a big part of workplace synergy.

Financial Compensation

Payment for work, complete with bonuses and incentives, provides tremendous stability. Being open to the possibility of raises in the future with long-term tenure and continued good performance is also a motivating factor.

Inspiration for Working Smarter

You should always encourage and foster working smart rather than working just to be busy. Ultimately, this is more productive and rewarding. This approach must be present in managers who supervise without micromanaging.

Great Relationships with Leadership

Those who seek to prove themselves every single day should be praised for their work ethic. Those who may be falling behind should be offered help from management to improve their performance, which may include such things as retraining, help with skill development, or clearer performance standards as to what is expected from the employee so that goals can be achieved. Positive efforts by management to help an employee improve can help foster the internal motivation that the employee needs to perform better. Forming relationships is an important factor in a harmonious workplace.

Challenge and Excitement

People want to be engaged with challenging work that piques their interest and employs their technical and interpersonal skills. Being able to complete projects with a dynamic and well-balanced team is encouraging.

Mentorship

Learning from more experienced members of the company can make things seamless for new and less experienced employees. Mentorship is conducive to learning on the job.

Recognition

It goes without saying that everyone likes to be respected and recognized for their hard work.

Career Development

Most employees don’t want to be trapped in dead-end jobs with no prospects for advancement and doing the same thing for years. Being engaged includes new challenges to overcome and new skills to learn in order to develop as employees and people.

Work-Life Balance

Excessive overtime hinders productivity. A reasonable amount of sick leave and vacation time is motivation to take quality rest and recovery time. This ensures that employees go back to work with a rejuvenated sense of purpose and excitement to perform.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

4 Email Marketing Phrases to Avoid

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Marketing professionals have to be prudent when generating emails to avoid having them be marked as spam. Marketers should send out bulk emails on a consistent basis to leads, opportunities, and customers in an effort to show people why their business’ products/services matter.

Corporate Business Solutions experts break down the following top four spam trigger words to avoid in your emails.

Multi-level Marketing

MLM refers to the practice where businesses hire people to go around and try and sell someone a product, then have that person recommend the product to others. At times this is a legitimate practice. Most of the time, however, it’s comparable to a pyramid scheme. Any business practice connected to a pyramid scheme should be avoided like the plague. Even searching “multi-level marketing” brings up suspect results, so it makes sense that any emails with the term in it will be triggered as spam.

Increase Sales

This is both surprising and not surprising. It’s hard to picture a business-to-business marketing team generating an email for thousands of potential clients and not using this phrase. However, that’s exactly why it’s often noted as spam in the first place. Context DOES matter here. This phrase will eventually come up in an email, but there are ways around it. For example, don’t use the phrase in the subject line. Also, steer clear of trying to look spammy and try these techniques instead to increase sales.

Web Traffic

If you received an email with “Web Traffic” in the subject line, would you think it’s legitimate? Increasing web traffic for an online business is absolutely critical for the success of that business. Ultimately, the more traffic your website garners, the more likely you’ll convert that traffic into sales. Spammers and scammers exploit this term because it’s something all online businesses are researching.

Free Consultation

Not many things in today’s world are actually free. Thus, this phrase immediately jumps out to just about everyone. Even if the consultation is free, there’s always a catch, and if there’s a catch, that means your marketing team isn’t being transparent to its targeted audience. Unless you’re truly offering a free consultation for potential buyers, do not advertise it as free. Plain and simple, to avoid being marked as spam, don’t put “Free Consultation” in the subject line.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

4 Awesome Tools To Come Up With Blog Ideas

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Content marketing is all about helping small businesses generate website traffic, online visibility, and sales leads. As known, a business blog is a key to content marketing. But if you’re like many in a small business, you may find yourself wondering what exactly to write about.

Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following four tools to help generate ideas for blog posts.

Google Keyword Tool

The entirely free keyword tool from Google AdWords is great for finding out what people are actually searching for on Google on a day-to-day basis. You can use the tool even if you’re not advertising through Google.

Of note: look for keywords that get a significant number of searches (for example, 50,000 monthly searches), but have low or medium competition. Take note of  “local monthly searches” if you specifically want to target readers in your region or area. You can also change the location to determine how keywords are performing in various regions.

Netvibes

Netvibes allows you to create a personalized dashboard so you can monitor RSS feeds, social media accounts, and even analytics for your own blog and website (all in one place). You’ll be able to add RSS feeds for your favorite blogs and news sites and check it daily.

You can add as many feeds as you desire to get vast coverage of topics. Then, you can simply scan the headlines for something in the news that triggers a blogging idea or serves as a launching point for your own piece.

Alltop

Alltop is an amalgamation of the best blogs under hundreds of topics. You can easily come up with blog ideas by browsing through the current post titles that are shown under each topic. For example, if you write on technology, there are a myriad of technology posts from which you can learn. You can also search for related topics for each heading.

Quora

Generally speaking, a good blog post often answers a burning question that many people have. Quora is a great place to identify the types of questions that business people want answers to. Quora is particularly good for business-to-business topics.

Questions are grouped under topics. Look especially for questions with a significant amount of interactivity and comments. This is generally a signal that the topic will be engaging.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

Enhance Your Content Marketing to Drive Sales

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Content marketing can accomplish different things for different businesses. While some businesses use it as a way to increase brand awareness, others may use content marketing as a way to generate sales or sales leads.

Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend taking the following steps toward content marketing that generates sales.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Not having a content plan in place is one of the largest mistakes marketers make when trying to drive sales. Sure, you’re aware that you need to create content and you want to boost sales. However, that’s not enough. You need to generate a strategy for finding and reaching your target audience to get them to convert to customers.

Understand Your Target Market

In order to produce effective content, you need to know who you’re creating that content for. Have a clearly identified target audience and speak directly to that audience through your engaging content.

Know Your Customers’ Common Concerns

Customers who are reading your content rather than buying your product or service are probably doing so because they’re undecided. To help them make their decision, it’s imperative for you to answer their questions and alleviate their concerns. Fortunately, you can do that with your content, if you know what your customers’ most popular questions and concerns are.

Listen to Your Customer Feedback

Coming up with those questions to base your content around can be as easy as simply listening to your current customers. If people consistently email you with the same questions or issues over and over again, those are likely things that would make for effective content.

Take a Look at Keywords

You should always consider the keywords and searches that bring potentials customers to your website. People will often enter questions into search fields if they can’t find an answer easily. Thus, if you see common themes there, that could be another source for your content.

Make a List of Questions

You should always go one step further than just simply keeping an eye out for common customer concerns. The very first thing to do is to create a list of the top 20 questions consumers have when deciding to purchase your product or service and subsequently create content to answer all of these questions in detail.

Take a Look at the Buying Process

When generating those questions and other topics for your content strategy, it can be helpful to put yourself in your customers’ shoes through each stage of the buying process. Spend the time to really familiarize yourself with the journey people take to purchase your product and then create the content to make it easy for them to purchase.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

5 Ways to Market Yourself as a Freelancer

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In today’s day and age, freelance work can earn you money in a variety of ways. Whether you’re doing it for the money or as a labor of love, Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend considering the following five ways to successfully market yourself as a freelancer,

Start With Blogging

Blogging is a tool both freelancers and any other small business owners with a digital presence can use to drive traffic and increase sales.

Your blog will give you valuable information about you, your knowledge and your work as a freelancer. By generating high-quality content on your blog, you can build credibility and awareness of your brand and also give your potential customers a valuable resource.

Use Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to increase your customer base. In fact, it can bring in nearly $40 for every dollar spent on an email marketing campaign. If you don’t happen to have the necessary funds, you can start with a free MailChimp account and grow from there. The free version of MailChimp will provide you with up to 2,000 subscribers, and 12,000 emails, which should be more than enough to begin.

Social Media Is a Must

With billions of people using social media day in and day out, it is no surprise that most experts recommend freelancers use this tool to market themselves as well.

Freelancers should identify the platform their potential customers use the most and start engaging with them on that channel.

Interact On Q&A Websites

Doing this helps to establish your authority in your field. With 200 million visitors every month, Quora alone can significantly boost traffic to your site. What could be better?

Don’t Forget About SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential tool in marketing your freelance business. While SEO can get somewhat complicated, it is an effective way to optimize your digital presence online. The more optimized your site is, the more seamless it is for search engines and users to find you online.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.