May 19, 2012

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How to run your business vehicle fleet

November 23, 2011 By

Part of running your business means making sure you take care of all internal admin as well as taking care of your customers. If your business has any vehicles owned or leased by the business, you should keep accurate records and maintain them regularly.  This will not only help protect your employees when they use the vehicles, it will also protect you and your company in case of accidents or legal claims.

Remember the following guidelines to keep everything in order.

Safety inspections

Ask your employees who use the vehicles to carry out regular visual inspections. Any defects should be reported and logged.

Book in regular mechanical inspections with a professional mechanic. A quarterly check can give early warning on mechanical issues and it’s better than just doing an MOT once a year, which only checks whether the vehicle is roadworthy on the day of the test.

Fix problems immediately

Make sure drivers inform you about any problems immediately. As soon as you can, get these defects fixed, and keep meticulous records of when problems were fixed. This can be as simple as holding onto the invoice from the garage who did the repair.

Diarise

Timetable any important dates for the vehicles.  This includes MOTS, renewal dates for insurance and tax.  Give one person overall responsibility, and ask the drivers to take personal responsibility for the car they drive.  This will give a double check system, so it’s less likely to fail.

Seek value

When lease contracts come up for renewal, hunt around for any better deals – or vehicles – on the market. The same goes for any aspect of business – why keep paying more simply because you don’t want to invest the time in looking around for a better deal?

Get someone else to do it

No, this isn’t a joke. Business gurus like David Lichtenstein and Dale Carnegie follow the mantra that you should stick to what you’re good at, and delegate the rest.  If you have a great administrator in the office, give them fleet control, which will free you up to concentrate on the income- generating side of the business.

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How to name your business

November 9, 2011 By

Choosing a name for your business may seem like the fun part of the deal – and it is. But it’s absolutely vital that you get it right. What about the involvement of Sean Parker as portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 movie The Social Network? At one point, Parker says to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg): “Drop the ‘The.’ Just ‘Facebook.’ It’s cleaner.” And, he helped make himself a few billion dollars in the process by this complex “drop the THE” business insight!

Your company or product name is usually the first thing your customers read or hear and it will form an immediate impression in their minds of what’s on offer – whether you like it or not.

So put a lot of thought into this.

The name(s) you choose are likely to be around for quite some time, particularly if they’re successful. If they aren’t – well just maybe the nomenclature will have contributed to that failure!

One of the safest options is to call the company something relatively conservative, but to name the product/s in more innovative ways. Procter & Gamble is relatively staid, for example, but it doesn’t stop the products having whizz-bang names down the years.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as coming up with a great name. There are legal complications, potentially.

If it’s a company name you’re concerned about and yours is or will become a Limited Company, then you’ll need to register the name with Companies House (or use an agent to do this for you). Their website includes information on company naming and what names aren’t available – and there are a lot of these unfortunately.

And if it is available, there are still a few more rules, as follows:

It must end with ‘limited’ (or Ltd), ‘public limited company’ (or plc) or Welsh equivalents if you are a company.

If you have a limited liability partnership your name must end with ‘limited liability partnership’ or LLP (including Welsh equivalents) if you are an LLP.

Also, you must ensure that your chosen name isn’t offensive and doesn’t include any sensitive words or expressions unless you’ve obtained specific permission to use them which, let’s face it, is unlikely!

With product naming, the trademark issues can become even more complex. Go to the UKgovernment’s Intellectual Property Office at www.ipo.gov.uk for further advice.

This article was written by David, who specialises in offering advice to start-up businesses. He frequently blogs his advice too, telling people about everything from the latest payday loan to the best banks.

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Flexible Working For Life

September 27, 2011 By

Gone are the days when the man of the house went to work in an office from 9 til 5 whilst his apron-wearing wife stayed at home washing socks and making dinner. These days modern family life is much more diverse and the demands on our time are more fluid, almost always requiring an element of flexibility in our work commitments.

One of the ways to create a really flexible working environment is to work for yourself, and ideally from home. It is amazing how much you can get done when you don’t have to spend hours on your appearance and commuting for miles to meetings! The internet is of course your best friend for this kind of set up, and making sure you have a powerful website with comprehensive wordpress hosting is really important.

Once you have decided to set up on your own you need to draw on all your skills and experience to get your business plan right. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in areas you are not so strong in and make sure you have everything in place before you launch. If you are not technically minded then read reviews on things like webhosting and make sure you get an online set up which will meet your business needs perfectly. Have your finances straight too – you don’t want your business to impact on your home if anything goes wrong. To reduce the initial costs, it makes sense to shop around for business essentials such as professional antivirus software. Don’t make do with an out of date version, there are plenty of free antivirus applications available. Many brands, such as Kaspersky free antivirus, offer free trials, so make sure you test the software before you spend a fortune.

Working from home can be really rewarding and the best decision you ever made. It will allow you to achieve professional success but will not prevent you from enjoying all the important family milestones such as sports day and the nativity play. Sharing parental responsibility will also make for a more harmonious home life for all concerned and the result should be a happy family unit. Enjoy!

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Outsourcing for profit

September 9, 2011 By

The definition of business success? Income £1, expenditure 99p. Business failure? Income £1, expenditure £1.01.
Whatever your business, it’s the bottom line that tells you how you’re doing. And for many people who run small businesses, what creates the problem is spending too much.
If you hire staff, you have to pay their wages, spend money on providing a safe and healthy work environment, and even pay them for when they are on holiday. When you’re in a business that doesn’t have huge profit margins, your staff costs can be crippling.
So the wise solution is to get involved in outsourcing.
This way, you can hire people by the hour, and end their contract at a moment’s notice if things aren’t going how you would like.
You can pay people to just work on a specific project, like do research to find the best antivirus software for your company. If, for example, they are able to find free antivirus software that works just as well, then you’ve already recouped your investment.
There are various websites where you can register, for free, as an employer. You can post a job and within an hour you will generally find that people are starting to apply for the position.
It can be a job as simple as designing a logo for your business, or it can be one that lasts for months and includes various different tasks. But the advantage of using outsourcing is that you can cut down dramatically on your expenses.
For example, if you employed a British person to do a task it might cost you £100, but you could find that there are equally skilled workers in India, Pakistan or the Philippines who are quite happy to do it for £25.
It’s not without its potential problems – not least if the people you’re dealing with don’t have English as their first language – but with a bit of research and effort you should find it a profitable endeavour.

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Is Now A Good Time to Start A Business?

August 31, 2011 By

At first glance it might not seem like a good idea to consider starting your own business in today’s uncertain economic climate, however depending on the type of business and your own individual skills it could be a tangible option. During any depressed market there are always opportunities to be explored, and if you have recently been made redundant due to economic conditions with a redundancy payoff it may prove the ideal opportunity to give working for yourself a try.

If you have a business idea then the first thing to do is research the market and the competition in order to decide if it is viable, and ultimately as recession-proof as possible. One way to do this is to see what kinds of companies are thriving during the recession and whether your idea correlates. Then check whether you can actually compete in either price or service.  There’s no point competing with established antivirus software manufacturers, for example, due to the free antivirus downloads readily available.  If you don’t have a fully-formed business idea in mind then think around your personal skills and experience and try to apply that knowledge to industry sectors which are known to be doing well.

Once you have decided to take the plunge then make sure you set off on the right foot and represent your company professionally. Make sure people can find you and understand what you have to offer, via an effective marketing strategy.   It is almost mandatory to have a web presence nowadays, alongside directory and journal listings.

Use your existing contacts, and if any run their own businesses ask them to review your business plan and possibly mentor you. Take your time and get the required details in your plan right in order to get your new business off to a flying start.

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Business Development explained

July 21, 2011 By

Business development is a catch-all term applied to the method of reinforcing ties with existing clients as well as cultivating patrons in other sectors of the market. So as to do this goal, business development routinely crosses the conventional barriers between sales, promoting, shopper care, operations and management so as to promote this process of growth on more than one level.

 This implies the business development expert must exhibit a degree of proficiency in numerous different areas so as to identify and profit from expansion possibilities. One of the foundational sides of busdev, or business development, is to evaluate the present assets of the company as they relate to the upkeep and growth of the business. To that end, the business development consultant will work closely with sales and selling executives to spot the degree of penetration already enjoyed by the company in diverse sectors of the patron base. At the exact same time, the expert will also work with client care executives to evaluate the feedback gathered from existing clients on the perception of the company and its products. This kind of activity can regularly identify paths to refine current sales and selling strategies to capture a broader share of patrons inside sectors where the business has already got a presence.

Simultaneously, the addition of the info acquired via buyer care contacts may help in identifying applications for the product that aren’t promoted at present and may lead to capturing new markets if sold correctly. It’s vital to notice the thriving business development consultant isn’t centered only on making sales or keeping current consumers cheerful. While those aspects are a part of the picture, the development expert will be involved with making the most sensible use of the corporation’s resources, refining the method and function of management and varied departments, and addressing any legal issues that really must be noted as the company continues to progress. In several associations, this gives the business development consultant a good range of authority to look for info from anywhere in the company structure and to persuade every facet of company function. The method of business development can be applied to nearly any company situation.

Even corporations that are tiny need this kind of activity so as to stay steady and to reach expansion over a period. Frequently the including of 1 person who is targeted on the activity of business development makes it easy to capture a view of the company that is tricky for folk with accountability for categorical functions with the organisation to attain without help.

Business development may occur by making an arm or dep. of the enterprise that carries out these functions. It’s also feasible to contract with a business development expert to appraise current circumstances and identify secrets for the creating of future expansion.

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