How many small businesses have a strategy? Are entrepreneurs using it to build and growth their businesses? Are small businesses strategic, tactical or only small businesses that are considering how to survive the month?

From my experience and contacts with entrepreneurs, I think that the most of them are not strategically but tactical oriented people. This means that they are most worried about generating income to pay bills and to survive the month. This means that small businesses don’t have and use strategies. This means that growth and development is not important, but only survival.

What is the Strategy?

Strategy is a plan of actions for achieving the set of goals that our business has. To implement a strategy it is necessary to have more tactics. For example, if our strategy is to build long-term business relationships with our customers, tactics that we can use for implement it can be providing additional services to regular customers, training, long-term contracts with lower prices, etc. Each tactic has specific activities that must be completed in specific time, and responsible persons for the completion of those activities.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as:

• a careful plan or method
• a clever stratagem
• the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

It is noticeable that:

• It is the means to meet business objectives.
• It is a kind of plan in which are specified actions that you as an entrepreneur will take.
• It is composed by tactics that are consisted from activities with which we will meet the desired objectives.

I have seen various “so-called” strategies. They seem more as a textbook with 20-30 pages and refer to the period of 3-5 years without any specifics that must be accomplished. As you can note from above for accomplishment of strategies it is necessary to determine the tactics and to define all activities for each tactic.

My recommendation before proceeding with a change of strategies is first to look at the definitions in this subtitle. Then look at your business actions and see whether it is tactics that you accomplish from time to time, or it is a long-term strategy.

How to change the strategy?

Changing the strategy is not desirable to do on an everyday basis. It is better to spend more time to prepare it and commit to its completion. I have a bad experience with frequently changing one strategy with another one before the finish of a deadline for which is provided the first one. In such a situation, the employees and consultants that work for that organizational system don’t know which one is in force.

The strategy was prepared by top management of the business, and is implemented and executed by all company members.

I will try to define an approach with 6 steps that can help you succeed to conduct strategic planning in your business and to change the current strategies if you have it, or maybe you think that you have it.

1. The first thing is to be sure you have strategies that your business follows, although you are not satisfied with it. You do not need a strategy that will sit in a drawer and holds dust. If this is the case then it is better not to waste your time on this.
2. Once when you are sure that you have and follow the strategy it is necessary to adjust the same strategy to make it proactive, rather than reactive. Don’t think about what somebody else makes. Think about what you want to achieve and do.
3. Think about what you need to do to receive the best results in the quickest time on a longer term basis.
4. Once you understand what it is that will give you the best results in the quickest time on a longer term basis you can start thinking about possible tactics.
5. For each tactic prepare specific activities with deadlines and persons responsible for carrying out these activities.
6. And of course at the end is system thinking. Establish feedback for measurement and monitoring of implementation.

Micro Businesses and Strategies

If you own a micro business with few employees or without employees it doesn’t mean that you don’t need strategic thinking implemented in business. This is a big mistake. Are small businesses having their own goals? Certainly, I think yes, if nothing else in the first year the goal is survival. How then they will survive? Will they offer an advantage to the customers or will provide more quality service? Will they apply new marketing methods and techniques? All these ideas are survival tactics as a part of the business strategies. All of this tactics will be followed by activities.

The difference is that person that prepares the strategies will be the executor of it in the same time.

There are entrepreneurs that are visionaries, but also there are entrepreneurs that are opportunists. Who of them will be more successful entrepreneurs?

In the theory, there is too much different thinking’s about is it better entrepreneurs to be opportunists or not. Certainly, one of the entrepreneurial characteristics is finding different opportunities, but remember that these opportunities should be used. Why would somebody seek to find an opportunity if he does not use it? More on this you can read in Entrepreneurial Success Factors.

Because of that, in this post I would like briefly to make a distinction between entrepreneurs who are opportunists and visionaries.

Entrepreneur Opportunist

What is an entrepreneur opportunist? I like to start with defining or profiling entrepreneurs who are opportunists.

Let’s see first what is opportunism. In Wikipedia the definition about opportunism is:

Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles.

Some better definition is given in the Oxford Dictionary where it is stated that:

Opportunism is the practice of looking for and using opportunities to gain an advantage for oneself, without considering if this is fair or right.

According to these definitions we can conclude that:

Entrepreneur opportunist is person who seeks opportunities to selfish utilize them without fair or right behavior.

At first it seems that for entrepreneurs this is good, because they are persons who has a business that exists on the market which is a battle where ethics and moral in this fight is not used.

Entrepreneur opportunist look for opportunities where nobody previously has found something, and they don’t think about correctness or rightness of that seeking. They do not think if it would be really successful.

The reason why opportunistic entrepreneurs  that opportunity is improving only their own lives and nobody else’s life.

Entrepreneur Visionaries

Let’s see what are entrepreneurs visionary? First a visionary is a person with vision or power to look in the future and who know what will happen in that future. Secondly, visionaries see possibilities, not by making something different from everyone else but making exactly that same thing. However, the difference is that they are doing that same thing differently from everyone else.

Entrepreneurs visionary are people who follow what’s happening around them and simply find hot opportunities in which they enter. They are willing to take action about that opportunity. All of that opportunities is the same opportunities in which too many people entering in the same time. But, only one is better than all other – Visionaries.

They do not start a business in the opportunity that they find only to improve their own lives. They start a business to improve lives of their customer, and if they succeed in this improvement, they will also improve their own lives. I’ve already written about How to Make Business Life Much Easier.

Difference Between Entrepreneur Visionary and Opportunist

• Opportunists are only opportunity seekers, while entrepreneur visionaries are persons who recognizes the real opportunity. Therefore, opportunist often ends with the eternal seeking the possibility that will never find, while visionary quickly finds and uses that opportunity.
• Entrepreneur opportunist is selfish and it only requires an opportunity for their own success, while entrepreneur visionary is considering the possibility through the prism of a potential customer, i.e. how to improve the lives of the potential customer. And of course, improving the lives of the potential customer will improve their own lives.

So just follow what happens in your environment. Find a place where everyone is included, but look through the prism of potential customers and their problems. Solve that problems better, faster and better than everyone else and success will be guaranteed.

Entrepreneurs are innovators that want to make a better future for them and for their customers. They are dreamers and every business start with the dream of an entrepreneur – idea.

In that dream, they see their life much easier. However, it is often the case when dreams become an entrepreneurial nightmare. That nightmare makes entrepreneurial business life much harder.

How we can avoid this nightmare?

Here are 10 tips that can help entrepreneurs not to become in the level when their dream becomes a nightmare.

1. Design Your Business According to Your Personal Life

Designing something means to plan that something to the complete realization of that something. How will look? What will be functionality? What will be needed activities? What are the most important tasks that must to be accomplished and when they must to be accomplished? This and many other questions should be answered during the design of your business. The better design, better and easier will be life of an entrepreneur.

2. Think Strategically

Strategy is the means that help entrepreneurs to meet objectives. Strategy use tactics that are composed with activities that must be accomplished in a certain time in the future. Entrepreneur without strategy is the same as a traveler without a map. If you know your entrepreneurial path to real success in the future, your life will be much easier.

3. You Own the Business, Business Don’t Own You

This is the number one rule of entrepreneurship. In many cases entrepreneurs become truly slaves to their own business. Are you an entrepreneur that owns the business or employee that business owns you? You must continually to take into the consideration this question.

You mustn’t be a workaholic to be a successful entrepreneur.

4. Outsource Activities That is Not Important

Your business life will be much easier if all of your unimportant activities will be outsourced to other people, even if you lose something from profitability.

5. Take Care About Your Customers They Can Make Your Life Much Easier

Customers can make your life much easier, but in the same time they can make you to have your worst nightmare. Without customers your business will not exist on the market. Focus on possibilities how to give him more and more, to receive more from them.

Give him benefits not features.

6. Organize and Be Organized

If you know what you must to do, how much it is important to do, when to do that important things and how you must perform that important things, then your business life will be much easier. That mean that you are well-organized entrepreneur. But, you must think about other people in your business and to organize them to accomplish the rest of the important activities.

7. Take Care About Your Employees

Your employees can contribute to your business to be successful, but in the same time they can harm your business. Employees are the heart and the most important resource. In the 11 Ways How to Keep the Best Employees, I have written that:

Without employees, you will don’t have products or services, you cannot use your technology, and you cannot perform business activities.

It is true, and you must think about your employees as a most important resource.

8. Don’t Forget Competition

Never forget the competition. The competition is an external entity that will always try to find ways how to make your business life worst and much harder. The competition has the potential to change your dream into your worst nightmare. Because of that always follow each of the steps that the competitors make and take counter steps to stay in a front of them.

Some advices about following the competition you can read in: How to Be One Step Ahead of Competition?

9. Don’t Over-plan

Planning means to plan the future activities that you can easily perform. Plan doesn’t mean to plan that activities that are impossible to become reality in the future. Be real when you’re planning if you want your life to be much easier.

10. Balance Your Business Life and Family Life

At the end of last, but not unimportant is balancing professional with private life.  Some of the reasons why entrepreneurial dream becomes an unbearable nightmare is unbalanced business life with family life. Family life is more important than business life and must be incorporated as a part of your overall entrepreneurial life.

Business Innovation present something new, something undiscovered, something untried in business world and market where operate a particular business. For every innovation, the greatest responsibility is in entrepreneur. Even the business that was founded by the entrepreneur is an innovation.

I want to continue with this serial of blog posts about business quotes. Previous post from this serial was business idea quotes. Now I will continue with business innovation quotes.

Business Innovation Quotes

Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way – Michael Vance.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower – Steve Jobs.

Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity – Michael Porter.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth – Peter Drucker.

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow – William Pollard.

Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure – Albert Einstein.

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation – Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Innovation by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires “courageous patience” – Warren Bennis.

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form – Watts Humprey.

We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either – Steve Ballmer.

Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress – Ted Levitt.

Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable – William Pollard

Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined – Peter Drucker.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it – Steve Jobs.

The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things.. it is the human mind, the human spirit, the human imagination, and our faith in the future – Steve Forbes.

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction – Picasso.

Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before – Margaret J. Wheatley

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation – Peter Drucker.

If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse – Henry Ford.

We don’t have a traditional strategy process, planning process like you’d find in traditional technical companies. It allows Google to innovate very, very quickly, which I think is a real strength of the company – Eric Schmidt.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• Innovation does not mean that you must to create something new. Innovation also means that you can improve something old or existing.
• Innovation can make your business unique.
• Innovation as a process in a healthy business is never-ending process. Something that is innovation today, it’s not tomorrow. It must be improved.
• Innovation needs creativity. You must exit from something that is logical or normally for you as an entrepreneur. Disturbances to the daily balance of normality causing creativity, and creativity causing innovation. That normality, usually behavior or established standards are the biggest enemy of innovation.
• Innovation to be accepted into the organization, there is a need of long-term experiments, trials and patience. On the other hand, each innovation is the enemy of the comfortable status quo situation of the organizational members. Because of that the resistance to the innovation is something expected.
• For successful innovation, it is necessary to have a feel for what is happening in the environment. To be in a close contact with our customers. They are largely able to help us choose the real innovation in our business. Entrepreneurs should seek sources of innovation and immediately begin to act on innovation.
• The changes are closely related to innovation. Without change, there is no innovation.
• Is anyone able to accomplish better their own work tomorrow? I think yes. But, is this man, your employee, encouraged to think about improving his own work? When something is standardized the likelihood is that each employee will remain in the field to those standards without considering the improvement of those standards. Every innovation begins with the destruction of the present, as he says Picasso.

Often I want to apply the laws of physics in entrepreneurship as a separate discipline or science.

What is Gravity?

I would not use some really complicated definitions, factors and figures in describing the gravity, but would simply express it as:

Gravity: force of attraction that exist between two objects.

For example, when you let a stone from hand it falls to the ground because of gravity (the earth attracts the stone). Is there not an analogy that we can also apply it for companies?

What is something that is most wanted for every business? Every business and every entrepreneur needs a kind of gravitational force that will attract customers and potential customers.

Gravity and Business

The concept of gravity, business and entrepreneur is shown in the picture. We have a business that is a system that succeeds by selling the products and services to the customers. The heart of the business is you as an entrepreneur. Outside of your business are the entities that decide whether to give you success or not, and they are:

• Customers. This are the persons that already buying from your business. They were attracted by a gravitational force to buy that product or service from you.
• Potential customers. Here’s gravitational force is still weak, but should be established and strengthen so it would convert this group into your consumers.

Among them and your business must be a gravitational force which will attract them to your business. In other words, it will attract potential customers to enter your sales funnel, while current customers and clients to get back into your business and buy more and more from your products or services.

Gravitational force will be bigger if the desire of this group of people or businesses to join your business is greater.

Tasks for Entrepreneurs

What will be your tasks as an entrepreneur in terms of gravitational force? First you need to build, then establish and continuously improve the forces that bring new customers to your business and increase sale to existing customers. Finally, you must constantly expand it to the other groups of people outside of  your business.

What are the Basic Elements that Affect Business Gravitational Forces?

• Products or services. This includes the features and benefits. Greater gravitational force we will have if the products and services are more useful for customers and potential customers.
• Price. Some customers and potential customers are attracted with lower prices, while others are attracted from higher prices. Depending on your target market, prices will have different influence on your business gravitational forces.
• Promotion. Many entities will be attracted by your promotional materials such as the advertisements, brochures, flyers, website, etc.
• Distribution. In some cases, crucial for the decision making process from the potential and existing customers is the distribution of products or services.
• You as an entrepreneur. Your reputation, behavior, a way of working is constantly followed by the above entities, and sometimes you can be a critical point to business gravitational force.
• Staff. Your employees are a reflection of your business. Your sales team has big influence in attracting potential customers and helping current customers to make a right decision.
• Combination of all above elements. Sometimes it is not enough only one of these elements for a strong business gravitational force. Therefore, all elements must be sufficiently strong in order to have a powerful gravitational force.

You may note that the above is a marketing mix of a business. So, marketing, entrepreneur like you, and your employees together are elements that increase business gravitational force.

Therefore, improve all these elements and increase business gravitational force, so the success will be here.

Тhis is the third article of this series of articles about factors that make an entrepreneur to be successful entrepreneurs. First we conducted an analysis of the factors that make a successful entrepreneur, and later we present the results of the analysis in a hierarchical pyramidal structure of most important factors – Entrepreneurial Success Factors.

In one of the previous posts, I have covered the first layer of the hierarchical pyramidal structure – Willingness to take action. If you’re willing to take actions it is necessary to upgrade that willingness with the second layer on the road to success, and that is knowledge and creativity.

What is Knowledge for an Entrepreneur?

I have knowledge about this. I have knowledge of that. They have knowledge of something else. Everywhere around us is some knowledge. Each person has a specific knowledge. I think that there is not a person without some knowledge. Our knowledge starts from our birth. Each new day of our lives is the acquisition of certain knowledge. We acquire knowledge, home from our parents, from a kinder garden, and later in school, university, everyday life.

So knowledge is composed of two major elements:

• Experience. Everything that we experience our knowledge. It is our personal assets or personal assets of an entrepreneur.
• Education. Everything that we acquire through a mandatory  educational system is poured off in our own knowledge. Besides the educational system as school, faculty and courses, also reading a book, acquiring information from the Internet and anything that will educate you as an entrepreneur will increase current knowledge about something.

What is a Creativity for an Entrepreneur?

About creativity in Wikipedia, we can find that:

Creativity is a mental and social process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.

So creativity is directly related to the discovery of new ideas or concepts or modification of existing ideas and concepts.

Being creative is not easy. To acquire knowledge is much easier than to be creative. Creativity cannot be taught, but it simply shows up and is performed by the entrepreneur himself.

Combination of Knowledge and Creativity

Therefore, the second layer of the entrepreneurial path to success is a simple mix between knowledge and creativity.

First, you must have knowledge in excessive amounts, but without the creative application of that knowledge into everyday practice, there is no guarantee that you will be a successful entrepreneur.

On the other hand, I think that knowledge is the only factor that can increase the creativity of an entrepreneur. Is it possible for an  entrepreneur to be creative without knowledge? Probably, not unless you expect a divine gift to be creative.

Precisely here lies the concept of a mix between knowledge and creativity that will only increase the likelihood of success of entrepreneurs. As you enlarge the knowledge about a certain subject, you will increase the potential of your own creativity.

A second factor that affects increasing creativity is the entrepreneur. This refers to what you call something inherent in man. It is believed that the most creative are artists because they have talent in some branches of art, and because they simply create their own art with an open mind. I already wrote about 6 tips to increase creativity.

With all this stated above, I feel free to express creativity as a mathematical function of knowledge and entrepreneurs:

Creativity = f (knowledge + entrepreneur)

How to be a Better Entrepreneur Through Knowledge and Creativity?

And finally the most important question is: How to be a better entrepreneur through knowledge and creativity?

I’ll give you few tips for your own personal improvement as an entrepreneur, which certainly will have a direct impact on better performance of your business:

Increasing Knowledge

Because I previously explained why knowledge without creativity and vice versa is not complete, we should  start with an increase of entrepreneurial knowledge. This can be achieved in two ways:

• Always learn new skills. Today there is a tremendous opportunity for learning. It is necessary only to establish a system that will continually increase your knowledge as an entrepreneur. Begin with the areas where you are weakest, and your business requires these areas. Read professional literature, magazines and newspapers from those areas and implement what you have learned in everyday work.
• Learn from mistakes – experiential learning. By learning new skills and their application in everyday work constantly improve these skills through their own experience. Even mistakes will make you increase your own knowledge and will make you be a better entrepreneur.

Act as an Entrepreneur

Yes, entrepreneur means to be creative, so use the creative methods and techniques that will come to your mind to increase your own creativity and knowledge. I will accent one more time 6 tips of entrepreneurial creativity:

1. Always use a notebook with you (e.g. It can be pocket notebook)
2. Change the routines in your life.
3. Look around You, observe.
4. Use social media.
5. Reinvent things around you.
6. Use locations that increase creativity.

Sell advisedly, not with pressure.

This question was rotated in my mind probably one year ago. I am a not big fan of pressure of every type of activities because I’ve been worked previously where everything must be accomplished with pressure. But, when I talk with some people with experience, they tell me that every sale that they made must be made with constant pressure of the potential customers.

On the other hand, if I take the place of the potential customers, I wouldn’t like to be on constant pressure.

Selling With Pressure

What is the process of this selling technique?

We have potential customers. Let’s say that we targeted some potential customers and with our marketing and selling technique our job is to transform that potential customers into real buyers. That transformation is made by pressure on the decision making process of potential customers.

What the pressure mean?

I will use a physical definition of pressure from Wikipedia:

Pressure is the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object.

In this physical definition what I can extract for this purpose is:

• Pressure is a force. In business vocabulary this is marketing and selling force pursuant to marketing and selling activities of the business.
• This force is applied to the surface of an object. This is important part. The object in our case is the potential customer and surface of that object are human senses for hearing, sight and touch.

With this selling technique business uses different marketing and selling channels to make a pressure on the potential customer senses.

What Results Can be Achieved?

Because with the pressure potential customers will be constantly bombarded through different media (as a phone, mail, e-mail, TV, radio…) they can make two decisions:

• Become a buyer for the purpose to escape a future pressure. This is not so probably. If they feel the pressure, they will not be friendly to the businesses that make that pressure to him.
• To find the ways to escape from the pressure. They will block and not answer the phone calls, they will change the TV channel, they will pay less attention for mails in their mailboxes, they will not open and will delete unwanted e-mails…

In these days when customers are more cleaver, and they use different technology to escape different pressures from different business the second decisions will be more probably. Who want a pressure? Probably, nobody wants pressure.

My Recent Experience

I want to share my recent experience when I must decide what technique to use. I was contacted from one potential customers about my services for their business. They come to my office, and I give him an offer with different services and prices. When we finished the meeting, they tell me that they will think about our offers and will contact me if they choose to use one of my services.

After one month, my business partner tells me that we must to call him, or send e-mail because they cannot decide to buy if we don’t bother him. I don’t want to go with the pressure technique of selling and continue to wait for the answer. In that time, one of my clients are seen by that potential buyer, and he was asked about what is his experience from working with me. The testimonials from my current client were crucial that potential client to become my buyer.

What Was the Process

• First they found me somehow and contact me.
• I give him offer where I put my claims.
• They add on my claims (offer) credentials from my current client.
• They decide to buy my services.

Get found from potential customers is most important part in this process. These are inbound marketing techniques for which I write in Inbound Marketing – Marketing for Today and Future. They found me probably from my blog on Macedonian language (Pretpriemac).

You must give your claims that are what you promise that you can do. But, the claims are not enough for today’s customers. They need credentials that are simple proof of your claims. Without credentials probably they will not decide to buy from my business.

Yes, this is a simple but very powerful process: to get found, to give claims and credentials and wait for the answers.

Every entrepreneur wants their business to be one step ahead of competition. This objective will improve the overall market position of the business and will bring constant business growth.

As a part of 15 Small Business Marketing Advices for 2010 one of that advices for entrepreneurs was to be one step closer to your customers and one step ahead of your competition. Here are some of the most important elements that can help you to be one step ahead of competition.

This is a combination of knowledge about most important business elements as competition, customers and products and services that will make your business always to be ahead of the competition. After collecting substantial knowledge for these three important elements your job as an entrepreneur is to improve all your business processes according to that knowledge.

Know Your Competition

You want to be ahead of your competition in every business aspect. Because you want to be one step ahead of competition you must to know what your competitors make to exist on the market. You must answer the following questions about your competitors:

• Who are the most important competitors?
• What are their products and services?
• What are the benefits and features that they offer with their product and services?
• Where they are finding their customers?
• Who are their most important customers?
• How your competitors convince their customers to buy?
• How much they charge for their product or services?
• Where are they marketing their product and services?
• How they are marketing their product and services?
• How they are making recruitment of their staff?

Think about implementing the system for monitoring the competition that will collect answers about that questions and give you the real time information.

Know Your Customers

Your business and your competition compete for the same customers. The business that will win in this battle will receive the larger portion of the market.

• Who are your ideal customers?
• How much they want to pay for your products and services?
• What are they wanting in the form of their benefits?
• Where are they located in most of their time?
• What are their buying habits?

If you know your customers you will know how they decide about products and services when they are choosing between you and your competitors.

Know Your Products and Services

Products and services that your business offer to the market is something that your ideal customers will buy. They are the subject for the battle on the market. If you want to be one step ahead of competition your business must offer better products and services.

• Are your products and services compatible with your ideal customers?
• Are the costs plus a profit margin is lower or equal to what your ideal customers want to pay for it?
• Are your products and services giving them what they want in a form of benefits?
• What is the main difference between your products and services and your competitors products and services?

Improve

Never ending activity is to improve upon collected knowledge about competition, customers and products and services. This is the force that will move your business one or more steps ahead of your competition.

• Improve your knowledge about your competitors and use it to improve all your business activities. Start doing the same what they do but in a better way.
• Improve your knowledge about your ideal customers and your target market and satisfy their needs.
• Improve your products and services to be better from competition’s products and services and better satisfy the needs of your ideal customers.

The most important part of each business year is to achieve every goal that has been set at the beginning. Sometimes the achievements weren’t the same as planned. I would like briefly present some recommendations about how to achieve everything that you want in 2010.

1. Start with the previous year

Close the previous year with an analysis of what you’ve achieved and everything that you don’t have achieved. What you’ve done well and what you’ve not done well. And always ask a question why. Why I have achieved that goals and why I didn’t achieve that goals? In this way, you will make cause effect analysis that will give you possible improvements of the achievement process this year.

2. Look into the Future

Forecast what will happen in the future? What are the trends? What are the potential changes to your market, customers, competition, political environment…? What would be your objectives and goals this year? What changes do you would like to see within your business this year? Answer to these questions will give you better picture of what will happen this year.

3. Set the goals for this year

When you set goals, don’t think only of business goals, but think also about your personal goals that will need to be incorporated into your business goals. That goals you would like to achieve in the new year. Be careful to not over-estimate what you’ll be able to achieve in one year. Too many goals are the most probably cause of goal setting failure. Analyze the goals in terms of their importance and urgency.

4. Establish a system for achieving goals

This is simply a transformation of the annual goals into the daily tasks that will be needed to achieve each of the goals. From the annual goal make monthly milestones and set weekly objectives for each milestone. For each weekly objective set daily tasks that must be done daily. These daily tasks should have priority before everything else in your daily calendar of activities.

5. Time Management

Time management is important part in the goal achievement process. Time management will introduce a management system of your daily time that you spend on the achievements of the goals for this year. Use the calendar which will be obtaining all daily activities with appropriate importance and priority. Finish the first ones that have more importance and priority. Divide the day based on routine tasks and real projects that will make money for your business. Routine tasks shall be last.

6. Project Management

Simple recommendation when it comes to project management is to focus on the completion of one project before you start another. If you start several projects at once, or start another project without completing the previous you will delay the completion of all started projects. This won’t be useful for you as an entrepreneur and your business.

7. Self-Discipline

You must have a self-discipline if you want to implement all daily activities as listed in the calendar with your daily activities. Set a time when an activity should be completed and when to begin another. Include your feelings and all the mental trigger that will continuously encourage the completion of the tasks. Why you do what you do? Are you doing what you do to make a better life for your children and your family? What is that elements that push you forward in the process?

First set a deadline then start working to accomplish that deadline about the project. Make a deadline to be public for potential clients that will know what to expect. This is something that will help you fully to complete the projects.

8. Less input for more outputs

Consider how to achieve maximum results with a minimum effort invested by you. Use the 80/20 rule for this purpose. 20% of your activities will give 80% of all results. Everything else is a routine that isn’t productive and fruitful. This may seem like something unachievable, but with the real focus on the first things first I think they are achievable.

Follow the recommendations, and make the calendar for daily activities that will lead to the achievements of the goals in 2010. If one day you make less than planned you must immediately ask WHY. In this way, you’ll include a self-improvement element of the whole process.

I hope that in such more organized way you’ll be able to achieve everything that you set as a goal for this year.

I would like to classify several quotes from different people who can motivate the entrepreneur for undertaking any action or to expand knowledge with views of some successful people. This will be a new series of posts, which will deal with various quotes from which we will try to extract some conclusions or recommendations for entrepreneurs.

Let’s start with quotes about business ideas.

Business Ideas Quotes

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right – Bill Gates.

If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. Ideas are any man’s greatest asset – Harvey S. Firestone.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think – Leo Burnett.

There is no substitute for knowledge. To this day, I read three newspapers a day. It is impossible to read a paper without being exposed to ideas. And ideas.. more than money.. are the real currency for success – Eli Broad.

There’s no good idea that can’t be improved on – Michael Eisner.

I feel I’m able to serve my customer by knowing what she or he wants. One of the ways I’m able to do this is through my website, and email: people give me great ideas, tell me what they want, what they don’t want. It’s really instrumental, and helps me stay in touch with people – Kathy Ireland.

Research your idea. See if there’s a demand. A lot of people have great ideas, but they don’t know if there’s a need for it. You also have to research your competition – Magic Johnson.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on – John F. Kennedy.

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines – Steve Jobs.

My job is to listen to ideas, maybe cook up a few of my own, and make decisions based on what’s good for the shareholders and for the company – Philip Knight.

Capital isn’t that important in business. Experience isn’t that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas – Harvey S. Firestone.

An amazing thing, the human brain. Capable of understanding incredibly complex and intricate concepts. Yet at times unable to recognize the obvious and simple – Jay Abraham.

You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them – Jay Abraham.

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see – Edward de Bono.

A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights – Brian Tracy.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• Ideas are the biggest assets of your business.
• Allow free flow of ideas at all levels in your business.
• Be open to ideas that coming from outside of your business.
• Put the ideas on paper. You can use the business ideas book template for this purpose.
• All business ideas as everything else in your business can be subject to improvement.
• Communicate with your customers to extend the ideas for your business. Only they can give you really high quality ideas that can immediately be applied in your business. Ask questions whose answers will give you new business ideas.
• A business idea to be a good business idea, there must be the existence of market need. The business idea is evaluated from the market, not from you as an entrepreneur. So, first make market research for each business idea.
• Stay focused on what happens in the environment. Sometimes the best business ideas or business solutions are right next to you, but you simply don’t see them. Follow everything and ask questions like Why and How. In this way, you will be able to see the difference in something that is obviously and clearly. These differences probably will not be seen from your competitors.
• The business idea is a creation of your mind, mind of an entrepreneur, and nothing else. Everything else represents a tool that helps you to create the idea.