The foundational training is centered on the company culture, which covers the basics such as who is the employee accountable to and what are they responsible for, dress code, using the time clock, calling when there are schedule changes, and use of company property. Make sure there are no “unspoken rules” that carry greater weight than the documented rules. Unspoken rules can undermine the success of the best systems.

When training employees, by following the money trail, the employee has a logical framework to couch their new found knowledge. Start with product training, possibly on a graduated basis for more involved products, so they know what the company offers – and what problems the products solve.

The next step in the money trail is sales. Sales training ranges from operational steps such as working the cash register and credit card terminals to the customer service area of handling irate customers, finding the right product for clients to soliciting customer feedback. The US Business Finance Corp team provides our merchant credit card account owners and employees training on both the credit card “point of sale” terminals and the handling of various customer situations. We believe credit cards should benefit your company with greater income and by minimizing “operator error” and credit requests through training we can help improve your business and protect your profit margins.

The last steps are usually the back office steps of handling payroll, invoicing and bill collecting. Though maybe somewhat tedious, one place most businesses have room for improvement is timely billing on their outstanding accounts. The sooner invoices are sent, the sooner clients will send their payments and keep the cash flow at the necessary level to meet the business’s own bills.

Documentation in some areas can be as simple as block diagrams or photographs of steps in a process. Simplifying steps aids in their ability to be remembered as well as the time it takes to document the steps. And it help keep documentation maintenance time low so its more likely that your training material remains current to your business’s innovations and improvements.

US Business Finance Corp realizes the tremendous benefits to consistent training as well as consistent customer service and help from your credit card service provider. We assist our customers, not just in providing great rates, but also in providing the training necessary to protect your merchant account status and your rates. Contact our small business financing team and credit card services experts today.

Prepared with business cash advances from US Business Finance Corp, entrepreneurs can quickly respond to opportunities calling for operating capital. As Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Businesses expand their markets best by having the ability to perceive market expansion opportunities, no matter how they are disguised, and have the capacity to respond. Entrepreneurs by their nature often see opportunities where others see problems.

In business, having a clear business strategy and knowing what service your company provides helps you find the market information that opens the next business opportunity. However “knowing what service your company provides” may mean seeing your company in a different light. For example, transportation companies that only see themselves as people movers, by seeing themselves as an all around transport service may be able to open additional markets in small cargo transportation. Another perspective changing thought is: differentiate what your business does from how your business benefits your customers. Phone answering services take messages, but they also provide the company’s first impression to their customer’s. Knowing this helps you train your employees to include some PR in there interactions, and create an additional marketing differentiation to attract new markets.

Another opportunity expansion exercise is to define all the steps your customer’s take to get and use your product. Then decide what of those steps can you include in your offering to improve your customer’s perception of your products and services. In business consulting terminology, this is sometimes called consumption-chain mapping.

Next is keeping your vision on your local demographic market and its changes in tastes and buying habits while keeping an eye on national trends. National trends are often the best ways to spot the effects of a disruptive technology. Once major changes in technology or national tastes (such as the shift from fast food to nutritious food) occur, being the first to adapt that finding into how you shift your marketing may cause a dramatic increase in market share.

The fourth area to examine for opportunities is to recognize competition in all its forms. Everyone is aware of their direct competitors, but focus should also be put on tangential competitors and potential competitors. Tangential competitors do not so much compete on product offering, but for your customers’ time, attention and, to a varying extents, discretionary income. An example of this would be a mini golf course and a laser tag place. They each offer a distinctly different product or experience, but they both compete for peoples’ relaxation time.

US Business Finance Corp’s business cash advance program was instituted to help small businesses who ran into obstacles securing traditional business loans. Our business capital financing not only has filled the needs of this under-served market, but our cash advance programs have created a strong competition for banks in the small business financing world. Our alternative financing is proving faster to secure, faster to pay off and less burdensome on business owners – no collateral or personal guarantee necessary!

Potential customers are harder to spot since they often appear on the market when people discover a new way to use a product or solution and apply it to another problem. That new way may suddenly be in direct competition with your business. In marketing, many start-up businesses try to create this “disruptive technology” product since it immediately puts them in a position to make inroads into an established market and establish major market share before the industry dinosaurs wake-up to the new competition. Japan took over the small car market when Detroit failed to see how small cars could compete with the popular large autos. Business cash advance alternative financing gained momentum when business owners expanded their use from emergency working capital needs to investing in equipment and advertising to grow their companies.

Paying attention to these four areas will give you a leg up on spotting marketing and sales opportunities for your company and prepare you for ways to re-invent your company if the market makes radical shifts. Contact US Business Finance Corp today to help your business expand its foothold in your markets with a cash advance.

The time you spend planning your marketing strategy will pay-off in its effectiveness. When budgets are tight, but sales are steady, US Business Finance Corp may be able to help you with a business cash advance to increase advertising and increase sales. The following are tips small businesses follow to boost sales and make the most of their marketing investment.

1. Know your customer. Instead of a “shotgun” marketing approach, where advertising goes out to a large general market, tailor your marketing to a very defined demographic. With a clear target you can measure your marketing effectiveness and tighten the scope of where and how you place your advertising material.
2. Network within your industry. Referrals are a solid source of business leads since anyone sent to your store or requesting your services has most likely heard a positive testimonial about you. The best people to network with are those who have businesses that share the same market, but sell different or complementary products or services. Leads groups and community service groups are all fallow ground for networking.
3. Understand your market. What local publications do they read? What radio stations do they listen to? Is there a favorite restaurant at which they congregate? Knowing as much about your target market makes it possible for you to better spend your advertising budget?
4. Get marketing feedback – find out how your customers found you. Knowing how your customers found you is the most important information you can receive. With that feedback you can refine your marketing. If one type of marketing does not work, the sooner you know, the less money you send down the wrong rabbit run.
5. Present your business as a benefit or solution for the potential customer. Turn the marketing tendency of listing your services or products features into benefits your customer receives. Listing features translates into “You’re selling something”. Listing benefits translates into “I can receive something I need”. For example, if you are an insurance agent brand yourself as “I help people get prepared financially for those unfortunate things that happen unexpectedly.” Marketing really about creating perceptions – you can either sell insurance or help someone make sure their family is taken care of should something happen to them. The first is perceived as an expense, the second as an investment.
6. Look for local market exposure. Find opportunities where you can use your products or services to support a cause or a raffle at wholesale prices. Put your name up alongside a worthy cause – always good publicity – and you usually invest less marketing dollars than the public’s perceived value of your offering. For instance, if you are an advertising agency, co-sponsoring an event, especially with businesses you want to network with, and placing ads at your wholesale discount prices costs you less than the event sponsors would have to pay if hiring your company – and you get your name prominently linked to an image-boosting event.

Using your readily available assets – customer feedback, networking referrals and “wholesale access” to your company’s strengths – to leverage your marketing capacity saves advertising dollars and maximizes your marketing effectiveness. Call US Business Finance Corp to get your business a business cash advance to invest in your advertising and future growth.

1. Just as in marketing, determine you target market. If your define your target market by demographics, you can research the US Census Bureau’s website to get information on where most of that target demographic resides in your town or metropolitan area.

 

2. Once you have used your target market research to determine where your market is, check where businesses that are similar or a competitor to your business are located in that area. It is no mystery that doctors’ offices are usually in the neighborhood of a hospital and lawyers’ offices are within blocks of the city or county courthouse. In this way you can utilize the marketing research and selling experience of the successful companies.

   Another aspect of locating near competition is that your companies draw from the employee group that has the same skill set. Local incubator companies and state and federal labor offices often have the information of the areas labor pools and markets.

 

3. Consider the transportation aspect. Will you be receiving deliveries from semi-trucks and need to be near a major street with an alley, or just off the interstate? Are most of your employees going to be using mass transit – need to be near bus/train lines? If you are opening a second store, is it in a similar area and easy to get from one store to another? Consider the situations where you have to handle an emergency or will be making regular trips between stores.

 

4. When price is an over-riding consideration. Businesses that either deliver a service to the customer, such as well drillers, or that deliver their product electronically, such as a software business, do not need to be in the “high rent district”, but can find the locations with very affordable rent or purchase prices, such as unused warehouses (and then get creative on interior design).

 

5. Choose your location for year-round residency in mind. Keep in mind winter conditions which will affect the expense of heating your office or store. Buildings with multiple retail or office spaces allow for  sharing certain expenses, such as snow plowing the parking lot, with the other tenants.

 

6. Use the knowledge of your real estate agent. It is always good to know the history of a building and the neighborhood – what businesses succeeded and which ones failed and why. This can help you from repeating another business’s same mistakes.

Every new business faces challenges, however, by choosing a beneficial location, you have overcome one of your company’s biggest start-up tests and placed yourself in the best position to succeed. When you locate your commercial property, turn to US Business Finance Corp for your best avenue to obtaining a commercial real estate loan. We have the experience and mortgage industry network to find you the financing you need.

The best way to define your competition is to define your market (geographical and/or demographical) and your key selling points or unique sales proposition (USP). Then decide whether you can do the assessment or if you need a consulting company or even a nearby incubator company – a business, often sponsored by local government or economic development organization dedicated to helping small businesses succeed, to help you. The following outline can guide your research.

1. Understanding your unique selling proposition will keep you out of the quicksand trap of competing on price. When measuring a competitor’s offer, make sure you find all the ancillary offerings such as finance terms, customer service record, and on-time delivery. When differentiating your product package, include all your customer benefits that raise you above the competition.
2. Check out the quality offered by the competitions’ suppliers. How do their products differ from yours? Is country of origin a factor in your market?
3. Solicit and use customer feedback as much as possible! Information provided by your upset customers – or your competitor’s upset customers now patronizing your store – may well be the most honest assessments of your industry as well as your store. Treat the feedback impersonally. If you know what are the traditional complaints your customers have with your industry then you can impliment a successful marketing ploy that exposes and owns up to them at the same time that you show how your store is different (especially if done in a humorous manner). With the admission of shortfalls, the customer sees the ad as rather frank and honest and appreciates businesses that see the industry from their perspective.
4. As part of a USP analysis between stores, figure out what emotional impact that the products you carry and your competition carries have. As one skin care executive once pointed out, they didn’t sell “make-up”, they sold “hope”. The more your advertising can position your product in the light of its emotional impact, the farther you can move your product from the commodity bin where price is the major (if not only) consideration and closer to an item whose value is more than its intrinsic cost.
5. How does your advertising material compare? Who is setting the bar for websites? Does your website look better professionally, have better navigation, faster to find key information? Are your local newspaper or magazine ads as well placed and eye-catching?

In the final assessment, scoping the competition is beneficial for your company. It helps you to see your company through your customers’ and your competitions’ eyes. Any ideas that build sales and help solidify your market are long-term pay-off ideas that make analyzing your competition worth it.