My1stBusiness

Sales forecasting is the process of organizing and analysing information in a way that makes it possible to estimate what your sales will be. This Micro Module outlines some simple methods of forecasting sales using easy to find data. Books containing simple and sophisticated techniques of forecasting sales can be found in libraries and business oriented book stores.


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So what is leadership?

By: Ben Botes, Copyright 2003 - 2004 www.My1stBusiness.com


We’ve seen hundreds of books on management and leadership fill the shelves at our local book store or business section of ‘what you should be reading’. But what does leadership mean to your business?

While your business benefits from being managed - kept orderly and productive - it will thrive from increased leadership. The essence of leadership is creating the change, including the change in your the culture, of your business, which is necessary to produce the results that will keep you ahead of the competition.

Leadership of this type is an emotional, not an intellectual, craft. It is an attitude, and the behaviours associated with that attitude, that results in participating in ways that inspire and motivate others to invest themselves in helping you create the results you want.


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Intro To Project Management

One of the greatest benefits of projects in an organisational context is their ability and effectiveness in the achievement of goals. The success or failure of projects is largely related to the way that managers develop tactics or plans for the projects and how these plans can be effectively monitored and controlled through the various stages of the project lifecycle. It is a basic premise that the successful implementation of a project requires the development of a set of action plans together with subsequent tactics by the project manager. The planning stage of the project will define issues such as the project goal, targets and other milestones, as well as the establishment of a relationship with the clients or stakeholders of the project. The tactical aspects of the projects will include activities such as verifying the projects technical abilities, resources needed such as personnel and equipment and putting systems in place for the monitoring and control of the project. Although these planning and tactical activities are carried out through the duration of the project careful attention should also be given to the human issues and its influence on the project.

More and more organisations are using a project management approach for the effective execution of critical operations. Projects are often carried out in four phases, namely the defining, planning, executing and delivering of the project.

How do I get started on learning how to manage projects?
It is important to take part in the exercises that are given here. Many of us read trough modules like these as an overview without going through the practicality of it. Its all in the doing. Watching someone having a great experience on the television, or reading about it in a book is not the same as being there ourselves.

Although some project managers use a five step model for the managing of projects, our project model have four steps.


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Creating A Vision For Your Business

The basic premises of designing an effective vision are as follows.
You must believe there is always a better way.
If you don't think there is a better way to run the business, then you don't need to create visions or strategies. If you do adopt this belief, it will keep you (and your client) aware that you need to monitor, review, and assess what you are doing, looking for what you could do better. The owner often feels that what they are achieving is good enough for now.

Otherwise they would have changed it before now. Most owners won't realize they even need to create a vision, so you will have to introduce them to this.
Work backwards.
Shift your mind set from incremental plodding forward, to having the owner see where they want to be 1, 2, or 3 years from now, and then work backwards.

People are ill-prepared for the future.
People do have ambitions to grow and thrive – and that's even more justification to create a vision. Just know that most people don't know how to prepare for the future, what skill sets are needed, etc. You will have to help them with this.

A real vision has to be based on real desires.
No matter how many mental pictures we form about the future, the vision will not be real to us unless it is based on our real desires.

As a business owner, vision means thinking for yourself and maintaining a clear image of your distant goals. In our work with entrepreneurs and the owners of small businesses, vision is that future they want to create, and in so doing, they unlock their potential, slot in their interest and generate excitement.

Vision is the underlying reason for why they do what they do in the first place.
It is very closely related to purpose and to mission.


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Raising Your Business Profile

By Ben Botes http://www.my1stbusiness.com

Whenever you communicate a message you are inevitably felling a story about your business. The media has an insatiable demand for stories; without them they would have very little to write about.

Public relations – can be a confusing term. But all businesses need and use PR, even if they don’t realise it. Businesses have to communicate with a wide audience of customers if they are to survive. It’s how well a company communicates that will determine its success levels.

The process of raising your business profile can be divided into four steps:


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Small Business Outsourcing: An Introduction

Outsourcing is the delegation of a business process to an external service provider. The service provider will then be responsible for the day-to-day running and maintenance of the delegated process.

Before outsourcing an IT function, look at your firm's own goals and culture. Price might be a key consideration, but a valuable outsourcing firm is more a business partner than a service provider. Such a partner should lend a level of expertise to your small business that builds upon internal know-how. Only then can you rest assured that you have achieved an optimum blend of in-house and outsourced IT functions.

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Small Business Pricing: Setting A Price For Your Product / Service

The importance of pricing can not be underestimated as incorrect pricing can often result in the failure of a business. New businesses often make the mistake of either charging too little or too much for their product or service. So to help you avoid making one of these mistakes, the following section will outline some of the guiding principles of price determination. Price is a key part of marketing. Setting prices is called pricing.

Pricing means more than how much you charge. Smart customers look beyond pricing when considering a purchase. Price is important but so are delivery times, guarantees, customer support and quality to name a few.

Small and home based businesses can - in many cases - do a better job than "big businesses" in some of these areas. You should evaluate your pricing based on this fact. You're small and don't have the inertia or paperwork logjams of a bigger business. You're quick on your feet and can change direction easily and quickly.
How do I get started on pricing a product/service? There are 4 steps here suggested by us. This module may not serve all types of businesses so if you are not sure consult as many sources as possible


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Small Business Sales: The Practicalities

You don’t have to be a born salesman to get orders. You don’t even have to enjoy selling. You just have to be clear about what you want and what you have to offer.

Remember that effective selling is essential to the success of your business. So whether you will be making the sales or have a team to do that, you should do everything you can to ensure that your sales are done in the best way possible.

Selling is one of the most important aspects of any business.

I suggest that if you at this point have not yet worked through the Micro Module on Finding Clients and Knowing Your Clients, that you do that now.

As you go through the following nine skills, think of the practical issues of your specific service, how can you implement these steps, what else could you do? In order for this module to be effective you have to work through it and not just read it. Use this as your opportunity to become a great presenter.


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Being Innovative

In 1968, George Land gave 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. He then re-tested the same children at ages 10 and 15. The test results were staggering! 98% at age 5 registered genius level creativity, 30% at 10 year and 12% at 15 years of age. The same test given to 280,000 adults placed their genius level creativity at only 2%! In his book 'Breakpoint and Beyond', co-authored by Beth Jarman, Land concluded that non-creative behaviour is learned".

Innovation originates from the French word "innovacyon" meaning "renewal" or "new way of doing things.”

Most of us would love to be more innovative, but are either to busy with ‘important life stuff’ or simply just don’t know where to start.

Unfortunately, innovation, unlike audits or reengineering, is not given to formulas. It is given to people -- restless, inspired, fascinated individuals with an almost cellular need for change. And while it can be supported by systems, it can never be reduced to systems. "Innovation," as Tom Peters so aptly put it, "is a messy business."

To become more innovative, forget about slick formulas and the excuses why you can’t be and bring your awareness to what is happening inside you. Because that's where it starts. What language are you using to describe your innovative ability? What does that internal critic have to say? Perhaps you are reminding yourself that if something were really such a good idea then some else would already have thought of it.

The answer is that we are all innovative and creative, albeit in our own way. It is the degree to which we allow and trust our creativity to come to life that distinguishes us from others.


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Innovation & Unleashing the Human Spirit

The importance of innovation has been described in a multitude of ways in recent years: Innovation has displaced quality as the standard for differentiation. Innovation is the only sustainable competitive advantage. Innovation is a necessity for continued existence. No matter how it is portrayed, innovation is understood by today’s vast business audience to be vital to any organisation's success.

Innovation has always been a primary challenge of leadership. Today we live in an era of such rapid change and evolution that leaders must work constantly to develop the capacity for continuous change and frequent adaptation, while ensuring that identity and values remain constant. They must recognise people's innate capacity to adapt and create -- to innovate.

In my own work I am constantly and happily surprised by how impossible it is to extinguish the human spirit. People who had been given up for dead in their organisations, once conditions change and they feel welcomed back in, find new energy and become great innovators

The human capacity to invent and create is universal. Ours is a living world of continuous creation and infinite variation. Scientists keep discovering more species; there may be more than 50 million of them on earth, each the embodiment of an innovation that worked. Yet when we look at our own species, we frequently say we're "resistant to change."


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