Business Okanagan

1. Be very focused on your business. Evaluate your strengths. Discard your weaknesses. Know the profitability and marketability of every product or service you offer. Know all the features of your products or services. Clearly identify the benefits they offer your customers.
2. Know your target market and how best to reach them. What is the profile of your ideal customer or client?
3. Set out a carefully thought-out marketing strategy and stick to it. How are you going to sell your product or service? You need a blend of marketing activities that will attract your target customers and give them a reason to do business with you and active, aggressive prospecting where you reach out to prospective customers. If they don’t know who you are and what you offer, they will never do business with you.
4. Make it easy for a customer to buy. Think about the purchase from their point of view.
5. Keep in touch regularly with your existing customers or clients. Give them a reason to come back to you and do business. Consider a customer loyalty program – these can range from simple and inexpensive to sophisticated (and more costly!).
6. Use common sense! This is one valuable asset that small business has and, apparently, a lot of large corporations lack.
7. Keep your accounts receivable and your accounts payable current – religiously.

In case all of this sounds pretty familiar, that’s because it is: these are simply the basics that successful small businesses apply all the time. That’s one of the reasons that I’m convinced that small business will help lift the economy out of recession – without any help – and virtually no recognition – from politicians and government.