Top 14 Tips For Small Businesses to Thrive in a Down Economy

Top 14 Tips For Small Businesses to Thrive in a Down Economy

If your thoughts are primarily fear based, if you're envisioning the worst for yourself and your business, if your conversations are focused predominately on bad news, then you're seriously impeding your own success. Instead of giving succor to all the negative blathering, buckle down and determine to take three actions every single day to improve revenue! Here are some suggestions.



1) Don't you Dare Pick up that Phone Unless it's to Generate Business!

Be ruthlessly disciplined about generating business as job one. Any activity that doesn't secure new business should be delegated, or done during non-business hours. Prioritize everything else around this fundamental principle. During business hours, dedicate yourself exclusively to building your business.

2) Virtually Stalk your Prospects:

Describe your ideal client. What types of organizations do they belong to? Join them. What kinds of publications do they read? Read them. What types of events do they attend? Attend them. Differentiate yourself with detective work about your targeted prospects. Research them; tap your network to learn more. This information helps warm up cold contacts, sets you apart from the most others who won't go to this much effort.

3) Work Backward to Move Forward:

If you're tracking important ratios, you know how many qualified prospect meetings it takes to generate one client, and the average sale per client. With only these two pieces of information, you can control how much you sell each month. Determine desired sales volume, then conduct two to three times the number of qualified prospect meetings required to achieve it.

4) Invite Scrutiny:

Whose business acumen do you admire? Who's already successful in your field? Whose clientele does your product or service compliment? Invite these folks to be your Advisory Board. Meet quarterly to gain their advice on you business challenges. Advisory boards impose a level of scrutiny and accountability that both challenge and comfort. Ensure you get unbiased, unemotional, tough truths by not including friends and loved ones on the board.

5) Your Pipeline is your Lifeline:

Never stop prospecting. In good times or bad, keep your pipeline full! Even when you're flush with business, don't get cocky. Realize that if you wait to prospect until you need new clients; it'll be too late to achieve immediate results.

6) You Lag Before you Bag:

The lag time between your first meeting with a qualified prospect and the closing the sale is an essential ratio for managing your productivity. The sales you bag today likely began at least 3 months ago!

7) Play the Numbers:

Whether you enjoy it or not is irrelevant; networking is an imperative. Learn how to do it well. If you want to survive the lean times, you have to network regularly, and focus on helping others. Understand that networking is a numbers game. Play to win!

8) Don't Pander; Ponder!

Showcasing your wisdom without taking time to probe causal factors can be insulting. Instead, honor the complexity of client issues. Be inquisitive about their goals, frustrations, hopes, and struggles. Then construct a matrix of options, and augment this with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

9) Prepare to Bend by Predicting the Trends:

Be vigilant about monitoring relevant trends, since they're always in flux. Even more importantly, anticipate and maintain an awareness regarding forces that could affect the trends you're monitoring. Doing so enables you to foresee and adapt to emerging trends before your competitors do.

10) Don't Defer Getting Referrals:

If you're not comfortable asking your satisfied clients to provide referrals, do it anyway! Once you've delighted them, conduct a brief interview to learn what they valued most about working with you. Using this information, draft a brief testimonial for them to edit and print onto their letterhead.

11) Publicize or Perish:

Both credibility and sales increase from publishing articles or books, and speaking on your area of expertise. It's not that hard! Every time you solve a problem for a client, produce an outline the process from start to finish. Then fill in the outline, and voila, you have an article or a speech. Multiple articles can comprise a book. Writing a book is less daunting if you write only one chapter at a time without thinking of it as a book.

12) Value for Free = Service for Fee:

Consider providing an educational session to prospective clients at no charge, but structure the delivery so that they want more. For example, deliver the information you promised to deliver, but make reference to additional, high value information your clients receive.

13) Don't Attend Conventions without Clear Intentions:

Recoup the opportunity cost of attending conventions. Get an attendee list in advance of the meeting, identify and research your targets before you even leave town. Then make it your mission at the meeting to establish contact and engage them. Remember: attendance is not an outcome. Make your attendance result in new business by preparing in advance.

14) Break it Down to Build it Up:

Identify key result areas of your business, such as prospecting, delivery, marketing, speaking, new product development, etc. For each, write out measurable goals each quarter. Break these down into component parts, and include them in your calendaring tool.

No matter how many of these tips you implement, your own outlook and attitude can diminish their effectiveness. Those who prevail in difficult times are the ones who steadfastly refuse to allow negativity to form a barrier to their success - who instead deliberately and diligently take constructive action, thereby refreshing and reinvigorating their minds and their spirits, enabling them to take more action, which refreshes and reinvigorates.

Railway Car Churches

Railway Car Churches


It can look bit crazy, but it seems that there is a widespread train in Russia to organize Orthodox-Christian churches in old railway cars.

It could seem like it’s a modern phenomena but bit retrospective digging reveals that some of them already appeared when the railroad itself appeared in Russia.

Lello Bookshop – Beautiful Architecture

Lello Bookshop – Beautiful Architecture

Acer S273HL HD LED Monitor

Acer S273HL HD LED Monitor


Acer offers latest S273HL Full HD LED Monitor, but it launches in Russia. The S273HL Full HD LED-backlit LCD display comes with excellent design and features. It is a 27-inch monitor features 12,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, Full HD 10920×1080 resolution and 2ms response time.


It is built in White LED backlight technology. This latest LED Monitor would consume less energy it saves about 68% energy. Acer’s display comes with slim and sleek design as well size is just 21mm. It offers two HDMI ports. It comes in black color.

Sculptures Made of Plastic Bottles

Sculptures Made of Plastic Bottles

Defining Conversions for Small Businesses

Defining Conversions for Small Businesses

When people are starting a small business, they very often do so with a solid understanding of the area or niche that they are entering into business in. This means that their product or service is something that they are going to understand very well. They will be able to create a high quality product, or offer an excellent service in their area of expertise. What they may lack however, is a deeper understanding of the concepts of business itself. That is why learning a few marketing tips for small business owners is something that is certainly advised for small business owners that don't have a background in business.



One of the things that small business owners need to understand is the whole notion of conversions. Conversions and, specifically, the conversion rate of a business are very important concepts for tracking and monitoring the success that a business is having in their sales and marketing campaigns. There are many different metrics and statistics that companies can use to determine how effective their marketing is being, but of all of these, that of conversions may be the most telling statistic of all.

A conversion is what business people call it when a lead becomes a sale. Essentially, a lead is any person that you have contacted, or who has contacted you in some way about your service. This could include someone that visits your website, your store, who you cold call, or who calls you for any information about your services. If you manage to take that lead and turn it into a sale, you know that you've made a "conversion".

The "conversion rate" then, becomes the percentage of the leads which you receive which are turning into sales. This is frequently used to assess the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, such as an email campaign that you send out to your subscribers. For example, if you sent an email to 1000 subscribers and made 20 sales, you would have a 2% conversion rate. If you then made changes to your email template, font, and copy writing, and then sent the message to another group of 1000 and instead made a conversion of 3%, you would know that the second email was the more effective.

This is why using the notion of conversions can be very helpful to a business. They can use this to help assess each of their marketing elements in turn. Changing marketing constantly in order to improve it and get better results is an important part of growing a business. Using the notion of the conversions you make on traffic that visits a websites is also an important way for small businesses to improve their results. There are many different things that you can change about a website over time. By using an analytics program to track the traffic that is coming to your website and making note of any changes that you see in the conversion rates that you are achieving, you can eventually come to what is going to be the most effective iteration of your website.

Audi 2050 Concept - City Racer of The Future

Audi 2050 Concept - City Racer of The Future


Imagined by Victor Uribe for the year 2050, the Audi 2050 Concept has been designed while keeping in mind a vehicle that is not only small enough to commute you easily through the crowded streets of tomorrow but also matches the essence of Audi.

Developed in an effort to break the stereotype that small cars must be boring, the car is perfectly sized with features and functionality to give riders the feel of race cars. The concept will be powered by hydrogen and transmits pure sensations of a racing even at low speeds. Replacing conventional sliding doors with sliding roof is another unique feature of the vehicle.

Despite that its shape is strongly inspired by the racing cars 30, like the auto union type C, and D, Audi 2050 Concept tries to capture the pure soul of those cars and turns it into a car that could be a classic in the distant future.

Amy Smart Pictures

Amy Smart Pictures

Motorola MB511 FlipOut

Motorola FlipOut MB511

Motorola officially announced the Youth guglofon with an unusual form
factor and user interface MotoBlur integrated access to social networks
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and full support services Google. Motorola
FlipOut - a very compact device. Its size at just 67 x 67 x 17. The upper
part of the device with a touch screen (2.8 inches with a resolution of 320
x 240 pixels) rotates around one of the corners, opening the QWERTY
keyboard. FlipOut managed OS Android 2.1, equipped with Wi-Fi module
and A-GPS, electronic compass, 3.5mm jack for headphones, camera, 3
megapixel technology to support Kodak Perfect Touch, noise-canceling
CrystalTalk PLUS, 512MB of internal memory and a memory card to 2GB
kit. The device operates in quad-band GSM / EDGE and liaises third
generation - HSPA 3G. About the price of the gadget so far nothing is
known. More images after the break...



Specifications Motorola FlipOut (MB511):

CPU: TI OMAP3410, 600 MHz
RAM: 512 MB
ROM: 512 MB
Available user memory: 150 MB
Network: GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA / HSPA (900/2100 MHz),
Display: 2.8 ", 240 x 320 pixels, 16 million colors (QVGA) TFT
Camera: 3 megapixel, technology Kodak Perfect Touch, geotegirovanie
Expansion slot: microSDHC (up to 32 GB, 2 GB included)
Platform: Google Android 2.1, an interface MOTOBLUR 1.5
A-GPS
Communications - Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0
FM-radio with RDS
QWERTY-keyboard
Position sensor, electronic compass
Audio: AAC, AAC +, AAC + Enhanced, AMR NB, MP3, WMA v9
Video: H.264, MPEG4, WMV v9
Battery: Li-ion, 1170 mAh
Hours Talk time: up to 357 minutes in GSM, up to 275 minutes in the networks WCDM
Opening hours Standby time: up to 365 hours GSM, up to 377 hours for WCDMA
Dimensions: 67 x 67 x 17 mm
Weight: 120 grams.