How can joint ventures boost local small business results

How Can Joint Ventures Boost Local Small Business Results?

If you own a business and would like to get more profit from less work, then you definitely want to start doing joint ventures. Find out how in this article.

A joint venture in business is simply a triple win, or a win-win-win. It happens when 2 (or more) business owners do a deal that not only benefits both businesses, but also serves the customers. There MUST be a win-win-win.

Let me give an example so you can understand the power of joint ventures. There are many kinds of joint ventures that you can organize. This example is for local business owners. Imagine this scenario. Sam owns a dog-friendly restaurant. Sarah owns a gourmet dog cookie business. They form a joint venture that works like this.

Sarah puts a few of her fancy treats into cute little bags. She includes a business card, of course, and she also includes a coupon. maybe it is a 10% discount or maybe it is a gift with purchase offer. She brings the treat bags over to Sam’s restaurant each week. Whenever a dog-owning diner comes to eat, Sam makes their dog very happy by giving the cookies. Any dog owner is likely to go buy the treats if they are a hit with the dog, right? So the dog owner makes a purchase from Sarah and in turn gets a coupon for a free appetizer or dessert from Sam’s restaurant. As you can imagine, both businesses benefit, and the customers will tell their dog-loving friends about their experience. That’s a match made in heaven.

If you want to re-define economic stimulus for yourself, then you want to start creating joint ventures for your business. Think of the buying habits of your customer and you can start coming up with some fabulous ideas for your own joint ventures. Why not take out some paper and start using the creative side of your brain?

All it takes is a little creativity and a deep desire to serve your customer. Find out what else your customer buys. If you notice that people often come into your business carrying shopping bags from a particular nearby business, you have the basis for a joint venture. Could you ask them to offer a coupon or a sample? And could you in turn find a way to give your customers a discount or sample of theirs?

Ask yourself these questions to get the creative juices flowing.

Where else do your customers like to shop? What other products/services are a natural fit for your customer? What else do your customers want and need that you don’t intend to provide yourself? How can you make these customers to think of you as their hero? Whom do you know in a business that your customers would also like to frequent? Whom do you trust in a complimentary business? How can you better serve your customers by forging joint ventures? How will you track results? Start stretching your mind and your expectations and create your own economic stimulus plan through the power of joint ventures.

How to maximize your profits with a liquor store

How to Maximize Your Profits with a Liquor Store

In my extensive experience with helping individuals buy all sorts of businesses, I’ve repeatedly noticed something thought provoking about people who are selling liquor stores. Almost all of them are suffering from severe burnout!

If you tour a number of liquor stores that are for sale, you’ll discover what I mean. The places are usually dingy, and there are bottles on the shelves that could have been sitting there for years. The lighting needs replacing, the walls need a fresh coat of paint, and boxes of really old stock are stacked up in storage rooms. I have even seen injection-molded plastic signs on the walls for brands of beer that aren’t even available anymore.

Sounds dismal, right? Well, not really, because all those factors can spell opportunity just for you, a smart buyer.

Here are the steps to turn that underperforming liquor store into a money machine!

Step one: Make sure you buy the right store!

First things first… You have to buy a store with untapped demographic potential. It could be an older «mom and pop» liquor store in a neighborhood that has recently been transformed by the arrival of younger, well-to-do professional consumers. It could be in a part of the city where new office complexes are planned. Whatever it is, it has to have growth potential.

Avoid buying a liquor store in an area that’s in decline. Sometimes such stores can be generating positive cash flow by selling half pints of liquor and flask-style bottles of inexpensive wine, but let’s face it; a store in an district which is improving will always provide you with more opportunities for expansion and increased profitability.

Step two: Cater to a more upscale clientele!

If you’re in an region that’s bringing in an increasing number of professional people, begin building an upscale inventory that will appeal to these customers. Don’t wait for people to ask for more exclusive wines, get those products on your shelves in anticipation of popular demand.

Then we get to the issue of customer service. If you want to capture an upscale customer group, you’ll have to be able to answer questions about various wines — which wines are highly rated, or which go best with a particular kind of food.

One way to provide this service is to hire knowledgeable salespeople. Another way is to hire enthusiastic people and train them, or perhaps become a wine expert yourself. Your choice of strategy depends on your budget, your sales and the size of your establishment.

Step three: Make your upscale store look the part — from day one.

If your store needs renovation or freshening up before it can appeal to your new clients, make sure you budget for this — and always reserve a realistic amount of money for fix-ups. Arrive at a reality-based figure for how much everything will cost, and make it part of your calculations as you bargain with the Seller for the most realistic purchase price. Remember, you can’t get the business from any of the upscale clientele by rolling on a fresh coat of paint on dirty old shelves. Look at windows, lighting, floor areas, wall coverings and more. Even your cash registers need to be up-to-date and spotless.

Step four: Expand your product offerings beyond alcoholic beverages.

Over the last decade, upscale liquor stores have begun to offer gourmet cheeses and other food products. It makes sense to expand in this way. If people are looking for a good bottle of wine, or some excellent beer to compliment a good meal, why not offer them cheese, olives, crackers and other elegant appetizers? Remember to check local ordinances and zoning to be sure you can sell foods at your location.

Step five: Hold in-store events to attract more of your target clients.

Hold wine tastings, cooking classes and cheese seminars in your store. If an author has recently published a book on wine or cheese, have a book signing on your premises.

Events do more than sell products. They give your store the feeling of a community — and a destination.

Step six: Build an Internet presence.

Set up a store Webpage where you recommend wine, liquors and beer. On your Webpage, make sure to put a sign-up form where customers can subscribe to a professional email newsletter, in which you distribute detailed information about your products.

Also, in your newsletter, include coupons for discounts on wines, beer and other products, and try to be inventive about finding new ways of making it easy for your customers to recommend additional subscribers to you.

Always present your Website visitors with the opportunity to order products strait from your Website store. You can offer local delivery if you have a vehicle, or low cost shipping to a wider area. Be aware, however, that you may be prevented by law from shipping alcoholic beverages to other states, and make sure to check this out before you buy your store, so you can get a realistic idea of the business’s true overall profit potential.

How to make your customers leave forever

How to Make Your Customers Leave Forever! — Or Not**

Every day more and more people are realizing that the Internet offers great potential to set up a lucrative business for pennies on the dollar. This is great news for Internet marketers, but it also means that we need to improve our game.

Why? Because the would-be «netpreneur» has access to far more training than ever before. It’s possible to become educated very quickly on what is required to start a business online. This also means that people quickly understand what offers real value and what does not. They see so many sales letters that they become immune to typical hype. They are willing to spend, but they want value for their money. They want to be treated like the intelligent adults that they are.

So here’s a lesson for all ‘gurus’ who are focused on getting their share of the pie waiting to be sent their way via the Internet.

1) What does it take to make people want to buy from «you» rather than someone else?

2) What might make people want to unsubscribe from your list?

3) And what pushes them into asking for a refund?

What Makes People Want to Buy From *You*?

— They buy if they can see that a product will solve a problem or improve their personal situation.

— They buy if the purchase will speed up their business growth.

— They buy if a product will automate a task that eats into their time.

Once new marketers have been exposed to a few sales pages, it’s not long before they learn to look beyond hype. They study a sales letter carefully to work out what the product will «really» offer them.

They learn to look for value. Some higher-priced products are worth every cent while some cheaper products add very little to what they already know.

Seasoned internet marketers already know that if they put together online interviews offering truly valuable information, they are far more likely to attract and keep new customers. A quick example: Jane Smith listens to a one-hour audio interview on search engine optimization and traffic. She finds out some really useful information she has not so far heard anywhere else. She decides that this guy knows what he’s talking about and shells out a couple of hundred dollars for his products.

What Makes People Want to Unsubscribe from Your List?

— Getting several identical emails selling them the same product because the sender hasn’t figured out how to move them from one list to another after they buy.

— Getting a ‘cookie cutter’ email sounding full of excitement about a new product or service, which turns out to be a duplicate of the email they got from six other affiliates for the same product.

— Getting email from a product creator about anything under the sun because you bought one product from them.

What Makes People Want to Ask for a Refund?

In the past, buyers have tended to shrug off a bad purchase. But increasingly, people are prepared to stand up for their rights. And they should! If they feel they have not received value for their money, they will ask for a refund.

So what makes people decide to ask for their money back?

— Software that doesn’t do what you say it will do.

— Physical products (CDs, DVDs) that don’t work on their operating systems.

— Ebooks that are full of content easily found in an hour’s worth net surfing.

— Ebooks that have skimped on content or that have been poorly written.

— Ebooks that not only skimp on content but are full of links to upsells to get the ‘really valuable’ information, or is full of affiliate links.

The last case, an Ebook full of affiliate links or links to an up-sell is something you should be giving away for free as part of your viral marketing plan. Charge for it, and you risk your reputation for being a source of quality information.

Other things that make internet buyers unhappy…

— MP3’s that are streamed from a website rather than being downloadable.

— Ebooks that are in «.exe» format only, so the customer can’t print them out in one ‘hit’ and can’t access them on a Mac computer.

Give your customers anything that they can listen to or read away from their computers. Most of them spend enough hours a day behind a keyboard already. They’d rather load an audio interview into their MP3 player and listen while they go for a walk or drive. They’d prefer to print out an Ebook and read it or highlight certain points while sitting in an easy chair.

Finally, about those «squeeze pages»…

People are quickly becoming tired of having to give up their email addresses just to get to a sales page.

Do you want them to buy or not? Unless there’s a huge buzz around the Net and they want to see what it’s all about, potential customers are just as likely to close the browser window and leave.

After all, there’s always another internet marketer waiting to sell them a product. Probably one very similar to yours. Marketers who respect their customer’s time and intelligence will get their loyalty — and their cash.

How to determine the best day for your fundraiser auction

How To Determine the Best Day For Your Fundraiser Auction

Friday and Saturday are the two most popular days to hold an auction. But what happened to the other five days of the week? What’s the matter with them?

Absolutely nothing!

The truth is, you can have a successful benefit auction on any day.

Of course, the day you select will naturally convey a certain feel or expectation from your guests. Here are some pointers as to how a day influences the perception of the event.

A Sunday afternoon auction must be a tea.

Auctions held over teas are nice in that (if it’s well-run) the event will stick to the schedule. These types of events are meant to be squeezed in after church and before Sunday afternoon commitments, so they need to be kept short and sweet.

Sunday and Monday events must mean that chefs are involved.

Auction events which involve local restaurant chefs often occur on Sunday or Monday. Because many restaurants are closed on Mondays, a chef’s weekend (if you can call it that, given the crazy schedules of chefs) begins sometime on Sunday. Picking one of these days may make it easier for chefs to have the time to cook or serve at your auction.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday lunches appeal to business-types.

Associations and other non-profits like this timeslot when they are targeting the business crowd. Guests arrive at the hotel … eat lunch … bid in the auction … and go back to work. It’s all business.

Mid Week (Tuesday Wednesday, and Thursday) auctions can be nice for foundations.

These days tend to be the most popular for auctions of corporate foundations and association expos. Oftentimes the auction will be in conjunction with a trade show, an awards gala, a user conference, or a golf outing for attendees. It could be either during the day or during the night.

Thursday night galas are the second-tier fundraisers. «Second-tier» is not meant to be a derogatory term! It just means that these galas are traditionally smaller and haven’t yet established a strong footprint in their city. A Thursday night allows the organization to enjoy a better rental rate on the venue, and it’s a solid strategy decision designed to boost attendance. For instance, whereas a larger gala might have the panache necessary to keep a guest from heading to the beach for the weekend, a smaller group must select a date in which many guests are less likely to be traveling — a Thursday night. Thursday night galas rarely clash with the big galas (which fall on weekend nights), they also avoid conflicting with school auctions, and they bypass competing with weekend activities of guests. Perfect, for them!

Friday and Saturday nights are your city’s «landmark» galas. Friday night galas are common and usually only differ from Saturday night galas in the dress code, which is cocktail or business attire instead of formal. The reason for the less stringent dress code is that the charity realizes many business people will be arriving straight from a day at work.

The truth is that you can have a successful fundraiser on any day of the week, but it does make sense to consider what activities are taking place in your community so you don’t directly compete with another gala.

In Washington, DC, I’ve seen as many as 12 predominant events taking place on a Saturday night during busy season — and those were only the auctions of which I was aware! I’ve talked with guests at an event on Friday night to compare notes as to where everyone will be on Saturday. It’s important to remember that your best bidders are busy people, so take their schedule into consideration when choosing a date.