Don't Fly By Night: The Inside Information on Merchant Accounts

by Kurt ThumlertContributing Author
How you accept online payments will determine the scale of your online profits. So when selecting a merchant account provider, more than just a degree of circumspection is required. Information is critical - and too many e-businesses have paralyzed their potential for growth and profit with a hasty or careless business decision. Choosing the wrong merchant account provider is surely one of the quickest ways to derail your online business. In a nutshell, a merchant account enables you to begin accepting credit card payments over the Internet. It's a 'liaison' account linking your customer's credit card account with your own business account. Sounds simple right? So what's the first critical error many online businesspeople make? They assume that all merchant accounts are alike.

Of course, this faulty assumption has lead to much e-commerce frustration - and more than one e-business crisis. Ask any merchant who's spent a day on hold trying to resolve a simple chargeback, been drained by vampiric fees, or attempted to reach an elusive customer service department about increasing a monthly limit (while business grinds to a standstill online).

Here, building a sound business foundation means finding the best merchant account for your business model, and for the types of goods you sell. Though the rates of some merchant account providers can give you vertigo, many of the cheaper solutions will end up costing you more in terms of poor service, inflexible limits, technical difficulties, or inept customer care. The key is finding the right balance.

Source: http://www.work911.com

Small Business Legal Requirements

By Rhonda Winn
One of the main issues that face new and existing business owners is all the legal requirements necessary for operation. The following list is the most common requirements and should help you get started on your road to legitimizing your business. Keep in mind that you must also consider regulations that may be specific to your industry or local area.

• Bar Coding - Many stores require bar codes on their merchandise. If you plan to have your products feature in different outlets or even in your own storefront, you may need to obtain a bar code.

For more information contact:
National Bar CodePO Box 1244Dayton, OH 45401(937) 435-3870

• Business Licenses - You may need vendor’s license to sell retail items in your state. Check out your state’s home page to get detailed information as you may need other types of licenses depending on your industry.
If you are interested in incorporating your business or forming a Limited Liability Corporation, check out Corporate.com to find out more information.

• Certificate of Occupancy - For store-fronts or brick and mortar businesses, you may need zoning permission from your city or county zoning department.

• Copyrights - Protects the thoughts and ideas of creative individuals. You may need this on marketing materials, books, poetry, etc.

Source: http://clearviewpublications.com

Business Decisions to Shape Your Search Engine Strategies

Search engines have become a critical source of traffic for many Web sites. In fact, search engines can account for as much as 80 percent of their traffic

However, search engine placement is a complex and ever-moving target to hit: search engines refresh their listings constantly to produce new content. They also use a unique and proprietary (read: “top secret”) algorithm to determine a site's relevance to keyword queries. You can never be too sure as to what Google or Yahoo wants from a site to merit a top ranking. Playing catch-up with search engines can be time-consuming and costly. Worse, search engine visibility takes time to achieve and only seconds to lose.

If you are operating a web-based operation, you will need to make a number of business decisions regarding search engine marketing. The key to successful search engine marketing strategy is constant testing, revising and optimizing based on metrics. Here are some business decisions that you need to address in search engine marketing:

1. Are you keeping up with the changes?
Search engines are constantly trying to improve their search results. In so doing, you might find your site in the number one position one morning, only to slide to page 10 the following day, or worse, dropped from the engine’s entire index. You check your web stats to find that your traffic decreased by 10% or so because one search engine reduced its referrals to your site. Do you know what just happened?

Source: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol131/search.htm

Business Management and Employee Morale - Praise Good Work

By Greg Blencoe
Managers should not underestimate the power that praise has on employee morale. When employees are complimented, they get a warm, fuzzy, magical feeling inside. In addition, the manager’s job becomes easier because positive reinforcement of actions gets those actions repeated. Employees will begin to seek out more ways to earn praise by working harder and more productively.

WHY PRAISE MATTERS
To illustrate how important it is for people to receive recognition, think about all of the keepsakes of success that we retain to remind ourselves of the good feeling of praise. For example, a good friend of mine, Dean, died a few years ago from cancer. A few months later, Dean’s Dad invited me to come to his house to select something to remember him by. In his closet, Dean had fifteen or twenty trophies that he had earned throughout his life. Several of them seemed to be quite old so I looked at all of the dates. The oldest one was from 1970. He had kept that trophy for thirty years, because it made him feel like a winner.

Some employees don’t go above and beyond the call of duty even when they know it will help the company, because they think nobody will recognize their efforts. Their attitude is, “Even if I do this, nobody is going to notice anyway. So what’s the point?” Even though your workload is likely heavy, do your best to stay informed about all of the good things that your employees are doing and look for opportunities to praise them. You don’t want to just give feedback to employees when they do something wrong. That is an easy trap to fall into.

source: http://clearviewpublications.com

Working to Build and Grow a Thriving and Prosperous Business in a Competitive Market

By Deborah Evans
In the age where new businesses are opening and closing on a daily basis, as a new business owner you want to do all that you can to make sure you are not one of those businesses having to close their doors. In order for your business to grow and succeed, you need to get your name out there in front of potential customers and keep it there. The more a potential customer sees and identifies with your business, the more likely they are to be open to what you offer. Some techniques that have proven effective are unique and innovative marketing gifts and ideas, Warm-call gifts, and Advertising Specialties. This is when you can turn to a gift basket professional. Professional Gift Basket Retailers are the premier "business resource" to aid in these projects.

WARM-CALL GIFTS - Warm-call gifts are inexpensive gifts designed to catch the attention of the intended, and put your business name out there with something catchy they will remember. Gift Basket Professionals help companies obtain sales presentations by creating unique and often themed WARM-CALL GIFTS that catch the attention of the decision maker. For example, a tag line card that says, ""We would love to talk with you!"" attached to a delicious chocolate cell phone in a patterned cello bag with a coordinating bow or personalized custom logo ribbon. This idea is an inexpensive, yet unique and catchy way to get your business name out there and remembered. This is the key to business growth and success.

ADVERTISING SPECIALTIES - By offering ADVERTISING SPECIALTIES (items like mugs, pens, etc. with the company logo), gift basket professionals help a company keep their name in front of their clients. Most gift basket retailers have access to over 100,000 items and offer to warehouse a supply for quick and easy insertion into a gift basket. Or perhaps a sales presentation has been set up to meet with 10 executives and the business needs 10 presentation gifts. Using mugs with the company logo, it easy to customize the gifts with cookies, coffee, tea, chocolate etc. Of course, using the corporate colors and imprinted ribbon with a witty phrase makes the gifts stand out, which is exactly what your business needs. (It says nonverbally- ""We're better than the rest. Using our services will make YOU better than the rest."").

Building good relationships with existing clients and customers, as well as new ones, is one of the best ways to increase your business and maintain success. In order to help companies strengthen that relationship with a client or customer, THANK YOU GIFTS are a must. The important thing is that the client or customer feels appreciated by your company.

CUSTOM IMPRINTED RIBBON adds an elegant and personalized touch. Imprinting ""Thank you from XYZ company. We appreciate you!"" on the cascading ribbons, shows your customer or client that this is a custom made gift just for them. This special attention to clients is a great way to facilitate referral customers. Let's face it; happy customers share their experiences with others.

HOLIDAY GIFTS - The holidays are a perfect time to show your clients how much you appreciate their business. While all businesses are sending out their holiday cards and your customers' mailboxes are getting full, a gift basket hand delivered to their door, says so much more. During this busy time of year, your customer sees that they and their business are important to you.

source: http://clearviewpublications.com

Niche Marketing Lesson While Driving Home

Any company, no matter how large or small, has to find its niche if it wants to be successful; it must strive to be unique and to position itself as the best at satisfying a very specific market need.

Implications on Internet Marketing
The world of Internet marketing (especially for small businesses) is no different. Search engine marketing is a case in point: choose to optimize your webpage for keywords that everybody targets (for example one word, generic keyphrases like 'computers' or 'DVDs") and your site will never be found. Find a niche, and pick more specific keywords (for example 'refurbished laptop computers' or 'Country Music DVDs') and suddenly you stand a chance.

You Must Know Who You Are Before You Start
You must strive to provide value and solve your customers' problems. On the net, the most successful companies are those who know what their customers want, and then over-deliver. Yahoo! is where you can find everything in one place: your news, your email, your weather forecast and directions to your favorite restaurant. Google gives you the best and most relevant sites for your search query. Amazon gives you the best shopping experience (you can even read chapters online, and order with one click).

These sites know "who they are". They don't try to be like everybody else. Google just does search, even though they could easily branch-out to all sorts of services. Do one thing, do it right.

Be Different, Be Unique, and Solve Your Customers' Problems
The best sites on the net are different, not because they embrace every rich media trend that comes around, or because they display the coolest graphics. They are different because they have focused on a very specific user need and are the best at satisfying it. A satisfied customer is your best competitive advantage.

Source: http://www.accordmarketing.com

Benchmarking/Best Practices

One thing that seems common to most top plants, or other top business operations for that matter, is a cluster of practices called "benchmarking" or "best practices." There are lots of official definitions out there. Here are the ones I use.

"Best Practices" refers to identifying, sharing and implementing practices that result in improvements in either efficiency or effectiveness. Best Practices programs are continuous quests for improvement. This ties closely to "Benchmarking," a term that comes out of the quality movement. I can't improve on the definition given by Richard Dun in an article in Plant Engineering, so here it is. "Benchmarking is a systematic, continuous process for measuring, evaluating, and comparing business practices against recognized leaders to determine the extent to which you can improve your organization's performance."

In general use, "best practices" seems to refer more to looking inside the organization, while Benchmarking seems to refer more to looking outside the organization. Both are parts of a good knowledge management program. Note that many companies do the job without hanging any of the above signs on what they do.

The power of these programs is in their simplicity. Sure, you can build Byzantine administrative structures around a best practices program, but at bottom here's what you want to do --

 Find good practices
 Share them
 Implement them in other places

To find good practices you need to measure your results and those of others. Then you need to go out and aggressively find out who's doing good things. Your business intelligence efforts should help you find out what's being done by others. How do you find out what's going on inside your organization?

You have to encourage folks to share. If you've got a sharing culture, great, but if you don't, you need to look at serious behavioral change. This is difficult. You can hire consultants and embark on an enterprise-wide cultural change project. Despite the promises in those slick brochures, these are difficult, failure-prone and often take a few well-placed funerals and firings before they take effect.

It's usually more effective to concentrate on changing your actual practices regarding pay, praise, and promotion. Adjust your compensation program so you pay people more when they share good ideas. Praise them and their bosses publicly when they do. Promote the ones that share.

And, this is important, don't forget to hold supervisors accountable for reviewing the way their subordinates share ideas and information.

Without looking at the rewards systems, you have very few ways of effectively encouraging the kind of change that sharing information often calls for.

Once folks are willing to share, you can use technology to make that sharing more effective. Networks, especially Intranets, are great for spreading good ideas around.

So … which ideas do you pick to put in place first? The answer is simple, but not always easy. You pick the ones that will have the biggest impact on your results.

Here are some possibilities.
 Start with ideas that will impact your biggest expense line items.
 Start with ideas that will break a bottleneck or remove a constraint.
 Start with ideas that will have an impact on your key business practices.  Created/Revised/Reviewed: 9/21/99

Source: http://www.bockinfo.com/docs/benchmarking.htm

TAX RECORDS: TO THROWAWAY OR TO KEEP . . . FOR HOW LONG

Contrary to popular opinion people don't usually get into trouble by not saving records but by saving the wrongs ones, outdated ones and too many, or not knowing where the right ones are. The huge stack of papers in the attic is often there due to inertia caused by not knowing which records need to be kept and which can be tossed.

Here's a quick guide.
RECORD RETENTION SIMPLY STATED:
• Keep tax returns (not records, but actual returns) forever.
• Keep every year-end summary of your pension forever

Keep everything else for 7 years from the last time it had any impact on your financial life.

Source: http://www.junewalkeronline.com/web/taxtips_09.html

Benefits of Business Plastic

Paying for business purchases on a charge or credit card can assist in small business management. In fact, most small business owners rely in some type of business plastic to acquire business-related goods and services and pay for the costs of doing business.
According to the March 2003 OPEN Small Business Semi-Annual Monitor, 74 percent of small businesses use a credit or charge card to pay for various business expenses.

Review the benefits listed below to make sure you get the most from your charge or credit cards. Learn more about business Charge and Credit Cards from OPEN: The Small Business Network.

Expense tracking
By paying for business expenses with plastic, you generate a record of monthly and annual expenses. This record, provided to you from the card company, can assist in tax preparation, expense projections, and cost cutting. For example, it can provide you with a categorized list of business expenses at tax time, or let you view spending trends by employee or product/service category.
Reduced reliance on petty cash and business checksUsing charge and/or credit cards for business purchases cuts down on your need to raid the petty cash box or write business checks when you need to buy something for your business. Reduced reliance on both petty cash and business checks can simplify record keeping significantly. Minimizing use of petty cash and business checks by employees can also help reduce the chance for employee fraud by providing you with a printed record of each dollar an employee charges.

Rewards for dollars spent
More choices than ever before are available for a per dollar payback on what you spend on a charge or credit cards. Common rewards include airline or hotel points, and credits or dollars toward specific merchandise. For example, the Membership Rewards® program from American Express®.This program lets you redeem points for travel, merchandise, and other rewards for your business. Other cards enable you to earn a cash rebate on purchases.

Simplified bill paying
When business expenses are accumulated on your card, your business needs to write and track fewer checks. Fewer checks in your business means less effort spent on bookkeeping and check writing when bills are due. For example, by charging certain wholesale purchases instead of paying each one separately, you can consolidate these bills on one statement instead of having to negotiate individual terms and bills from multiple suppliers. It may even be possible to consolidate certain monthly bills – such as those for your cell phone, long distance, or Internet access – on your card, further simplifying your record keeping.

Money management
The “float” that comes from having breathing room between the day you purchase an item and when the bill is due provides a welcome cushion to many businesses managing cash flow. In addition to the standard float, credit cards let you carry balances for a prolonged period, which can prove helpful when large purchases are at hand or when cash is tight. Some cards now let you pay off partial balances monthly and carry larger balances forward as needed.

Source: http://www10.americanexpress.com/

Easy Tracking of Employee Spending

If you have employees, chances are they?re spending your company?s money. How you track these expenditures impacts what you may owe at tax time, your business capacity to manage its cash, whether a tax audit may go smoothly, and other important aspects of your business. So how do you track the money employees spend on hotel bills during a business trip, filling up a gas tank on the way to visit a client, or purchasing supplies?

Here are the three most common methods of tracking and accounting for employee spending. Compare them to your current system and see how you stack up.

Company card
Employee reimbursement
Cash advance
Company card

What it is:
A corporate credit or charge card1 is distributed to the employee; the monthly charges are billed to the company. Corporate cards can allow you to set limits — for example, so they can only be used with particular vendors, for particular goods or services, or for charges only up to a certain amount. They are most commonly used for travel and entertainment expenses, but are also practical for incidental expenses (such as office supplies or shipping charges) that previously fell under the category of "petty cash".

Advantages:

• Easy expense tracking: Expenses can be tracked via a single, consolidated bill that can be sorted by employee name, type of expense, or specific charge. This can streamline expense reconciliation and reimbursement.
• Clear spending records: Card statements and reports can provide the records your business needs to help manage cash flow, handle tax filing, or support an audit.
• Employee morale: Employees appreciate the convenience of their own card. They can separate personal and business expenses, simplifying record keeping while eliminating the need for expenses to be reimbursed after a trip.
• Rewards points: Having cards for employees can speed up accumulation of bonus points and other incentives.
• Less paperwork for company and employee: With the majority of expenses going on a card, there is reduced need for reimbursements via manual systems.

Disadvantages:
• Not every type of expenditure can be put on a card, so a supplemental system is required.

Tip:
Streamline your record keeping by using electronic management reports, such as American Express’ Expense Management Reports, to sort employee expenses by cardholder, expense category, amount, date, etc.

Employee reimbursement


What it is:
In a reimbursement system, an employee pays for his or her own business expenses, and is paid back by the company after filing an expense report with receipts and other documentation

Advantages:

• Usable by everyone: Any company employee can be given a printed or electronic expense form for out-of-pocket reimbursement. Not every one is at a level or tenure to be given a card. • Flexibility: Even if most employees have company cards, a supplemental system is needed to reimburse incidentals and other disbursements made where cards are not accepted (tips, cabs, newsstands, coffee counters).

Disadvantages:

• Reimbursement processing: Entries need to be tracked against receipts for accuracy. Checks need to be cut and dispensed, and replaced if lost.

• Burden on the employee: Employees need have enough available credit line if using a credit card; they may have to wait until a reimbursement check arrives before paying off their outstanding balance (i.e., ?float the company?). Those with extensive receipts have a lot to keep track of.

Tip #1: The more detailed the expense form, the easier it may be for your company to track spending for tax reporting and other purposes. Speak with your tax advisor about the best way to develop your form.

Tip #2: Be sure you ask employees to submit their reports in a timely manner. Generally, companies require employees to file their reports within 60 days of a trip. This can help in your record keeping and help ensure you?re able to manage these costs properly.

Cash advance

What it is:
The business writes an employee a check to cover anticipated expenses, and the employee returns any unspent funds.

Advantages:

• Employee float: The advantage of this system accrues to the employee who receives up-front cash.

Disadvantages:

• Cash flow: The company has to pay out money before expenseas are incurred.

• Collection: Since employees must return money they don?t spend, you not only have to track expenses accurately, but have to collect unspent funds.

• Employee burden: As with the reimbursement system, those with extensive receipts have a lot to keep track of.

Tip: If you use this method, consider a "non-accountable" plan, where expense advances are given to employees as checks separate from payroll, with those advances counting as compensation for the employee. These kinds of payments are included in employee W-2 forms, and they are subject to employment taxes such as withholding and FICA, but your company can write off 100% of the cost of these advances. While each method has advantages and disadvantages, the important consideration is whether your system of tracking employee spending is it effective for both you and your staff. If so, you are on top of employee spending. If not, easy changes in process can make a big difference in office efficiency.


Source: http://www10.americanexpress.com

The Five Ps of Leadership

There are whole libraries full of things that tell you what to do about leadership and how to remember what’s important. Here’s another short edition to that library – the 5 P’s of leadership. They are:

• Pay Attention to What’s Important
• Praise What You Want to Continue
• Punish What You Want to Stop
• Pay for the Results You Want
• Promote the People Who Deliver Those Results


Pay Attention To What’s Important
Time management courses, strategy books, and management gurus all will tell you that there’s not a lot that’s really important. Your job as a leader is to concentrate on what’s most important so that it gets taken care of. Then let the rest of the stuff take care of itself.

Now if you’re a perfectionist, that’s going to be hard for you to do. But there’s not P for perfectionism in this scheme of things. No, we recognize that there are limited resources of time, energy, people, and money. Because those resources are limited, you want to go for the big stuff first.
What you’re after is the 20% of stuff that gives you the biggest bang for the buck. What underlies all of this is something called Pareto’s Law. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian Economist and Sociologist in the late 19th century. He formulated something he called "The Law of the Unequal Distribution of Results." You probably know it as the 80/20 rule.

All the 80/20 rules says is that there’s 20% of the stuff you do that gets you 80% of the results. The trick is finding that 20%. Once you’ve found it you then have to pay attention to it.

Pay attention to it in your written and oral communications. Restate the key themes over and over. Don’t undervalue repetition, repetition makes for memory and memory makes for action.
Pay attention to it in your casual contacts. John Kotter, in his book to general managers, pointed out that effective general managers make great use of the random contacts they have with people. Those contacts could be in the hallway, at the water cooler, in the elevator, or walking down the street. The seize on those moments to talk about the things and ask the questions that are important to their leadership agenda. You should do that too.
Organize you day, your communications, your organizational structures, your reward systems and everything else to pay attention to what’s important and then do that with unremitting diligence.

Praise What You Want to Continue
Praise is your best training tool. In technical terms, praise is a positive consequence that follows a positive action. It’s a reward for something done right. Use praise to get people to continue to do things or to take positive action. That’s where it’s best used.
Remember, too, that praise is a tool that is most effective when it’s used inconsistently. Used consistently, praise tends to loose its force. So, don’t worry so much about praising everything that people do right, but do worry about praising.
That’s important, because most of us came up in a world where we didn’t praise enough. Seek out opportunities to praise but don’t get anal retentive about it.

Source: http://www.bockinfo.com/docs/5p.htm

Offline advertising strategies

The majority of marketing messages still reach people through print media like newspapers and magazines, and through radio and TV. As a result, traditional adverts, press releases and company stationery can be combined with your online strategies to spread your promotional communication as far as possible.In other words, if you want to tell the largest possible number of people about your website, you can't limit your advertising campaign to the Internet.
Instead, offline media like newspapers, magazines, flyers and even business cards play a very important role in spreading the word about your site.

Press releases
Like its web-based equivalent, offline promotion doesn't need to be expensive. It can even be free. When there's a newsworthy event to publicise, like the launch of your new online store, you can send a press release to industry-related newsletters, other relevant publications or radio stations.Unfortunately though, with the large number of companies looking for free publicity, there's a chance that your press release won't actually be featured - especially if it's filled with marketing blurb instead of newsworthy information.

Print adverts
Although print adverts aren't free, there are so many options available that you'll be able to find a format that suits your budget. Nevertheless, whether you decide to place an advert in a national newspaper or targeted trade publication or use a full colour brochure, the principles stay the same. Regardless of its size, your ad doesn't really need to contain more than your website address and some text that will encourage people to visit it. All your marketing information can then be featured on your website which acts as a permanent online display. It can contain far more information than could be included in a full-page advert or even a brochure. Your site will also be more cost effective because it can always be updated – quickly and easily. To entice visitors to drop by at your online display, the text on your print ad should let them know that they'll actually gain something from visiting your site. People are more likely to drop by if they can take advantage of discount coupons, special offers, online ordering facilities or additional information.

Company stationery
Placing your URL on your company stationery – including business cards, letterheads and envelopes – is a very easy and cost-effective way of telling people about your site. With the ever-increasing number of Internet users, your website address is becoming as important as your phone number. Many of your potential customers will prefer to get information about your products and services from your website instead of phoning you. And if your site contains enough relevant information and provides answers to common questions you'll spend less time answering queries from possible clients.Regardless of the strategy you choose though, offline promotions shouldn't be overlooked. They form an integral part in the marketing of your website, ensuring that it's exposed to the largest possible number of people.

Source: http://www.gnuworld.com/