Professional Cleaning Services for Small Business Owners
Small businesses face many unique challenges but hiring a professional cleaning service means image won’t be one of them. Budgets are tight and a smaller company often must run on a leaner financial platform than larger competitors. When identifying where to cut corners, the small business owner might be tempted to skimp on professional cleaning services, however, many benefits to this service make the investment worthwhile.
Most successful small businesses find ways to get a leg up on the competition, and presenting a professional image is one critical way to achieve this goal. Many potential clients prefer working with a small business but how many will be willing to take a chance on a small company with a disheveled office or facility. A small business owner who thinks and acts like the big business leader he or she aspires to emulate has a greater chance of achieving those goals.
Professional janitorial services will help give the very best image for your company when customers visit. No one wants to be judged on appearance but the reality is that appearance – yours or that of your business – makes that critical first impression.. That first impression will become a lasting perception. Think about how you rate a potential employee or vendor; your future clients are likely to evaluate you and your business in the very same way. If that first impression is of a messy, dirty office, they may believe that you are already too busy to provide excellent service or – worse – that you simply don’t care.
The other critical mistake a small business owner may make is to attempt to self-clean the office or perhaps even ask employees to do it. Employees in a small business are likely few in number and probably already covering a variety of job duties. Don’t ask them to play janitor too! You’ve chosen your employees carefully and they represent one of your most valuable assets. Asking them to provide office-cleaning services in addition to everything else may leave them feeling devalued and send them in search of other employment opportunities.
Many professional cleaning services offer packages designed specifically for the small business and medical or dental clinics. Daily cleaning service may be overkill for a very small company today, both in terms of need and cost, but you may need that level of service in the future (or now if you run a medical office). Select an office janitorial service that will adapt to your company’s changing needs, allowing you to choose a less aggressive office cleaning schedule now, and ramping up the level of service as you grow the business.
Running a business of any size is challenging; running a small business requires critical thinking and tough decisions. One decision that’s both easy and wise is to make sure your company presents the very best image possible by hiring a commercial cleaning company to keep you in tip-top shape. As an added bonus, your employees are likely to be sick less and more productive.
7 Steps to an Online Home Based Business
Are you thinking about starting an online home based business from scratch but don’t really know how to get going? Well, then this article is for you! I have outlined seven steps to get your online home based business up and running in a matter of days, or even hours.Here you go…1) Defining Your Reasoning – The first thing you need to do is answer this question for yourself… why do you want to start an online home based business? Write down all the reasons for why you want to start an online business. Here are a few of the more common reasons: financial freedom, luxury vacations, more time with family, new car, new house, money for college, etc…Once you have written down as many things as you can think of for why you want to start your own online home based business then pick the best one that applies most to you. This is what you will use as your “reason” from now on. Now write this one reason on a separate piece of paper and post it everywhere you can, so you will see it many times per day. This will keep you driven and focused on your dreams.2) Domain Name – Since you are starting an online home based business it is obviously very important that you create an online presence for yourself and your business. So a website is an absolute must have. The first thing you need to do before you start building your website is to register a domain name. One of the best places for doing this is godaddy.comSo what should your domain name be? Well, I can’t entirely answer that for you but I can tell you that you want to make sure that your domain name reflects what your business is. Too many people use their names, some “cute” name, or some other irrelevant domain… do not do that unless it actually is reflective of your home based business!3) Choosing a Web Host – If you don’t have a way to host your domain/website, you won’t be able to proceed with your online home based business. Yes, this is a very important step!Here are a few things to look for when choosing a web host:SpeedIt is important to your business success to make sure visitors can see your site quickly. Part of this has to do with how fast your web-hosts servers are. Although there are a few other factors, server speeds are pretty darn important.Customer SupportWeb hosts should offer a variety of customer support options. These are typically toll free phone numbers, email support, frequently asked questions pages, live support, and help forums. Obviously the more support your host offers, the better it is for you if you ever need it.ReliabilityChecking out the reliability of a service is also very important to your website and ultimately your online business success. Hosts usually have several backup systems in case something goes wrong with the main servers. They also can promise less “down time” by backup power systems. I wouldn’t use a web host unless it has at least a 97% uptime guarantee.4) Building Your Site – This will most likely be an ongoing task for as long as you have your home based business. However, just to get something up and going at first here are some pointers…* Keep your text relevant to what you are offering.
* Do not stuff keywords in to your text.
* Do not put banners on your home page.
* Always have a catchy headline.
* Keep the site clean looking and easy to read.
* Dark text on light background is always best.
* Let your visitors know what you can do for them.
* Make navigation very simple for visitors.There are many more rules of website design but those are some of the basic ones that you need to worry about for now. This step is something you will always be keeping up on. Make sure you continue to learn, tweak, test, and build your site.5) Uploading files to your site – So you have built a few pages for your new site, now what do you do? Well, you have to upload them to your web host. Typically this will be done using “FTP”. Now you are probably thinking, “What the heck is that?” Well, don’t worry about all the technical stuff. In simple terms it is a way to get the files, or pages, that you just built onto your website and “live” to the world.You can just ask your web host for your FTP information or do some searching around the frequently asked questions in your control panel and you should be able to find this out fairly easily. Once you do it is simply a matter of putting in the information into an FTP client and watching it upload to your web site.6) Putting your business on autopilot – This is big step in creating a successful online home based business because it keeps you from being completely consumed by it and actually allows you to enjoy your new found freedom.One of the recipes to creating a successful online home based business is to automate as many things as possible. This will save yourself time to do things you do best and actually enjoy your business.One of the best ways to do this is with an autoresponder. An autoresponder pretty much defines itself. It will automatically send out your emails at intervals that you set.A great way to utilize autoresponders is to write up an e-course and/or a weekly newsletter, and then copy/paste those messages into your autoresponder, set the days you want your prospects to receive them, and voila… it’s on autopilot. You will want to have a form on your website for your visitors to subscribe to it. They will put in their name and email address and you will have a prospect to email to over and over again.I have used many different autoresponders since I started my home based business and I can tell you without a doubt that my favorite is Aweber. I use them to this day and highly recommend them. You can find them at aweber.com7) Automating the sales process – The last thing you need to do to get your online home based business up and going is to setup your ordering process, so visitors to your website can buy whatever product you are selling.The very first, and most common way people sell digital products, like ebooks and software, from their sites, is to use a 3rd party merchant called clickbank. You can find them at ClickBank.comSetting up an account with them is pretty darn easy to do and is quite a bit cheaper than getting a merchant account for your self. Just follow their instructions. They are well known and respected so you should feel safe with them.Alrighty, that’s all there is to it. Seven steps to getting your new online home based business set up and going strong. I will admit that for the complete beginner it may not be as easy as it sounds but it is not rocket science either. You could honestly have all this done in just a day or two. Do some reading, learning, a little bit of guessing, and jump right in. Your online home based business will take be up and running before you know it.If you have any questions I will be happy to help. You can find a link to contact me on my website (see resource box below).
Information Product Creation: Never Compete on Price Because There Is Only One You
Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.
Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.
You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.
Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.
Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.
Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.
You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.