What Up With Goal Setting?

Want to talk about goal setting? On second thought lets not, lets do something more exciting like watching the clouds go by, listening to paint dry. Anything but talk about goal setting!

Really the only losers that want to set goals and create business plans are those geeky types like at Apple, IBM, or Microsoft right? We don’t want to be like them do we? They waste hours and days with production schedules and writing out time lines and lots of other boring stuff like that. What do these people know?

But get this, these nerds also while away time working on something called Management By Objective. They even gave it a cute little acronym MBO so they can say it to each other quicker. But you know what, its such a simple little strategy and anyone can do it, really I’ll show you how.

Here take this blank sheet of paper. Now draw two lines down the page and split it into three sections by drawing a line across the page near the top. In the furthest left section at the top write “Objective”. In the middle section write “Method”. Finally in the furthest right section write “Date”.

Yawn… are you as bored as I am?

Well while we’re into this lets have a little fun. Let’s fill up the whole sheet with some things we could be doing instead of this. I mean really we have other things to do that are far more exciting than this right?

Done yet? Okay let me see yours and I’ll show you mine. Here take a look at what I wrote down:

Objective – Learn more about what my business’s products and services are and how I can improve them.
Method – Research online and take some notes on what I read.
Date – Spend one hour a day for at least the next week.

Objective – Recruit at least 3 new sales people or affiliates
Method – Run ads both online and offline.
Date – Accomplish this in the next two weeks.

Objective – Setup a lead capture page on my website for gathering leads.
Method – If I have time I’ll do it myself or outsource it to a HTML web programmer.
Date – Get this done by the end of the week.

Objective – Take the wife and kids out to dinner Friday.
Method – Call wife at home and give her the good news of my generosity.
Date – Do this today, while I’m thinking about it.

Hmm… yours is not full yet. Keep working on it. Remember this is the FUN part of this MBO thinga-ma-bob. Don’t stress about it though its nothing like actually setting goals or anything even close. Nobody likes setting goals except those slackers at Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.

Now that I think about, it its things like this that keeps the government always on their case. They set these goals thinly disguised as their MBO and become too successful in the process. These companies that do this really should be split up. They are just too successful and set way too many goals. Don’t they have a real life like we do?

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This is but a small portion of what you can learn about having an online business in my new FREE guide: Empowering Your Online Business. Click here to get your copy today and take your online business to the next level. Also included is a copy of our award winning Excellence Magazine. Be sure and visit http://www.daelectronics.com to get both of these.

Starting A New Online Business - The Right Way

Thousands of people everyday dream of working from home and having their own online business. Sadly though, most online businesses fail within the first year. The reasons for this are two fold. In the following paragraphs of this article we will discus these two areas that cause most online businesses to fail. More over we will discuss what you as a new online business owner can do to empower your online business and avoid them being your downfall.

The first area of that we need to look at is actually made up of three sections. These deal directly with the product or service that the online business has to offer. In order to be successful online a business needs these three things right off the bat. In the beginning stages of a new business there is a little leeway in this area but not much. A new online business must focus and fine tune these areas quickly.

Section One:
1) A product or service that people actually NEED.
Many new business owners fail to research the need for a product or service. It may also be the case that the market may be over crowded or saturated with similar products or services. Such situations cause an atmosphere of extreme competition for the marketplace position.
Lots of times the new business owner may actually have a product or service they are using and believe it to be a marketable product. In reality though the product or service may only be useful to a small subset or niche of people. While there is nothing wrong with having a product or service that only a small sector of other people may need it does change they way the product should advertised online.

2) A product that pays GENEROUS commissions.
Too often a new online business will promote a product that has a very slim profit margin as their main product. A lot of businesses will use a low cost product as a “loss leader” to secure a customer. A secondary product, that in most cases is really the main product offering, is available as a “back-end” product.

3) A product that pays you RESIDUAL monthly income.
Just as bad as a low profit main product is promoting a product or service that only offers the one time sale to the customer. A business should always be looking towards a consistent revenue stream from the new customer. This could be offered through maintenance contracts or updates or even upgrades to an improved version of the product.

Next we’ll move on to the next area that a new online business owner should pay particular attention to. For it it is in this area that a business sustains its livelihood in the online marketplace.

Section Two:
This is probably the biggest mistake that new business owners make and that’s lack of contact with the new and prospective customer. It is a given fact that in advertising a potential customer needs to be exposed to the business’s offerings five to seven times on the average.

Many new businesses ignore this and only offer a simple email contact link on their websites that they must manually use to answer the customers questions and concerns about their products. While this is actually not a bad thing it should not be the whole method of contact the business offers.

To effectively service a customer and to persuade a new prospect into becoming a customer an online business must have an autoresponder service. Autoresponders can be used for a variety of things in an online business. Foremost is the ability to facilitate offering additional information and serving advertising about the business’s product to prospective customers.

But also a just as needed service an autoresponder can serve is instruction and training for the use of a product or service. Using an autoresponder in this manner even saves the business money in employee and tech support costs.

This was a quick summary of the two things that most new businesses online over look and can lead to their failure. Neither of them are hard to provide, but both are absolutely essential to a business being successful online.

This is but a small portion of what you can learn about having an online business in my new FREE guide: Empowering Your Online Business. Get your copy today and take your online business to the next level. Also included is a copy of our award winning Excellence Magazine. Be sure and visit http://www.daelectronics.com to get both of these.