A hot trend in the home based business world right now is the forming of strategic alliances. Strategic alliances between home based business owners are generally not between competing home based businesses, but between businesses that offer similar products and services. The strategic alliances can be either short term or long term, depending on the need and desire for it to continue. If your home based business could use a boost, and whose couldn’t, right, you might want to consider forming a strategic alliance–or two. The advantages are many, and some of them just might surprise you.For instance, forming a strategic alliance with a home based business that offers a similar but broader range of products and services than your own would allow you to offer your home based business customers more products and services. This way, you’d spend less time and money developing your own. Most home based business strategic alliances work out a commission plan that can make this extremely beneficial to both home based businesses involved.Another way a strategic alliance can benefit your home based business it that you instantly have a greater number of sales people selling your products and services. This means you have to hire fewer sales people for your own home based business. Hiring fewer employees saves you a great deal of money–and time.A home based business strategic alliance also allows you to compete at a higher level than you could by yourself. You can reach a larger target market through a home based business strategic alliance, while also increasing your existing customer base. This gives you the advantage of being able to compete with larger home based businesses and conventional companies without having to increase your overhead, since most strategic alliances work strictly on a commission basis.Your home based business will also benefit from a strategic alliance in offering you an increased number of knowledgeable, skilled people working on a project. You’ll gain experience and knowledge from being with other home based business employees that you can easily put to use for your own home based business. Also, not having to pay these employees saves you a great deal of money that you can put to use growing your home based business and expanding it much sooner than you would be able to otherwise.Also, your home based business advertising and marketing budget is increased substantially through a strategic alliance. That’s because you combine your marketing and advertising costs in a home based business strategic alliance. An added benefit to this is that you can reach twice, and sometimes more, the number of people on the same marketing and advertising budget. Since you are increasing a much larger target audience for your home based business products and services, you could hardly help but increase your sales as well.One of the most important advantages a strategic alliance can have for your home based business is that it will make it possible to expand your business a lot more quickly. And not just because of the increased customer base and sales force. The money you save, and make, can be used to grow your home based business into new markets. You may also want to develop some new products and services as well. This can only be good for the future of your home based business and for the business you’ve formed your strategic alliance with too.Improved customer service is another benefit of a home based business strategic alliance. You work hard to meet your home based business customers’ needs and to solve any problems that may come up. But when you’re on your own, this can be very hard to do quickly because you have so much to do. And customers don’t like to wait. The strategic alliance gives you access to a larger number of customer service people who already know your products and services and who can be of immediate help. And of course you know that customer service should always be the number one priority of a home based business owner–because happy customers are loyal customers!Charles Fuchshttp://www.charlesfuchs.comhttp://charlesfuchs.blogspot.comI grant permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way.
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.
More Thoughts on Why Most Home Based Businesses Fail
Many of us have tried different home based businesses; MLM’s, Direct Sales, Network Marketing, whatever you want to call it, with no success to show for hours of pitching but damage to our relationships with the friends & family we’ve pitched to. Frustrated, we vow to never get duped into another “scheme” again. Here’s the truth about most home based MLM’s and Network Marketing Opportunities: they have too many variables for failure.Variable for Failure #1 – The “Warm” Market: Most home based businesses tell you to start out by writing a list of 100 people you know. Then you are told to pitch your product or opportunity to these people. There is a HUGE problem with this. These people already know you! They know you’re broker than a pyromaniac on the 4th of July! They are never going to join you in a business until you can prove to them that you are successful. If you want to have a successful home based business, you need to find a system that will teach you how to attract people to your opportunity that are already looking for it!Variable for Failure #2 – The “Presentation” Meeting/Party: Attempting to draw people to your product, service, or opportunity through small meetings and parties is flat-out a waste of time. You need to use a vehicle that places your business right under the nose of people who are already looking for it. Millions of people are using the Internet everyday to search for the products and services they desire. Your business needs to be online, on the front page of Google!Variable for Failure #3 – Lack of Automation: Robert Kiyosaki said, “The only difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they use their time.” He also said, “The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.” Many home based business owners get burnt out because they lack systems that automate many redundant tasks. They don’t have an automated system for drawing new, targeted prospects to their business. They don’t have an automated system for presenting their product to their prospects. They don’t have an automated system for signing up new members or customers. And they don’t have an automated system for training new team members. As a result, they never gain the time freedom they truly desire. Automation is the key to freeing up time. The most successful home based business owners are those who have systems at work in their business. They have systems for pitching their products, closing their sales and placing orders. These systems allow successful business owners to make money while they are taking a shower, getting their teeth cleaned or seeing a movie! Now that’s the way to do business!Variable for Failure #4 – YOU: Let’s face it, you are not the best sales person. You’re not even sure you understand what owning your business is all about. Many home based business opportunities get you to sign up, promising that your sponsor will teach you everything you need to know to make big bucks. What if your sponsor drops off the face of the Earth a couple weeks after you join? Then what do you do? When considering your next home based business opportunity, find a way to see what their training is like. If the company has an option to fully refund your start-up kit within 30 or 60 days, you may want to consider joining and take a good look at their training materials. If you don’t like what you see, get your money back! A cutting-edge company will have several different forms of training: live calls, recorded calls, video tutorials, webinars and live events. The best home based business opportunities will equip you to never having to rely on a sponsor again.