bizthreads.net: Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

No matter what you sell, your business today faces a continuous struggle for survival amid rabid competition.  I know as well as anyone that it is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with the pressures and demands of the retail consumer market. According to a recent survey, the United States had about 24.7 million small businesses in the year 2005. While setting up a retail business, you may consider including a point of sale system or POS. A point of sale system comes with several benefits and is available in different versions.

Features of the Point of Sale System

A POS system simplifies your day-to-day tasks and lets you manage your business effectively.  The system typically resembles a desktop computer that tackles complex data and integrates lots of functions. The system maintains business transactions, stock management, processes payments and prints reports.

With a POS system your employees can view sales records any time of the day. It is also easier to create price tags for products and print labels for shelves in a short period of time. Different types of databases maintained by the system include consumer, item, department and seller databases. POS systems can be easily networked, meaning you can forward messages, maintain staff attendance records and store receipts. Using this system, you can adjust sales tax and merchandise prices effectively.

Without the POS system, who knows where retail business management would be.  Maybe we'd all still be using manual label machines!

Not every site I recommend on this blog will have an obvious, immediate business application. From time to time I find something that I think is cool and cutting edge… and if history tells us anything, these cool and cutting edge things become mainstream in the future if enough people get excited about them.

http://www.swarmthe.com/

This is a graphical way to browse the Internet. Yes, it's unusual. Yes, it's difficult to see an immediate value… but something like this is exactly what the web of the future is looking for: a company willing to go beyond what we're doing today to try something new.

The more I think about it, the more I see great advertising possibilities coming from this, as well as a combination of the current tagging phenomenon, too, to help make the Internet even more user friendly.

Often, I'm asked by business owners about management resources to help them. Many entrepreneurs didn't make it to the C-level executive position before becoming entrepreneurs so they lack some of the managerial experience gleaned along the way.

This is a really impressive site, full of incredibly powerful information. Although it may be designed for corporate managers, its information is no less pertinent to the entrepreneur who needs to quickly learn how to develop their management skills.
http://www.managementhelp.org/

I don't have Skype… but I hate to admit it. I'll eventually have to get it because colleagues always ask me to communicate with them on it. But there are two reasons why I don't have it.

The first is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype. I realize you can't trust everything you read on the Internet but this has me concerned enough to think twice before I use it. Some of the things I'm concerned about include (quoting from Wikipedia):

• Keeps chatting on the network, even when idle
• Blind trust in anything else speaking Skype
• Skype makes it hard to enforce a (corporate) security policy
• SkypeOut can be more expensive
• The continuous access pattern does not allow the disk to enter “sleep” or “idle” modes while Skype is active, even when offline

Other reasons were mentioned but these 5 are my biggest concerns.

The second reason is anecdotal: Every time someone has called me (on my landline phone) from their Skype, the quality has been low, the delay between talking has been painfully long (even on local calls), and some of the time I'm put on hands-free, which means that my voice is coming out of the computer speakers and I can hear myself talking. All of these things are very distracting to having a real conversation with someone.

I love new technology and I love to see it leveraged for better business use. But to me, Skype just isn't there yet. Right now they're on version 2.5. I'll wait a couple more versions before I look at it again.

Everything we do in business is sales. Even if you're just handing out your business card - what you say, the way you say it, the way you pass your card, and what your card says about you - are all parts of that process.

Does all of your sales material work for you? Here's an interesting way to find out.

http://www.glyphius.com/

Now, I'm not mathematician but this software is supposed to help you write better sales content. It analyzes the content of the sales message — whether its' a sales page, a website, or whatever — and assigns it an effectiveness percentage. Many of us are not writers and (to be honest) that's reflected in many websites. Business owners want to be perceived as coherent and well-spoken so they should use any tools in their power to create well-written and effective sales messages.

www.paypal.com

While my view is not shared by everyone, I have to admit that I’m a big fan of Paypal. Not only is it convenient to use, it’s great that they accept credit cards.

No, this blog is not “brought to you by Paypal”!!! I’m just making an observation that they are positioned really well to build their own business while they help you build yours:

For example, they enable the small business owner to accept payments from credit cards, avoiding the hassle and cost of merchant accounts.

I also like that Paypal offers free resources, such as a downloadable e-book on ways to build your business, or free marketing for all Paypal merchants so other Paypal users can find them.

What impressed me the most, though, was their free shopping cart you can use to sell your products.

Paypal isn’t just good for the small business owner; they’re smart. All of their free products are specifically designed to increase their business.

That’s something to think about for your business!

Links of Interest: Free credit report from all Experian, Equifax, & Transunion is offered with credit monitoring.

This site falls into one of those “why didn't I think of that?” categories.

http://www.waxmail.biz/

Microsoft Outlook users can create mp3's (those are audio files for you non-audiophiles) and attach them to your email.

Although I can hold my own with the typists of the world, I know plenty of entrepreneurs who can't be bothered to type or simply don't have the time because they use the “hunt and peck” method of typing. Moreover, nearly all of the business owners I know are great verbal communicators but fall short with the written word.

This is the solution: Say what you want to say. Save. Attach. Send.

GoGoFrog.com is a unique site: they let you create and host a website… but not one like you'd expect… it's a 3D webste. Check it out! It starts off feeling like you're in a game — one of those “first person shooter” video games that the kids play these days. You navigate around the site with your keyboard's arrow keys and it actually feels like you're in a room.

It's unusual, at first, but then you get used to it and it becomes fairly addictive. It's definitely something I see could change the face of interactive webmedia. But like many web revolutions, it probably has to run its typical course: used initially by a faithful few who like using it for personal communication and expression… then it expands into the larger realm of early business use and personal use for the mass populace. Finally, it will become highly commercialized. That seems to be the way the Internet has progressed (as a whole as well as in its individual parts, such as websites, blogs, social sites, podcasts, etc.) Is this the next revolution?

The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barabara Pease.

I've always had an interest in psychology and the inner workings of the mind. In college I was fascinated by a number of books on our internal and external motivations. To be honest, I think understanding those things has helped me in business.

Recently, I was discussing the successes and failures of corporate meetings with a few small business owners and one of them recommended this book to me. The last book on body language I had read was in college so I picked up this one — published in 2004 — for a refresher.

Allan Pease is the world's foremost expert on body language and that becomes very clear in the book. The Peases cover everything from the basics to advanced concepts, including cultural differences and gender differences. The book has a general focus, ranging across applications that include personal settings (like at a party or when you're interested in someone romantically) as well as corporate settings that include meetings, office politics, and interviews.

Admittedly, I would have liked a book that went even more in depth on the business side of the body language equation, but this very comprehensive book does a great job of talking about many aspects of body language that an be applied to business: this includes building rapport, as well as diffusing difficult situations, and making the customer feel important.

If you interact with people — socially or professionally — this is a good read. If you want to connect with your customers and make them feel great about doing business with you, this is a must-read.

Websites of Interest: Business Loan Your Financial Experts.

I apologize that I'm blogging about Google twice in one week. I wouldn't do it if they'd just stop trying to be so darn helpful.

I know that many people go to Google's main page, www.google.com  to browse. My home page when I first turn on my browser is actually Google's “other products” page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/  because it gives me instant access to whatever I'm looking up: regular searches, news, blogger.com, images, video, etc. It's quick to see when they add new things so the other day I noticed a link I hadn't noticed before: http://webaccelerator.google.com/ . This is a Google Labs product, which means they're still testing it, but will let you download a version to try it out. If you use a DSL connection (that is, high speed not dial-up) then this is for you. It places a toolbar on your browser that helps you to browse more quickly.

They give details on their site on how they can help you browse more quickly. Some of the ways include pre-fetching pages or saving pages and only loading updates. One neat (but essentially pointless) feature of the toolbar is a counter that adds up how many minutes or hours you save by using the accelerator. A clever idea but it's really just there for interest sake.

Use it to browse more quickly. As I mentioned in a previous blog, it's another way for Google to become King of the Online World.