Some entrepreneurs say that success is relative. Some small businesses are after market share while others focus more on profitability. Regardless of what your business objectives are, here are 3 helpful tips for succeeding in your endeavors.

Be Water My Friend

You should try to be flexible with your strategies and general direction of your business. If what you’re currently doing doesn’t seem to work, try another way. Learn how to react to new opportunities and adapt to future trends. In the words of the late martial artist, Bruce Lee:

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Love Thy Employees

Don’t be like one of those rotten leaders who treat employees as slaves. There are different ways to instill a sense of ownership to all your employees such as having an employee recognition program or sharing a stake in your company through Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). However, make sure you pay attention to your hiring policies to get those passionate and highly qualified employees.

Choose Your Customers Wisely

Don’t be a one-size-fits-all business to satisfy all people. Instead, take time to find your niche and learn more about your target customers. It’s all about your customers, so offer something they want and not what you want.

Despite the technological advances in terms of business networking, the use of business cards remains relevant until now. Aside from being practical, compact, and easy to carry, it is also loaded with important info about you and your company. You can check out samples of our business cards as a reference. Here are some tips to help you maximize the use of your business cards:

1. Always bring your business card. Some entrepreneurs leave their business cards at their office or don’t carry one if they don’t have any meetings or conferences. Try to keep at least 10 cards within your reach because you never know when you’ll meet new prospects, alternate suppliers, or other entrepreneurs. Also, don’t wait for your card to run out before ordering another batch.
2. Attach your business card in every communication. Even if you are not meeting other people, you can still share your business card by attaching it with your thank-you cards, correspondences, holiday greetings, project quotations, and newsletters. You can also leave it at the restaurants, hotels, and other business establishments.
3. Write something. A number of business cards end up in trash cans for many reasons. You can minimize this by writing something on your card such as your alternate e-mail address or mobile number. This will add some personal touch in your business card.

Many entrepreneurs dream that someday their business will be the number 1 player in its industry. But once you reach that much-coveted position in the market, a bigger challenge now is how to stay on top as long as possible.

One key strategy to maintain your strong position is to make sure you have relevant products all the time. You should constantly check every product line you’re selling and observe if there’s any downward trend. The bottom line is you introduce new products and manage the graceful exit of your obsolete products. Here are some tactics to ensure your relevance:

Monitor technology changes

New inventions or improvements might render your product truly useless. Classic examples include the obsolescence of the typewriter because of PCs, pagers due to SMS or text messaging, and someday possibly snail mail because of email. That’s why it is very important that you understand how technology will affect the future of your business.

Suggested activities include reading journals related to your industry and regular online research. It would help greatly if you can keep an eye on what changes might be in the pipeline of your customers lives.

Pay Attention to Changing Market Trends

As they say, nothing is constant but change. The buying behavior and preferences of our customers also change for a lot of reasons and you should be one step ahead to make your products really relevant. If you are in the fashion industry, for instance, you should know the 2007 fall trends many months ahead of time so that you can offer products customers will be dying to buy come time. The website TrendHunter.com is very useful for this task.

If you think project management is intended for engineers and architects only, think again. Although some entrepreneurs don’t have formal training in this area, many of us business owners are constantly juggling several projects, both in our personal lives and business ventures.

A project is defined as an undertaking that encompasses a set of tasks or activities having a definable starting point and well defined objectives. Whether you’re planning a vacation trip or launching a new product, you will need to manage a project. Keith Robinson provides a clear and comprehensive guide on project management.

The first step is planning a project. Here are some of the important questions you need to factor in your planning:

1. What’s the impact to the business? Assess if there is a value for doing this project. It can be reduction in cost, improvement of productivity, or increase in sales.
2. Who are the stakeholders or the group that will be affected by this project? It can be your business partners (if any), suppliers, customers, or employees.
3. What resources are needed? You should know how much money is needed to run this project and see if the benefits outweigh the expenses.
4. Who will be the team members? Usually the stakeholders compose the team because they have the interest, experience, and expertise in the area.
5. What is the timetable? A project has a termination period so you need to set deadlines and milestones.
6. What is your measure of success? Create a report to monitor your progress and document the entire project. This will help you track the problems encountered and see if there is any room for improvement. This might come in handy in your next projects to come.

Setting up an online business is affordable and easy. You don’t need to learn the technical stuff (although it helps) like HTML advanced coding or programming. In some cases, you don’t even need your own product to sell because there are many affiliate programs like Clickbank and Commission Junction. (Sign up if you qualify, then use a chunk of code with your tracking ID, and you can sell their merchants’ products on your site.)

The main problem now is how to design your website to attract your online customers. The term design sometimes deludes many entrepreneurs to focus on creativity alone. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Here are some of the common design blunders that may affect your online business:

No General Outline

Some entrepreneurs set up websites without knowing its importance or connection to their small business. You should have a clear purpose for putting up the website. Some use it as a support to motivate customers to visit their brick-and-mortar business while others rely on the website itself as the main source of income. This will greatly help you create an appropriate design and publish suitable content.

Too Techie

With thousands of cool fonts, eye-catching colors, and flashy web templates, there is no limit to your creativity. However, it is not just about you and your likes but your dear customers. These things, while very creative, will often distract your online customers from reading your product offerings. Keep things simple yet effective.

Simple Things Matter

In our effort to come up with an attractive site, we might forget the basic elements such as use of the back button, posting contact information, not checking broken links, and failure to update our website regularly. Learn what customers are searching for in a website. Also, find out from BloggingStocks what you can learn from iPod about killer designs and gather insights from our Logo Design Blog.

If you talk with your customers and ask them what sets your company apart from your fierce competitors, do you think they can tell the difference? If not, you should try to differentiate your business. Mavenblog expounds on how to make your company unique in terms of price, focus, product/service, and customer service. As a supplement, included below are the 4 easy steps you can implement in your business:

Step 1. Know Your Enemies

Differentiation is worthless if you don’t have a standard to compare with. You should gather all info about your direct and indirect competitors, like marketing materials, web content, prices, press releases, and even financial statements if available. This will help you find the chink in their armors and dodge their strong points at the same time.

Step 2. Look in the Mirror

Find out if you have something to offer that your competitors can’t. If you have, make a list of these things and proceed to step 3. If not, you will need to make some adjustments to be unique. Use the weaknesses of your competitors as your guide towards differentiation.

Step 3. Hype the Difference

Create compelling marketing campaigns anchored on your uniqueness and its benefits to all your customers. Consistency is vital to your success here, so make sure your all your initiatives are always well connected.

Step 4. Be True to Your Word

Don’t just say it, prove it! A clever marketing strategy can lure customers to trust your company and try your products. If there is a wide gap between your promise and performance, all your efforts will be wasted. Do your utmost to delight every customer.

Some starting entrepreneurs still use their personal credit cards to pay for business-related expenses. While this may be convenient during the early stages, it might do you more harm than good once your business expands. Perhaps it’s time for you to switch to a business credit card. Here are some of its advantages to your small business:

1. Easy monitoring. No need to go over every receipt just to separate your personal and business expenses at the end of each year. Many business credit cards provide itemized reports of your expenses for easy bookkeeping.
2. Establish your Business Credit. Regardless of what happens to your business, your personal credit score will not be affected if you use a business credit card. If you have a good business credit rating, it will also help you secure loans easily in case you want to expand your business.
3. More Perks. Many business credit card companies wooing small business owners offer numerous business-related rewards and discounts for office supplies, phone services, and business travel.

In case you’re having a tough time looking for the right business credit card for your company, Small Business Trends will guide you on how to choose a card while BusinessCreditCards.com presents a comprehensive comparison of different cards.

Sometimes, when we plan for new business strategies, we copy what the big companies are currently doing. On the other hand, big corporations worship Mr. Jack Welch, the legendary Chairman and CEO of GE, noted for having keen business acumen and leadership skills. Managers Realm highlights a lesson from Mr. Welch about being either number 1 or number 2 all the time.

But do you know that Mr. Welch is really a pro-entrepreneur guy and that we should also listen to his teachings? Need proof? I happen to unearth a more interesting lesson from Mr. Welch himself that will surely blow your mind. Are you ready? Really? Here we go. Jack Welch recommends we should:

Behave Like a Small Company. Small companies have huge competitive advantages. They “are uncluttered, simple, informal. They thrive on passion and ridicule bureaucracy. Small companies grow on good ideas - regardless of their source. They need everyone, involve everyone, and reward or remove people based on their contribution to winning. Small companies dream big dreams and set the bar high - increments and fractions don’t interest them.”

It’s very ironic that many entrepreneurs keep following the footsteps of the big players when in fact they envy us small business owners, and they should be following us. In this competitive landscape where niche markets and personal attention are becoming more and more important, the upper hand is on our side. We should learn how to maximize these opportunities before it’s too late.

When it comes to selling, some entrepreneurs have an ongoing debate about which is generally better: on the phone or in the field? Although selling’s importance varies from industry to industry, some business experts recommend that you don’t choose which method is better. Rather, you should use both to have better sales performance.

Field Team

The field team are your good old traditional salespeople who visit your clients. The advantage of this team is its power to build more personal relationship. Also, a face-to-face communication motivates customers to share more details about their preferences and complaints.

Inside Team

Your inside sales team is composed of contact center agents who spend countless hours over the phone to close a deal and generate new leads for prospecting. Generally, this team is relatively cheaper because you can sometimes outsource the work to contact centers in various countries. In some cases, your inside sales team can also be your customer service team.

Integration

You should pay attention on how to seamlessly integrate both teams so they work optimally. Some helpful activities include weekly coordination meetings, setting of shared goals, sharing of information and best practices. When it comes to motivating your sales team, check out Biz Plan Hack’s advice.

Some entrepreneurs sometimes feel like they can never take another step to meet the demands of the business, suddenly lose their perspectives, self-discipline, and even their funny side. These are some signs of a major burn out. Among the 20 tips shared by BootStrapMe to avoid burnout, I found tip #17 very helpful:

Know your own “Relax” buttons. I not only make coffee, I grind my own beans and use a French press in the kitchen to create a relaxing brew. The relaxation is not only in the coffee itself but in the process of making it.

Here are some additional ways to defeat burn out and come back stronger than ever:

1. Expand your skills and learn something unrelated to your small business. It doesn’t have to be useful as long as it will take your mind off your business temporarily.
2. Spend some time with your family. Sometimes, a child’s burning passion and intense curiosity are all you need to get to get back on track.
3. Take time out to meet with your close friends
4. Learn to let go of the things you cannot change or control
5. Breathe deeply for a few minutes.
6. Meditate.
7. Cry
8. Clean your office
9. Take time to be alone so you can reflect about your life and your business.

If you are both an entrepreneur and blogger, please take time to read Performancing’s 23 Simple Health Tips For Bloggers.