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A Checklist for Entrepreneurs Considering Their First Business Premises

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Business Premises|A Checklist for Entrepreneurs Considering Their First Business PremisesAs a startup business, choosing your very first business premises is a crucial choice. Getting the right location and building for you can help jumpstart everything you have been working towards and put your key business plan into action.

While setting up your first business premises can be an exciting (albeit nerve-wracking) time, it’s important to plan ahead and be sure that you’re realistic about what you require.

Deciding to Buy or Rent

This is possibly the biggest question in terms of wants and needs and will primarily depend on your budget and position. As an entrepreneur, it may be that you don’t have the required funds to fall back on for making huge deposits in order to buy a property, so renting may be your only option. Or, it may be that you do have enough to either buy or rent, so you will need to weigh up the pros and cons fairly. Think about your long-term goal and the flexibility each option could afford you.

Stick to Your Budget

Always be very strict about what you can afford. If you’re viewing properties and find what you believe to be the perfect option but it’s far out of your budget, don’t try and stretch your funds and don’t risk getting into debt before you’ve even begun. You can always work up to a bigger or better property in the future, but for now, make sure you have a strict budget and stick to it.

Consider All Security Extras

When considering your business property, you should also factor extra necessities into your budget and planning, particularly in the realm of security measures. You will need to think about installing CCTV systems and relevant alarms, and professional suppliers and fitters like Jackson Fire can help you do that, as well as provide quotes ahead of time.

Think About Commutability

It’s naturally important to think about the building itself — and the interior of it. However, have you also considered its location regarding accessibility and commutability? Not only do you need to ensure that all employees can easily get to your business building, but if you’re planning on having a lot of visitors, whether consumers or otherwise, you need to ensure that your location is easy to get to.

Think about being close to transport links and in the thick of it where necessary. Or, if you do need to be a little more remote for the right building, at least provide car parking facilities and clear directions for visitors.

Think About the Company Growth

You should always be thinking about the future when developing your startup, and this includes the potential for growth. If your future plans see you growing your business in a way which won’t affect your physical premises, then you may be able to stick with your first choice long term. However, if your growth plans see you needing bigger premises to grow along with you, then factor that into your location plans.

3 Important Tips For Starting A Mining Business

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Starting a Mining Business|3 Important Tips For Starting A Mining BusinessIf you are looking for new startup ideas, you will probably be looking at growth industries like tech. But sometimes, the best opportunities are in the industries that nobody is really talking about. The chances are, you haven’t considered starting a mining business, and it may not seem that exciting, but you should definitely think about it because there are some great opportunities in the industry.

You could start your own mining company and dig for resources or you could look into areas, like mining equipment or consultancy. Materials are always in demand, and there is a lot of money to be made in the mining industry if you get it right. However, there are a lot of hurdles that you have to get over. If you are interested in starting your own mining business, here are a few important tips to consider before you break ground.

Do Your Research

If you don’t have any prior experience in the mining industry, you need to make sure that you do your research. Now is the time to learn how to network and start connecting with notable figures in the industry. If you already know anybody that is working in the industry, get in touch with them and find out about their business and some of the challenges that they have faced. If you are planning to start a mining company in another country, it’s important that you research the logistics of starting a business abroad. Unless you do your research, you will be out of your depth when you start your new business.

Prioritize Health And Safety

The mining industry is dangerous and, as an employer, it’s up to you to make sure that all of your employees are safe. If you do not prioritize health and safety, you will find yourself dealing with mining accident injury lawyers and you will have to pay out some big settlements. This could be enough to sink your business before you get off the ground, so it’s vital that you have all of the correct health and safety measures in place. Make sure that you invest in training for all new employees, and put on refresher courses every year so you can be sure that everybody is always following health and safety rules. It’s also important to keep up with maintenance on any equipment so it is always in good working order and safe for employees to use.

Hire Experienced Site Managers

When you are starting a mining business, you need to pay close attention to your hiring process and hire some experienced site managers. Take a strategic approach to hiring and be realistic about the areas of the business where your knowledge is lacking. If you can hire experienced site managers that you can trust with the day to day running of the mining operation itself, you can handle the business side of things.

The mining industry has a lot of great opportunities for entrepreneurs, but if you are planning to start your own mining business, it’s important to keep these things in mind.

Identifying Your Weaknesses As A Business

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StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program (BPAP) Article |Business Weaknesses|Identifying Your Weaknesses As A BusinessSmall businesses do a lot of things better than the competition. As an SME, for example, you’ll have tighter links with the local community, allowing you to strengthen brand loyalty. Also, having a limited budget means that you understand how and where to cut costs to maximize your funds.

On the flip side, you will struggle to perform some tasks to the same standard as everyone else. While there is nothing wrong with having weaknesses, it’s essential to turn them into strengths if you want to stay afloat. After all, your rivals will leave you in their dust if you don’t adapt and thrive.

First, you must figure out what the company’s weaknesses are as it will allow you to focus on the most important ones. Here are four common pitfalls that SMEs suffer regularly. It might come as a surprise how basic the following steps are.

Ask Others

Most posts will start by saying that you need to conduct a SWOT analysis. Working out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a great place to start, but it doesn’t help you figure out what they are. With that in mind, it’s wise to ask other people for their opinions.

Employees will always be happy to help in this department because they are never satisfied! Bear that in mind when analyzing whether they are weak points or not as they could be little gripes that do not affect the business. Clients and customers are excellent research sources, too. All you need to do is ask them whether you can improve on the customer experience.

You should be open to constructive criticism. Some of the things you’ll hear will be out of the blue, and it’s easy to react poorly. Instead, write it down and move onto the next potential weakness. That way, you can review them in more detail later.

Perform Tests

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it’s possible to test various elements of your business to check for weak spots. A performance assessment of your server and internet connection is the best place to begin because the company relies on the Web. Professional network solutions are often necessary as they ensure the business is never offline and website upload speeds are high. Plus, quality services come with an assessment included.

Next, it’s time to test which areas of the site are getting traction from browsers and which ones are lagging behind. A/B testing is a fantastic tool for companies that can narrow the weaknesses down to a handful of features. If you don’t fall into this category, you should opt for multivariate testing instead. MV tests analyze several elements of your site simultaneously, helping you to figure out what is useful.

You should always perform assessments as they encourage growth and improvement.

Keep Tabs On Complaints

The first paragraph said you should ask customers for their opinions. Well, the good news is that you don’t have to – they’ll come to you if they think the standard is low. One in twenty-five shoppers will complain directly to you, whereas an additional 13% will tell up to five people about the experience. Thanks to the internet, you can find these complaints with ease.

Again, it’s about striking the perfect balance. Yes, some people like to complain, and they will do it regardless. However, there could be a couple of nuggets of information that will transform your processes and practices. The trick is to watch out for criticisms that pop-up more than once. If several complaints focus on the same point, the odds are high that they are right.

Responding to complaints and asking for feedback is a smart way to show you care and want to change.

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program (BPAP) Article |Business Weaknesses|Identifying Your Weaknesses As A BusinessCompare Yourself To The Competition

Comparing yourself to anyone is risky because there could be differing variables. As a result, the conclusions you draw will be flawed. Although that is true, it’s never bad to evaluate your business against the rest of the market. By doing this, you’ll figure out which areas you excel at, and which ones need some work.

A good tip is to keep it general. Check their website and see whether it’s more navigable than yours, or gauge whether they go the extra mile for customers for the sake of their experience. Doing this should provide perspective and encourage you to up your game to compete with your rivals.

Do you understand your business’ weaknesses? Hopefully, this post will help you address the imbalance.

5 Golden Rules for Managing Business Logistics

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |Managing Business Logistics|5 Golden Rules for Managing Business LogisticsManaging your business gets increasingly more difficult as you scale it, Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to ensure that your company stays organized as long as you adopt some golden rules to help streamline your workflow and logistics processes. So in this post, we’re going to talk about five important things to follow.

1. Proper planning is mandatory for an efficient logistics system

Before you make any sweeping changes to your business, it’s vital that you plan out all of your actions to ensure that you’re not missing anything and that you’ve included everything that is a part of your logistics chain. Planning is important because it allows you to get a better overall view of your business’s current logistics system, giving you a better look at the areas that need to be optimized and where you can maximize your profits.

However, what’s arguably more important than proper planning is the ability to prepare for any potential situations where your plans don’t work. Unforeseen circumstances aren’t uncommon regardless of the type of business you operate. Whether it’s a problem with your products, adverse weather conditions, transportation issues or even internal organization problems, you need to have contingency plans in place for when things go badly.

2. Focus on building solid relationships with third-party services

While you might manage most of your general logistics chain, there’s undoubtedly going to be areas that you need to rely on other companies–at least for now. Everything from outsourced drivers to a pallet delivery company can be considered an essential service for smoothing out the bumps in your logistics chain. In some cases, you might even need to rely on a warehousing service to help you store excess goods as you grow your company’s storage space.

However, if you find that you’re constantly forced to use external employees to help, you might find it more convenient to hire new staff instead as long as the cost of recruitment and training can offset the current cost of hiring temporary workers. Eventually, you’ll want to manage virtually every aspect of your logistics chain so that you have more control over it, but until then, it’s perfectly fine to rely on outside services.

3. Efficient warehouse management is the key to a well-oiled logistics system

Proper warehouse management, such as indexing of items, can help a considerable amount when it comes to optimizing your logistics system. This is especially important for companies that typically deal with items that are perishable, such as food items that need to be refrigerated. The capacity of your warehouse should also accommodate your needs. This can be difficult to measure unless you’re actively monitoring every aspect of your logistics chain, hence why analytics and accurate reports can be important.

Warehouse management also means having enough workers and equipment to store and retrieve orders as needed. This includes having staff that are knowledgeable of all the safety considerations of working in a warehouse, and also having access to forklifts and similar pieces of equipment to make their life easier.

4. Use automated processes to become more efficient

Whether it’s organizing goods or printing labels, automation can make your logistics chain a lot simpler to manage. With the right type of software and engineers to monitor and tweak it, automated processes could play a major role in the way you operate your logistics.

Automated tools are usually always a big help, but it’s worth remembering that they can be difficult to set up and are usually prone to problems. Make sure you do your research and trial any piece of automation technology you use before putting it into service.

5. Analytics will help you get an objective look at your logistics chain

We mentioned this briefly already, but having analytical tools to track different metrics is critical to the operation of your business. Warehouses benefit greatly from using analytics because it allows you to make informed decisions backed by real statistics and facts that you personally generate. It allows for smarter inventory management, it helps you expand when needed and it also works well with complex supplier networks.

In addition, analytics can also help you react to certain situations. For instance, if there’s a supply chain issue like a truck getting stuck in transit, then you’ll immediately notice there’s an issue. Using your analytical tools, you can make decisions on how to proceed. This can be done by examining current stock, how much the truck is carrying and also how long your current stock will last. You can even track financial objectives to see if you’re meeting your targets.

3 Law Firm Marketing Strategies to Implement in Your Firm

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |law firm marketing strategies |3 Law Firm Marketing Strategies to Implement in Your FirmThere are over 442,000 law firms in the United States.

In a country of over 330 million people, you’d quickly assume law firms don’t have any problem finding new clients. You’d be wrong.

The legal industry is a competitive space, with big law firms dominating the market. The small firms, which are the majority, have to work hard to attract clients and generate the revenue they need to keep the lights on.

If you own a small firm, it’s time to stop working hard and start working smart. A savvy lawyer invests in effective law firm marketing strategies.

In this guide, we’re sharing a couple of ways you can market your firm and create a steady stream of clients.

1. Word of Mouth Is King

At a time when almost everyone is looking for businesses online, you’d be forgiven for shifting your entire focus to digital marketing. Don’t make this mistake, though. The business world is unforgiving.

Ensure word of mouth marketing is your #1 strategy.

You see, as consumers, we trust what our closest friends tell us. If your pal says product A is the real deal, you’re going to try it out without thinking twice. If another pal says law firm B offers the best legal services, why would you waste your time looking for another firm?

That’s organic word of mouth marketing at it’s best.

And the best thing about WOM is you don’t have to directly invest any money in it. Just offer top-notch legal services to every client you get and rest assured they’ll tell their friends about it.

2. Work on Your Law Firm Website

Even though word of mouth is a vital first step, digital marketing is still valuable.

Today, many people looking for legal services begin their search online. Even after a friend has given you a recommendation, you’re going to look up the firm online, as opposed to physically visiting their offices.

What impression are people getting when they visit your law firm website for the first time?

If the site is taking longer than 3 seconds to load, you’re losing a good chunk of potential clients. If it doesn’t load properly on mobile devices, you’re leaving money on the table. If the navigation isn’t intuitive, you’re losing customers.

Giving your website a refresh and optimizing it for user experience can increase the number of leads your firm gets and converts.

3. Invest in a Legal Lead Service

As a lawyer, there’s only so much you can achieve when you’re implementing marketing on your own. You probably don’t have proper marketing skills.

Outsourcing your marketing to a digital marketing agency is one way to solve this problem. Another way is to work with a legal lead service, such as this exclusive attorney service.

Unlike a digital marketing agency, a legal lead service focuses on lead generation. They have a pipeline of clients who’re ready to hire a lawyer. As such, when you buy leads from such a service, you’re assured of getting paying clients.

Implement These Law Firm Marketing Strategies

A law firm, just like any other business, needs customers or clients to stay afloat. And to get clients, you need to invest in marketing. With these law firm marketing strategies, you can now position your firm for success.
Keep reading our blog for high impact small business advice.