Full Description

Entrepreneurs have many choices when choosing a business start-up guide. But once they’re up and running, there’s nothing to show them how to improve profits and manage their company better.
The Next Level: Grow Your Business is the guide small business owners have been waiting for.

Filled with expert advice, Grow Your Business takes the entrepreneur through fifteen areas in which they can improve their business, providing detailed steps on how to make it happen.

Small business owners looking to take it to the next level will learn how to:

- Fine-tune sales and marketing skills
- Manage time and get organized
- Control the financial reins
- Hire and manage employees
- Grow their customer base
- Operate more powerfully
- Overcome operational crisis

Filled with tips, questionnaires, checklists and invaluable advice, The Next Level is the next big thing for small business guides.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface to New Edition

Introduction

Chapter 1: Are You Taking Care of Business
- Where are you now?
- You are your business
- Business is all about service
- The top ten mistakes in growing a business
- Take the test: The “Where Am I Now? questionnaire

Chapter 2: Do Your Entrepreneurial Skills Need Fine-Tuning?
- You’re the boss
- The Eight Entrepreneurial Skills
- How to survive and succeed in a changing world
- Your golden box of opportunity
- The A to Z entrepreneur
- Take the task test
- Entrepreneur or operator?
- Getting by with a little help from your friends
- What do you really want to do?

Chapter 3: Are You Organized - Or Out of Control?
- Get organized
- Organize for the “Five Fs”
- Organize the office: Manage time
- Organize your files
- Utilize your filing system
- Organize your computer
- Organize your email
- Organize and master time
- Organize a monthly routine
- Organize the home office
- Plan to stay organized: a checklist

Chapter 4: Are You in Control of the Financial Reins?
- What does accounting tell you?
- The six-step accounting cycle
- What are source documents?
- The general ledger - your business “bible”
- Financial statements - your business health barometer
- Design an informative chart of accounts
- How to analyze an income statement
- Know your break-even point
- How to decipher a balance sheet
- The balance sheet shows
- Increase your gross profit margins
- Is your overhead out of control?
- Plan for your future

Chapter 5: How Else Can You Increase Your Profits?
- Increase profits by increasing efficiency
- Take a systems inventory
- Is your inventory under control?
- How to count inventory
- How to cost inventory
- Are your customers paying you?
- Set credit policies
- How to use credit applications
- Monitor accounts receivable
- What if your customers don’t pay?
- Improve your administrative efficiency

Chapter 6: Are You Ready for Growth?
- Did your plan go to plan?
- Use the six-step growth analysis plan
- Grow your business by exporting
- The benefits of incorporation
- The downside of incorporation
- “Going for growth” action plan

Chapter 7: How Do You Find - and Keep - Good Help?
- Are you ready to be a boss?
- “I can’t get good help these days!”
- How do you hire the right person?
- How to recruit the perfect candidate
- Wading through the resume pile
- The art of successful interviewing
- Reference checks
- Your responsibilities as an employer
- How much does an employee cost?
- Make your employees “LIFERS”
- Employee theft - an employer’s nightmare

Chapter 8: How Do You Grow and Maintain Your Customer Base?
- Are you missing your market?
- Understand the components of marketing
- Revisit your marketing plan
- Reevaluate your marketing plan
- Revise your marketing plan
- Your business image and branding techniques
- Target your market
- Your marketing budget
- Don’t let ‘em out the door
- Where can you improve?

Chapter 9: Are Your Written Presentations Professional?
- Communication is your key to success
- The art of writing professional letters
- How to set out a smart letter
- Sample letters for all occasions
- How to write a powerful media release
- How to prepare a professional media kit
- Pitch yourself to the media
- How can you improve your written skills?

Chapter 10: Do Your Verbal Skills Need Enhancing?
- Business is all about communicating
- Telephone talk
- Cold-call with confidence
- Make fruitful follow-up calls
- Speak your way to success
- The “Five Ts” of terrific talking
- Networking - breaking the ice
- Improve your communication skills

Chapter 11: How Do You Apply Communication Skills to marketing?
- Use low-cost or no-cost marketing magic
- Communicate in your community
- Network, network, network
- Communicate through speaking
- Communicate through the media
- Communicate, demonstrate, and educate
- Communicate through writing
- Build credibility using testimonials
- Apply your communication skills to marketing

Chapter 12: What Else Should You Know About Marketing?
- Develop a marketing mix
- Build a database - build consumer loyalty
- Out-service the competition
- Marketing and the Internet
- Making surfing easy
- “Hit-or-miss” media advertising
- Don’t waste marketing time and money
- Now plan your marketing approach

Chapter 13: How Do You Improve Your Sales Skills?
- Selling is an everyday experience
- Dispelling the sales myth
- Consumers are filling a need
- Use the six-step sales process
- The “Five Ws” of selling
- The “Six Ps” of selling
- Can you improve your sales skills?

Chapter 14: How Do You Operate in Crisis?
- Do you still have passion?
- “Let’s not talk about failure”
- Heed the warning signs
- Ten steps for operating in crisis
- Failure of a sole proprietorship
- Failure of an incorporated business
- What are directors’ liabilities?
- Think about your family
- What will your decision be?

Chapter 15: Are You Ready to Succeed?
- What does success mean?
- Women move into the boardroom
- Why women succeed
- The challenges smart women face
- But men hold their ground in the business world
- Why men succeed
- The challenges men face
- What is good business management?
- Plan to succeed

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