Business Tips to Stay Competitive

Posted by Frank under Service Providers, Tips

1. Know who you’re up against.

In the ancient words of Chinese general Sun Tzu, you must “Know your enemy as you know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.” It’s essential to understand all we can about our competitors. What we mean by this is know what they’re saying and how they are saying it by obtaining copies of your competitors advertising and brochures.

2. Offer more value.

Some product and service providers traditionally compete based on discount pricing. However, for many other types of businesses price cutting is often detrimental. For example, if you offer a service and charge the same rates as your major competitors, cutting your prices may make you look suspiciously cheap. This will inspire customers to wonder what’s “wrong” with your company or the services it provides. A better idea is to offer something of additional value that your customers will find tempting.

3. Add a sales channel.

One channel selling is not effective, such as exclusively through a brick-and-mortar store or by catalog only. Introducing another channel, such as joining an online service marketplace for instance (ServiceLive.com), will give you a much greater reach for new business and customers.

4. Extend your offer.

If you’ve reached the maximum market share in a particular service, add a new one. By adding a new service it may stimulate more work with a new customer base. The more services you offer the greater chance for more service opportunities.

5. Tune into your customers.

In order to remain highly competitive, you must understand what your customers need. Unfortunately, your customer’s needs and preferences can change rapidly.  It would be prudent of you, to conduct survey’s on a regular basis to solicit customer feedback around the services your company provides via your business web site. To get the best results, anonymity will encourage your customers to provide honest feedback. As a small business owner you are in a enviable position of being closer to your customers than many of your big-business competitors.

Share some of your business tips that keep your business ahead of the competition.

Tags: Business News, customer service, Customers, Survey, Tips

Technology Growing Exceedingly

Posted by Frank under Business News, Tech

There are approximately 850 million computers worldwide, 71% more than in 2000, according to eTForecasts, a market research form. By 2010, eTForecasts predicts 1.4 billion computers will be up and running.

The IT profession will see more job opportunities as this industry continues to grow in massive numbers. It’s expected that by 2010, the worldwide share of wireless computers is expected to grow from 19% to 55%, which means that over 2 billion people could be online by the end of this decade.

What’s causing this growth?

Thanks to falling computer and hardware prices, employment at computer service firms is projected to grow 55% by 2012, making it the second best industry to start and grow a business. The technology sector will see an increase in output as well, growing at a pace of 9.0% per year. Solutions for networking hardware, software, and communications technologies will make major gains in growth output. There’s even more good news for the computer service business. As this industry grows, so does computer security, as “hackers” and viruses are anticipated to increase over the next decade.

From homes to small businesses to multinational corporations, information technology has quickly become the lifeblood of the 21st century. With more software developed each day, the technology sector expects to see output grow by 8.4% per year through 2012.

What Technology job do you perform?

Tags: Business News, computers, services, technology, wireless