Wow, September already. The year is in its final throes as we race towards the magical 25th of December.

Small businesses stand to benefit immensely by having a website of their own. The website becomes their biggest promoter, and an online presence can be the best marketing tool for their products and services.

With a globalised and increasingly competitive business world, sales teams have progressively understood the value of major accounts.

Working for myself one of the biggest challenges I seem to face is not understanding when I have done a good job. Why do I find this a challenge?

PR and marketing are both used to improve profits, but they choose different roads to reach their destination. While marketing is comfortably understood, public relations is often overlooked among small business marketing ideas because of confusion about what it is and how it contributes to business success.

Now we focus on some other financial indicators that can tell you something insightful about how is your company doing.

In the summer of 2008, I did not have a care in the world. I was working remotely from a small island in the Mediterranean, for my families telecommunication business, located in the suburbs of NYC.

Last week I was talking to the manager of a communications company about the trials and tribulations of sales staff and their lack of ability to look after their customers. I asked the manager whether he had sales reps or account managers to which he replied “they are the same thing …. aren’t they?”

Within a few weeks of the birth of our first child, Diane and I were already imagining and anticipating how it would be when he was all grown up, had graduated from college and was out on his own.

I asked some of our contributors to provide us with their best tip on how a business can survive especially while we are in this recession.

The debate of how much effort and resource a business should invest within social media for engagement continues but we at BusinessBlogs.co.nz have found that social networks are increasingly making up 30-40% of our inbound traffic.

Every company has an accountant. They are often seen as gray men, with round glasses and little social skills. Many think that their existence is justified by bookkeeping, which, in turn, is a law enforced requirement, right?

Small businesses (19 or fewer employees) comprise 99% of New Zealand businesses and Dr. Kate Lewis (Research Associate of the NZ Centre for SME Research) predicts that the proportion of women business entrepreneurs is growing.

Centuries of academic emphasis on “teaching” (which fills our heads) instead of on learning (which fills our lives) has left us more proud of our ability to reason than of our ability to know.

We love to know exactly what the near-term process is we’re supposed to be doing, we’re almost obsessed with it, to the point that at least in business, we’re too often okay …

The Four Cornerstones of Success and Significance are A Big Motivator and Three Bosses.

To build a business that provides you the lifestyle you want, you need a vision that motivates you. And guess what? Making money is not an empowering vision. I know plenty of people who’ve tried it including me.

The most important marketing tactic ever devised is also the simplest. And it wasn’t invented by marketing people, but by business owners and sales people looking to grow their business the best, fastest, least expensive way possible.

Whether you’re running a business selling products to customers or delivering services to clients there will be a number of aspects of the way you operate that are key to your ability to function.

Small businesses with the fastest growing revenue know exactly where they are going. According to Inc Magazines 28th 500 fastest growing small businesses list, approximately 88% of them have a statement outlining where they are going. The other 12% are living dangerously.