There’s a marketing crossroads companies come to when they’re at that stage of going from Small Company to Less-Small Company.

Somebody did a study of sales people who make over $250,000 and found out that the #1 reason for their success was SPEED OF EXECUTION.

Occam’s Razor says that given two possible answers to a problem, the simpler one is usually right. If we applied this ancient idea to business, we’d make a lot more money.

Successfully marketing you and your business is not always a simple or straight forward task, but there are three aspects to your business that you can focus on that will strongly benefit you and the performance of your business.

Does your business have a “point of difference”? In this competitive market, you need to be able to know how to market to your target audience and just as importantly – what you need to be saying.

In the gulf war, before an F15 pilot friend of mine went into a dogfight, he would turn off all but a couple of his heads up warning and information systems . Why?

“Liked the shop so bought the business” – it does happen and owning your own retail outlet is a dream shared by many. After all there is huge revenue to tap into with New Zealanders spending more than $12,000 in shops each year, for every adult, child and baby.

As is often the case when entering into a business, the complete focus is on setting up, operating and growing the business. What is easy to overlook is the all-important business exit strategy.

The biggest problem in trying to grow a business is that we’re too busy making money. It’s not a play on words – it’s a serious problem. You’re too busy making money.

You have made the decision to sell your business. Generally, using a business broker is a good idea – especially if you have limited time to work with potential buyers, are not easily contactable or lack the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively market and sell your business.

No-one goes into business planning to fail – do they? I was reading some quotations yesterday and one from Michael Gerber really got me thinking,

It really amazes me how some small business owners believe that having a LinkedIn profile and joining LinkedIn groups, but not participating, equates to networking.

So you can cook, deal with people and think you could run the café down the road better than the current owners’ – so what next?

There’s no hiding from the current hard times – the media is awash with headlines of hard luck stories, however it’s not all bad.

So you want to be your own boss but you’re not sure where to start. Perhaps you have an idea or are still looking, waiting for that ideal business opportunity to present itself.

Pumpkin Patch is in decline. Several weeks ago they announced they would close 20 of 35 US stores in order to curtail further losses.