CategoryBusiness Advice Archives — Page 4 of 8 — C. Lynn Northrup, CPA, CPIM

Starting a New Business

One of my students asked me to share advice and information on starting a business. After thinking about his request, I recalled a recent article posted on the Business Owners Zone. It is a must read for any person considering a new business venture and was posted by John Benson who successfully started a business and lived through the process.

I thought the most critical question in the article was “do you have a business plan?” A business plan will help to answer the question of whether you have enough money to start and grow the business. The article also touched on the psychological and emotions issues that should be addressed before launching a new venture.

Business coaches weren’t mentioned in Benson’s article but I think having one is a good idea. In a previous blog post I pointed out that business and life can be a lonely journey. Having an experienced coach can be the difference maker between success and failure.

Starting a new business requires serious research and analysis. Here are some questions to consider:

• Am I qualified to do this work?
• What is the cost to start this business?
• What resources do I have to commit to the business?
• What is the competition?
• How successful is the competition?
• Will I need help to run the business and can I get the help I need?
• Can I run the business from my home?
• Who can I talk to about starting this business?
• Do I need a business coach or advisor?

These are just a few areas you need to evaluate. Many other questions will emerge as you prepare to start your journey.

One of my other blog posts dealt with the flower exercise to help you understand your skill set to get a better handle on how well equipped you are to start and run a business. The self-examination process should be part of your homework before making a leap of faith into something that’s not a good fit.

If you make the decision to move forward and follow your dream you will need an expert financial advisor. I strongly recommend engaging a CFO advisor to help you set up a cloud based accounting system. This will provide the necessary financial tools to help manage your new business. Having a good accounting system and being linked to your own virtual CFO is an essential ingredient to success.

Your business coach together with a virtual CFO will help you craft a strategy and develop a business plan. These steps combined with a solid accounting system will give you the tools to measure and monitor your business results. Measurement is critical. If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t manage it and improve it.

Delivering More Customer Value

Here are three ways businesses can deliver increased value to their customers:

1. Charge lower prices
2. Help customers reduce their other costs
3. Provide more benefits

I think businesses need to focus on finding ways to provide customer value other than just reducing prices. When you provide a benefit bundle to add customer value you are providing a uniqueness setting your business apart and beyond the competition.

Here are some ways to offer more benefits to customers that can take your business to new levels:

• Offer customized products and services
• Offer more customer convenience
• Provide faster service
• Give customers more or better service
• Give customers extra training or coaching
• Provide an extraordinary guarantee that competitors can’t match
• Give useful tools (hardware or software) to customers
• Win, keep, and grow customers by rewarding them (membership programs)

Now you have some ideas on how you can beat the competition besides just lowing price.

Helping customers reduce their other costs is an additional way to increase customer value. Some approaches include arguments that your product is more reliable, lasts longer, or attracts higher prices in the second hand market. Some businesses will provide support to customers in the way of coaching and training on how to reduce costs when using their products.

Other approaches to helping customers reduce their costs might include techniques to improve business processes such as purchasing and ordering costs. In this regard, providing them with unique systems to accomplish these tasks is one approach that can be utilized.

Inventory always represents a challenge for both small and large businesses. Offering customers just-in-time supply capability is one way to deal with this issue. Another approach is utilization of consignment arrangements. Some companies offer outsourced inventory management that help to maintain lower levels of inventory investment.

Some businesses justify higher prices by helping their customers reduce their processing costs. Techniques might include more efficient ways to use their products which lowers processing costs. Application of lean six sigma methodologies can help improve yields, reduce waste, eliminate chances for accidents, and lower labor costs.

Strategy – The Competitive Edge

Having a strategy is essential to success. It gives you the competitive edge in business, politics, and everyday life. Strategy represents the steps and actions that need to be implemented to fulfill your vision and achieve your mission. Success in strategic planning doesn’t come easily and in many instances fails to contribute to strategic thinking.

How do we develop a strategy that will create a competitive edge? First, utilize an approach called the strategic thinking process outlined in a previous blog post. Thinking strategically and focusing on simple processes to apply concepts like Blue Ocean Strategy will improve you chances for success. Crafting a successful strategy requires an understanding of Blue Ocean Strategy.

Blue Ocean Strategy is focused on providing value propositions to customers in ways that have a positive impact on the company’s cost structure. Finding directions or features your competition hasn’t offered is the key to success. Implementing these new concepts combined with eliminating factors others take for granted is a big piece of the puzzle. This creates cost savings from generating higher sales volume as a result of the superior customer value created from new concepts never before offered.

Blue Ocean Strategy essentially reconstructs market boundaries. This is achieved by going beyond looking at just the numbers and focusing on a bigger picture. Getting past what is being done and developing a new source of customer value is critical to successful strategies. This requires development of the proper sequence or steps to allow a strategy to be successful.

Strategic sequence includes having exceptional customer buy in to the new business idea. Your selling prices need to be easily accessible to the target market of buyers. Once you know what customers want and are willing to pay for, you need to be capable of attaining costs which will allow achievement of targeted profit margins. Finally, you need to be organizationally capable of putting the new strategy in place and making it work. All of these steps may sound simple, but in reality will likely involve considerable effort.

Blue Ocean Strategy success depends on the success of the following three propositions:

1. Value for customers.
2. Profit from revenues less the cost to produce and deliver value.
3. People that are motivated by the incentives created by the strategy and effort needed to support and implement it.

When these three propositions achieve a combination of differentiation and low cost a Blue Ocean scenario is created that builds sustainability and formidable barriers to imitation.

Red Oceans result from failure of the three strategy propositions to create differentiation or low cost. Competing in Red Oceans opens the door for extensive competition and lower profits or losses. Many different factors can allow other companies to imitate your strategy and undermine success. Creating barriers to imitation through proper strategic alignment, effective organizational structure, branding, and effective economic and legal steps is essential to preventing Red Ocean environments.

Blue Ocean Strategies can create a competitive edge, but it takes work. Hopefully, you have a clearer understanding of what is involved in crafting a successful strategy. Thinking strategically to identify and create Blue Oceans is going to take you out of your comfort zone. But isn’t it better to achieve new success in contrast to failure resulting from swimming in Red Oceans?

The Changing CPA World

The world is changing fast and everyone is struggling to keep up. This is true both for businesses and the CPAs that serve them. Instant information is available to everyone making it easier to look up questions on the internet, do their own accounting, run payroll and prepare tax returns.

Business owners frequently need help but don’t know it. CPAs are still traveling down traditional paths and not always in a position to effectively assist their clients. Business operations and financial management can be complicated. Business owners will frequently self-medicate when they should get help. And in many instances, CPAs aren’t adequately trained or skilled in providing in business advisory and consulting services.

Business advisory services range from specialized CFO and controller support, strategic planning, operations, marketing, information technology, and human resources. Most business owners don’t have skills to cope with all these areas of expertise. In addition, there aren’t too many CPAs that have the training and expertise to provide advice to clients in all these sectors. Therefore, it is critical for CPAs to develop their business advisory and CFO skills to be able to help their clients.

Business owners need trusted advisors that can help them address the unique problems in their business. CPAs need to shift their focus to helping clients identify these special needs. This is the future of the profession. This requires training and the development of new skills. Business owners also need to recognize that they can’t know everything and be willing to seek help when and where it’s needed.

The role of CPAs as business advisors is to enhance the productivity, profitability and wealth of their clients. Creating awareness of client needs is critical. CPAs must be willing to collaborate with expert advisors skilled in providing the necessary services. This creates win/win situations for all parties.

The challenge is that most small and medium size businesses have never experienced the benefit of working with a skilled consultant. Another barrier is that they don’t understand how they can benefit from an advisory relationship with their CPA. The key is understanding that using an expert advisor is an investment and should not be perceived as a cost of doing business.

Businesses need to understand:

• Why they need an advisor/consultant.
• Why the advisor is ideally suited to perform that function.
• What will be the approach of the engagement?
• What is the goal of the engagement and how they get benefit from it?

Consulting engagements are complex and require special expertise. Consultants sell knowledge and expertise, not products. They transact returns from investment, not sales. Their fees represent an investment, and not a cost of doing business. When businesses and CPAs develop a better understanding of advisory engagements, both will benefit from their investment.

The Virtual Business Coach

Having a coach gives small business owners a strategic advantage. They have a someone to help guide them in the right direction and make better decisions. Today’s virtual tools provide greater opportunities for collaboration for businesses to receive coaching and guidance support. Plus, they can get help on a real-time basis. Having an experienced business expert available with just a phone call or an e-mail produces better decisions, faster business growth, and greater profitability.

Northrupcpa goes well beyond accounting and CFO support. I was fortunate to be mentored and gain extensive general business experience gathered over the years. In addition, training enhanced and built on my experience enabling me to provide a wide range of services. Here’s a summary of some of the virtual business advisory services that are available:

• Cash Management and Planning
• Performance Measurement Analysis and Dashboard Support
• Strategic Planning
• Budgeting
• Forecasting and Modeling
• Change Management
• Operations Management and Lean Workflow
• Risk Management
• Training (Financial Management and MBA Basics)
• Business Valuation
• Estate and Succession Planning
• Cost Accounting including Activity Based Analysis
• Lean Accounting

I developed a unique approach to help guide business owners using cloud technology that includes surveys, questionnaires, and virtual diagnostic interviews. This capability allows an assessment of businesses to accurately identify the issues and problems. This approach places a focus and attention on the high priority areas.

A career in industry combined with consulting and public accounting gave has given me exposure to the non-accounting areas of business adding to my understanding of the broader challenges facing small business. It pushed me to study non-accounting areas such as operations, marketing, strategy, and change management. In reality, it provided the perfect platform to teach other CPAs the essentials of business advisory service and CFO concepts.

Adapting business advisory coaching to the cloud allows any business to receive guidance. This represents a unique opportunity for CPAs to provide added value service and small businesses to grow and benefit from a new paradigm shift. Collaboration is the key to making business advisory support functional since it will be difficult for most CPAs to build the knowledge base required to adequately fulfill client needs. Sharing client services with skilled business advisors is a way for CPAs to broaden the services they make available to their clients and creates win-win situations. As small businesses become comfortable with cloud technology, they will start demanding a broader range of advisory services in addition to CFO support. CPAs are in a great position to take advantage of these opportunities by collaboration and using the cloud and the many tools it offers.

Retiring Boomers Translates to Big Opportunities for CPAs

Changing demographics created by baby boomers represent big opportunities for CPAs. There are 10,000 boomers hitting retirement age each day and they need help in a lot of areas. While financial planning is usually the focus, there is an abundance of practice development opportunities.

Here are some shocking statistics. Over 13% of the population in the United States will be 65 by 2020 and more than 16% will be in excess of 65. By 2030, most baby boomers will have hit their 65th birthday. This means that more than one in five Americans will be 65 or older and about 10 million of them will be over age 85.

Money tops the list of problems since boomers haven’t saved enough to retire and survive through their later years. They also aren’t prepared to deal with declining health. Plus, they may have to contend with elder care either for parents or themselves. Combine these challenges with social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and estate planning there are lots of possibilities for added value business. There are a lot more people with questions, no answers, and the need for guidance.

CPAs can help retirees and elders on a wide range of areas. Typically, seniors turn to attorney’s for guidance which makes sense in many areas. However, CPAs educated on the needs of baby boomers and elders can become valuable and needed advisors to a huge segment of the population.

The first step for CPAs is getting up to speed on the issues. The next step is letting people know how you can help them. In addition to CPE programs there are a lot of resources to gain knowledge about elder issues. A good place to start is by gaining expertise on social security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

One of the opportunities for CPAs to help baby boomers is with basic budgeting and cash management. Boomers try to do their own planning and budgeting when objective input from a CPA would be a better option. Most boomers haven’t planned very well. Many will need to, or want to, pursue a business. Helping these boomers get started on the right foot can translate into added value revenue.

A simple budget spread sheet can be a useful tool for CPAs to assist boomers create an understanding of their situation and develop a plan for the future. Consider all possible income streams such as social security, pensions, plus any other sources of revenue. Expenditures should include housing, travel, medical, automobile, and all living expenses that boomers will incur. Most boomers think expenditures will be reduced in retirement. This often is not the case. A good analysis can become the basis for projecting into the future and providing boomers with guidance on possible options.

The budgeting exercise helps provide an independent sense of reality on retirement finances. Most boomers have lived week to week and haven’t saved for retirement. Now they will need advice on how to make it through their aging years. CPAs are a logical source to provide much needed advice on how these seniors can manage their future.

Having additional knowledge to help seniors gives CPAs an edge in developing an elder practice. Here are some thoughts on how to gain the needed knowledge and information. Take CPE on estate planning tools. This will give you a foundation on the basics of wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. You can use these tools to help these seniors manage their affairs. You need to have signed powers of attorney for business and medical reasons in case these people can’t manage their own affairs. If you are advising boomers on carrying for elder parents, having these documents in place is essential and critical.

Most boomers don’t think about elder care and what it entails. CPAs who understand the complexities of assisted living facilities and nursing homes can provide much needed support to seniors. Take the time to learn about assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and other senior housing possibilities. I learned about these issues because of the need to deal with aging parents and in-laws. Usually these areas aren’t addressed in depth until it becomes a necessity.

Many boomers who are suddenly faced with caring for aging parents have lots of questions and need assistance. CPAs can provide useful guidance by being knowledgeable on the various facets of senior housing and care. There are a variety of options for seniors, including ways to keep them in their home as long as possible. By understanding the array of possibilities will put you in position to offer solid guidance.

Most of the questions raised by boomers will be directed to assisted living facilities and nursing homes. I think the best way to gain knowledge about them is to visit and take a tour. These organizations will inform you on their billing structure and other financial information. During your tour make an effort to observe the quality of the staff, the rooms, and the food. Another consideration is the capability of the medical staff. Finally, take note of the variety of activities and transportation options available to residents.

When visiting nursing homes it is essential to realize that they provide skilled care which is a big difference from assisted living facilities. Also, determine if they accepts Medicaid since not all of them provide this option. This can become a big issue when elders run out of money and need to be moved. Most assisted living facilities have special areas to care for dementia and Alzheimer residents called memory care units allowing residents to stay until the end.

Gaining knowledge of senior housing facilities can also become a great networking and marketing opportunity as these organizations are happy to know of available resources for their residents. CPAs who understand elder care and associated issues represent a valuable and needed resource.

CPAs who understand the shifting demographics can position themselves to provide significant added value assistance to a segment of the population that needs all the help it can get. While it will take some time to gain the necessary knowledge and market it, I encourage CPAs to step up and fill the need. Seniors need your help.

Assessing a Business

Ask and Listen

A key tool in assessing a business is diagnostic interviewing. This is a process of asking questions and then carefully listening to the answers. W. Edwards Deming, the man who helped the Japanese recover from World War II, always said, “Ask the people who are closest to the action to find out what was really happening.” This advice has never failed me.

Diagnostic interviewing provides indications and clues as to problems. It is a technique I have used to conduct assessments in countless organizations. Getting business owners and management to open the lines of communication can be difficult, but it’s worth the effort. Employees might be reluctant to open up and provide the “unvarnished truth.” It is essential for management to make it clear that they want the truth and the facts. Tell me like it is.

The real key to success is listening and hearing what people are telling you. Frequently, what people say with body language is more revealing than the words that are spoken.

Other Thoughts

A business assessment involves more than just looking at financial data. Take time to step back and thoroughly evaluate the business. Find out what hurts and locate the source of the pain.

Assessments should encompass the entire state of the business from every aspect and all points of view. Get an effective understanding of what is happening in the industry and in the business. Get the big picture as fast as possible.

Analysis

Analysis is performed in order to prioritize problems. Examine problems and then break them into their component parts. Conclusions then can be developed to fit the problem. This is when symptoms are distinguished from problems.

Analysis depends on the specific problems under consideration. Here is my three phase approach:

1. Sort out the facts,

2. Applying analytical techniques, and

3. Use judgment to draw conclusions from the analytical process.

Sorting out the facts is a process of categorizing all the information collected during the assessment. The facts should be sorted based on the assessment parameters. There will be a lot of data to match up including the information gathered from the interviews. Take time with this process and avoid jumping to premature conclusions.

Once the facts are sorted, then start applying analytical techniques. There is both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Qualitative techniques are used to analyze factors which can’t be measured in numerical terms. Examples of qualitative techniques include the development of matrices, asking fundamental questions, and searching for patterns. Additional examples include comparison of events for the purpose of identifying both differences and similarities. Qualitative techniques also include development of flowcharts and fish bone diagrams. Applying analytical techniques is very important so think carefully about the potential range of possibilities.

Self-Assessment Toolkit

I developed a Self-Assessment Toolkit for use in my consulting work. You don’t need to use it but the checklists and questionnaires it offers provides a good roadmap. Another component of the toolkit is a team survey to gain feedback regarding employee opinions about the organization.

The 10 Step Process

To get things on a profitable footing I created the 10 Step Process to Building Business Value:

1. Identify and locate the pain.

2. Establish the parameters on what needs to be done.

3. Evaluate your market, products, and services – are they right for your business?

4. Right size the business.

5. Financing the business.

6. Maximize asset utilization and returns.

7. Improve employee productivity.

8. Conduct product and customer analysis.

9. Improve business processes.

10. Measure and monitor performance.

These 10 steps represent the essential components of what every business needs to do to maximize profitability and build the value of their organization. These steps represent a long-term no nonsense approach to value based management that produces results.

This methodology works because I have used it to produce results in a number of businesses. When businesses apply the tools and employ them consistently over a period of time, the benefits are record growth in sales and profitability.

These concepts are not silver bullet fixes. They represent a common sense application of tried and true methodologies that can make the difference between survival and failure.

Health Care Cost Control

Health care costs are outrageous and continue to climb. A Business Week article reported that over 700 hundred billion dollars is wasted on countless wasted procedures, fraud, and unnecessary treatments. After thinking about the current state of the economy, this revelation struck home. With all the effort being placed on health care reform, it is shocking that this legislation will have no impact on the rising level of health care costs.

Because the health care system operates on a fee-for-service basis, there is no incentive for doctors and medical care facilities to eliminate waste and do a better job of cost control. While there is no incentive for doctors there seems to be plenty for those who are interested in using the system to fraudulently rip off the system for an estimated $150 billion dollars or more.

In thinking about this mess, I tried to consider some potential solutions. CPAs have lots of tools to assist in fraud investigation. The talent is there to get the job done. Why not engage some of the best resources available to stem the tide of leakage from fraud?

The health care system is a process, just like internal control and business processes. Again, wouldn’t it make sense to tap into the lean experts that are streamlining our supply chain and provide focus on the health care system?

When considering cost containment and control, health care represents one of our biggest challenges. I realize the political sensitivity and polarization that surrounds these issues, but government could wake up and pay attention to the talent pool available and make some real progress in contrast to pushing legislation that isn’t going to get the job done. The answer doesn’t lie with Congress; it requires executive action to take the steps that could really make a difference.

5 Steps in Achieving Success

Everyone wants success. The difficulty with achieving success results because it hasn’t been clearly defined. I am going to give you a 5 step approach to achieve success and build the value. The secret to creating value and achieving success starts with a vision for what you want to achieve and how you define success and the steps that are associated with it. The 5 steps necessary to achieve success are:

1. Create a Vision for Success

2. Set Objectives

3. Develop a Strategy for Making it Happen

4. Build Action Plans

5. Evaluate Performance

Following these 5 steps and documenting them are essential to keep your life or your business on track. This doesn’t need to be a complicated process, and in fact, the simpler the better. However, putting these steps into a written document is essential and helps to build the commitment necessary to convert the vision for success into reality.

1. Create a Vision for Success

A mission statement should be brief and focused. It can be nothing more than a few words or phrases that provide a description of how you define success for you and your business. It should become a living document about where you’re headed going down the road. When you define where you are going you have a better chance of getting there.

Your vision statement should spell out where you plan on going and the steps required for getting there. There needs to be a link with the goals and objectives required for achieving the desired level of success. The best vision statements are simple and straight forward. Keep it simple and spell it out in contrast to just thinking about it. Writing the vision versus thinking about it is usually the difference between success and failure.

2. Setting Objectives

After establishing a vision for success, the next step in the process it setting goals and objectives. Setting goals and objectives stems from the vision statement and assessing current performance and the major issues that need to be addressed and how they relate to strategy to accomplish your objectives.

Objectives should specify measureable results that need to be accomplished together with a target date or a time span for completing it. Objectives should be as specific and quantitative (measurable and verifiable) as possible. Development of objectives should specify only what and when it needs to be accomplished and should not venture in to the why and how. Objectives and goals should relate directly to crafting a strategy to achieve your objectives.

3. Develop a Strategy to Make it Happen

Strategy corresponds to the actions and approaches necessary to achieve your objectives and fulfill your vision. The components of strategy include deciding on those attributes which offer the best chance to achieve your objectives or to gain a competitive edge. Strategy is where you focus on the skills, expertise, and competitive capabilities that will set you apart from your rivals.

Strategy is about being different in contrast to something that everyone is or should be doing. It boils down to making the tough choices that create a sustainable competitive advantage. These choices are those that allow you to change the rules in your favor.

4. Build Action Plans

Action plans are when you need to get more specific to clearly identify what has to take place. They represent an opportunity to test and validate your objectives. In addition, they provide a basis for communication for others who need to contribute to or will be affected by what takes place.

The following basic components should be part of the plan development. First, document the specific steps that will be required. Next, it is important to identify the people who will be held accountable making sure that each action step is completed. Developing a timetable getting things done is essential. Make sure to determine what resources will be needed to achieve your objectives. Finally, it is critical to provide feedback mechanisms to monitor progress.

Documentation provides a basis for monitoring the progress of each action step. Incorporate this documentation into a schedule that spells out what needs to get done and when.

5. Evaluate Performance

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is a term frequently associated with achieving results. Monitoring and evaluating performance is essential if your vision is to become reality. It might be necessary to reevaluate your strategy depending on how things are working out. Assessing the financial impact is essential in determining if you are achieving the level of expected results. Regularly evaluate your resources. Do you have everything in terms of personnel, materials, information, and other resources to support your vision and strategy? After establishing the vision, the strategy, objectives, and action plans, it is essential to monitor the few vital factors that let you know whether or not you are on track or if modifications are necessary. Continually check your progress and respond appropriately.

Final Thoughts

When creating a vision and converting it into reality is not only critical, it is essential to put it into writing. Written goals and objectives are more likely to be accomplished. Make this a habit and I think you’ll start to see success. Written plans represent a commitment that translates into success.

3 Basic Ways to Build the Value of Your Small Business Online A guest post by Christopher :o from the Dapeem blog

Running a business in a saturated market if no easy feat – in fact, it’s downright tough. With more and more businesses popping up daily, entrepreneurs are facing the challenge of not only making their product or service available, but rather, making them more valuable than anyone else’s.

With this in mind, small business owners have taken to the web to build the value of their business.

Here’s what they’re doing to effectively build the value of their small business – consider doing the same for your own business!

1. Branding

Creating a recognizable profile for your company and yourself is important when building value online. Whether you run a website, a blog, a collection of social profiles, or all of the above, it’s important to create an image for your business so people will recognize it across the web.

Branding your business online is about consistency. Help your visitors recognize your profiles, blogs, and website visually by adding a simple picture of yourself – not your business logo. The first step in tapping the social sphere as a business entity is creating transparency – in other words, you need to introduce yourself and let your visitors know who you are. By spending time branding yourself first as an authoritative person in your niche, visitors are more likely to stick around and trust you.

Once you’ve successfully branded yourself online as an authoritative source, you can then proceed to brand your product or service.

This step is all about consistency and persistence. To brand your product of service, create an image and let people know it exists – in other words, remind your visitors it’s available where ever possible without spamming them.

One of the best ways to remind your visitors that you have something to sell is to post a banner in your own sidebar, header, and in the footer of your blog posts. Remember, this game is all about reminding your visitor – the more you remind them, the more likely they’re going to buy.

Why?

Because they trust you … don’t they? Wait, how do you build trust online so that you can brand yourself as an authoritative voice?

2. Building Trust

The practice of building trust with your visitors is similar to building credit – it takes time and it requires a record of good history.

To start building trust with your visitors, you need brand yourself as a transparent source of information – that is, someone interested in providing information … for free. Even if you’re helming a business and need to focus on making money to stay alive, you need to position yourself as a source of information and help that visitors can depend on. If you don’t then visitors will happily click away from your site and visit someone else’s – and there are plenty to choose from.

Becoming transparent is simple – just be you. Avoid hiding behind company logos, mystery profile pictures, and other tactics designed to shield your identity from your customers – you don’t want people to think you’re shady. Reveal yourself and give people a reason why they should trust you – it should be clear, to the point, and fast.

Giving your visitors a reason to trust you can happen in as little to one to three steps – if you’re new, chances are it will take a bit longer.

First, create something of value your visitors can use. For example, if you have a blog, create a post that your targeted visitors will find helpful. The goal at this point is to attract your future customers, hook them with helpful content, and lead them to one of two places … which leads us to the second step:

Second, provide your visitor with an impressive “about” page. Whether you’re working from a blog, a social profile, or traditional website, you need to create that “about page” so that your visitors can read more about you once you’ve impressed them with your post (the about page is one of the most popular pages visited on a site). Tell the visitor who you are, what your experience is, and what you’re doing.

It’s completely up to you whether to take the modest approach – some find it effective, others find it effective to blatantly spell out why they’re at the top of their game. Perhaps a balance of both would serve your goals best. Visitors want to be in the hands of a pro, yet too much arrogance or confidence could result in a backfire and you’ll lose the customer.

Usually at this point you will have either gained or lost a new reader, but sometimes readers will stick around undecided, which brings us to the third step … which is more of an ongoing step:

Third, continue to help your visitors with helpful information (such as blog posts, guest posts, eBooks, reports, and more). This step depends entirely on your performance either as a social media personality, blogger, or other web publisher. Your activity and production will determine whether or not your readership grows, shrinks, or flatlines, so it’s crucial to stay on top of it at all times.

Blogging and social activity can be very rewarding, but it requires dedication of time and effort. This brings us to the final method I’d like to explore …

3. Building Useful Content

With the boom of social activity online, including networking, bookmarking, commerce, and more, there’s no question that every business owner online is a hyphenate – that is, you’re a business owner – web publisher.

By publishing blog posts, submitting to article directories, updating your status, and uploading photos or videos, you’re a web publisher. How much you do is entirely up to you – there is no secrete formula or mixture that leads to success … it’s all about experimenting what works and what doesn’t. If you’re selling cameras of developing photographs, you might find more results joining photo sharing sites than video sharing sites. Likewise, you might find that your crowd prefers to follow you short updates than your drawn out blog posts.

Regardless of platform, the point is that business owners should to take advantage of the web by providing useful content for their visitors, followers, and customers.

What type of content?

Helpful, of course! Write an article that solves someone’s problem, provides a possible solution, or other helpful resource. The idea behind producing content is to feed the conversation online and help visitors in the process – those visitors will turn into your customers depending on how well you present yourself as an authoritative voice in your niche.

If you position yourself and your business as a helpful resource, you increase the chance of turning your visitors into customers – especially when you reach out and provide help with your social profiles.

Building value for your business online isn’t all that complex; it just takes time and effort, which for most business owners, isn’t an option. If you have the time and ability to create content, it’s highly recommended. Every piece of content you publish is like an active banner – the more you publish, the more likely you’ll be able to attract some visitors. That said, creating content is also an exceptional way to connect with your customer – it enables you to open a discussion with them, hear their feedback, and even track them as customers. It also happens to be one of the ways small businesses can win customers from the conglomerate giants … connection. For more on this, check out The Power of the Business Owner’s Connection with the Customer.

Brand yourself and your business, build trust with your readers through transparent presentation, and provide helpful content – just a few ways to build value for your business online.

Christopher 😮 writes about building more value, finding more customers, and making more money online at the Dapeem blog.