Multiple Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Start a Small Retail Business with Multiple Sales Channels

Starting a small business with several sales channels maximizes your chance of success

In those tender first few years after you start your small business every sale is significant. It’s unfortunate that many entrepreneurs attribute a small start up budget with a single outlet for sales. In the past this may have been true. Few entrepreneurs had enough capital to open even a single store. Two or three stores in different neighborhoods was well beyond most budding entrepreneurs. Today, there is no end to the different sales avenues available to imaginative start up retailers, despite limited budgets.

Channel One: Start a small retail business with a mall kiosk

Don’t let the high cost of starting a bricks and mortar store keep you from making sales to live customers. An attractive kiosk can be purchased for less than a decent used car. Utility and Maintenance costs are also inexpensive. Mobility is an added bonus. If one location fizzles out you can always pick up and move.

Internet options may be less expensive to start up but they also take much longer to be noticed. Depending on your experience, they also take a lot longer to build. A well placed kiosk can be fully operational and generating income the moment you wheel it in the door.

Channel Two: Start a small retail business with an ecommerce site

Once you have your kiosk in place, you’re going to find yourself with a lot of free time between customers. You could spend this time talking to your neighbors or reading the newspaper. You could also boost your future sales potential by starting an online store.

Ecommerce sites can be created quickly but they do take time to fine tune. Once you’ve worked out all the bugs it may still be a while before many customers start to notice your small retail business. There’s no reason you can’t handle an ecommerce site from a notebook at your kiosk.

If you merely started an ecommerce site, you would have to wait months until your site was noticed or pay for expensive advertisements. Instead of sitting in your basement, frantically checking your server log, you could be positioned at your kiosk with an opportunity to speak face to face about your products, and hopefully sell some of them.

Not only can you continue making money while you start your ecommerce site but you also get a chance to promote it at practically no extra cost. Stamp your small business website address on your kiosk, shopping bags and reciepts. Be sure to mention the site to everyone that stops by your kiosk. Even offer a chance to browse, or beta test, your ecommerce site from your notebook.

Channel Three: Start a small retail business selling products on E-bay

E-bay and Pay-Pal take a hefty chunk out of your profit margin but E-bay still has some redeeming qualities. Almost any product you put onto their website will be noticed. In addition, once you’ve completed several transactions successfully your seller profile will indicate that you can be trusted. It takes a long time to build up trust for your ecommerce site. Like your kiosk, you can advertise your ecommerce site at no charge.

Unlike your kiosk and online store, your products can be sold on eBay with practically no startup cost. Also, there are a lot of savvy internet shopers that make online transactions exclusively through auctions. By opening up this third channel your potential customer base skyrockets!

How To Achieve Multiple Streams Of Income In Your Home Business

It is best to start a business that has multiple streams of income but you need to be successful with one income stream first before you can start to develop more. Fortunately there are a lot of different home business ideas online to help you make this happen.

Starting your own multi level marketing business is just one way of doing this. In this article let’s talk about using the network marketing business model to develop as many streams of income as you desire.

1. Build systems for lead generation. This is the real beauty of the Internet and how it can be used to build an MLM business.

The old days of prospecting in person are long over. There is nothing to say that you cannot still do it – by all means if you enjoy it, then do so! However you may find that you have more success by generating leads online.

When we talk about building systems for lead generation we are talking about a couple of primary components. One essential thing that you need is a squeeze page, also known as a lead capture page.

When you market this directly you encourage people to sign up for something by giving you their name and email address. All of the letters are stored inside an autoresponder so that your prospects will be followed up with automatically.

The whole process can be automated and set up in advance so all you do is promote the landing page and let the autoresponder follow up for you. The more names you get into your autoresponder the more potential new distributors you will enroll.

2. Find unique products. All sorts of products, both digital and physical are being marketed through network marketing programs.

Internet based products are very good because you can build a worldwide business without worrying about shipping them. This also makes it easier to enroll people all around the world when the products can be accessed online.

This means that when you advertise your opportunity you can enroll people no matter where they live. However, this is easier to do it if you are dealing with products that are somewhat unique and can be enjoyed by the masses.

3. Join more than one business opportunity. This is the key to ensuring that you earn more money online.

It used to be you only had time to build one network marketing business. You were actually frowned upon if you were in more than one opportunity at a time.

A large number of successful online marketers promote one or more network marketing opportunities. They are aware that the best way to generate multiple streams of income in MLM programs is to promote more than one opportunity at a time using as many different methods as possible.

These are just 3 ways that you can generate multiple streams of income – if you look further you will find even more.

Multiple Revenue Streams Keep A Solopreneur Solvent

To build a successful career as a Solopreneur consultant requires courage, resilience, possession of marketable skills and relationships with people who are willing and able to refer or endorse you for paid project assignments. Solopreneur consultants must have a talent for selling, the discipline to create and pursue business goals, a knack for big picture thinking and implementing strategies and an understanding of human nature and motivation. The ability to attract good luck and dodge bad luck helps, too.

Precious few Solopreneurs are able to just “go to the office” everyday and delve into the usual work. In order to generate the preferred amount of business revenue, we understand that creating multiple revenue streams may be necessary and to make that possible, we must recognize the marketability of our skill sets, in aggregate and in segments. As well, we must learn to package, promote and sell our skills and value to prospective clients.

Consider my revenue streams, for example. When asked, in my short form elevator pitch I say that I’m a self-employed external consultant who provides business strategy and marketing solutions to mid-size for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. What that means in reality is that I’ve facilitated strategic planning meetings at not-for-profit organizations; edited a 100 page nonfiction book and also served as its photo editor and project manager; developed curriculum for a series of 90 minute sales skills training workshops; and periodically I teach business plan writing.

I’ve been fortunate enough to regularly win business strategy development or marketing campaign assignments, but the fact is that there are often gaps and in response, I’ve learned to branch out and offer segments of my skill set to clients or employers as a way to maintain my required cash-flow and, whenever possible, also enhance my brand. In my experience, it’s the ability to leverage one’s perhaps infrequently promoted competencies that help Solopreneurs to create and sustain a profitable business venture.

My friend Adela is a busy educational consultant who works with college bound high school juniors and their parents to identify suitable colleges for the student and navigate the application process. Adela’s business appears to be thriving, yet she nevertheless teaches Spanish at a local university (she was born and raised in Mexico and came to the U.S. to attend Notre Dame University).

Jackie, a friend of many years, is the founder and manager of a small, full-service fitness center that became very successful in that highly competitive market, yet she teaches a fitness class at another gym a few miles away. Why? Because she gets to observe another style of fitness center management from the inside, she receives training in new fitness techniques that she can evaluate for inclusion in her own gym and she earns a few extra dollars each week, something that a mother of four can always use. Sometimes you can get paid to research the competition!

My friend Carole toggles between freelance marketing gigs at technology companies and corporate positions in that sector. She’s a Lotus alumna who’s also worked for tech giant EMC, distinctions that command respect and open doors in the tech industry. In between corporate gigs, Carole goes out on her own to develop marketing strategies for tech start-ups. A couple of years ago, she was offered a position as director of marketing at one of those start-ups, but when the inevitable reorganization occurs, she’ll re-enter Solopreneur life.

So, Solopreneur friend, I invite you to put on your thinking cap and brainstorm how you can create additional revenue streams by exploring how certain segments of your skill set can be packaged and promoted to current and prospective clients!

Thanks for reading,

Kim