Can Your Behavioral Style Impact The Success Or Failure Of Your Home Based Business?

Are you a risk taker? Do you like to interact with customers? Are you the type of entrepreneur who likes to work on group projects in collaboration with others? Or do you prefer to work alone analyzing detailed work?

A lot of questions, but if you are going to be successful in your home based business, the answers could be critical to your success!

Understanding your behavioral style can help you succeed in your home based business, whether your work requires you to talk on the telephone with vendors, meet in person with customers, work with others to deliver your products or communicate over the Internet. Every style has strengths and limitations. And strengths if overused, can be weaknesses.

Most people have a primary behavioral style that is their natural approach to how they tend to respond or behave in certain situations. The DISC® model provides a quick and easy way for determining your behavioral style. Most people are unaware of their behavioral style, yet their close friends, family members and even co-workers can often tell what motivates them. Getting in touch with what motivates you as an entrepreneur and what motivates your customers is an important tool for a home-based business. It can impact your bottom line and provide direction in all that you do!

Here are the four behavioral styles: “D”- is the dominant or the risk taking style. If you are a “D” you are likely to prefer entrepreneurial pursuits where you can lead projects and present new ideas. You will have no trouble contacting the CEO of a major company and scheduling an appointment. You might have a tendency to be a bit heavy handed and if you’re not careful, you could chase some customers away. The “I” style is the people oriented style, motivated by recognition and interaction with others. If you are an “I” you will be great at marketing your business and persuading customers to buy your products. You may even get your foot in to door with a customer when your product or idea is not well thought out and this could cause you to lose a sale. The “S” is the Steadiness or team player style that tends to be cooperative and prefers to work in settings with others.

If you are an “S” style you will excel in projects that provide clear steps and processes that are sequential. You will do well with customers who like your dependability and you calming reassuring nature. You may be challenged with changes to your processes or your projects and you may have to work harder when responding to changes. If you are a “C”, you are analytical and logical.
You are reserved and business like in your demeanor and are quite comfortable working alone. Your customers will appreciate your attention to detail and the high quality of your work. You may
be challenged with in person meetings or criticism of your work and you will need to take care to meet customer deadlines.

Because most home based businesses are operated by sole proprietors or micro businesses, understanding your behavioral style is a quick and easy way to get real feedback that will forever change your business life! When you are in touch with your behavioral style you will learn what motivates you, become more aware of your own style preferences and biases, and understand how you react when you are frustrated or under stress. Moreover, you will be able to learn how to communicate more effectively to meet the style preferences of your customers, your business partners and your vendors.

So what style are you? What about your customers? If you have a home based business and or have a business that is operated primarily on the internet, it will be critical for you to adapt your ads and even your website, to appeal to the several behavioral styles mostly likely to be reflected in that environment.

Because most of us have a combination of styles, to determine your overall behavioral profile, you should take an online assessment. Once you learn your real style, you are in a much better position to gauge others and align your business accordingly.

Knowing your behavioral style and how your tendencies impact the way you conduct your home based business will be critical to your success or failure.



By Dr. Devona Williams
and Kenny Anderson




Bronzi Home Based Business Tips

Tweet

Read More

5 Pillars To A Successful Home Business

Here are the 5 pillars to have a successful Home Business: 

1 - Hustle:

Generally, people who make it big have one thing in common—they are dissatisfied with the status quo. They will not take what is “common” or “expected” and let that define their lives—they move past it and excel. You must work hard and hustle.

2 - Character:

Someone coined the phrase, “character is what you do in the dark.” In other words, when no one is looking, will you behave differently than if someone was looking? If not, then you have character. If you are attacked, be tough—not hard. Don’t be a pushover, but be compassionate, gentle, and flexible—especially on procedure (not principle).

3 - Risk Taking:

This isn’t gambling, it’s a willingness to be bold, hearty, and to push forward. People who refuse to take risks are definitely going to lose. If you refuse a new promotion because you’re not confident of your skills, you will likely be passed over when a different chance arrives.

Don’t be afraid of rejection, just take it as part of life and you’ll find there’s nothing to be afraid of—especially in the word “no.” “No” is just another opportunity to find a way around an obstacle and to use creative problem-solving skills.

4 - Time Management:

We all know that one minute has 60 seconds and that one hour has 60 minutes. One day has 24 hours, and one year has 365 days. But one year also has 525,600 minutes. We don’t think about a year in such small increments, but maybe we should.

We waste minutes as if they’ll always be around, and the fact is that time wasted is time we can never get back. We might miss a deal or promotion of a lifetime by wasting just a few minutes.

Proper time management is essential as you climb to success. Continue to break goals down in to manageable chunks—do that with relation to your day and the time you’ve been given. You’ll accomplish far more this way and you won’t regret using your time wisely.

5 - Master Non-Verbal Communication:

It is said that our body language and facial expressions do much more communicating than our words will ever do. When the words that you speak don’t match the expressions on your face or the stance of your body, you confuse the listener and muddle your message.

Be aware that when you try to “multi-task,” you often end up short-changing something, and the last thing you want is to short-change people. Don’t try to do too much at once—your willingness to do this tells people they aren’t important, even if you’re expressing your appreciation of their work and effort.

Be aware of what message your body is sending off!


Are you a blogger? Then I have a free gift for you. Click here.



Tweet

Read More

4 Tips For At Home Business Call Success For Mom Entrepreneurs

The kids are racing through the house screaming and the business phone rings, what do you do? Don’t panic! There are some simple ways to handle your at-home business calls.

You know it’s happened to you. Your phone rings and it’s the important business call you’ve been waiting for. As you look at your children wildly circling you, you ask yourself, “Do I take the call?”

It leaves you wondering how other Mom Entrepreneurs handle at-home-business calls.

Here are 4 quick tips:

1. Don’t apologize.
On the days my son, Ulyssis (age four) is with me, there ARE times he talks or is noisy when I’m on a business call. (That is I use to have this problem, but he's thirty now. Soon to be thirty one.) I used to say, “I’m sorry, my son is here…” But thankfully, I’ve changed. I’m grateful to Ponn Sabra, author of Empowering Women to Power Network for setting me straight. She told me to be proud my son is with me. And she is right. Now when I proudly state, “My son is with me today,” I find callers are gracious. Most reply with, “Oh, that’s wonderful! Enjoy your time with him.”

2. Be prepared for the unexpected.
As a mom, you wear many hats. When on the phone, always smile and project a good attitude. But be prepared to deal with unexpected situations. If children are disruptive during a call, remain calm. This is the time to have a sense of humor and make light of the situation. If the caller hears the background cries and you’re unable to quickly control the situation, offer to call back at a later time. “Would ten minutes or a half hour be better for you?”

3. Give “silent hellos or goodbyes”.
Laurie Hurley of Home Tutoring Business developed a “silent hello” (or goodbye) she uses when on the phone and her girls walk in or out. Laurie wears a headset to free her hands for a big hug and a quiet kiss. Her girls are trained to be quiet and they understand she can’t hang up just because they’ve arrived. The girls compete to see who can be the quietest, and Laurie doesn’t have to hang up on a client!

4. Leave your children “reminders”.
Melody Spier of Ballyhoo Virtual Services purchased a small stop sign for her office door. It serves as a visual reminder for her kids to stop and listen so they don’t burst in during a business call. Below the sign she posted three questions for her kids to ask themselves before interrupting.

1. Is someone hurt?
2. Does it concern schoolwork?
3. Would you pay $5 for the answer? ($5 = the 15 minutes it takes to work through the question and get refocused)

This cut the interruptions down to almost zero after about a week.

By being proud of your decision to work from home, being prepared for the unexpected, giving silent hellos or good-byes, and leaving your children reminders, you, too, can experience more success with your at-home-business calls.




Photo Attribution
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mangpages/3212233291/ CC by 2.0

Bronzi Home Based Business Tips


Tweet

Read More

10 Setup Secrets For Your Home Based Business - Ten Of Them!

Setting up a home based business doesn't have to be intimidating, expensive or time consuming. When you decide to make your living working from home, you simply need to go through a basic set up process to ensure you are ready.

Here are my steps for setting up your home business for success:

1. Attitude

- The key to your business success is your attitude.
- Treat your business like a business.

This is critical whether you are working part-time or full-time. For example, the mom who works from home around her family. She always puts her family first, at the same time developing her business. She says, "I may work part-time, but I have a full-time attitude." To put another way, "Have a hobby attitude, get a hobby income, have a business attitude get a business income."

You can be successful working part-time and you can be successful working full-time but it is unlikely that you will be successful just working in your "spare time".

2. Describe Your Business

Be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one or two sentence description that someone can repeat in describing your business to others.

A unique and memorable tag line can also be invaluable for promoting your business. This is often referred to as your "elevator pitch" or "audio logo". Think about it, if you ask someone about their business and they describe it as "a errr, well, I kind of take care of, you know, well in as much as..." would you be impressed? Would you think that you should really hire that person? It's much better to be able to speak briefly, confidently and memorably about your business and what makes it unique.

3. Know Your Product or Service

Once you have chosen the product or service to sell you need to know your product intimately. If you are selling e-books for example, then know the content and its value. If you are selling software then use it and know it "inside out".

You will develop a reputation of providing quality information and because of your product knowledge, you can become the preferred supplier.

If it is not practical to use certain products (for example a woman may choose to sell man's shoes or vice versa) then you won't be using the product, however you can still know the benefits and features of the product intimately.

4. Get a Domain Name

Welcome to the twenty first century, you need a domain name for your business! You'll need an account with a reputable hosting company who will provide a "space" on the web for your domain name and site. The fees can be as low as $4.95 per month and go up from there. If you do not have any knowledge of HTML there are hosting companies that provide "site builder" software via the web. This can be a great option but be sure you like the application before you plunk down your money as you will probably be using it a lot!

5. Email

Once you have your own domain you will have one or more email accounts for that domain. This can assist in the promotion of your business and promotes a more professional business image.

Using email smartly can help you in the task of organizing your business communications. For example, sales can arrive via sales@your-company.com, support and help requests via support@your-company.com and so on.

By setting up some basic rules in Outlook or other email program you can have the mail conveniently sorted into folders for you as soon as it arrives.

6. Payment Processing

You will probably need a way to process credit cards. You could use services such as:

- PayPal https://www.paypal.com/
- StormPay http://www.stormpay.com/
- 2 Checkout http://www.stormpay.com/

Paypal now has a Pro level of service that includes a virtual terminal, helping to keep the costs low. Once your business picks up you may need to look into your own merchant account for credit card transactions but any of the sites listed will certainly get you started and may be all you need for the life of your business.

7. Computer Protection

Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and must be protected including the data that is stored. You will need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware and anti-adware and preferably an email scanner with the ability to delete suspect of spam email from the server before it is downloaded to your computer.

Some suggestions are:

- AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com/ (free version available)
- Spybot S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org/
- Microsoft Anti-Spyware: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
- Adaware: http://www.lavasoft.com/
- Mailwasher Email Scanner: http://www.mailwasher.net/

A good all-round selection is one of the Norton products as they are kept up to date and have many if not all the features mentioned.

8. Working Environment

Getting organized is highly important, to ensure that you complete projects on time but also pay your bills on time and even bill your clients on time!

Having a working environment that help rather than hinders you work is also highly important. It can be tough but you need to establish a definite workspace for both yourself and any other people that are around.

- A space that you can call your own, free from distractions for your scheduled time.
- A comfortable chair and organized desk.
- Stationery supplies as required.
- Ensure you have a good computer monitor if you will be staring at it for long periods of time.
- Consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time is valuable and a broadband connection can allow you to get more done in a given time frame.

9. Administration

Use good record keeping practices... please!

You may need to consult a tax advisor who can let you know about the best way to set up your financial records and what records need to be kept. Your advisor can recommend record keeping systems and software may simplify this aspect of your business.

Additionally you can obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bank accounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separate account. Many banks now offer free checking for small business so do your research in to the options available to you.

Keep track of your various logins, usernames and passwords. This can be quite a big deal once your have a number of business resources online.

There are other useful tools for this also from a simple paper notebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popular solution is PasswordSafe.com. They provide a free web based service for storing username / passwords so you can access them from anywhere with an internet connection. They've been around since 1998 so the service is both trustworthy and reliable.

10. Schedule

Develop a schedule that works for you, your family and your business. When you mark off a block of time for work, then use that time for work. Equally important is to schedule time for your other commitments - family time, self-education (reading, listening and viewing), "health time" (exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During these other times don't work. Remember, one of the reasons to work from home is to spend more time with your family and you don't want your working at home time to consume your family time.

You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice) is your "boss". When you have people calling you or dropping around unexpectedly or maybe out-of-town visitors may want to catch up with you then you need to make a choice. Are you committed to your own business success? What will be your choice in these situations? Only you can decide what is important to you.

In a family environment you may need to negotiate with your family and have your business time agreed upon, during which you will not be interrupted. Put this schedule prominently somewhere so all family members are aware of your work schedule.

These are the ten basics of working at home. Some of these items may change a little depending on the type of business you choose but in essence, this is it. A home based business can be the most fun, most rewarding experience of your adult life as long as you realize there are a few simple rules to keeping everything on track along the way.



Photo Attribute:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoach/3654123527/ / CC by 2.0


Bronzi Home Based Business Tips

Tweet

Read More