For businesses that can’t afford to or simply don’t want to unnecessarily spend thousands on a full-time office… we offer a physical office address, phone, fax, reception and meeting space access for a fraction of the price.  A New York Virtual Office may be just the solution for you. Find out today with our July 2009 Virtual Office Address Trial Offer for only $12.50 per month.

Within one business day you can open your New York office on Broadway in the trendy Flatiron district taking our advantage of our trial office of US$12.50 per month, for 2-months of service including a physical New York office address with reception and access to meeting facilities.  

During the trial period, you receive everything you would at the standard rate.  Mail handling is available as well as meeting rooms, phone service, fax service, and all the extras!  All the benefits of having a real staffed office (not a mailbox or a fake suite number) without the overhead or headaches.

VIRTUAL OFFICE TRIAL
$12.50 per month for 2-months of Virtual Office. Virtual Office address includes:
-Physical Office address on Broadway with reception and meeting facilities.
-Mail handling privileges including mail-forwarding
-Meeting room rental privileges

For more service details, visit:  http://manhattanvirtualoffice.com/virtualoffice.html

To apply for this offer, simply click here to access the online application.

<em>Offer valid for new approved clients only. Offer may not be combined with any other offer. Not valid on renewals or reinstatements. Applicants must order and have their completed applications approved prior to July 31, 2009. After the 2-months are up, you can opt to renew service. Renewal rates revert to standard rates.

Mature industries like banking, pharmaceuticals and insurance have been outsourcing for decades – even before the term became popular. These verticals have standardized processes in their industries which enable them to easily scale – based on the economy and market conditions.

Because outsourcing has become available to small business owners and online professionals, you can now expect the same level of scalability, efficiency and cost savings that exists in other well-managed businesses that leverage outsourcing.

According to a report titled “Global Sourcing Trends in 2009” by U.S.-based law firm Morrison and Foerster:  Most outsourcing transactions intend to produce immediate improvements to the bottom line for businesses. While this is a common reason to outsource, with fluctuating economic times like we have been experiencing lately, the flexibility to scale up or scale down (based on the business’s needs) has been the determining factor to outsource.

Smart executives are using outsourcing to build flexibility and scalability into their businesses—and to gain access to a global pool of skills at competitive cost.

The recent economic downturn led many companies, especially those who don’t have existing outsourcing contracts, to consider outsourcing. But companies who already have outsourcing agreements are re-evaluating their outsourcing decisions to find providers that offer more business continuity and integration.

In an environment where Fortune 500 companies have disappeared overnight, a successfully executed outsourcing partnership could make the difference in a company’s ability to ride out these challenging times. The flexibility to bring on needed help and expertise in times of growth – without committing to a project contract or adding people to the payroll, has been an invaluable solution to the small business owner and online professional. In addition to providing scalability, this also allows the owner to focus on core competencies of the business.

Outsourcing provides businesses with instant scalability and service flexibility, as well as reducing overhead costs.  One of the major advantages of outsourcing is that companies can now get the best from new developments without the expense.

In terms of new technologies, new processes and new ways of doing things, you don’t have to invest to do that in-house.  Outsourcing is also particularly beneficial for new businesses, or those looking to expand their operation. This includes those who do not necessarily know what hardware or software they will need.

Outsourcing providers with more experience should be able to advise companies about where to spend their money, so that they do not waste time and resources.

Any hesitation to outsource may be affecting your company’s chances to effectively scale for growth in this highly competitive business environment. As a small business owner or online professional, carefully consider your outsourcing partner when looking to expand your business and make it globally competitive.  When considering a company for outsourcing, make certain that they are equipped to handle the ebb and flow needs of your business when scaling up, and when scaling down!

Many of our clients have been able to build their businesses successfully as a direct result of outsourcing. One of the most common jobs that they outsource is appointment setting. If your company does any type of outside sales (and most do) having an outsourced telemarketing department is ideal. Think about it, if you tried to hire telemarketers in house, you have to set up office space, get office furniture, get special phone lines installed, get computers, etc. You even have to either manage them yourself or hire someone else to make sure that they’re showing up on time, working their agreed upon shift, calling properly, reading the scripts properly and performing the way that you want them to. 

Yet when you outsource your appointment setting, all you do is have your sales force (or yourself) show up to prescheduled appointments and write up deals. That’s it! No trouble no hassle no headaches. All of this for an employee that costs around $5 per hour.

As a small business owner, you can also use virtual assistants to contact your existing clients and cross sell them on additional products and services (a very successful and profitable strategy). In addition, they can serve as an answering service when you’re out of the office, handle your billing / payments & collections, perform accounting and bookkeeping and more. Some mortgage companies use outsourced workers to call homeowners and sell them mortgages over the phone.

Realtors use virtual assistants to help them run their offices. Their reps help them prepare documents, upload listings, answer phones, do internet marketing, send out client newsletters and more. Other businesses have outsourced reps handling some of their marketing functions. These include internet marketing. There are over 50,000 free classified ad sites on the internet other than Craigslist. Some business owners have their outsourced marketing reps posting ads on these sites each month. They also design their print and internet ads, launch their direct mail campaigns, fulfill information request orders, perform E-blasts, perform “Live Chat” for their website, perform search engine optimization, blogging, writing and posting articles online, updating their website monthly, and much more. Some accounting companies even have outsourced reps doing their clients bookkeeping (unbeknownst to their clients). Other companies have outsourced reps doing actual sales entirely over the phone and internet.

So as you can see, there are a tremendous amount of ways that you as a small business owner can benefit from outsourcing. The ways we mention above are just a few examples yet the possibilities are endless.

 

 

Many small business owners have been disappointed when their applications for small business loans were disapproved by banks under the Small Business Administration’s program for America’s Recovery Capital. According to an article written by Robb Mandelbaum in the August 12, 2009 edition of The New York Times Online, “the program is off to a slow start.” It seems that most banks are reluctant to approve applications for small business loans.

Mandelbaum reports that the Small Business Administration’s program has $255 million to give away, enough to give small businesses 10,000 loans reaching as much as $35,000 each. However, two months after the program was launched, there have only been 1,127 small business loans released, with a total of $36.8 million.

Sources are saying that banks are not very keen on participating in the Small Business Administration’s program because giving the small business loans would not be very profitable for them. Paul Merski,.chief economist of the trade association Independent Community Bankers of America, said, “There’s not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years.” Bob Seiwert from the Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking at the American Bankers Association reveals that, because of strict underwriting standards, servicing the small business loans becomes even more expensive.

The banks have also found more ways to restrict the approval of small business loans with the Congressional restrictions on loan eligibility. According to Congress, in order to qualify for the Small Business Administration loans, small businesses need to be both struggling and viable. That means the business should have had an “immediate financial hardship” such as a 20 percent decrease in revenue. However, the business must also be at least two years old with proof of positive cash flow in one of the previous two years. It should also submit a two year cash-flow projection proving that it will be able to afford loan payments.

Because of the Congressional restrictions, banks are more likely to approve small business loans from their existing clients. Merski said, “From a financial perspective, it really is a loan that makes sense for an existing customer. You’re not going to have to put out a lot of resources to do a very costly underwriting. You know the business.”

Those who are working in support of small businesses are very much disillusioned. An example is Alex Cooper who is a counselor at the Pima Community College Small Business Development Center in Tucson. He said he had assisted almost 30 small business owners with their loan applications but none of them had been approved. “It’s a disappointment. I thought the banks would be more interested in the community and try to help small businesses,” he said.

When the applications for small business loans are disapproved by banks under the Small Business Administration’s program for America’s Recovery Capital, small business owners still have another option. They can get the equivalent of small business loans from their credit card services.

Credit card services provide their clients with the ability to accept payments through credit cards or debit cards in person, online or through the phone. Clients who have established a certain minimum in average monthly credit card sales are qualified to apply for cash advances that are like small business loans. Payments are automatically deducted from future credit card sales.

If you are a small business owner, you do not have to go through the hassles of applying for small business loans with banks who are reluctant to participate in the Small Business Administration program. Get your trouble free small business loans from your credit card services instead.

Adapting your business to a foreign country’s culture, is not an easy process the first time you try. You will not be able to anticipate the stumbling blocks that would not happen ‘back hone’. More importantly you will not know what you need to do to adapt yourself to the new challenges and tasks at hand. You will need to develop a Small Business Action Plan for your first effort with International Business Development.

• Are you a small business and want to develop your international business?
• Do you have a limited budget to develop your international sales?
• Do you already have domestic clients but are just starting to reach out to international clients?

There are numerous strategies that exist to get you more international clients. A lot depends on your business and your commitment.
Here is an action plan to start your first international business development strategy:

1. Internationalize your website

It is important to make sure your website is not pushing your international visitors away from you. Bad or non-existent cross cultural communication can easily do this.

You can create a website specifically targeting an international audience, in your language. This is a business decision and will depend on the nature of your business and your clients. Companies in non-English speaking countries will often create an English language website specifically to target their international markets.

You may decide to keep your main website targeted to your domestic clients. There are still ways to tweak your website, with very small touches, to give a better experience for your international readers. Have a translation tool on your website. The online translation tools are far from perfect but they do bring your clients that one extra step closer.

2. Research your international markets

International business development is all about you learning to adapt. Adapt your business, your products, your communication, and your sales pitches, to each country you market to.

How do you start if you do not have any contact with your foreign markets? Use everything you have available to you and slowly build up your foreign market research. The beginning usually requires the most effort. It does not take as long as you expect.

If you are just starting out check out all of the associations, official groups for all international data you can find. Use the phone extensively. Do some online research. The goal is to simply become familiar, and feel comfortable, with your market. This is the time to eliminate all culturally inappropriate businesses.
The research that you do at the same time as you are marketing to your audience gives you the best results, but don’t get stuck spending too much time here.

3. Track visitors and results; adjust your communication

This step is very important. The better your analysis is, the stronger your international business potential will be.

Tracking and testing are key marketing tools. Your international communication is a process of testing, adjusting, inciting feedback and learning more about your audience. You have to be sure that you establish measurable goals before you begin testing. You must have a tracking system in place for your goals. And you must also track the responses your communication is having on your international readers. Remember, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

International business development is all about your capacity to adjust your business to the needs of people in another country. In order to make these adjustments and improvement you must know where you start and how to interpret results. You need precise things to measure.

4. Create a newsletter in English targeted for your international clients and distribute by email and on your website.

Internet marketing today is all about creating an online presence through content. Internet readers actively search for content. Your international readers are the same. One major benefit of publishing a newsletter is it provides a platform for consistency.

A newsletter helps you to stimulate market feedback, with links back to your website and other content provided through different media. Links to audio and video files, quizzes, surveys, free reports and other feedback generating tools published or advertised in your newsletter create reader interaction.

A regular newsletter targeted to a broad international audience will not be as powerful as content marketing targeted to one specific culture. But it is an easy and inexpensive way to start if you have no real idea where you want to market to.

5. Include tools to stimulate feedback

There are tools you can use to stimulate feedback. Quizzes, surveys, polls, questions, homework assignments, and contests are some tools you can use to stimulate feedback.

The key is to find out what your target readers want and need the most. As you learn more about your international prospects you will adjust your feedback tools and enticements.

You can grab hold of your readers by offering free or discounting items that are not information products, discounts available only to your readers. You will have a better response rate if you can identify what your readers really want.

You can encourage readers to participate with you feedback generating tools by offering them free white papers, case studies, reports, guides and other information useful to your readers. If your feedback enticements are information products, you have another platform to use in your internet marketing strategy.

A wise use of different media touches linked to your feedback stimulation tools strengthens your internet marketing. These tools will take some planning and strategy to put in place.

6. Track results and adjust your communication

This is a repetition of step 3. Tracking your results and analyzing your international responses is an ongoing process. International marketing is all about taking things one step and a time and making adjustments along the way.

The two processes of internet marketing and international marketing can be combined right here in the tracking and adjustment. This is also how you can learn about your foreign markets even if you live thousands of miles away and you don’t speak the language. This combination can be powerful at very first phase of your international business development.

Internet marketing is all about adjusting your message real time. It is about being present online in real time. If your communication is outdated no one will listen to you. You need to adapt to your foreign markets. When you start out, you do not know much about them. You must continually check and adjust your communication.

7. Identify a country to target specifically

You will get better results from your international communication if it is targeted to very specific markets.

This means you need to identify a country as a target to market specifically to; and there is no real way to choose which country you should start with other than saying the country with the best potential for real sales. There is no magical formula for choosing the first international target market that works across all industries. Find a country where you can reasonably expect a good client base.

There are obvious cultural obstacles for certain types of businesses. So check with all of the appropriate domestic authorities. They will have good insights into what goes on in other countries. Check with your countries embassy in the country concerned.

You can also base your decision solely on data: export data, industry revenue. You can also base your decision on where your competition is located or not located or if they are considering entering into a market.

International business is all about changing your mindset. Choose a country and get started. The first learning curve is the hardest. So don’t be afraid, jump in and focus on the learning experience of getting to know your market in one foreign country.

8. Create either a blog or a country specific newsletter for that target country depending on your foreign market.

Now, once you have identified a specific country you want to target, you will need communication targeted to that culture. Custom content for one particular country, not old content repackaged.

A blog may be the easiest tool to get to know your target country. You can also do this with a newsletter published for one cultural audience. The important thing is to have customized content written for one cultural market.

There may be translation costs involved. A blog will probably cost you more than a simple monthly newsletter. But a newsletter can be repurposed into several different forms of customized content such as articles, emails.

If your communication is directly targeting one specific culture, you will get better results than with you broad international targeting. Having custom content in either a blog or a newsletter reaching out to one foreign country is your first real presence in a foreign market. And you do not have to have offices there.

9. Track results and adjust your communication.

OK. So now you have a real presence in your target country. Guess what you next step is?
Stimulate and entice feedback. Track results. Adjust your communication to what you learn from your readers. Give them what they want to know. Test and start over again. You need to adjust your communication to the culture and market you want to create a business relationship with.
This is a learning process. It is critical to your international success.

Your Action Plan Continues

Identifying which products and services you want to sell to your foreign markets is yet another action plan. Use good internet marketing practices based on providing information in the above plan. This gives you the possibility of creating other information products as front end sales for your foreign market.

Once you can recognize the international expertise you have acquired through this process, you are well on your way to developing your business internationally. Use this action plan to continue to expand into other countries.

After you have adapted your business to one country’s culture, the process usually gets easier. You will be able to anticipate stumbling blocks more easily. But more importantly you will know how to adapt yourself much faster than the first time around.

Are you committed to speeding up your international sales cycles?

Learn how to combine cross-cultural marketing tools and international sales strategies for faster sales.

Join us on the International Sales Road Map

Would you like to develop your international business?
Are you a beginner at international sales and marketing?
Read the Beginners Guide Discover Your International Business