Tuesday, June 28, 2011

4 Ways to Use Less Paper at Your Business

If you look in the trash can or – let’s hope — recycling bins at many businesses, you’ll probably find a ton of paper. Paper is one of the most common waste products at most businesses, and thus one of the biggest sustainability opportunities many small businesses have.
Cutting down on paper waste isn’t as easy as you’d think. For one thing, paper itself is relatively cheap, so business owners might feel like there’s little economic incentive to reduce it. Moreover, it’s hard to change perception that paper use has little environmental impact. But that’s not true: Recycling 1 ton of paper can save 7,000 gallons of water and enough energy to power the average U.S. home for six months, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Reducing paper use in the first place, then, can save a lot more.
Cutting down on paper waste should be viewed as high priority on your sustainability checklist, just like saving energy or reducing water use.  Here are four ways small businesses can cut down on their paper use.
recycle paper
1. Use printers that allow for double-sided printing. You can halve the amount of paper used by printing documents on both sides of paper. Some laser printers offer double-sided or “duplex” printing as a standard feature so you can easily set it up through your computer’s printer option features as the default mode. Others make it more tedious or impossible. Check into this capability before purchasing a new printer.
2. Repurpose used paper into notepads. Despite your best efforts, odds are you still have plenty of paper printed on one side that goes to waste. Collect this paper over time and turn it into small notepads for scratch paper. Many copy shops and office supply stores offer this service for less than a dollar per notepad, or you can bind them yourself by purchasing padding compound.
3. Cut down on junk mail. Junk mail to businesses accounts for a huge amount of needless paper waste. There are several strategies for stopping junk mail from being delivered to a business, which we’ve outlined before.
4. Go “paperless.” More businesses that traditionally rely on lots of paper for transactional purposes are finding ways to greatly reduce it. Some mortgage lenders, for instance, now put loan documents on jump drives and allow for electronic signatures to avoid printing out dozens of pages. Other businesses make PDFs of documents they want to save electronically rather than printing them out.
Of course, you still need paper for various things. So when you do buy paper products for your business, look for paper with a high post-consumer recycled content, such as 60 percent or even 100 percent.  This greatly reduces the number of trees cut down, gallons of water used and amount of carbon dioxide emitted to make that paper.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Why is it important to have a (good) website for your business?

Nowadays it is almost instinctive for any business to create a website. Basically every person that is asked if a business should have one would doubt very little to reply affirmatively. But when asked Why? the doubt starts to grow.

It is so simple and so powerful that is hard to imagine why not, but in this humble post we will try to explain why it is not only important to have a website but a good one.

Before the internet was born businesses used strategies to promote themselves like having a big sign on top of the store, advertise on newspapers or TV, mail coupons or fliers, have a nice window display and rely on the happy customers to spread the word about it. This strategies are still being used today but they are moving online.

Having a website for your business is like opening a new virtual office or store. Visitors will come in, look around and eventually convert to customers or leave. It doesn’t matter if you sell shoes or plumbing services. Visitors will come in, and if your website works properly, you will get new customers.
And the beauty is that not only are you opening a virtual office for visitors around you but for a world wide audience. You might have the biggest sign on your town, but from two miles away it is hardly ever seen. You might have the biggest ad on the local paper but no one will call you from out of state. A website can open a business virtually unlimited opportunities.

The value of an internet presence is much more tangible for retail stores since they are opening their doors 24/7 to customers all over the world without much hassle. If your store is in Kentucky you wouldn’t care to ship your products to Bangladesh, there is almost no difference that shipping it to New York. For a small investment your possible customer base is expanded borderless.

So, what will a site provide you? First of all, presence. If you have your website it will be there when someone is looking for your products or services. It will also let you tell the story, it is not just a phone or address in the Yellow Pages but a display of what you want to tell your customers. If they have a warmer feeling about your website they will pick you instead of the competition, the battleground has changed. And lastly, it is a great tool to communicate with your patrons. Not only you can tell your message to them, but you can also hear them back, receive feedback about your work and how to improve it.

With the present status of the internet the communication is not only between you and your customers, but between them. The mouth to mouth marketing has moved to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If you fix computers and someone was happy about your work they will talk about it and your site can be the hub of that information, and if someone was unhappy you can prevent the word from spreading by just saying sorry.

It is now clear that you must have a website. The quality and functionality of it will depend on your budget and willingness but if it is just a free one with the business description and a phone you are on the right track.


November 20th, by Diego

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Microloan Program

What is a Microloan?

The Microloan Program provides small, short-term loans to small business concerns and certain types of not-for-profit child-care centers. The SBA makes funds available to specially designated intermediary lenders, which are nonprofit community-based organizations with experience in lending as well as management and technical assistance. These intermediaries make loans to eligible borrowers. The maximum loan amount is $50,000, but the average microloan is about $13,000.

How Microloan Funds May Be Used

Microloans may be used for the following purposes:
  • Working capital
  • The purchase of inventory or supplies
  • The purchase of furniture or fixtures
  • The purchase of machinery or equipment.
Proceeds from a microloan cannot be used to pay existing debts or to purchase real estate.

Technical Assistance

Each intermediary (lender) is required to provide business training and technical assistance to its micro-borrowers. If you apply for microloan financing, you may be required to fulfill training and/or planning requirements before your loan application is considered. This business training can be helpful to you as you launch or expand your small business.

Terms, Interest Rates, and Fees

Loan terms vary according to:
  • The size of the loan
  • The planned use of funds
  • The requirements of the intermediary lender
  • The needs of the small business borrower
The maximum term allowed for a microloan is six years. Interest rates vary, depending on the intermediary lender and costs to the intermediary from the U.S. Treasury. Generally, these rates will be between 8 and 13 percent.

Collateral

Each intermediary lender has its own lending and credit requirements. Generally, intermediaries require some type of collateral as well as the personal guarantee of the business owner.

Contact Your Local Microloan Intermediary

Small businesses interested in applying for a microloan should contact an intermediary in their area, since all credit decisions are made on the local level. The Microloan Program is available in selected locations in most states. For more information contact your local SBA District Office or review the attached file for a list of participating intermediaries by state.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

7 Small Business Marketing Tips

Advertising, Sales and Marketing

1. Don't Advertise Like a Big Business 
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. A small business can't afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales ...now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising - and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.

2. Offer a Cheaper Version 
Some prospective customers are not willing to pay the asking price for your product or service. Others are more interested in paying a low price than in getting the best quality. You can avoid losing sales to many of these customers by offering a smaller or stripped down version of your product or service at a lower price.

3. Offer a Premium Version 
Not all customers are looking for a cheap price. Many are willing to pay a higher price to get a premium product or service. You can boost your average size sale and your total revenue by offering a more comprehensive product or service ...or by combining several products or services in a special premium package offer for a higher price.

4. Try Some Unusual Marketing Methods 
Look for some unconventional marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. You may discover some highly profitable ways to generate sales and avoid competition. For example, print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website or generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.

5. Trim Your Ads 
Reduce the size of your ads so you can run more ads for the same cost. You may even be surprised to find that some of your short ads generate a better response than their longer versions.

6. Set up Joint Promotions with Other Small Businesses 
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This usually produces a large number of sales for a very low cost.

7. Take Advantage of Your Customers 
Your customers already know and trust you. It's easier to get more business from them than to get any business from somebody who never bought from you. Take advantage of this by creating some special deals just for your existing customers ...and announce new products and services to them before you announce them to the general market.

Also, convert your customers into publicity agents for your business. Develop an incentive for them to tell associates and friends about the value of your products or services. An endorsement from them is more effective than any amount of advertising - and it is much cheaper.
Each of these 7 marketing tips provides a simple, low-cost way for any small business to find customers and generate sales quickly.

Copyright 2005 Bob Leduc

Monday, June 6, 2011

What Obama’s Budget Means for the S.B.A.

In recent weeks, President Obama has traveled the country calling for renewed government spending to foster small-company innovation, but on Monday his administration unveiled a Small Business Administration budget (pdf) for 2012 that limits growth in its most important program, government-guaranteed general business loans. It proposes making cuts, modest and substantial, to other S.B.A. programs as well, and would eliminate two initiatives altogether. Still, over all the cuts are not as drastic as the administration may want to convey.
All told, the Obama administration seeks $985 million in new spending for the agency — or $818 million for small-business programs, after subtracting funds for administering disaster loans, an S.B.A. function that is only marginally related to the agency’s small-business mission (and one that fluctuates wildly in response to events). That is just over half of what it received for these programs in 2010, when the agency was engorged with supplemental stimulus money to spur lending and borrowing.
Congress has yet to pass a budget for fiscal year 2011, and unless it does, spending will remain at 2010 levels, excluding the stimulus money. If $818 million still seems like a big number — should Congress bless the administration proposal, it would be the highest annual appropriation for the agency, in nominal dollars, since at least 2000 — it chiefly reflects the higher cost of subsidizing loans, rather than an expansion of the agency’s services.
In the general business, or 7(a), loan program, the S.B.A. guarantees 85 percent of loans up to $150,000 and 75 percent of loans up to $5 million. The S.B.A., like all federal agencies that make or guarantee loans, must account for the cost of that lending in its annual budget by projecting the share of loans likely to fail and then spreading that cost across the entire pool. For loans made from 2005 to 2008, “the collateral that people had, particularly real estate, was quite inflated,” said the S.B.A. administrator, Karen G. Mills, in a conference call with reporters. “And as a result of those assets really not having the value that they did in that time, we are seeing losses from that cohort in the portfolio.” Those losses have driven up the cost of the subsidy, which is currently shared by taxpayers and S.B.A. lenders and borrowers, who pay a fee on each loan.
For its fiscal year 2012, which will begin in October 2011, the administration is asking for a subsidy that would permit up to $16.5 billion in 7(a) lending. That is $1 billion less than what the S.B.A. sought for fiscal year 2011, and less than it loaned in calendar year 2010, when extended Recovery Actprovisions made 7(a) loans unusually attractive by raising the guarantee to 90 percent and eliminating fees. Demand for 7(a) loans has fallen sharply since those provisions expired at the end of last year, said Ms. Mills, and while the agency expects an uptick, it doesn’t expect to have to turn borrowers away. (Even in pre-recession years, 7(a) lending did not top this ceiling.) But, she added, the S.B.A. already charges borrowers and lenders the most it is allowed by law, so if Congress appropriates a smaller subsidy, the agency will be forced to guarantee still fewer loans. “The subsidy only lasts for so many loans, and that restricts our ability to meet market needs,” said Ms. Mills.
The agency’s microloan program would be hit harder. Microloans are small loans to very small businesses, typically in low-income areas, made by nonprofit organizations with money borrowed from the S.B.A.; the nonprofits also provide training and other technical assistance to borrowers.* The Recovery Act essentially doubled the amount of money the S.B.A. had to loan to microlenders, which quickly absorbed the extra funds. But that, too, has been spent, and as with guaranteed loans, the subsidy expense of making microloans has risen substantially, said an S.B.A. spokesman, Jonathan Swain. The agency will seek to cap its lending at not more than $25 million, the same limit in place for 2011 but well below the $40 million actually provided in both 2009 and 2010. The administration’s budget also proposes a deep cut in funding for the counseling that accompanies microloans — $10 million, down from $22 million in 2010.
Adding to the pressure on these programs is the Small Business Jobs Act that became law last September, which noticeably raised the top loan sizes for most guaranteed loans and microloans. In the microloan program particularly, where demand for loans could easily outstrip supply, larger loans may well mean fewer loans, further constricting the program’s reach.
In the conference call, Ms. Mills stuck to the theme of making difficult choices that Mr. Obama has sounded in recent speeches. “It’s critical that as we go forward with our budgets, we continue to support small business,” she said. “We have to make sure that they can find ways to grow and innovate and create jobs as we come out of the recession, and there’s still work to be done.” But, she added, “even agencies like the S.B.A. have to tighten our belt, too.” The administration apparently believes that there is more political mileage to be gained at the moment by emphasizing its willingness to hurt the ones it loves over its commitment to helping small businesses create jobs — a summary of the budget sent to reporters highlighted the 45 percent cut from 2010 levels, even though the stimulus funding was an extraordinary circumstance.
The president’s budget also proposes spending less on business counseling.Small-business development centers, which are jointly paid for by the S.B.A. and state or local governments, would receive $10 million less from the S.B.A., a cut of nearly 9 percent. The agency would also eliminate a separate small counseling program for the sorts of very small businesses that might be eligible for microloans, as well as a drug-free workplace program, which together would save $9 million. Other counseling programs, including  Score, would maintain their funding levels or see slight increases.
Programs that help disadvantaged businesses win government contracts, which have seen big funding increases under the Obama administration, would see modest increases next year.
Ms. Mills said that cuts to microloan technical assistance would be offset by money from the Recovery Act, and that the jobs act provided $50 million to small-business development centers, which they could use to soften the blow in 2012. Still, she said, “this is what belt-tightening is about. Everybody across our 900 small-business development centers is going to do what we’re doing at headquarters and in the field, which is find out how to do more with less. That’s what taxpayers are expecting of us.”
But C. E. “Tee” Rowe, president and chief executive of the Association of Small Business Development Centers, said the centers have already used money from the jobs act to hire more advisers to do more counseling. Moreover, he contended, a cut in federal funding would lead to a cut in state funding. “The state government looks at it as a situation where they’re required to come up with less matching funds, so they will,” he said. “It’s a reduction in both sides.”
Connie Evans, president and chief executive of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, a trade group for microlenders, criticized the cuts to programs serving the smallest, poorest businesses. “The initiative that the administration has announced recently seems to emphasize high-growth, high-tech businesses,” she said, “and it seems to not grasp the idea that innovation takes place in low-wealth communities as well. And these entrepreneurs need support. Businesses that receive support from microenterprise development organizations have a higher survival rate than the average business and create three to five jobs on average.”
On Capitol Hill, the Democratic leaders of the small-business committees expressed cautious support. “The president has, again, submitted a budget for the Small Business Administration that allows the agency to meet its mission, after years of being under-funded and unable to help small businesses,” Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said in a statement. However, she also signaled she would fight the cut in funding for small-business development centers, which she described as a “lifeline that we must strengthen not weaken.” Representative Nydia Velázquez Democrat of New York, called the president’s S.B.A. proposals “a starting point.”
But Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the ranking Republican on the Senate small business committee, chastised the Obama administration for seeking more money “for salaries, operating costs, and the administrator’s Executive Direction budget” — which, she pointed out, has nearly tripled since 2008. “If the president can find areas for spending cuts within the programs that directly reach America’s entrepreneurs,” Ms. Snowe said through a spokeswoman, “he should be able to find areas for cuts within the agency’s overhead expenses.”
*Microlending should not be confused with the late and troubled America’s Recovery Capital loan program created by the stimulus, in which the S.B.A. fully guaranteed small bank loans to “struggling yet viable” businesses.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Find Business Loans, Grants & Other Financial Assistance


Federal, state and local governments offer a wide range of financing programs to help small businesses start and grow their operations. These programs include low-interest loans, venture capital, and scientific and economic development grants.
Use SBA.gov's Loans and Grants Search Tool to get a list of financing programs for which you may qualify. Please note that many small businesses do not qualify for government grants. For more information, visit Facts About Government Grants. Additionally, check out the resources below to learn more about small business financing programs.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Videos to Help Small Businesses Export

President Obama set an ambitious, yet attainable goal of doubling US exports by 2015, and small businesses are leading the way. Often, the only tools a business needs to sell their goods and services overseas are a website and a broadband connection.
At the SBA, we are working to increase the number of small businesses that export, and the number of countries they ship to. Our approach is simple: Identify. Prepare. Connect. Support. We start by identifying small businesses that are interested in exporting. We then work to prepare these companies for the process by connecting them with overseas markets, and supporting them with loans and counseling.
The SBA recently teamed up with Inc. Magazine and AT&T to produce a video series with tips and tricks to help businesses grow and create jobs through exporting:


Additional videos are posted at www.inc.com/exporting, and you can learn more about exporting on our website www.sba.gov/international.