With more than 400 million users and increasing everyday, Facebook.com is one of the most powerful social media platforms around.  Facebook advertising platform is very similar to Google Ad sense; it displays ads on the right side of the screen allowing users to find out more information regarding the company/product.  There are a few more advantages to advertising on FAcebook, such as:

1. Target: The ad can be targeted towards the audience by gender, education, relationship status, workplace, and keywords.
2. Engage:  If you are promoting a page of event, Facebook will add the “Become a fan” or “RSVP to this event” button on the ad, therefor the users don’t have to leave their current page to engage with you.
3. Budget: Ads are shown based on cost per click model or cost per thousand model (pay per 1,000 ad views).  Depending on your ad the CPM model might work better for you.

Social media is evolving everyday, why not take advantage of it when you can and list your business for sale?

Can You Get a Top Price for Your Business In a Down Economy?

You didn’t get to be the owner of a successful private company by following the crowd.  You instinctively found opportunities to prosper within every crisis you faced.  Now, you are considering selling your company to perhaps, spend more time on Cape Cod or restoring that ’55 T-Bird that’s been collecting dust in the back of the shop for years now.  But, with the economy in the shape it is, doubtless best to put any plans of selling on hold for awhile until things turn around. Right or wrong?

Good News
Our experience selling businesses more than 2,000 businesses over almost thirty years through the best and worst of times is that private companies’ valuation methods do not change during a recession. In fact, a down economy might be the best time to sell a good company!

Here are some of the reasons why:

• Savvy individual and corporate acquirers understand that the best way to grow is through acquisition of profitable companies that will help their core business prosper.  They realize they must take advantage of an opportunity when it’s available or risk losing it altogether.
• Fewer profitable companies are on the market in poor economic times primarily because business owners who, under normal conditions, would be selling their businesses are deferring a sale because conventional wisdom dictates that “you can’t get a good price in a down market.”
• Serious buyers are constantly in search of quality acquisition opportunities.  The number of Main Street and middle market business buyers increase as more and more people are laid off and/or outsourced.
• You can get tomorrow’s price today for your business if you choose a buyer who recognizes the opportunity your business represents and considers expectations of future profitability when assessing value.

In order to obtain an optimum price for a business, regardless of the economic condition, one must attract the type buyer who will recognize the opportunity the business represents.  In real estate, optimum value is determined by the entity that will recognize highest and best use of a property.  Business prices typically reflect an acquirer’s perception of future earnings under their ownership. Therefore, the optimum value of a business is determined by the buyer who recognizes the most opportunity the business represents.  A business can be considered worthless to one yet be worth millions to another.

How to Identify Your Ideal Acquirer

There is no substitute for real world experience when it comes to differentiating between buyer types and determining how various issues surrounding your business and industry will impact their perception of value.  Public companies call upon their Investment Banker to obtain the pre sale intelligence required to make informed decisions.  Private companies can call upon their Business Intermediary to obtain the same kind of information.  The first step is to engage a Business Intermediary (Broker) who is familiar with the marketplace for your size and type business.  This professional will employ a two step approach to the process i.e.:

Step One – Provide you with:

• An overview of marketplace dynamics, a description of the different buyers, how they think and how their thinking impacts the value of your company.
• A summary of what buyers can be predicted to pay for your business,
• A list of recommendations both long and short term to enhance and increase your company’s value – in other words, be sure that a satisfactory outcome is obtainable before you bind yourself to a contract to sell.

Step Two – Once satisfied that you can obtain your price, even in a down economy, you authorize marketing efforts to begin.

• Marketing and Due Diligence materials are created and assembled
• Advertising and other marketing strategies are implemented to attract your ideal candidate
• You will know everything of importance about your candidate before they know your company’s identity
• Your business is sold at your price, typically with three or less exposures

In Summary:

Business pricing methods remain unchanged even in a down economy; fewer profitable companies are on the market, the number of serious buyers in the marketplace increases in a down economy, savvy business owner’s know Only the Right Buyer will pay the Right Price and; you should not attempt to sell unless you are sure you can get your price no matter what the economy.

Author: Theodore P. Burbank, FIBBA, CBI

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing.  It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a web page.  Twitter is a way for small business owners to talk directly to customers in a way that they were able to do only in person before, this helps to shorten the emotional distance between businesses and their customers.

Twitter is the digital manifestation of word of mouth, allowing users to broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.

Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers but it can help find both suppliers and customers nationwide.  It can give a small business national presence in a way only large marketing and advertising budgets have allowed in the past.  Twitter is also a great place for information.  For example you can learn business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.

Click here to create your free Twitter account today and start connecting!

Here are a few suggestions to help you assess your business and determine if you’re giving your customers what they’re expecting.

1. They’re Saying What?!: The first place you must start in your analysis is your telephone.  Make it a priority to thoroughly train everyone who might ever come into contact with a customer.
2. Listening In: Make numerous calls to your business, answering service, or call center over a period of days and record them.  Ask all sorts of questions and conduct yourself in various manners, all in order to capture a response to many different situations.  Then analyze the tapes and make necessary changes.  As a business you absolutely must have weekly meetings not only to stay on top of what is going on, but to let the manager know you are paying attention.
3. Sweat the Small Stuff: It’s not just what they say, nor just how they say it; it’s also their ability to give the prospect sufficient information in a coherent and understandable way  that the prospect is about to make the decision to take the next step and make an appointment or a purchase.  You and your employees are so accustomed to being in your space that it is all but impossible for any of you to see it through a customer’s eyes.  Fresh eyes not only look for problems, they also identify additional opportunities to create, reinforce, and maintain the image you want your customers to have of you and your company.

By conducting a basic audit of your business, you will be improving your sales conversion rate by addressing all the loose ends.  If you don’t remember the old saying, “A confused mind always says no”

2010 brought with it a renewed sense of expanding the business.  With that came plans to target the untapped demographic and reinvent the company to include them.

Now that you have set your new goal, that hard part is achieving it.  Below are three ways that can help you recruit new clients:

1. Go where the growth is:  Identify key industry segments that are growing and reach out to them with something as simple as attending their trade show.  “At Homestead Resort, in Midway, Utah, general manager Britt Mathwich says the hotel made a quick shift away from the corporate and training market to families, after seeing a slump in business travel.  The resort picked up more business by attending home-decorating and bridal shows, he says.”
2. Strategy of secondment: Partner with companies that provide similar or complementary services.  “Maclay, President of engineering-consulting firm Voler Systems, is now working on two projects that combine Voler’s electrical-engineering expertise with the other firm’s mechanical-engineering specialty.”
3. Online Tools: Maintain a blog or a social media profile which includes facebook.come, linkedin.com, and twitter.com.  Social-networking tools are also places to post promotions.  “Mr.Maclay says he gained new clients by posting the company’s resume on Craigslist.”

Take a few minutes to update your marketing plan and get your business off to a great start in 2010!

What a difference has the last decade in the way business is conducted around the world.  I am referring as the title suggests to how ubiquitous the internet has become and how central it has become to our existence.  Certainly, every teenage and even pre-teens learn ways to use the internet from Facebook to Twitter to Xbox to Ipod.

Just as in personal living the internet has contributed to a virtually unlimited ways to monitor, manage, and handle your business affairs.  Not just in operating your business, but when it comes to selling your business the internet offers countless ways to streamline and guide your process to more efficient way to prepare and even consummate the transaction.

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Seasoned professionals know this little known fact.  Valuing a business is not completely a science neither is it completely an art.  While there are many known and time tested method of valuing businesses, at the end of the day there are a lot of subjective elements that play a huge part in the valuation process.  Several sophisticated methods can be used to estimate potential business valuations but finally it all come down to what the buyers are willing to pay.

Now let us look at the few methods of business valuation that are out there.  One of the common approaches to valuing a business is the income approach.  Under this approach the valuation is based on future discounted income of the company.  This method relies on the accuracy of cash flow projections and will depend on the market conditions that will prevail.  While a financial investor can feel good about knowing the returns the business will provide, in some industries this can be hard to predict.  How many of us would have predicted the current financial meltdown we are experiencing and its impact on income & cash flows?

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There is no escaping the fact that the economy will always go through a recessionary and growth cycle.  The only fact that changes in every cycle is the timing of when a recession starts, when the economy bottoms out and if the recovery is V shaped U shaped or a W and so on.  The same is true for growth periods, and the facts that change are how long the growth continues until it slows down and falls into a recession.

Now that we have agreed that recessions are unavoidable, let us see how a business owner can handle his or her exit in a recession.  I am sure some readers are thinking, why, should any owner sell a business during a recession, why not simply ride out the recession, wait for the economy to grow again and then sell the business.  Good point, but experience tells me it is not always that simple.  There are a lot of reasons, I can think of, but let me just cite a couple of them.

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The National Food Service Security Council (NFSSC), a trade association for loss prevention and risk management professionals in the casual-dining and quick-service restaurant chain industry, announced it is expanding membership categories to include qualified franchisees and vendor companies.

“For the first time ever NFSSC is opening its membership doors to franchisee operators and vendor companies serving the multi-unit food service industry,” says Cliff Stepp, director of assets protection at Yum! NFSSC has always been about education and networking within the restaurant industry’s corporate professional loss prevention structure. Now we have the unique ability to add even more elements to that equation.”

Click here to register with NFSSCC today!

Online Directories are the perfect place for a small business to gain exposure to investors, partners and potential employees.  But as always there “risks that can hurt the company’s reputation.”

Many online directories such as crunchbase.com and wikipedia are great platform for small business to get their message out but small businesses should check monthly to ensure the information is accurate.

An easy way is to set up alerts from the directory and additional alerts such as Google Alerts.  Therefore every time something is added or removed from the listing the small business will receive an email.

Hurry and take advantage of all the free exposure and free advertising for your small business today!