7 Template Resources to Save You Time

If you are a small business, every bit of efficiency helps you. Free templates available online help you do exactly that. You don’t have to recreate Invoices, supply order forms, financial worksheets, NDA drafts, etc. They are all available out there. As you think about it, it seems fairly obvious to prepare templates for such repetitive tasks. It increases your productivity immensely and also gives you an opportunity to improve your brand image when you use customized templates for internal as well as external needs.

I have put together a list of useful resources. These are by no means exhaustive.

Google Docs Templates and Microsoft’s Office templates are, in general, very good resources for

presentation templates, MS Word and MS Excel based small business templates. Check them out. The resources below are in addition to the above and address a specific need.

1. Presentations

Brainy Betty is a very good resource for free and paid templates. Besides just the templates, they also offer a range of extra utilities and add-ons to be used with PowerPoint. The premium templates are not free, but are good. You can search for different kinds of templates on the basis of keywords and template colors. Microsoft’s Business Presentation templates and HP’s business templates and images section are good sources where you can get very good free templates to be used for presentations. A couple of resources for pay-to-use PowerPoint templates are Presentation Load and Dream Template.

2. B-plans

Business plan templates are essential for those run-ins with Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors. Having your plan ready and accessible makes you prepared for such situations. Bplans.com has a few good business plan templates to be used. Another very good resource for getting help on making B-plans with prepared templates is Score’s template gallery. It has business plan templates for start ups and established companies.

3. Financial Accounting Worksheets

This is a very good tool for goal setting as well as continuously assessing your growth. Monitoring cash flow and financials is good habit for small and large companies.

Score’s template gallery has profit and loss projections, balance sheets, sales forecast, start up expenses, financial history and ratios, cash flow, and breakeven analysis templates.

If you are an expert in finance, Exinfm is a good resource for getting some very good and free templates for financial valuation and the like. They are organized as per expected requirements and you are bound to find some that will suit your needs.

4. Invoices

Billing invoices need to be prepared fast and quick once the job is done. Microsoft’s site for Office products offers free templates for invoices. They are spread out over a range of different needs and requirements as anticipated for almost all kinds of businesses.

5. Office Agenda and Memos

If you need to have meetings frequently with your group, you know how important it is to have an agenda for the meeting ready and circulated among the members prior to the meeting. Having a simple template according to what you usually discuss makes it easy for you to record the proceedings and make sure that critical issues are covered. Meetings can stretch on for hours if no agenda was agreed upon in the beginning and valuable time is lost. I found that Microsoft’s online help has a good set of free templates for you to use for internal meetings, conferences, community meets among others.

6. Non-Disclosure Agreements

You often need NDAs when you share sensitive information with an affiliate or a client. Having a simple template for this is always handy. This is a fairly generic document, so you may try out any of the following templates. Please note that if there are some specific laws or clauses to be inserted, you need to have a section for them. Links: Business-in-a-box, Experienced People. You should also know that p2w2 has off-the-shelf, customizable Non Disclosure agreements that you can use when you document terms of service with a professionals.

7. Work-for-hire agreements

A simple work-for-hire document is about getting work done through others (like you can do on p2w2) but protecting the intellectual property in that work so you can claim it. P2w2 has off-the-shelf, customizable work-for-hire templates. In addition, Docstoc is a good source of such templates.

(Disclaimer: Nothing in this post or blog should be considered legal advice)

About the author: Chaitanya Sagar is the Co-Founder and CEO of p2w2, which helps small businesses outsource services like writing, software, graphic design, virtual assistance, business consulting and research. He is fascinated by entrepreneurship and the difference technology can make in people’s lives. Chaitanya blogs at p2w2 blog (RSS) and tweets at www.twitter.com/Chaitanya.

Picture credits: Envios, Endlosautomat

   

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Networking – The Key to Unlock Small Business Growth

What is the mantra for success of your business? Introducing new products? Big ad campaigns? Networking? No. It’s relationships!

Networking sounds like wiring. And many people network like wiring – they make it messy and they want to extract something out of it.

Networking is not exchanging business cards! It’s about connecting with people. That is how you can help them. Darcy Rezac (in the book “The frog and the prince”) defines it as “discovering what you can do for someone else.” (Source: Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of Schmoozing)

Relationships are about Caring for Others

Just today, I heard this podcast (Jackie Speier, Former State Senator and Deborah Stephens, Center for Innovative Leadership at Stanford) where Deborah talked about relationships and she said, “I don’t think we have to network. We have to build Relationships. Relationships are about caring about someone.” And caring is reflected in how we listen to people, and how much we help others, how much you want to meet people, and how much time can you spare for others just to help. And you have a ton of such opportunities in business.

Wonders Relationships Do to Small Businesses

I cannot think of p2w2 without relationships. Every step we have taken until now was made possible because we had someone who helped us along the way.

Relationships are so important – they help you reach a higher orbit. You get new opportunities because someone knows you. They help you keep your business in a tough economy. They help you in hiring, financing your company (friends and family are the biggest and the first source of financing small businesses), in purchasing (you know deals before others!), and of course in selling (referrals). Relationships could be the essence of building a business.

If you have great relationships, you can survive the biggest challenges in the market, competition or otherwise.

So how would you network? err.. build relationships?

About the author: Chaitanya Sagar is the Co-Founder and CEO of p2w2, an online marketplace for services like writing, software, graphic design, virtual assistance, business consulting and research. He is fascinated by entrepreneurship and the difference technology can make in people’s lives. Chaitanya blogs at p2w2 blog (RSS) and tweets at www.twitter.com/Chaitanya.

Picture credits: Theeerin, techcocktail

   

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The Slow Down Reaches Small Businesses

Ever thought Enron is history? The past 10 days have been shocking in India as the Satyam Fiasco unfolded. The $ 1.5 billion fraud made headlines across the world. (see Satyam: Sanskrit for ‘Enron’). It’s great to see that the Indian government has acted swiftly (see: India Names New Satyam Board).

Satyam episode is not the only thing bothering me. Layoffs in small businesses have been on the rise. (source) The ADP national employment report indicates that layoffs in small businesses have increased 3.5 times in the past 3 months. In Dec 2008 alone, a staggering 281,000 employees have been laid off in small businesses. This follows 197,000 employees in Nov 2008.

“Sharply falling employment at medium and small-size businesses clearly indicates that the recession has now spread well beyond manufacturing and housing-related activities.”

Historical data indicates that this has been the largest fall in employment in small businesses in the past 8 years since ADP has been collecting the data.  The highest prior to this was in Oct 2001, after the dot com bubble burst and Sept 11, in which 125,000 employees were laid off.

This is not good news for the small businesses. I do hope that we will get over the financial troubles soon. What is your own assessment? What is happening in your business and other businesses you know of?

   

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Never Outsource Happiness. Have a Wonderful 2009!

   

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Dealing with upset customers

Receiving positive feedback from your satisfied customers is always nice, but the real test of your business acumen lies in dealing with the upset ones. Unfortunately, despite efforts, mistakes happen. When they do, how you tackle them determines your success.

A talking customer is an opportunity

Let’s look at the opportunity. When the client is upset, she is willing to talk. And you have an opportunity to listen what she has got. Most likely, she has a genuine issue. If she had, you have every reason to alleviate the problem and see to it that the client is satisfied. Even assume, the client is being a little unreasonable. She wants a little more than what the implied promise is. That is an opportunity to show your customers that you mean what you say in your marketing materials.

Fix Your Processes

There’s another opportunity. An upset client is a symptom. Studies reveal that a small percentage of upset clients actually complain. It means that the clients are just a tip of an iceberg. Most likely, with every such disappointed client, there is a loose end in the process. If you do some soul searching, you will come up with some problem that you can fix and help you have more satisfied clients. I have learnt that it’s better to be prepared to listen to complaints. You never know what you might be missing out on unless you get critical feedback from them.

An upset customer might interact with an employee in person or on the phone. Remember, when a customer is upset, he or she might seem to lash out on you as a person. They can get unruly and sometimes downright obnoxious. Excepting the odd one out, most customers are looking for someone in your company to listen patiently and solve their problem in a reasonable time. Just give them a smile, hear them out and solve the problem they have. That is it! The first lesson is that you must listen to the customer.

Receive the Angst with Pleasure

There is no need to take the diatribe personally, I realised that the customer doesn’t know me as a person and his or her angst is not meant to be directed at me unless it is my fault. Keep your cool throughout the talk, and be professional and considerate when you respond. A lot of such customers might have a genuine problem and even though I agree that their tone might be far from polite, their complaint needs to be heard objectively. A brief heartfelt apology is a good start. An abusive and angry customer generally calms down to a great extent if you approach the issue with an open mind after an apology. If I got defensive I immediately came across as not trying to look at the problem from his or her perspective. Listen carefully without interrupting. Make sure that you register the complaint fully the first time itself, asking a customer to repeat the problem again will portray inattentiveness.

In case this conversation is happening on the phone, I make sure to note down the real problems which might not be obvious if the customer is irate. After taking down all the details, I offer to call the customer back at a time convenient for him or her. This gives you time to calmly resolve the problem while letting the customer cool down and will avoid the problem from exacerbating. I know that I have spent a considerable amount in acquiring the customer, so I need to make an effort to retain him or her.

I found myself empathizing with such customers and deviating from standard company policy in a few cases to help them out. Be ready to do so, dealing with people means that you cannot always follow a rigid set of rules. Give them the attention they deserve as individuals rather than a complaint. A company policy needs to be flexible since my customer takes priority over it.

Followup and Solve

Choose your words wisely. There are ways of replying in an effective manner without upsetting the customer further. Offer them the best you can; if that still doesn’t appease them, transfer the problem to a superior and brief them effectively about the issue. As a final point, always remember to follow up on the problem with the customer once it gets fixed. Satisfactorily dealing with upset customers will go a long way in ensuring the success of your venture.

So, what do you do when a customer calls in with a complaint?

About the author: Chaitanya Sagar is the Co-Founder and CEO of p2w2, an online marketplace for services like writing, software, graphic design, virtual assistance, business consulting and research. Chaitanya blogs at p2w2 blog (RSS). He is fascinated by entrepreneurship and the difference technology can make in people’s lives.

Picture credits: Blatch Shermeee

   

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