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|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Start Up is an ultimate dream of any young college graduate. These day’s students coming out of IIT’s (and also other colleges) are venturing into Start Ups rather being hired by some corporation. Start Up sounds very fascinating however it has other side also. Start Ups could make or break things.

In this article we try to figure out advantages as well as disadvantages of Start Up business in India. If you live here then you have to consider both sides of the picture. You can’t just see the rosy side of the story and ignore the underbelly of a start up business in India. Let us first look at some of the major advantages of Start Ups in India.

[Image Credit - Indian Startups]
[Image Courtesy* – Indian Startups]

Advantages of Start Up Business in India

Sky is the Limit When it Comes to Innovation

One of the biggest advantages of a Start Up is that you are full of energy and willing to experiment something new. You are not afraid of failure or breaking the rules because you can conceive and implement whatever you like.

This kind of freedom is missing if you are working for a regular company. You can take innovation to a new level and create products that no one has done before. A fearless mind, the energy and the excitement you can only find in a Start Up and not if you are working for some other company.

Create Your Own Rule, You’re the Boss

This is true for any other country. In a startup you don’t have to listen to your clients because you are in the driving seat. Usually if you are working for some other company then you have issues where you have to listen to management and make changes accordingly.

However in a startup you can take risk and make your own rule although this has its own risk. Here you are not following any fixed formula but still you can do it in a startup.

No Dearth of Seed Funding if the Start Up is Promising

If your idea is solid then you don’t have to worry about the funding. Today there are multiple seed investors in the country and outside who are ready to fund as much as they like.

There is no limit to capital that you can access. However your new startup has to convince them that the idea is really great and it is going to give returns on every penny they are investing. Recently Tata invested into an online car portal named CarDekho.com, the exact amount is unknown.

Start Ups Better at Pricing then Corporations

Start Ups can offer really competitive price to their customers. Why so many start ups are successful because price of their products are very competitive.

Start Up gives you complete control over designing and setting price of your new product. This is absolutely not possible if you are working for another company because they usually stick to a formula.

Availability of Start Up Eco System

The eco system is very important. Although in India you do have a developed ecosystem for certain kind of startups. If your startup is all about online shopping or anything to do with e-commerce then it is quite successful.

So you have the right kind of mentors who are ready to guide you through the tough times. So these were few advantages of a startup in India and elsewhere.

You also need to see other side of the picture because a startup in India could land in many troubles.

Disadvantages of Start Up Business in India

Higher Cost, Tax and Regulations for a Start Up in India

Starting up in India isn’t that easy because the cost is very higher compared to other parts of the world. The taxes are higher and there are regulations from the government that makes things more difficult.

The upfront cost before you start your venture could go up to $2000. You have to pay huge cost if you want to close your start up and move one.

No Seed Funding Unless the Start Up is Exceptionally Promising

Well you do get seed funding only when your start up is exceptionally promising. Previously in the article I mentioned how Tata has funded CarDekho an online car portal.

When Tata gave funds to CarDekho the company already was priced at over $100 million. This is not possible with every other startup. Forget about $100 million, only few startups are able to raise $1 million. So how a mediocre entrepreneur is going to raise funds for their startup without any seed funding?

Ecosystem Still Not Very Developed

Ecosystem is developed for only few kinds of startups like e-commerce. If you are venturing into something very technical in nature (like hardware startups) then you will face problems because there is no one around to guide you.

You will not find mentors in India if your startup is not about e-commerce (or if it is not an online venture). That is why most of the startups move to Silicon Valley.

Hiring New Employees Could Be a Challenge

The last but not the least problem is human resource. Not very people are interested working in a startup. Usually they find problems working in a startup so they avoid it and join an established company because that is important for their career.

They don’t trust startup because they don’t know whether they are going to succeed or not. So hiring employees could be a challenge.

Whether you Should go for it or not?
You might be confused by reading advantages and disadvantages of a startup. There are advantages as well as disadvantages. But if you really believe you have a great idea that can change the marketplace and give tough competition to its competitors then go for it.

You really worth a shot as it may turn out to be the next $100 million company.

However if you aren’t sure about the product then you better lie low. You need to develop your product first and then think of venturing out.

Without any plan you can fail and it will cost you heavily. Remember 9 out 10 startups fail.

About the author

Priya Nagrale is the Co-founder of SureJob, a job listing portal and can be contacted at admin@surejob.in

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments
Are you losing possible new sales, registrations and subscribers ?
Before you answer that question, answer this one:
Can you remember the last time you updated ‘About Me’ page ? If your answer to this question is anything other than ‘YES’, then you need this guide. Andrew Wise from Wise Startup Blog has a complete about me page guide on what Should be on your page and what Should Not.
Before you read the guide, here’s an actionable tip you can use right now

Build a Call to Action Into Your About Me Page

What’s a call to action?… If you run a blog, then your call to action should be to “subscribe” to your blog. If you are a salesperson, your readers should “call you”. If you have an ecommerce site, then you should promote your “100% satisfaction guarantee”, or whatever your promo is to encourage customers to buy.

You get it. Okay, so now implement this technique and checkout the rest of the guide or just skim the infographic below:

[Source* – Andrew Wise Blog]
If you loved the info-graphic, than you would surely enjoy the ‘Mantras’ shared by Andrew Wise on creating Killer About-Me Page
Note* : Content reproduced with Andrew Wise’s consent

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Today we have a guest article by Clay Clark who is former United States Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, an award-winning speaker & founder of the Thrive15.com online business education platform designed to help people to start a business, grow a business or advance in their careers.

Note – I in the article refers to Clay. Some of his views might be only applicable for US based startups.

He shares  sixteen Business laws every Entrepreneur should know. So let’s get started with his guest article.

Action is the real measure of intelligence : Napoleon Hill

After consulting countless entrepreneurs in nearly every industry imaginable, I have found the following universal business laws that successful entrepreneurs follow and you should too –

Dream big and then focus on turning those big ideas into small action steps

You have to begin with the end goal in mind, knowing that a goal is a dream with a deadline. You must believe and understand that if you do not impose a deadline for your dreams on yourself, your dreams will never become reality because they will never get done. You must learn to break down your big ideas into the small actionable items needed to get things done. This is skill that you can learn and a skill that is taught in the book Scale by Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel.

Learn to sell or your business will go to hell

If you can’t sell your product, it goes from being an asset to a liability. Learn to sell, partner with someone who can sell, or learn to be poor. And when I say “learn to sell” I realize that most people (not you) immediately formulate a mental picture a man similar to the sales hack below. My friend, the man featured below is not selling, he demonstrating high-pressure “jackassery” in combination with a lack of tact, knowledge and skill.

If you are serious about learning to sell make sure to read Soft Selling In A Hard World by Jerry Vass, Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, The New Conceptual Selling by Robert Miller and Relationship Selling by Jim Cathcart. There are as many highly-skilled natural sales people as there are natural cricket players or American-style football players. Learn to sell or you will come across like the man below.

Over deliver and you will soon be over paid

Over deliver on promises and deadlines. Show up early, deliver your product early, and deliver more than you promised. Over deliver now and in the future, and you will be overpaid. My friend this concept of over-delivery and forming the “Habit of Doing More Than Paid For” is described in great detail by Napoleon Hill in his bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich. The habit of doing less than paid for and always doing everything a day late or just in time and slightly wrong is taught by everyone else. Don’t do what everyone else is doing if you want to get paid like the top 5%.

Always deliver on your promises

Even when it’s not fun, easy, or conveniently affordable, you must deliver on your promises. Build a foundation for success around a solid reputation so that you can exponentially grow your level of compensation. Most entrepreneurs really struggle with this and it’s usually a result of poor organization habits. If you are choosing to be disorganized you are going to start dropping the ball and forgetting to complete tasks.

To be a successful entrepreneur you must have a maniacal focus on details. Most struggling entrepreneurs are visionary generalists who lack the discipline needed to sit down, shut up and write down all of the actionable details needed to move from point A to point B. However, ALL SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS IN THE HISTORY OF THIS GREAT PLANET are either phenomenal when it comes writing out the specific details or they have hired someone on their team who is phenomenal with the details. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple was correct when he once said – This is what customers pay us for – to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers.

Standardize everything

Common sense is not common; thus, you must create duplicable processes for every facet of your business. Think like GE, Southwest, and QuikTrip; not like some ridiculous and perpetually-just-barely-surviving-bait-shop-or-taco-truck. My friend mentally marinate on this for a moment.

Warren Buffet, who is one of the world’s wealthiest people and arguable the most successful investor of all time said, “I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” What does this mean? It means that you must build your business based around standardized systems that work and not around the minds of people who will go and go.

(more…)

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Subject lines are incredibly influential in deciding the course of your email campaigns. After all they ensure whether someone even opens the campaign; your first step towards engagement. If it weren’t for a convincing subject line no would even bother to open your campaigns. Thus, Subject lines play a very pivotal role in getting the first step towards engagement.

But are subject lines that critical? Yes! Consider a normal advertisement you saw off Facebook or your TV. How long does the ad stay relevant? Only for a few moments. Now consider the fact that the inbox won’t throw out emails if they remain unopened.

Emails linger in the inbox long after they get placed. As one can never truly predict when a campaign connects with a subscriber; a strong and influential subject line can drive opens even if it takes the subscriber a few days.

A subject line is the first impression of your email marketing campaign. And as they say “first impression last”, your subject lines carry more weight-age than you would think.

subject-line-image

Are there any rules to Subject Line creation?

Yes! And No!

This might seem slightly confusing but there are no hard & fast rules to designing a good and effective subject line. Subject lines can be interpreted in various manners, so one subject line might not suit all groups within your audience. Nevertheless, there are some elements you should steer away from when designing your subject lines.

Long and boring!

Studies conducted across various demographics depict a clear correlation between opens and length of subject lines. Ideally and statistically shorter subject lines are better at prompting opens. This is primarily because no one has got the time to read big sentences when only a few words can convey the intention of the campaign. Consider another factor; typically you can see up to 40 -60 characters on your subject line, when using a computer.

On smartphones your subject line are bound to get truncated when casually viewing the inbox. Having short subject lines that give clear and concise intentions connect better with all groups. It’s all about being visible.

It’s all psychological!

In truest essence, subject lines deal with the psyche of the individual and certain words can push the subject line further. Having subject lines designed around particular words can greatly influence a subscriber. Appropriate phrasing plays significant role in determining the effectiveness of subject lines. Here’s a compilation of various categories of keywords that can be deployed in subject lines:

  1. Benefit – If your subject line conveys the benefits of opening the campaign certain words out perform others. For example the word “cheapest” has a negative influence in read rates as opposed to “fastest” or “quickest”
  2. Clickbait – If you’ve been thinking that clickbait keywords still work their magic, you’re wrong. Clickbait words no longer influence opens, in fact they are counter-productive
  3. Commanding words – Commanding words are quite tricky, because no one likes to be bossed around. Words like “register”, “add” or “try” influence opens far more than “buy”, “call” or “click”
  4. Discount and price oriented keywords – A majority of e-commerce brands heavily rely on phrases like “2 for 1”, “clearance sale”, “half off” or mention price drops in the subject lines. The only way these subject lines works are when the discount offered is significantly large. Such words are way too common in the email ecosystem, hence it easy to look past such routine subject lines
  5. Urgency – Subject lines that indicate urgency generate high open rates. However phrasing still acts as an influencer. Consider two subject lines; “30% Off on Shoes, Limited time only” and “30% Off on Shoes, Expiring soon”. The former will pay better results.

Subject lines are quite a tricky affair, but one cannot undermine their worth. It’s vital to devise clever and original subject lines to get audience to open campaigns. One can truly say that Subject lines are skillful art; you have to be expressive and clever, while maintain brevity and clarity.

And as all email strategies of email marketing service provider go; you need to test, test and test some more. A/B split testing with different subject lines can give insight on which work and which don’t. Analysis of these results should aid in developing a psychological angle to identify how different groups respond to different subject lines.

Once you’re clear of varying inclinations of segments in the audience, subject line creation would be a piece of cake. But don’t stick to the same practices for every campaign; innovate to improve efficiency.

About the author

Shantam Dubey is Assistant SEO manager at iCubes.in. You can have a look at his complete profile here

Image Credit* – thephorest

|In: Blogging|Last Updated:

Blogs can be a very gainful tool if utilized appropriately. Benefiting from blogs is simply a matter of grabbing the awareness of an audience and not accomplishing any sort of selling. You should start your blog with any blog hosting service. A free blog hosting service permits you to initiate blogging straight away without needing any acquaintance of hosting, or programming.

Successful-Blogging-2

 

In this article you will come across 8 topmost ways to successful blogging.

How to begin

The best way to begin is starting with a free service. In case, your blog doesn’t yield any positive results, eventually you are not going to lose any money. A blog is always structured in chronological order, and your newest entry is exhibited first.

If your blog traffic develops greatly, you can upgrade it and make the most recent blog entry the message of your progress. Simply you can type the new blog URL address. It will direct visitors to the new blog site, and continue you following, without difficulty to anybody.

Niche selection

A niche is an aimed product or service. You should make a decision on a product or service offered by you.  Prefer an area which you can passionately write about, and you can use keyword research engines to find well-liked searched topics.

As long as there are viewers for your topic, your blog should be doing well. Any topic can be measured a niche, and it doesn’t matter how large or small the audience is. If there are people who are fascinated in hearing about your topic, you can pick to build your particular audience.

Update on a regular basis

Updating your blog on a regular [if not daily] basis keeps it more appealing to readers, and also it generates fresh content making it more tempting to search engines. In order to retain your blog traffic, it is a necessity to update your blog regularly with manifold entries.

You should attempt to update your blog daily with a minimum of three entries. The best way to achieve this is to plan a set time that you will contribute to your blog every day.

Track your blog

How you’re going to know your blog has traffic or not? It doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing as no one is leaving comments. Many visitors do not comment their first time, but are lively daily visitors.

Blog tracking does not have to be complicated, and typically an Site Meter or Stat Counter will accomplish the job. It would be much better to utilize a service that provides advanced traffic analysis, like search engine information, keyword tracking and referral information.

Always listen to your audience

With the aid of proper page counter, you will observe how others are getting your blog and which keywords are being utilized to locate your blog. In the event, your blog is being located by one or more keywords, then try to focus your blog around these popular keywords to make it more dominant.

Always incorporate these keywords when writing entry titles and maintain the blog more interesting.

Short and brief

The blog entries should be concise and brief. The lengthy articles should be avoided, and you should endeavor to submit blog entries so as to become hours of reading. Many visitors are fond of reading interesting information, and it is good to make available constructive information. Never include any useless information, as visitors will flee sentences that turn away from your theme.

Digital art

Make an effort to incorporate pictures, photos, non-advertising graphics and art in your blog entries. Graphics can give you blog more life, and evidently, the content is the most important aspect and never try to surpass your content with graphics. Be particular about your graphics and ensure they fit the entry topic. Original photos, pictures, graphics and art is greatly recommended.

Be more professional

As a professional blogger, make your own team with one or more other bloggers. This will help create an appealing blog, and more authors signify more coverage since each author will have a particular interest in the blog. The proposal of a team blog is to make it more gratifying for all authors, and maintaining the blog exciting for visitors.

About the author

Lisa Coffey is an expert SEO consultant. She has years of SEO related experience. Her enthusiasm and dedication for internet marketing, technology and writing has made her a colossal symbol on the World Wide Web. Presently she is working with FourQuadrant and you can contact at lissa.coffey@outlook.com

*Image Credit – HopScotchTheGlobe

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

How many times, have we as consumers un-subscribed from emailer’s sent by e-commerce companies, Banks etc. since it clogs the mail-box & “un-subscription” was the only option left for the consumer 🙂 Today we have a guest-article by Varun John of iCubes, a firm specializing in Email-Marketing where he gives insights into “Email-Marketing”.

email-marketingBanner

For the email marketer, the top priority would be to get as many promotional emails into the inbox as possible. But have you ever considered that you might be over-doing it? Shooting campaigns by the dozens can be a huge turn off for your clients. Continue the practice & they will soon vanish from your mailing list. Don’t want such a scenario? It’s time to adopt an optimum frequency for your mailing.

If someone opts to receive your campaigns, newsletters and offer mails your first priority must be to make them appreciate and antedate your campaigns. This isn’t as simple a task as it looks. You need regular analysis, constant innovation in content and smart segmentation to ensure email fatigue does not happen.

Obviously, you want to engage customers as much as possible but you risk running into email fatigue. So you need to weigh in the pros and cons and make an intelligent move from therein.

What is the optimum frequency for my campaigns ?

Sorry to break the bad news, but there is no optimum frequency to send your mails. You can only optimize the frequency with which you target inboxes separately but as a collective there is no frequency that could please everyone. Some might want more mails from your side while othere may require only a few. Irrespective of how often your mails reach your audience, engagment solely relies on how relevant and engaging the content within your mails are.

A thorough understanding of your audience using demo-graphical and behavioral data can get you better insights on customer profiles. This will make your frequency customized and intelligent. You end sending fewer mails than before but the engagment and ROI you gather off doesn’t nosedive. In fact, with a custom frequency you are more likely to get an increased ROI & better customer engagement and loyalty.

Determining the ideal frequency

Before you fiddle about getting the optimal frequency another question needs to be answered. Are you mails reaching inbox? Email fatigue is usually understood when you see a decline in open and click rates. But beware, this might be solely because your deliverability has been affected severely.

As ISPs restlessly and relentlessly change their algorithms to improve customer experience, they take into account a whole lot of factors to determine whom to block. One of the latest additions is checking into average read time that a mail gets. If your emails remain stale, then your mails would soon be making trips to the Junk folder. Keep shooting campaigns on an aggressive pace, your domain reputation will soon get trashed !!!

If deliverability is not the concern, your content most definitely is. Would you like to see the same movie over and over again in just a few days ? Not likely. Your mails are just the same. If your content isn’t fresh and trendy, plus your mails bombard people’s inbox getting blocked is inevitable. Regular monitoring of data can help you resolve many doubts about what your clients are looking for.

Have you ever shared a profile update mailer ?

No, send one right away so you give the control back to the customer. When someone joins your subscriber list, always send a profile update mailer which askes the following questions:

  1. What sort of content would they like?
  2. How often they would like to connect?

In fact, you could have a “Click Option” to update preferences of content and frequency in every campaign. The more control that goes to the customer, the faster & smarter you can implement suitable strategies.

Let them go

One of the major disappointments that email marketers face is when someone unsubscribes from the list. However, there is a silver lining. Inactive users distort your performance metrics so it’s good to have only those people who love your mails.

Your mailing frequency should change according to the season because expectations vary around the year. In the wake of the holiday season, it is advisable to back down on your offer mailers. Give your subscribers time to detox and rejuvenate.

To continue engagement over this period, set up an automated series of campaigns. The content for each segment you create can vary according to preferences and tastes. A capability one must nurture here is the ability to predict email fatigue across the different demographics. A little bit of experimentation and a whole lot of analysis can help you achieve smart and intuitive prediction models.

About the author

Varun John is a content and social media marketer for iCubes, an ESP provider dedicated towards creating an Email marketing India ecosystem. He is always hunting for new ways for companies to engage with people using innovative technology, insightful data & intelligent marketing.  He loves to spend time on his guitar and is an avid reader of advertising techniques, human psychology & history.

iCubes on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/iCubes.in
iCubes on Twitter – http://twitter.com/icubesindia
iCubes on Google Plus – https://plus.google.com/u/0/+IcubesIn/posts
iCubes on LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/company/icubes
iCubes on Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com/icubes

Image Source* – SoftTrinity

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

When it comes to successful social content marketing strategies, creativity reigns supreme. Today we have a guest-article by Janine Neutra who works as a “Senior Director of Online Marketing” for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media. Here she shares insights on “Effective Social Content Marketing Strategies” & it will become clear as we review these five strategies that in order to be successful with your own strategy it’s necessary to create something that is unique, while also being authentic.

ContentMarketingBanner

The Inside Joke by Buzzfeed and HBO

To promote HBO’s show ‘Silicon Valley’ they enlisted the help of Buzzfeed in order to advertise. They understood their target audience and knew that many of their potential viewers are fans of Buzzfeed. Since Silicon Valley is known for being a hotbed for coders and programmers, they created inside jokes for their advertisements that would target that demographic. The result was a campaign that gained the attention of multiple coders and programmers throughout the country.

Doing this for your own brand would mean gaining a complete understanding of your target audience. Once you’ve done so, you can create personalized inside jokes that they’ll be sure to appreciate and remember. This is one of the better ways to create brand awareness & loyalty.

The Useful App by Charmin

If you think it’s difficult to provide successful content marketing for your product or service, think about how challenging it would be to do so for a product like toilet paper. Charmin, however, found a creative way to do just that. Their ‘Gotta Go On the Go’ app enables users to find and rate public restrooms, providing something useful while successfully promoting the brand.

Many business owners may think that creating your own app would be far too expensive or difficult. Companies like Mobi Blocks, however, allow businesses to create useful apps easily and at very affordable rates.

Twitter Tag Campaign by Edge Shave Gel

Twitter tag campaigns are becoming increasing popular because they generally don’t cost a dime. Creating a great campaign that gets people involved is the difficult part. Edge Shave Gel was able to do this with their #soirritating tag. The brand was getting at the fact that shaving and getting cut by doing so are irritating. Thousands of people jumped on the bandwagon and began tweeting the things that they found ‘so irritating’.

Doing this on your own requires nothing more than a bit of creativity and ingenuity, and it can create eyes on your brand quicker than just about any other method.

Vine Campaign by Tombstone

Tombstone used its name association to create a Vine campaign which featured Halloween based vines during the entire month of October. They posted a single video everyday throughout the month and created what turned out to be a viral sensation. The campaign was a huge success and it is even up for multiple awards.

For companies looking to do this for their own brand, it will once again require a bit of creativity. Planning will also be essential so you can be consistent with posts throughout the campaign.

Checking In by Burger King

The fast food giant cleverly created a strategy which involved constructing a digital Burger King Motel where customers could check in using the hashtag #motelBK. It was designed as a way to promote their new Chicken Tender crisp burger and the stay at the motel was seen as a way to cheat on the Whopper without being noticed. It was obviously both clever and quite funny.

This particular strategy will once again require quite a bit of planning and creativity. It can, however, be a very effective way to develop an audience that thinks it is ‘cool’ to check in with your brand.

Reviewing the Strategies

As we’ve mentioned, the success of all of these content marketing strategies came from a whole lot of imaginativeness & creativity. While a lot of the work necessary to create this success for your brand will come from your own creativity, there are quite a few things that you can take from the successes of these five strategies. Hopefully this overview has given you some ideas for exactly what you can do to create your own successful social content marketing strategy. Good luck!

About the Author

Janine Neutra has worked in online marketing since 2000, where she managed search and social media marketing for a national nonprofit organization. She’s now Sr. Director of Online Marketing for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media, helping small organizations and startups create programs that get results.

Image Credit – Dive Bomb Media Blog

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Every now and then, several SME’s have been thinking on the exit strategy from their business. The most common exit plan for SME’s is the out-and-out sale of the business.

There could be various reasons for which the owner decides to sell the business. Irrespective of the reasons [why’s] or motivations, the business owner should be confident that the real object is met – the business is sold.

Today we have a guest article by Priya Bhagat; Co-founder of Indiabizforsale. Indiabizforsale is an online platform for Business buying, selling, Business valuation and leasing. Before starting Indiabizforsale, Priya had a successful career in UK and India working for companies like Suez group, Nestor healthcare, Billdesk.com in various capacities in finance. Also, she has gained masters in international finance from Middlesex university & masters in commerce from Mumbai university.

In this article, Priya highlights “Business Selling/Exit Strategies for SME’s in India”.

IndiaBizForSale

The likelihood of business being sold successfully rises when the business for sale is marketed carefully; business valuation is genuine; internal factors are promising & external elements are beneficial.

Market carefully – Sale of a business is a life-changing scenario; the business owner should very diligent in promoting the business opportunity for sale in the market. The business owner’s main concern while marketing the business for sale is to maintain confidentiality [so that competitors & employees are not aware] at the highest level.

Hence, using the right medium to sell is very crucial to maintain privacy and at the same time generate prospects. Offline advertising like newspapers can be expensive & has a short life span. Many online classifieds provide a good channel to advertise the business for sell, however, one needs to chose a premium platform & avoid websites that have junk listings. The business owner should also be careful of any hidden fees or commission that such listing websites charge.

Genuine Business Valuation – If the valuation of your business is done on a realistic basis, the chances of closing the deal successfully increases. The value of the company should be estimated before marketing the business opportunity for sale. There are various methods used for business valuation, it is ideally important to seek help from professional expert to get the valuation of the business done properly.

Promising Internal factors – Internal factors like financial performance of the company, management team and employees, technology, suppliers and customers have to be dealt delicately as these internal factors increase the success of the Business for Sale. It is better to inform the employees after you have reached to advance stage of the business sell. about the decision to sell and address their concerns.

Beneficial External elements – External elements like market conditions, trends in the industry, legislations, competition, etc. can be beneficial if impacted positively to the business.

Generally, the SME’s approach the business brokers, the most common platform. On successful completion of a deal, these brokers expect a return in terms of a commission on the transaction price, which normally ranges from 1%-10%. Such hefty succession fees are sometimes not affordable to SME’s and the chances of businesses being sold quickly slows down. At the same time if the SME is not experienced [generally most SME’s are not] in selling the business, it is most appropriate to get professional help. In brief, if your business is not selling a business, please seek help while selling yours.

Plan and start Early – The average time it takes for a business to be sold is from three months to twelve months. Once your business opportunity is out for sale, be patient for the genuine buyer to be attracted.

You can reach Priya Bhagat on LinkedIn here. If you have any questions for Priya, please leave them in the comments section.