Today’s blog is about the most fundamental issue in contract law: do you actually have a contract? While this might seem like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised at how many sophisticated businesses file lawsuits to dispute particular terms in a “contract” only to get the unpleasant surprise that the disputed terms are moot because there was no legally enforceable contract at all. Here are the necessary elements of a legally binding contract.
Topics: Sales, Business Best Practices, Legal
Chris Bjorklund: Hello, I’m Chris Bjorklund for the Virtual Business Center. Today, I’m talking with Jan Triplett, the CEO of the Business Success Center in Austin, Texas. In an earlier podcast, Jan, we’ve talked about the steps customers take when buying. Tell us now how we can help them through this process, a small business can help them through this process?
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Topics: Sales, Customer Service, Podcasts
A good relationship with your lender is very important in order to get and maintain the funding levels you require. During my years as CFO and COO the lenders I dealt with always relied on historical financial data. Quarterly P&L, inventory listing, accounts receivable listing, etc. were submitted on specific intervals and once a year a face to face meeting to discuss how the business was doing and what the expectations for the next year were. Amongst other things we would talk about the budget for the next year but I always wondered how confident they felt about us achieving the sales targets in that budget.
Topics: Sales, Technology, Blog Posts, Risk Management
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Driving more traffic to your website is a good thing, right? The best answer to this question is a qualified "Yes."
Topics: Sales, Technology, Marketing, Articles
Most sales efforts, training and management focus on getting to Yes. In most cases, Yes, or an order, takes a full sales cycle. A lot of time and resources are spent on your leads and prospects pipelines. Getting to “No” while not as lucrative as a “Yes” can be just as important especially in the early stages of the sales cycle as getting to “Yes”.
Topics: Sales, Featured, Blog Posts
Many entrepreneurs and small businesses, especially when they are starting their businesses or their founder is a dynamic evangelical individual, make the initial sales for the company.
Topics: Sales, Featured, Blog Posts
Frequently my clients and prospects ask me this question as they don’t fully understand SaaS or how it can fit their business needs. Let’s first start with the question what constitutes Software as a Service. Instead of investing significant funds in software, hardware and the installation of the software on the new hardware, an organization can enter into a contract with a service provider and typically pay a modest fee per user per month for the usage of the software solution which you will access over the internet. The service provider will maintain the system and keep in up and running so you will not need your own IT staff to maintain this system. The SaaS movement started initially in the Customer Relationship Management space with SalesForce.com but in recent years other vendors have joined. Besides CRM solutions you can now also get your email system, document management, phone system, accounting, ERP and various other systems delivered in the SaaS model.
Topics: Sales, Technology, Management, Blog Posts, Accounting & Finance
Most every business eventually has to, or should, fire some customers at some point. It’s counter intuitive to most businesses and entrepreneurs that some customers may just be customers that they cannot afford. It may be your oldest or highest volume customer, or a friend of a friend that you do business with, it doesn’t matter sometimes it just can no longer be justified or make sense.
Topics: Sales, Management, Blog Posts
If your business is like most, some percentage of your monthly revenues depend directly or indirectly upon visits to your website. Of course, if your business relies primarily on e-commerce to make sales, that percentage may be 90% or even 100%. But even if you do not directly sell your products and services online, you likely rely upon your website as a catalyst for at least some of your sales revenue.
Topics: Sales, Featured, Blog Posts
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