> Your Goal: Find a Good Match

To help assure that you find a good match, you should candidly consider your lifestyle, interests and experience, A good place to start is to ask yourself if you like working with people or prefer to work more by yourself. If you are shy and will be uncomfortable around new people, you'd be best advised to stay away from a high-profile selling scenario.

On other hand, if you thrive on energy of other people, you probably won't he happy in a business where your must work by yourself a great deal, such as an accountant. Review things you like to do best. For example, if you love to go camping and hiking, a business in outdoor recreation might be a good fit for you. But what form should it take? Sporting goods store? Expedition leader? Equipment manufacturer? Newsletter publisher? You can quickly see that one idea can develop into many forms. Although you may eventually try them all in your business, you need to focus on one at beginning. How do you go about doing that?

> Take Advantage of What You Know

It's generally advisable to start with something you have done before and are good at. Ask yourself what basic skills are required by this activity. For example, are you good with your hands? Do you speak well to groups? Can you write well? Are you well-organized? If your don't have all necessary skills, can you learn those you need?

Another good way to learn pros and cons of a business you're considering is to seek out people in same or similar businesses and talk with them. Ask them first for their advice. Observe how they function in their work.

What you want to do to help you move forward is to:

Plan and prioritize. If majority of your day is spent with your customers, you will need some down time. You need to have time to look at trends in your business. By this I mean go over your customer records, see where patterns are, what changes you need to make and then set up a plan to implement those changes. If you spend a little time at end of each day going over what transpired during day and set up your plan and schedule for next day, you will be much better prepared for next day and subsequent days.

At beginning of each week, take a look at where you want your business to be and make plans on how to get there. If something you are doing isn’t working, make changes. However, then you need to give those changes time to work. If they don’t work, change them again. Most important is that you spend time each week to figure out what your business needs are and what your needs are, till you come up with what works best for you, your business and your customers.

As many of our long time readers know, I am a big proponent of To Do lists. Make up a daily to do list, a weekly and a monthly. Remember to consider your goals when making up your To Do list. Where do you want your business to be in five years, ten years? When you ask yourself these questions, you focus on direction you want your business to take and income you want to make.

Remember, after you have determined what your goals are, then take your goals and figure out steps you need to take to get to that particular goal. Do this with each of your goals. Since we are concentrating on sales in this article, ask yourself: Do I need a new product? Do I need to look for other ways to sell my products? If I make these changes will I need additional funds? If I need funds should I get a parnter or find an investor? If I increase my business will I need to hire someone? Once you have answered these questions, then take steps you have come up with and put them on your To Do list.

It is very important that you have a calendar and that you set deadlines. Your calendar can be paper or electronic. The most important thing is that you use it. Put all your goals, steps needed to get to your goals, and deadlines to meet those steps in your calendar. Remember, if you use your calendar wisely it will help you accomplish what you need to and help you to get things done efficiently and on time.

To show you how your calendar can work for you, let’s set up a marketing campaign. First, you want to schedule deadlines for everything that needs to be done before you can even start campaign.