Market Trends – Customers Still Shop Locally
Published October 11, 2011 | 
Believe it or not, even with difficult market conditions and decreasing profits, the American consumer still shops at locally owned and independent retailers.
Continuing the trends of the past, a vast majority of the market, with over ninety percent of people, believe that it’s important to support local small businesses. And what is more important, on average they continue to spend about one third of their monthly discretionary income at local independent retail stores.
Okay, so how can you the local entrepreneur capitalize on this important and useful information?
Something that every successful entrepreneur should know and clearly understand is that customers mainly shop at local small businesses specifically because of friendly employees and superior product knowledge.
Additionally, over 80 percent of the market share very favorable opinions about a business, while only 69 percent share any kind of negativity towards business. Not surprisingly, the vast majority use word of mouth and social media to both provide and obtain information about businesses from friends and acquaintances through social media applications and active social networking.
So as an entrepreneur you should ask yourself, do your current employees have the right knowledge-base? If they, then the evidence strongly suggests that you should work on peer-to-peer marketing, and social networking appears to be a better use of your resources and somewhat easy to develop as part of your social media and web marketing strategies.
Of course, other social media specific questions are, does your business have a Facebook page, a Twitter account? You can make great use of both to market specials, manage contests, or even to let your customers know about new inventory items. Understand that “Retweets” and “Likes” are equivalent to new modern day “word of mouth,” or as I often refer to it as “world of mouth.”
For your customers who are not so technologically disposed, you might also consider a referral program specifically for them, and offer a small discount to any of those type customers who actually send business your way.
If anything has been learned it’s that you should always be looking for ways to leverage your high rate of customer satisfaction as an effective marketing tool. In other words, provide encouragement to your loyal repeat customers to share the love, and in return, maybe offer to share a little wealth with them.
Small Business Success – Growing a Small Business Takes Time
Published May 27, 2011 | 
Compared to the time it takes to start a small business, growing that same small business takes much more time. Despite what you may have heard on late-night television infomercials, you can’t expect to jump right in and start making millions of dollars or even be profitable in the beginning. What it takes is sustainable, all-inclusive marketing tactics to build your customer leads, your sales, and ultimately your bottom line or profit.
Many of the successful businesses we observe in the economy around us make business success look easy (especially the larger ones). It is important to understand many of them have a highly-specialized marketing and sales staff running their daily operations. 
The reality is that most small business owners can’t afford such a staff, and they are on their own responsible for all aspects of the daily operations, including marketing and sales.
But the good news is that with the correct and precise focus, you can become that dedicated and expert marketing department. Although it requires a little bit of work up front in the beginning, you can get sales leads streaming through the door all by yourself.
Make it a dedicated goal that you will invest some time in educating yourself on a few simple uncomplicated marketing strategies and resources. A whole new level of business growth you never thought possible, will result from the little bit of work you accomplished up front.
If you can become proficient in a few simple areas, you will be well on your way to success.
Don’t try to implement all of these steps at once… that would be way too overwhelming.
Take them one step at a time and build as you go.
Just choose a few of the strategies you want to work on now and start there. Then, little by little, you’ll build up your marketing efforts until you can count on consistent sales and associated work from month to month for the business.
Biz Success! SunPower – Changing the Way the World is Powered!
Published May 18, 2010 | Team Altman Business Success Video! SunPower!
One man had a dream to develop the solar power used for satellites in Space as an affordable alternative to fossil fuels, here on Earth. Dick Swanson faced huge skepticism from the industry, but 40 years on runs a thriving, billion dollar company, SunPower – Changing the Way the World is Powered!
As always enjoy, and share the SunPower Success!
Think Business as Unusual For Success in 2010 and Beyond
Published May 1, 2010 | Capitalism is just a word, but unlike any other word it’s meaning creates instant strong feelings in many that hear it on both sides of an economic battle of words that’s been waged for many years, and judging from the popular word on the street, Capitalism has been targeted as the root of all that’s evil in the economy and has been out of fashion in the U.S. and Europe long before the Great Recession hit the global economy hard approximately 3 years ago.
In 2010 and beyond, we as Entrepreneurs and Small Business owners need to adapt a new mind-set in terms of, and prepare for the non-traditional “business as unusual,” since the market has developed a stronger awareness and global understanding, added to an already strong sense of urgency that “economic sustainability” has to become reality rather than a discussion topic, and is the only way to bring much needed “certainty” to the future, while going forward in the near term, and of course, how sustainability impacts consumer driven economic societies remains a major component of continuing discussion and debate.
In closer examination and analysis of the markets that make up the established and mature consumer driven economies represented by the U.S. and Europe, businesses will have to do more than the traditional old school way of doing “business as usual” that dictates just the embrace of the notion of being a good corporate citizen in the global economy. For business to be successful from this point forward they will have to be able to quickly adapt to what the market presents and move with the cultural shifts and evolution of technology to remain CONNECTED.
To build value in the markets of the global economy, with enlightened consumers that possess heightened levels of awareness not seen before, this might require a greater display of transparency and honesty, and taking part in real meaningful conversations as opposed to the traditional approach of one-way advertising, and build strong relationships by championing collaboration instead of the traditionally one-way us-them mindset, or, the message could be presented inherently about generosity versus greed, or build the reputation of being edgy and daring as opposed to safe and bland. All of which can work together to increase, build and leverage the sustainable perceived, and therefore real value in the eyes of consumers in the global market, in whatever niche they reside.
As always, the future of the global consumer markets will be unevenly distributed, but one only needs to look closely at successful business models like Google, Amazon, Zappos and Virgin to get a strong understanding and instinctive feel for what “business as unusual” is all about, and in doing so, not surprisingly, the trends point to the growing success of “doing things differently,” driven by changing identifiable consumer preferences and desires. The wise Entrepreneur will recognize the importance of making the time to study and learn from those brands that they think are already mirroring today’s more diverse, chaotic, networked society, and then even more importantly, develop critical strategies to first join them, and then outdo them as markets continue to evolve.
What Kind of Success Do you WANT?
Published March 3, 2010 | When we think of the word “Success” it can have many different meanings to people including the top grade on a test, retirement to a dream location, 
enough money to take care of desires, or enough to pay for children’s education at the best schools. So whatever the individual’s definition is, it is always about achievement of that certain something or getting to that certain place.
We have discovered that as much as people in general say they want success, extremely few actually put in the time and effort, and seek out and get the help they need in order to define and achieve their goals for success. Time and time again we hear the excuses and weak reasoning, as to why they failed to follow through including “my parents didn’t prepare me,” “I didn’t get the right education,” “I’ll wait for the economy to improve,” and “I’m stuck trying to decide what to do.”
Through the experience of helping thousands of Entrepreneurs be successful, I have observed there are people that believe they can and will succeed, and those who truly do not, and as it turns out the overwhelming majority of the time, both kinds are almost always right. When we look closely at the strongest personality traits of the true Entrepreneur, they believe they will succeed, and will do whatever it takes to reach the goals they have set to measure their success and make their dreams come true. An out of work employee who hasn’t been able to find another job decides to run the risk of starting their own business, an Entrepreneur whose business is struggling just to break-even, and decides to seek much needed help from someone that knows how to improve businesses. They both know and understand that what 
stands in their path to success are really opportunities and challenges that need the right planning and effort to meet and overcome.
But when we look closely at those without the right kind of drive to achieve success, any kind of challenge gives them an “excuse” to put off, delay, quit, or as they almost always manage to do, lay blame for their failures on others, so they don’t have to ask someone for help, or even simply change how they do things. They fail to develop a plan to follow closely, and make the necessary changes and adjustments to stay on the path to success, and this is one of the biggest reasons why 45% of businesses fail within the first two years and 90% fail within 10 years.
People instilled with a strong entrepreneurial spirit know what they believe, and are willing to do whatever it takes including the steps necessary to clearly define their mission and vision, and concisely plan how they will achieve their goals and dreams of SUCCESS, and then successfully execute their plan.