Do Business Well

Purchase History

<FIRST PURCHASE DATE, LAST PURCHASE DATE, PURCHASE FREQUENCY, PURCHASE VALUE (ACTUAL PURCHASES OR AVERAGE PURCHASE), PRODUCTS PURCHASED, PURCHASE DRIVER (WEBSITE “WALK-ON,” EMAIL RESPONSE, BANNER CLICK-THROUGH … )>

Because past purchases are among the leading predictors of future interest, you should use the information contained in the customer’s purchase history to determine the timing, offer, targeting, and personalization of your promotional communication. If, for example, you bought book from BarnesandNoble, you’ve probably been identified as someone who’s interested in high-tech business books, which means there’s a good chance you’d be interested in Geoffrey Moore’s Inside the Tornado. Continue Reading »

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The majority of people who work from home, whether they be working for giant corporations or in one-man bands, work by themselves. On the one hand, that means they are extremely efficient — no interruptions, no joking during meetings, no office politicking around the coffee machine, or gossiping in the lunch break — but it also means that homeworkers can feel terribly alone and isolated.

`I found that working six hours a day at home was worth more than eight in the office,’ says Emma Dally, now Publishing Director for The National Magazine Company. ‘There are so few interruptions that you are able to work very intensively.’ Continue Reading »

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ASSET VALUE

For most companies the asset value should represent the lowest amount below which the owner might just as well liquidate. There are only two differences between asset value and liquidation value. In calculating asset value you don’t have the costs of liquidation and you can be more generous in appraising certain assets than you might be if you had to liquidate.

INDUSTRY STANDARD VALUE

It’s common in many industries to have a valuation method. Travel agencies are generally valued at ten times annual commission. Manufacturers’ reps, on the other hand, are generally only worth one year’s commission. Magazines use a certain number of dollars per subscriber. Manufacturers might expect to get between two and ten times annual earnings. Continue Reading »

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I don’t know your financial situation or what you dream of doing in your future. But if you’re like most teenagers, you have a specific high-dollar dream in your immediate future, whether it’s a car, a college education, or even a three-month overseas mission trip after you graduate from high school. Whatever your next big financial goal, this four-step strategy can help you reach it.

1. GO FOR GROWTH

Your number one investment goal is to make your money grow. Right now you have few expenses compared to your income. But soon you’ll be paying for cars, education, furniture, entertainment, clothes, food, housing, medical expenses, and a thousand other things that someday will obliterate your paycheck. Make the right investments now, and your money will grow substantially until you really need it. Continue Reading »

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We considered some of the new business models that are developing online. One of these was the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) model, upon which online communities are based.

These communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. They offer a simple means of overcoming the lack of human contact online and hence can meet consumers’ social activity needs. Consequently, online communities can now represent a significant commercial opportunity. According to Kozinets,

Online social interaction is therefore a unique public—private hybrid never before encountered in human history. Changes in capitalism, social thought and new technologies have imploded the boundaries between home and workplace (and production and consumption). CMC [computer-mediated communication] offers ordinary people access to a mass medium, a stage before a global audience. . . . Opportunities abound not only to broadcast one’s own private information, but also to partake publicly in the private information of others, and also to commoditise and commercialise these relationships. Continue Reading »

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A certain mystique has surrounded banking for centuries and some of it has managed to survive to this day. Considering the fact that we live in a time when old bastions of authority have crumbled and cynicism rules, this is rather surprising, but it is a fact nonetheless. Many people continue to see bankers as creatures with almost supernatural powers, in a position to decide the fate of a small business at a whim. To them, bankers are the custodians of piles of cash that they will lend only to a select group, with thedecision to grant a loan being based solely on old affiliations and personal preferences.

They tend to overlook the simple fact that in a banker’s hands, cash is practically the same as the merchandise a retailer offers for sale. Bankers accept money from depositors who expect to receive interest. They in turn lend this money out to borrowers whom they charge interest, obviously at a higher level, and the differential between the two interest rates enables them to generate profits for their shareholders. Although this may be an oversimplification, it illustrates the point that bankers are practically forced to lend out money. If they fail to do that and keep the money in their vaults instead, they will soon go out of business. Continue Reading »

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