Be a Good Negotiator

Being able to talk your way into a better deal always has its benefits. What tips can you use to help you get a better deal, or talk you way into a cheaper pair of Naot shoes?

Well...Norm Brodsky, of Inc.com discusses the tricks of the trade in winning a negotiation. #1 thing to do in a negotiation, just like it is the #1 rule of sales is to listen.

Most people don't listen to each other. It may seem like that isn't the case to most people, but it is completely true. In fact most people want t TALK as much as possible instead of letting their opponent ramble on and proceed to show you all of their cards. Read more in depth about this here.

Employer Health Care Costs Nearly Doubled Since 2000

With all the talk about the new health care plan possibilities from the government, we still ahven't really helped anyone with health care costs in general. Even those that have insurance are feeling the pain.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today released a report about the rising cost of health care. Among its conclusions: "Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have nearly doubled since 2000."

The increase in health care costs increased almost triple the rate of wage growth. Something that has been rather stagnant just form my limited observations over the last decade. Jobs I had 10 years ago are paying exactly the same todaty as they were back then. Flatlined.

They cost employers' $12,680 for the average family plan -- nearly the same as a minimum wage salary for one year, according to the HHS. Kind of hard to balance the books on your lcd monitor with that type of cost increase.

The HHS report stated that family deductibles increased 30 percent in two years for average preferred provider (PPO) plans; for families covered by "small firms" the increase was 64 percent, from $1,439 to $2,367.

"It doesn't matter if you have insurance or not," states HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, "when Americans go to the hospital or the doctor's office, they are paying more and getting less."

Save Your Tech Marketing Money

Following the theme of my last cheap publicity tips article, and saving money in your small business let's talk a little bit about how to stretch your actual technology dollar with equipment, services, and tools.

Take a look at some of the tech essentials for small business, and see what is available for much less cost than you would ahve thought.

I'm a tech geek myself, and know how easy it is to blow your budget up by just going after the "best" tech when you have a pile of cash set aside to furnish your office. While it may be a good idea to get cheap diet pills since they are virtually all the same, we may feel that if we aren't going after what are considered the "best" tech toys, we might be hurting our business performance. That, and we just can't say no to cool stuff a lot of times.

Problem is, that we simply can't afford the "best" when we are starting out, and we shouldn't be lookign for the best anyways unless it is absolutely crucial to business.

Computers are a perfect example. I see so many people go out and buy muscle machines for the office when they can get by with a cheap $500 desktop that will do everythiing they need it for. Remember that unless you are using it to do some insane graphical work, is there really any need to have a top of the line graphics card in a sdata entry computer? Of course not. You don't need something that can play the most advanced graphical video games in the office do you? Nope. Besides if you have a better video game computer at work than you do at home you probalby are going to be wasting time at work screwing around.

Expenses you can control to some degree. Tech is certainly one of those aspects you can control. IF it does what you need and probalby more for $500, then in a business sense there is absolutely no reason to spend $1500 for it. None if it doesn't have some need in the future, but you really need to think about that before buying it. Odds are it doesn't and $1000 more unspent could be worth so much more when the unexpected comes up.

Cheap Publicity Tips

Advertising is expensive. Publicity doesn't have to be.

With the vast amount of media resources available to us in today's technolgy environment there are many ways to reduce marketing and advertising costs. It doesn't take a lot of money to do some really great marketing concepts,b ut it does take a little bit of creativity.

This article talks of several inexpensive ways to get noticed by paying little more than time, and a bit of smooth talking.

Several of the ideas are quite easy to do, and a lot of what it requires is your ability to network. From becoming a source quote in an article to starting your own free TV show, the possibilities are endless. Imagine discussing a new diet pill in the local paper when you in fact sell diet pills yourself. Maybe you can even get some recognition for your own business in this way.

While they do mention becoming source material for articles, and generally talk of "becoming a star" by creating your own television show for free, there is something I have toyed with and found very successful myself that I never see mentioned. Using the local media more than just aquote source.

While in a large city it isn't as easy to get yourself to become a local celebrity, in a smaller city where you run your business it is quite possible to become the expert for whatever it is you are trying to sell.

Suppose you develop a website that offers coupon codes for various online stores. While this is generally a valuable service, the search engines are overrun with such websites. You obviously have a lot of competition trying to win over the world wide web, but you likely have NO competition locally. In fact, you do have zero competition when it comes to businesses in your locality.

So what am I getting at? First of all, the local newspaper is your best friend. Local reporters have little to othing to write about most of the time other than local crime. Every now and then they publish something informative, or a feel good story, but if you haven't noticed local businesses get profiled fairly often, and reporters love to do these types of articles.

Taking advantage of this love for the local businessman, you can get featured in an article syourself. You just have to have a good "story", or provide a good service for the community. In this case the economy is terrible. Offering ways for people to save money on purchases, or even meals is an incredibly useful service for citizens.

Don't forget about local businesses as well though. Not everyone likes to shop online. They will go online to print out a coupon for a local restaurant though. So in reality you are getting people to go to businesses they may have never even heard of by having them come to your site. Local businesses.

If you liv ein a small town you know that most of them hav every little if any real local support online, or are even allt hat good at marketing. You be the middleman and the press man. You drive them business by setting up deals with the local businesses, and you get them FREE advertising as you only charge based on either an affiliate program, or by some sort of coupon clip rate. You might even be able to charge for premium positioning.

Also, if you ahve any web design knowledge you can even open the door for yourself to start building websites for the businesses youa re helping. It may not be the world wide web takeover you dream of, but you certainly aren't going to ahve any competition, and you certainly aren't going to go broke if you do this right. Costs are minimal. Rewards are great, and you become a trusted partner for many local businesses.

Jsut an extra quip about going local I have used, although this does cost money. Depending on what you sell, the local sports radio, and other talk stations are brilliant for advertising this sort of thing. Theya re even amazing simply for any affiliate program you run, and radio fees are very affordable. Dominate your world, before you dominate the whole wide world and you may find you are doing better than you ever expected.

Business Plan SMuisness Plan: Attracting Venture Capitalists

It is a common idea that having a great business plan will indeed be the major factor in procuring venture capitalist funds. A recent studt from the University of Maryland's business school says otherwise.

In the real world they suggest that venture capitalists look much more at their relationship with the business owner than any sort of business plan to start writing checks. We aren't saying that you should try to wne and dine them with Vegas vacations, but that you need to ge tut there and meet people. The #1 rule of business anyways.

Jon Chait, partner at Dace Ventures in Waltham, Massachusetts, agrees with those observations. "We discourage a lot of effort on business plans for early-stage companies, because their plans evolve at least 50 percent from their initial goal in the course of a year," he says. Obtaining a warm introduction is important not because investors do not read unsolicited plans—in fact, Chait reads dozens of them—but because it shows entrepreneurs' ability to build partnerships. "It's part of the skill set," he says. "By blindly submitting something, you're not taking the opportunity to show off that strength."

Although a formal business plan is not of much use to venture capitalists, the same is not necessarily true of other sources of capital. Azi Gera, one of the University of Maryland study's authors, stresses that a well-written business plan remains critical for funding such as bank or government loans. "VCs can evaluate the soft processes of an entrepreneur better through other means," he says. "A banker doesn't have that ability."

Help Getting Stimulus Money For Your Business?

Being a business owner in America is tough when you aren't a big corporation. You don't get the kind of mega billion dollar hand outs that they are all getting right now. In fact unless you deal with something popular like Green shopping you probably think you can't get your hands on any of that $787 billion in the economic stimulus pot. Think again.

That's where organizations like National Strategies, Inc., Onvia and Business Matchmaking come in.

Read this article to find out how they can help, as well as whether or not you can actually try to stake a claim on the stimulus money out there.

How to Deal with 10 Sticky Work Situations

Weird things seem to happen in the wokplace that you can't always explain. Seeing people do things that have no explanation is commonplace. Things like people looking at inappropriate websites, office dating, or brtowsing for a diet pill that works instead of working are things that happen quite often. How do you deal with such things?

Some of the most common oddities are listed in this article, as well as how to deal with them. Some highlights are Sharing to much personal info (TMI) with co-workers, employee gets a DUI, planning a wedding at work and annoying co-workers.

7 Ways To Work With Your Spouse and Live to Tell About It

Workign with your spouse could be great. It could also end your marriage. No matter how well you both get a long things can get hectic running a business together and emotions will sometimes take over for common sense. Same as they do at home, but this time it is both your livlivhoods.

HEre are some tips to make the workplace with the spouse as happy as at the home :).

1. Stick to Your Role- If your spouse is an expert at something and you really have no idea how to do it leave them alone. If they are good at cad drawing and you can't even make a fancy doodle, then you probably don't have any reason to be giving them pointers on how to do it now are you?

If your spouse is trained in a specific area of expertise, don't try to do his or her job. They're in that position for a reason. "When we got into arguments, it's almost always because one of us would come over to the other person's side of the business," Ken Wright, co-founder of Dinner A' Fare, says. "It's about the other person's responsibilities and trusting that the other person was going to complete those tasks."

6 more tips

Employee Salary Transperacy

IT should come as no surprise to you that most employers want to keep your fellow employee's salries a secret from you. Many times when you are hired they tell you not to discuss how much you make with the other people you work with. They don't want to deal with complaints about some people making more than others when certain employees feel they are underpaid. Doesn't matter if your beef is legitimate, or not employers try to keep the peace by hiding the truth Overdramatic? Maybe a little, but to the point with a lot of truth.

It is hard to go to work everyday and be one of those guys that is a fat burner, someone who goes above and beyond to work hard while they are there. Then watch as another employee doing the same job puts in half the effort. Some people are just built to work hard and will keep doing it. Others that find out they make less may even become disgruntled and slack off like everyone else. Ever try that? It's like getting a technical foul in basketball. The first guy never gets caught, but the second guy always does. So when they see the big difference in your effort most of the time they take it out on you even if you are just following the crowd. It rarely pays off.

So what kind of transperancy do you think employers should have in regards to employee salry? How do you think employees should be paid? Based on the job title, or based on their work?

That is a debate that can rage for hours, but 1 employer I read about is all for high transperancy. The short of it is that this company believes that everyone who does a job gets paid the same amount. If one gets a raise they all do for that job description. So essentially everyone knows how much everyone is paid.

IS this a good way to go about salaries? Certainly it helps transparency, but is it really a great motivator? Read their full disclosure on how employees get paid at Fog Creek Software to form your own opinion of their practices.

Stimulus Package Hurts Small Business Owners

When Congress approved the Obama administration's economic stimulus package in February, a little-known provision aimed at easing the pain of healthcare costs for laid-off workers triggered a financial affliction for business owners.

Instead of planning weekend getaways with the money they save from laying off workers in stimes of low production, they are instead finding out that they are on the hook for more than they thought they were.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act reduces the amount laid-off workers have to pay in order to extend optional healthcare coverage under federally mandated COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) rules. Instead of writing monthly checks for 102 percent (the extra 2 percent for administrative costs) of the healthcare premium they enjoyed on-the-job, they now have to front only 35 percent. The caveat: The remaining 65 percent must be paid, up-front, by employers, which can then withhold the amount of the payments from their next federal payroll-tax contributions.