An “Entrepreneur’s Toolbox” includes things that must be within the prospective entrepreneur’s very person but also; external tools.

First, let’s cover what you – the prospective entrepreneur – must have within yourself, in order to have a productive future.

First-and-foremost, “vision” is an absolute must.

The most successful visionaries normally have a very big picture of where it is that they want to be. (It is easier to scale back to a more practical  – and smaller – overall vision than it is to open your mind to a larger vision; once you have set your mind to something small and simple).

Secondly, you must possess plenty of “Self-Trust”.

Many speak of “innovation” as part of the ideal entrepreneur’s mind. Well, without belief in your ideas and the inner trust in yourself that what you wish to provide is needed in the world, your ability to innovate means nothing!

And, last (certainly not least) an entrepreneur must have a bit of “Intuition”. And, despite some of the ideas that the term ‘intuition’ may bring to mind, the sort of intuition that I am referring to is simply: “Knowing something without knowing how you know it”.

And, while it seems to be an in-borne quality, intuition can be developed.

The purpose of this article is to show you the external tools that can develop your intuition – as well as your vision and self-trust – to its fullest potential; in order to cut your costs and to increase your overall efficiency!

A proper business and marketing plan, devised by an outside, expert source; can help you to avoid the mistakes that many make. (Passion and drive are great qualities but, sometimes they get in the way of the bottom line!).

When it comes to your marketing, it is important to be aggressive but also, to be sure that you aren’t aggressive to the point that you trap yourself into one course of action.

Also, you don’t want to ‘burn yourself out at both ends’. So, a well-tuned Marketing Plan is absolutely crucial. To go along with that marketing plan, it is positively a must to possess a detailed, easy-to-use Marketing Calendar.

As covered in one of our other informational articles, a marketing calendar can also help you to be sure that personnel staffing, budgeting and foresight are already taken care of; with little work coming from you! Therefore, you save money, can dedicate your time to more constructive things than worrying and, have that overall satisfying feeling of stability.

A Budget Plan is very important, alone. And, while it is fine-tuned and worked-around (as well as made to be flexible) within your marketing plan (and calendar), having a realistic, organized and easy-to-monitor budget plan is an absolute must. And, just like your other external tools, a budget that is designed for your particular business and reviewed by objective experts increases the odds of your business being a success.

Just like your Marketing Plan, your overall Business Plan should contain “what if” strategies.

No matter your foresight or intuition, you can never be completely certain what emergencies may come up; nor, can you always correctly predict what you competition is going to do.

Put simply, our Business and Marketing Plans must be very flexible and objective. Being “fixed” in your planning can lead you to failure; in fact, it normally does, for most!

A Strategic Investment Plan is something that you must have ready when beginning your career as an entrepreneur.

While you may know exactly what you wish to invest in and when, just like the tools covered above, you must have plenty of flexibility in terms of your investment planning.

What your competitors do, things that happen in the economy and possible failures of past marketing are all things that may play into your needing a flexible and objective strategic investment plan. And, a common mistake that many make is grouping their investment plan in with their budget plan. When you put some thought into those two things, it becomes apparent that they need to be separate; or else you wind up with too many important factors compartmentalized into one category!

Also, depending on your business, you may be thinking more locally than Globally. Well, the right Marketing Company takes things like this into account from the very start. If you consider yourself as an aspiring entrepreneur (or if you are already an entrepreneur looking to increase his success) we have plenty of essential and proven tools that can help you along your way!

B2B businesses seem to have much smaller marketing budgets then B2C businesses.

If you are a B2B business looking for a few ways to stretch your marketing dollars, here are 5 to get you stretching.

5 Ways To Stretch Your Marketing Dollars

1. Use the ads you create in other way besides publication advertising. When you run your ad pay for reprints (they are very lows cost) and mail your reprints to clients and future clients. Also turn you ads into data sheets by printing feature data on the back of your reprints.
2. Don’t change a thing. If your ads are working, keep running them until they stop working. You’ll get bored with them long before your future clients.
3. Pay your suppliers on time. Taking advantage of discounts and avoiding costly late fee can save you a lot of money. Plus, you’ll build your reputation leading to referrals and better service from your suppliers.
4. Don’t get to fancy with your ads, brochures and marketing. Many times going overboard will turn off potential clients, especially in the industrial marketing. Concentrate on your headline and offer, they are far more important then the bells and whistles.
5. Do it yourself. The everyday marketing tactics such as distributing press releases, updating your marketing plans and meeting with media resources can all be done by your or and administrative assistant or even a virtual assistant for some of the repetitive tactics.

If you had to choose just one of these dollar-stretching ideas, which one would you do first?

By the way www.FastMarketingPlan.com is getting close to being completed. I’m shooting for a November 30 launch. So click on the link above and sign up for updates and you’ll be in the front of the line for a 30-day $1 trial where you’ll love building all the marketing plans you need, FAST and the best part, you’ll get reminders and help every Monday morning about your upcoming marketing tactics to kick into action

© 2009 Sanford Jay Barris

An even more important question to ask is, “Do you know the ‘Life Time Value (LV)’ of that client?”

Very few business owners take the time to learn this important secret. They don’t understand what a “life time value” is!

In addition, they don’t realize how viewing customers with this approach can change the way that you do everything in your business.

What does “lifetime value” really mean? It’s pretty simple. Lifetime value is the average amount of money that a customer spends (and the profits that you make) from the first time that the person buys something until his/her last purchase.

For example, if your average sale is $50.00 and the profit on that sale is $15.00, and your average clients buys from you 10 times per year for five years, then your sales to them are $2,500.00 with a LTV of $750.00 in profit. You should be able to determine how many “average” customers you need to have to make the profit that you desire.

If the actual figures on this are not available or are hard to calculate, use your “best guess.” Attempt to figure out what amount your average client will spend during the time that s/he is doing business with your company.

It is even more important to try to determine how much of that total amount is profit. Study the results in detail. You should be able to determine the average number of “repeat” or “backend” purchases that each customer makes after the initial sale.

When you know the average amount of LTV profit that your business will make on each customer, then you will be able to calculate how much you are willing to invest to get a new client.

From our example above, we know that we will make $750.00 of profit on the average client. Knowing this, we also know that even if we spend $250.00 to get that client to buy our products/services, there still will be $500.00 of total profit from that client.

If the majority of the profits that you make on your average customer come from sales made after the initial sale, then it might make sense for you to sell at cost, or even a little below cost, on your first sale. You can do this knowing that you have landed a customer who then will give you the opportunity for additional “repeat” sales.

Knowing your client LTV allows you to focus your marketing efforts. You can target new customers with special “sales” or with other offers designed to bring them in the door.

In addition, you can market to your current and prior customers with campaigns that are designed specifically to generate the repeat business that produces most of your profit. When you can answer the crucial question of “Lifetime Value,” you will be ready to determine how much you are willing to invest to bring in a new client.

Do you know what the lifetime value of your customers is?
If not, what can you do to find out?