Now before I begin this isn’t the ‘definitive’ guide and you use these recommendations at your own risk!

Research, research and research
From wanting a common item like hard drives to more unique units, give yourself the time to do the research. Try and assess pricing before contacting any suppliers.

Who are you buying from?
You can’t buy items without running eventually into an issue. A missing part, a device that doesn’t work, a damaged good. Don’t be scared before you make any purchases to discuss their procedures or look this up on their website. Especially if your buying expensive items or large volumes. Yes I know there are laws for majority of the readers visiting this blog regarding returned goods, but hassle, time and money are factors and you want a smooth process when it occurs.

Now google is your friend. Type in the companies name and do some research. Are they mentioned in forums? Has someone written a blog post? Now always take such entries with a pinch of salt. You are only reading one side of a story, the facts might not be correct. However you could form a picture either negative or positive due to this research and decide to not use that firm.

Confidence, Time and Patience
You might have seen a price on a website for an item. This could be a single unit purchase price or perhaps your interested in buying bulk. Regardless send an email to the sales team and mention you are gathering prices and would like a quote.

Now if you are looking to purchase large volumes, mention this and say you want to try out a company with an initial purchase before purchasing in larger quantity.

This can often be a good idea to help discover any hurdles or issue, before you invest a large sum in their goods. For instance if your going to purchase 1-5 units, but might be purchasing larger volumes in the future, mention this. This could impact negatively on the pricing you are given for the initial purchase, but might prove beneficial later and help you walk away sooner from a supplier. Don’t contact any other sellers, just wait for this first response.

Now the sales team might be keen to speak on the phone. To assess you as a buyer and try and make the whole situation look like they are considering whether they want to actually sell to you! Don’t sound desperate, willing or allow yourself to purchase the item. Play it cool and just get the price and tell them you will get back to them.

Now you’ve got the price contact another seller. Again tell them you are looking to purchase the item(s), but this time say you’ve received quotes already, but looking for a more competitive price. Now it’s up to you whether you reveal your first price, but I wouldn’t reveal the companies name who gave you the quote. That’s poor form and unfair in my opinion.

Now you could decide to go back to the first firm and mention you’ve received a quote at x price and can they beat it? Don’t be scared to negotiate with the suppliers. At the end of the day this is part of business, don’t be scared or ashamed of asking for a better price.

Regardless if your buying in bulk, all firms will probably say they can look at the price later on for later purchases and often send you a list showing quantity pricing such as 1-9, 10+, 50+ etc. Don’t let later pricing deter you from achieving a good price now and you can always look at the pricing later.

Hidden Costs
Look for the hidden costs. Such as postage types. We are all familiar with this on ebay. Sell something for little, but charge expensive postage and delivery. I’ve not experienced this extreme obviously on bulk items, but look at the price of delivery and see if it impacts the purchase costs and thus your margins, especially on small purchases.

Support
Now factor in your earlier research and assess what level of support you can expect from the organisations. It’s not always about price, but making sure the goods are delivered timely and you receive the best follow up support. Why not try an initial smaller purchase as previously mentioned.

A hurdle
If you’re a start up company often there is a hurdle such as filling in forms, giving financial details and having a credit check run against you. Which is tough going for a small firm, especially startups. Don’t despair, explain you’re a new firm and at the end of a day people want business and how you pay for it, either receiving credit or paying beforehand is factor you need to consider if a hurdle appears.

Evaluation
Now this is actually a different ball game , depending on what your firm does. If you are evaluating products, mention you are gathering quotes, product and support details. You could ask for an evaluation unit (or sample depending on the type of good). In one firm I’ve been given evaluation units to keep or for set periods to allow me to assess whether to use the product. Obviously this has other factors, such as how unique the product is among others.

I hope this guide helps and leave feedback with your own advice.

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Q. Thank you for doing this interview. Can you please tell SBT readers what you do for a living?
My pleasure, thanks for having me, I am delighted to be able to contribute! I run my own business, which I founded 2 years ago to focus on my passion: transformation. I believe in guiding my clients through change, making them embrace, manage and maintain it! Whether working for small or large organisations or with individuals, I coach my clients to help them find solutions to the challenges that they face as they transform themselves and their organisation. This work had led me to develop the “Mountain Moving Mindset” programme, where I empower business owners, entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs to master their mindset, so that they can move mountains and bring their businesses to the next level! I share this programme through my coaching sessions, my published articles, my blog and my newsletters. And, now, I am actually really pleased to say that I am taking the M3 programme a step farther by announcing my upcoming live event, where I will teach and transfer the same skills, attitudes and systems that work for me to 30 business owners ready to reach new heights!

Q. Do you feel that technology, can at times hinder people’s ability to ‘grow’ as individuals and be successful?
At times, yes! Before having my own business, I was a full-time communications and change management consultant and worked on IT programmes and projects, mainly on ERP implementations. I believe that you cannot grow or get growth unless you change and step out of your comfort zone and as a general fact, we, men and women, do not like change and resist to it! And, from experience, technology, when first introduced can scare people off, because it is new. This is why you have people like me who specialise in change management, so that we can come onboard, help through the process and guide them though their transformation and get them the growth and results they aspire to.

Q. Can any individual, from the small baker to I.T. technician benefit from coaching and in turn ‘reward’ his organisation?
Absolutely! All of us, and I do include myself, as I do have my own coach, can benefit from coaching. A coach’s mission is to help you be the person you really want to be by guiding you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow and what steps you need to take to get there. Thanks to coaching sessions, we can all focus on us and our business and work towards achieving our desired results and realising our dreams and aspirations while tackling “us” and whatever is going on in our mind! Most successful business owners have a coach and it is no coincidence; it is proven fact that when you invest in yourself, your business will be rewarded.

Q. In these tough economic times, should small businesses be investing in coaching?
Particularly in these times! A coach can help business owners realise that they are in charge of their own economy and can make it happen no matter what; there are lots of businesses out there that are thriving right now and I am one of them, I’ve launched at apparently ” the worst time ever” and I have been very successful ever since.

Q. How has technology helped you ‘connect’ with your clients and is it changing with the availability of more high profiled social networks and technologies such as VoIP services (i.e. skype)?
I love technology as it brings people closer; with technology, you get to meet new people at the click of a button and people from all over the world. On the social media front, I am using the “fabulous 4″ as my mentor called them: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. I also use Skype to talk with my clients and have our sessions. And, as I frequently host live teleseminars, I used online teleseminar facilities, so that people can listen in on their computer, which makes it really free for them!

Q. How can people find out more about your business and connect with you?
I am currently offering a special 2-part teleseminar series; on these free calls, I will be revealing how to get results after results in 2010!!! If there is one thing I know how to do, is to get results! You can sign up for free at http://www.mountainmovingmindset.com. And by signing up for these calls, you will also start receiving my weekly M3 Power newsletter, which was especially created for individuals who want to take their life and their business to a whole new level!

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I think most people have given up trying to put a number on the total blogs in the world, but it’s in the hundreds of millions. The vast majority are personal, or hobby blogs. But a significant number are a business, and some are now multi-million dollar companies.

If you can write, and do so with some passion on a subject, then blogging might be an opportunity for you to branch out on your own.

Let me share some basic steps for you in creating a business from a blog:

Find your passion

If you’re going to be writing on a subject for the next several years, you’re going to need to be sure that you are passionate about it! Choose something you love, something you really want to share with the world. And although you don’t need to be an expert when you start, you should be prepared to do the necessary research to become one.

Build a platform

The work will be hard at first, writing post after post that only a few people are reading. What you are doing in this phase is creating a platform for your business. Think of it as a home base. And like every home base you need to have “outposts” all over the web – places like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, where people can find you and follow you back to your home base.

Build a tribe

All successful bloggers build up a large audience over time. But as with all things internet based, most are not engaged, and simply “graze” the words they write. One of the keys to success as a blogger is in building a smaller “tribe” of fans, who become part of your blogging community. These are the people who will recruit new tribe members, buy your books or anything else that you can offer, and become an ambassador for your brand.

Sell things!

Once you’re established, you’ll want to earn some money! What that boils down to is selling something. It could be books, you could become an affiliate selling other people’s products or you could come up with a membership program offering additional content. There are numerous ways to earn money, and all benefit from the power of the internet. Let me give you one example. I have a good friend who is also a professional blogger. He runs two blogs. On one of them, he offers a premium membership program, for which he charges just $15 a month. Within a month of launch he had just over 3000 members. I’ll leave you to do the maths!

The traditional model for generating income form a blog is through advertising. And it remains a potentially lucrative area as more and more businesses are switching their advertising spend to online and way from print. There are various agencies who will handle advertising sales, or you can cut out the middle man and sell space yourself.

Expand your game

Once you’ve created a strong on line presence and a good sized readership, you’ll find many opportunities open up for you. Many bloggers have gone on to become successful best selling authors, others earn good income from speaking, and still others use their blogs to build and promote a conventional business, often in the world of tech.

If you’d like to learn more about the fascinating characters who have become the superstars of the blogging world, then please get a copy of Beyond Blogging, which is available as an E Book, via the Amazon Kindle, and very shortly in both print and audio.

You can also visit Mike at his blog, Mike’s Life

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Social Media – old favourites Twitter and Facebook have played their part. I initially thought of these as broadcasting platforms from where we could promote our services but have since realised the greater value in ‘listening in’ to the conversation. I often liken it to overhearing a conversation in a pub. With the right tools in place this can be a valuable source of leads, industry news, latest technologies etc.

We also use our Twitter and Facebook accounts as outposts for our blog content which auto updates these accounts. In our Twitter toolbox we use CoTweet which allows multiple users to keep an eye on our business account. We will be utilising this much more in 2010. Another good app is Twitterhawk which is a Twitter search programme which enables you to listen out for any keywords. Once you read the context of the keyword you can Tweet from the application.

I love Twitter but often don’t have the time to spend on it (can be a time sink) – however CoTweet collates and emails me updates of any DM’s or mentions of my Twitter usernames.

Two Twitter apps we’re looking at for 2010 are wildfireapp and Objective Marketer – seem to be geared more to enterprise but may hold value for us too.

Probably the most important software we use for the business is Google Apps. We made the switch earlier this year and it’s been seamless. Much prefer Gmail to Outlook and also a big fan of Google Calendar. We decided to go to the cloud as it frees up staff to work at home and on business trips without a VPN. Another vital Google tool is Reader – my personal favourite and increasingly my most important. I use this for the many Google alerts for industry keywords on the web and mentions of our competitors. I’ve also set this up to scour the internet for business leads.

Some other stuff we’ve been using :-

Apture on our wordpress blog to automatically generate content, photos and links for blog posts.

Batchbook – we use this as our CRM system in tandem with Campaign Monitor. Another web app.

Pipejump – this is a sales pipeline application that we use for our commercial contracts. Again it’s a web app.

My Iphone has also changed the way I interact with my working life (essentially now no distinction). My favourite apps are Tweetie for Twitter (superb!), Awesome Note for ideas, Mindmeister for mind-mapping and Toodledo for the various task lists I have.

We considering setting up one or more Posterous sites for the different parts of our business. Posterous allows any updates (these can be emailed to your site) to auto update other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook – very useful.

I’ve also been using Google Wave but not quite got my head around it as yet. Need to dedicate a day of trying out the various bots that embellish it. Strangely enough I’ve already had a good enquiry for reclaimed flooring via Wave!

One area which we haven’t sorted as yet is a company intranet – currently looking at looking at Zoho, CubeTree and PBWorks.

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Scooped! the suitably named brand at makingthenews.co.uk allows you to create your own personalised newspaper to mark an occasion. Impressive enough, but why is the small business tech blog writing about this business? We’ve mentioned Scooped! before on this blog with regard to the services and software they use to manage their business. This article about the business clearly demonstrates its ability to adapt and improve it’s online presence.

There is a twitter feed which James uses to not only write personal tweets, but also to inform others of relevant news regarding his company. Not being scared to communicate and personalise his brand, you become quickly aware of not just promotions, but become better informed about James and his business.

As well as the twitter micro blog, the business has a traditional blog. In the current internet climate it is wise to utilize both types of blogs. It allows people to choose which method suits them best, thus reaching a wider audience.

Too many businesses will invest in their business and find it hard to adapt and make changes further done the line. In the large corporate and enterprise world this is because they wish to write off costs or people fail to understand the quicker pace of business and think they will look foolish. In my opinion this creates an environment that doesn’t foster the best strategies to maximize potential and grow your business.

Many in the small business world have quickly learnt that quick adjustments are often necessary. Changes need to be made quickly to improve the service or to integrate new features more seamlessly.

Scooped! has done just this, a brand new site that clearly presents the business offerings, with new features that reduce the processes from being a prospect to a client. Essentially learning what works and what doesn’t, then quickly making the right changes. Followed up by communicating this to others, coupled with a 25% promotion at the right time of year.

I highly recommend you follow Scooped! on twitter and visit their website. They are a business that are always moving forward with their online presence and many could learn from following them. Plus if you want to buy a personalized newspaper with 25% promotion currently, I would check out their site sooner rather than later!

twitter: http://twitter.com/makingthenews
web site: http://www.makingthenews.co.uk/

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Don’t fall into the trap of considering a loan on…paying for peace of mind, quick sourcing and quick scalability. Do your own home work, research, ask advice and if you know another small business that has been around for over two years ask their advice if possible.

Business Connections
Join LinkedIn and if suitable ask questions in the Q&A section, read through the Q&A section. However be weary of the advice as someone might just want to sell you a product or service! Find out about business breakfast clubs, associations etc that don’t cost a yearly fortune to be involved with and seek advice. In the UK business link can be a very useful source for advice.

Computer hardware
Think online, don’t think that huge Comet, PC World store etc down the road which is easy to browse. Shop around for good deals on your hardware. Also do all the computers your business require need to be the latest and greatest with slick cutting edge graphic cards when you might just be using them for database, email, spreadsheets, wages and word processing? If you are starting off with more than one employee, buy laptops for those who really need them. A laptop is cheaper to buy and cheaper to upgrade.

Open Source
Microsoft Office even the small business edition is not worth the money in my opinion. Everyone is familiar and used to Excel, Outlook and Word. However using Open Office and Mozilla’s Thunderbird instead might well be ideal for your small business requirements. Worth investigating, especially as they are free.

Servers
Does your brand new small business that might have five employees within six months really need an expensive Microsoft Windows server with a support contract to boot? There are cheaper server and network device options to cover backup, connectivity, security, storage and not compromise your desktop requirements. Plus if one device goes down, if properly configured or good support you can still use the other devices.

I’ve seen expensive routers used and configured in such a manner that a cheap router would of done the same. However the support firm they brought it from where a reseller also and supplied the expensive router… wonder why.

I’ve seen expensive servers used when a business only required backup, broadband, email, security and office apps. Same situation as above, plus when the business have a problem they were using ‘certified’ expensive specialists to resolve the issues…. yes they really needed their own inhouse email server (not).

Support
I see this time and again. Small Businesses paying a fortune for what they would call reliable, dependable computer support. In a sense paying for peace of mind from a medium sized computer support company. There are so many that will come in do the spec, supply the hardware and software, setup your network and provide onsite and offsite support whenever required. All sounds great until a point (the money and wrong hardware and / or software sometimes)! Do your home work and shop around, ask advice from others and research. Do you really need offsite support on a rolling yearly contract if a good reliable local small firm can walk down the road to help you on a per issue cost?

If someone is going to put together your requirements and then sell it to you, perhaps you should get a few quotes at least from different firms? Seek advice from other businesses that have been running for more than two years and ask their advice. From the support firms ask to see testimonials etc. A wrong mistake here can seriously set a small business back.

Stationary!
Use an online stationary company rather than pop down the road to the local stationary shop. Buying some items that are used daily in bulk will save you some money. It is all about predicting when you are going to need the items. You don’t need a complicated system, piece of paper with a chart and someone just puts the latest stock level and when a level is reached, you buy. Better than someone dashing down the road and paying five times the price.

This blog entry could go on and on! Essentially I am telling you to question the advice you are given, research alternatives and see if they are viable. Others will see the wisdom in pumping in large amount of money for countless reasons, I would question this. After all it is your ‘small business’, not a large corporation and you personally need to question and be in control of your spending. Then you might discover along with other judgment calls (size of office, location, serviced offices, water cooler etc), that the loan could be smaller or isn’t need at all.

Please leave your advice and feedback in the comments. Don’t forget to bookmark this blog or subscribe to our rss feed.

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From a small business tech perspective some of the areas you could look at are…

AntiVirus and Protection
Remember not to skip on these areas, not only do you need to consider costs, you need to make sure you have the proper protection right for your business. However if you have an employee who uses Windows XP or Vista just for Email, Excel, Word and Internet access consider a linux alternative such as Ubuntu coupled with OpenOffice and Firefox to help reduce costs (also better in my opinion).

Brand Identity
Do you use an email address supplied by Google, Yahoo, MSN or your ISP for your business? Consider the benefits of using a domain name instead. yourbusiness.com

Create a house style (formatting etc) for your business, web site, update your marketing material, business cards etc. Does your logo look dated (don’t buy an expensive logo, lots of quality cheaper options these days)? Perhaps time for a change.

Give brand identities and house styles some research and find out how you can adapt advice to your business if beneficial. Whatever you do, look at how your are marketing your business.

Home workers
Chances are your home workers have a broadband connection and your office also. A cheap £10 headset and skype and you could perform skype to skype calls for the cost of your bandwidth. Cheaper than calling someones mobile.

Intranet
If you have an intranet do you use Dreamweaver to update it? Many companies pay someone to setup an intranet and then they are resold Dreamweaver by the same people to update it themselves. If you have an inhouse tech consider using free alternatives to use on your server such as nanocms, website baker or joomla depending on your requirements. Then don’t bother with buying or updating dreamweaver.

Marketing material
Some people post brochures like confetti and this might be justified for your business. However see if an initial PDF version of your marketing material might be a good replacement in some situations and not affect sales leads. For instance a word document can easily be converted to adobe pdf format using open office. If you have a scanner lying around you could also use that and then export to pdf using free software from the internet.

New computers
Do any of your staff really need new computers for a while? A clean up, defrag, removal of wallpaper etc can breath new life into many computers. We will post entries on how to do this in the future.

Servers
Does your server need to be windows, with expensive yearly software updates and paying for an expensive support contract? Perhaps research if there is a good linux firm nearby that can help you look into alternatives such as linux and whether it will save your business money.

Software
Need to buy or upgrade? Think open source! Open Office might be the ideal alternative to your excel, word and presentation requirements. Dia might meet your flow chart requirements and Photoshop is overkill if someone just needs to do simple graphics edits, try the badly named Gimp.

Suppliers
Hunt around for better deals for your tech requirements. CD’s for backup might be convenient to buy from down the road, but are they cheaper from an online supplier and just as good? Again the same for stationary, worth shopping around.

Support
If your support staff or sales staff have some spare time in their day, get them to go through the contact management database and contact customers to see if they need help. This can generate extra work I know, but also can generate stronger relationships, repeat sales or referrals. For instance does your company make software? Perhaps a customer doesn’t know there is a free .x update that gives new features and improves performance?

Web Sites and Hosting
Look at updating your web site with new content or getting a web site if you don’t have one. A web site need not cost a fortune or look like it was done by a budding amateur who also happens to be your friends son. There are some reasonably priced hosting solutions around that provide good performance and decent web designers who don’t charge a fortune.

Web Site: Search Engine Optimization
Everyone seems to think this costs a fortune, but it does not have to! Do you have an inhouse tech team? Setup a team from across your small business to look at how you can improve your web sites SEO. If you had a web site designed that you can update yourself, then a technical support person should be able to make a copy, put it on a development machine for you to use as part of the project before you update the main site. Easyphp is ideal for Microsoft Windows for such situations.

I am sure this list could go on and on. Please leave comments with advice and feedback.

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There are many ways to do this online,  but have you ever thought about using a people search service to help? Well I discovered that 123people.com works extremely well if you type in a business name or for researching people regarding their business. It breaks down the search into different categories and these cover:

• Blogs
• Documents
• Web Links
• Phone numbers
• Video
• Images
• Email Addresses
• IM profiles
• Social Network profiles

This service obviously doesn’t provide you with all the information you require, but it is a good supplement to your research. It is also extremely interesting to research yourself or your business!

http://www.123people.com

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Rodrigues Animation & Design: http://dionrodrigues.phpnet.us/current/

Dion Rodrigues Blog: http://dionrodrigues.wordpress.com/

Dion Rodrigues Twitter: http://twitter.com/DionRodrigues

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