How to Design Infographics Using Your Own Business Statistics: Best Steps and Strategies

Building infographics is enjoyable if you like design and have an interest in visual communication. There are many sites nowadays that make this process easier by offering infographic templates for free. There are also high quality templates available on membership sites which only require you to pay a low fee every month.

Infographics make it easier to understand information and can be used to demonstrate the steps involved in a process more easily than would be possible with just plain text. For example, you could develop an infographic for the number of people who use Twitter worldwide at particular times of day. You could also do an infographic on the ways in which people across the world enjoy milk.

Business woman Mamphela Ramphele-via Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

People in business use infographics for communicating with their clients and sharing information about their own business with potential customers. Some of these charts require data that can only be gathered in house. In order to do this, you will need to find a means of collecting the facts easily.

It should not be difficult for you to gather information from clients who are online or offline, once you make the steps involved in sharing information with you as hassle free as possible.

Face to Face
A simple conversation can provide lots of information. Assign sales representatives in your store with the task of speaking to clients in order to get answers to the questions that your chart will address.

Surveys
If you don’t have time to have face to face conversations with your clients consider using surveys that they can complete on their own time. Make these as short as possible. In fact, sometimes it is better to break a long survey up into smaller parts that take a couple of minutes than to ask customers to spend a whole block of their time completing a survey.

When you are collecting the information that you will use to design your infographic, make sure that your facts are as accurate as possible. Double check your results using different methods of collecting the facts.

MARKETING ACTUARY: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SETH GODIN, GOOGLE AND BLACKBERRY ...

MARKETING ACTUARY: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SETH GODIN, GOOGLE AND BLACKBERRY ...: I attended the Tech Leadership Conference for the first time. I went primarily to see Seth Godin. Overall, the sessions were worthwhile. The...

Small Business Accounting Expense Categories

Familiarity with small business accounting expense categories makes it easier for you to do your taxes. If you operate a micro enterprise, preparing your tax return is probably not your favorite thing. In fact, it is usually recommended that you get help from a tax preparer you can trust if your budget allows for that.

Image via 123RF

Whether you are doing your taxes yourself or not, it helps to know which expenses are deductible. It gives you greater peace of mind when you are planning or making decisions on a daily basis. For example, if you operate a farm and you want to get a small van to transport goods, you would want to make sure that you could list that as a cost associated with operating a commercial enterprise.

Expenses often fall in the following categories:

• Commercial use of your home
• Business use of your car
• Retirement plans
• Interest on loans
• Necessary insurance

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States makes it clear on their website that anything you buy must be necessary, for it to qualify. Necessary means that it is helpful and appropriate for your type of trade or service.

Source: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Deducting-Business-Expenses

Prospecting for New Business- A Review of New Sales Simplified

If you are prospecting for new business, New Sales Simplified can help you. This guide is written by Mike Weinberg and S. Anthony Lannarino. It is 229 pages long and is focused on techniques you can use to develop a consistent flow of new clients who will regularly make use of your products or the services you offer.

If you are a salesperson or head a sales team, you will find this text useful. It goes through the essentials of developing a strategy for selling your product. If you are new to business or have been doing well for a long period of time but want to improve even further, it will provide tips you can use to raise your income.

One of the biggest strengths of this text is the style that the information is delivered in. It’s lighthearted and funny and that alone makes the idea of cold calling someone seem less intimidating. While it walks you through the best way to build rapport with a new prospect, it makes you relaxed too.

New ideas are taught using stories. This makes it easier for you to remember the how of carrying out a particular strategy when you need to. Even if you are stressed, the examples are pleasant to remember. Things that are learnt while in a strong emotional state, such as happiness, tend to be remembered. The authors use that fact to help ensure that you remember most of their content.

They teach important concepts without being offensive. You learn to remember that every sales conversation involves getting feedback from the prospect as to what their needs are and matching what you have to offer with their needs. All in all, if you want to become a better salesperson, New Sales Simplified will teach the skills that help you get more business and prospects than ever before.

New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development