Many professionals in private practice are struggling to grow a successful business. They are smart and dedicated people. Often the problem is that they don't know enough basic business and marketing skills.

I see far too many women getting overwhelmed with trying to figure everything out and do it all themselves. They have lots of information - in fact, so much information that they become confused and overburdened.

Having a restaurant strategy plan is a vital part of running a successful business. It will help you stay focus and meet your goals quicker and easier while increase your revenue in the process. It will also help you avoid many of the common mistakes made by entrepreneurs when starting up a new company that can cause their business to fail.

Some of the obvious reasons why a new business fails include the following: borrowing more money than what can be paid back, similar businesses growing or going bankrupt and poor management.

If you are a service provider charging by the hour for your services, you may be trapped in a cycle of under-earning. Charging an hourly or even monthly rate for your time puts a ceiling on the amount of income you can earn.

Your profits are limited to how much time you have available to actively work with your clients. And that time is restricted because of all the other activities you are doing to run your business: marketing, sales calls, speaking, networking, writing a newsletter.

I receive e-mails on a regular basis from people who state that cold calling is working perfectly well for them and that they've become quite successful by it. That's fine - as I've always said, if it works for you, then keep doing it. My materials are for people who either are not getting results from cold calling, or who simply do not enjoy it and do not want to do it anymore.

Many small business owners feel overwhelmed when they face the daunting prospect of getting their online presence going. Everywhere you turn there's an "expert" trying to tell you what you ought to do.

As a coach and consultant to entrepreneurs, I've watched too many of you go astray, so I've assembled my Top Ten List of Mistakes so you can avoid them!

1.

Holidays and the end of the year_combined with an economic recession_offer some revenue possibilities to smaller business owners and managers that may not be immediately apparent. Let us consider advertising first.

The deluge of mega store pre-printed ad circulars and broadcast commercials - replete with HUGE never-before-seen price reductions - are already being stuffed inside newspapers and replacing the political clutter on the airwaves.

We've all heard the term KISS at one time or another - "Keep It Simple, Stupid." However, the majority of salespeople violate this basic principle more often than not.

Let me start with some examples of what I'm talking about. At one position I held, I sat next to someone who could have been a top salesperson. He and I both operated much the same in that rather than cold call, we ran our own personal marketing programs to generate leads and simply took the calls that came in as a result.

I came across an article today that explains how companies can successfully implement a company-mandated sales plan and be sure that all of the salespeople are following it.

I found the advice given in that article to be deeply disturbing to me, especially since it is new and not from a twenty-year-old book from the old school of selling.

The essence of the article is this: Companies that intend to implement a new sales plan must make it mandatory, must hold the salespeople accountable for following it, must let the salespeople know that managers will inspect to make sure the new plan is being followed, and that role plays should be done in training sessions to teach salespeople how to use the new sales plan.

As more and more people enter the sales profession, less and less are utilizing cold calling as their prospecting technique of choice.

Why is this happening? Why is cold calling going away?

There are several reasons. First of all, prospects have become so sick and tired of cold calling that they have reached the point of total intolerance.

Have you ever wondered why sales managers are so insistent that you cold call?

Have you ever wondered why many companies will not even consider a marketing budget, and instead mandate cold calling, make it a job requirement, and tell you you'll be fired if you don't do it?

Doesn't it seem a bit strange that you'd be paid so much in salary just to run around collecting fifty business cards a day, or making fifty telephone calls when your talents are so much better than that?

There is a reason for all this insanity.

Serendipity means the seemingly random things that are continually going on in our lives, that we feel that we are not controlling or in control of. Sometimes these things seem good to us at the time and sometimes they don't.

However, its only with a large serving of hindsight that we can ever really tell. And the interesting thing is that with hindsight, its often the things that we didn't like at the time that were some of our most valuable experiences.