The bestselling Tips & Traps series helps you avoid bad investments and common mistakes as you build a new business In this time of mass layoffs, stock market instability, and low interest rates, you might be interested in buying your own businesses—but don’t know where to start. Tips & Traps When Buying a Business gives a step-by-step approach to finding and financing an established small business or franchise. Greg Balanko- Dickson provides the skills to make the correct decisions for everything from investigating a business and arranging financing to hiring professionals, cutting costs, and negotiating a deal.

Win new customers—and keep them coming back Whether you run a billion-dollar company or a mom-and-pop small business, you have to know your customers and know what they want. Written by three marketing experts, Tips & Traps for Marketing Your Business is filled with marketing best practices that show you how to win over new customers and make existing customers more profitable. You’ll also find practical and proven marketing tips and traps to help you grow your business, lessons learned from realworld experience, and tangible examples from the leading companies in business today. Connect with your target market Unlock hidden streams of profit and increase sales Develop and deliver a compelling story for your brand Effectively and profitably manage customer relationships Determine how much media weight is enough and how to avoid spending too much Attract customers to your Web site

Explains what business plans are and why they are important, provides information and advice on the process of researching and writing an effective business plan, and includes worksheets, forms, charts, and resources.

This easy-to-use guide will help entrepreneurs steer clear of often costly "trial and error" methods, and move them steadily toward success. "Tips and Traps for Entrepreneurs" is full of valuable management insights--real-life, step-by-step examples that have been used successfully by entrepreneurs in many industries.

Robert Irwin is America's #1 real estate expert. But don't take our word for it--the sales figures speak for themselves. To date, his real estate titles have sold more than one and a half million copies. Of all of his books, those in the bestselling "Tips and Traps" series continue to be the most popular(more than 500,000 sold), and two of those--Tips and Traps When Buying a Home and Tips and Traps When Selling a Home--have gone on to become the #1 guides in their respective subjects. In the seven years since those two classics were last revised the real estate market has undergone many dramatic changes. Irwin has updated these bestsellers to reflect these changes so readers can be successful in their real estate endeavors. This latest edition of Bob Irwin's classic Tips and Traps When Selling a Home brings new and experienced home owners up-to-speed on all the recent changes, regulations, and trends in real estate. It provides important information on market conditions, new tax advantages, toxic materials in the home, alternatives to the traditional broker, as well as proven strategies for: Handling multiple offers Negotiating from a position of power Dealing with the new "fee-for-service" and discount brokers Holding a home for investment, instead of selling And much more

This text covers every aspect of buying and selling a business. It describes an easy five-step method to valuing any business, lays out the buyer's and seller's responsibilities, advises on the best time to sell a business, and gives the pros and cons of using business brokers. The text describes the all-important 3-step negotiation process, and essential franchise considerations.

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.