PrintEmail

If you want to shake off an inferiority complex and be taken seriously in the marketplace, you should present a professional image and emphasise the advantages people see in dealing with home-based businesses.

These are two of several key suggestions to come out of a Home Business Week tele-seminar attended by Homebizbuzz.

The difference in marketplace perceptions of corporates and home-based businesses is not as large as many think.

"If you go in with the greatest confidence and the ability to convince them that you can do the job and that you have the back-ups in place, you're not only going to convince

them, you're going to convince yourself," Homebizbuzz Editor Heather Douglas told seminar participants.
But the home business person has to convince themself first, she added.

Other contributions to the tele-seminar included:

• Home businesses tend for forget they have huge advantages over corporates. They are able to move quickly to take advantage of opportunities and don't have to get anybody to sign off anything.
• Clients and customers are often not happy with big corporates and like the one-on-one attention they get from a home-based businesses.
• In order to counter potential negative perceptions, home businesses need to have strategies in place, such as back-up support to cover absences, and planning to cover mis-matches between production and sales.
• Some home businesses try to compete on price and are then forced to cut corners in their branding and marketing. People also rate you by what you charge. If you charge the lowest rate, people are going to think that they're going to get the lowest quality job. Pricing at a level sufficient to allow investment in professionally created and properly produced marketing materials is essential.

Particpants were also challenged to test whether they had a home-business inferiority complex, whether they were not being taken seriously, and what they can do. You might like to ask yourself some of these questions too:

• Are you trying to pretend your business is not home-based, or do you just ignore the issue?
• Do you deal pro-actively with the fact you work from home and what this means for your customers or clients?
• What arguments can you mount to counter negative perceptions and how can you substantiate those arguments?
• Are there advantages and benefits for customers and clients in using your products or your services, compared to competitors which are not home-based?
• What communication opportunities and mechanisms exist - or which can you create, to get all this across?
• How do you want to be perceived by customers or clients, and by your peers in your industry?
• What are you doing personally, and in the face that your business offers to your market, to position yourself in the way that you want to be seen?

The tele-seminar was conducted for Home Business Week by John Shattock of Shattock Communications. A recorded version and transcript is available on request at www.shattock.net.nz/homebiz