1. Know your competition. Know what they’re doing, what their strengths and weaknesses are, who their target market is. Know what they want to do. The more you know about your competition, the better you can position yourselves in comparison to them.
2. Attend industry seminars and trade shows. Go to the panels and workshops. See what’s new from your suppliers, or what new technology is out there that will help make your job a little bit easier. Discover new techniques to do what you already do. Never stop learning.
3. Test your products. Depending on the type of product you have, you may need to do focus group testing, or usability testing, or stress testing. No matter what needs to be done though, testing is vital for any product – it keeps that quality of your product high. High quality products typically result in happier customers, and happier customers are more likely to stick with you than head to your competition.
4. Keep your current customers happy. We are always thinking about how to get new customers, and it’s not unusual for us to forget about our current customer base. Keeping our current customers happy is one of the best ways to keep ensuring our customers don’t go to our competitors.
5. Know what your customers want. This goes hand-in-hand with the above point. If you know what your customers want, then you can be sure that you are giving them what they want – especially when your competition isn’t. Be careful, though, to make sure you don’t become too preoccupied with what your customer wants, as you could lose focus on the big picture of your product.
6. Don’t get stuck on what has happened in the past. Focusing too much on the past won’t let us get a clear picture of what is happening currently, or won’t let us work towards where we want to be in the future. Whether it is something good that has happened in the past, or something bad, it can give us a skewed image of where we are right now.
7. Promote yourself and your products in different areas.
8. Don’t feel the need to compete on price. There are other ways that you can compete with your competition, than through pricing. You have to take into account the quality of products, the target market, and other considerations as well as pricing.
9. Never stop innovating. Products and processes can constantly be improved upon – innovation can happen at any point in the design process. Even after a product has been released, innovation can happen to make future product releases better.
10. Take advantage of government grants, loans and tax incentive programs. The SR&ED program is a great example of this – the SR&ED program will provide you with a cash refund or tax credit as a reimbursement for money that you have spent on creating and improving products and processes. Additional sources of funding can give you the much needed cash flow to invest in your business that will allow you to remain competitive.

Whether we enjoy them or not, we all need to do presentations at some point in our careers. Here are ten quick tips to ensure the presentation goes as smoothly as possible.

1. Practice in front of an audience. Nothing is better than having the opportunity to practice in front of people – they can tell you whether you are talking too fast or too slow, whether you are loud enough, or whether what you are saying makes sense.
2. Have backups of all presentation materials. Imagine you are all set-up for your presentation, and have your presentation material on your laptop, but for some reason your laptop doesn’t communicate with the projector. Do you have a backup of the presentation on a different laptop? On a CD or USB key? If you can’t get any of your digital files to work with the projector, will you be able to do your presentation with digital files?
3. Allow yourself to be nervous. Nerves are a good thing – and most people feel them before a presentation. You can use these nerves as an adrenaline rush to make your delivery of your presentation more enthusiastic.
4. Anticipate the questions your audience will ask you. If you can anticipate the questions you will be asked, you can prepare your answers beforehand. When asked a question, you won’t be left floundering for an answer, but will already have a good idea of what to say in response.
5. Have one strong hook at the beginning to lure the audience in. There’s nothing worse during a presentation than looking out at your audience and realizing that no one is paying attention. A strong opening hook can grab their attention right from the beginning and will make them more attentive throughout the whole presentation.
6. Make short notes for yourself. We can all get sidetracked in the middle of a presentation, or momentarily forget what we are talking about. While having a full copy of your presentation is discouraged (it may cause you to read directly from the paper as opposed to speaking to your audience), having short points that you can take your cue from are always helpful.
7. Keep eye contact with the audience. Not only does this help the audience feel you are communicating one-on-one with them, but it also helps to keep their attention tuned towards you and your presentation.
8. Watch your posture and your body language. Body language can be quite dangerous if not used correctly. Keeping your arms crossed can give the impression that you’re not open to communication from your audience.
9. Have a conversation with your audience. You don’t necessarily have to have an actual conversation, but keep the tone of your presentation conversational. This makes the material you’re covering presented in a much more relatable way.
10. Expect to make mistakes. If you expect to make mistakes, you won’t let the ones that you do make fluster and unnerve you. Everyone makes mistakes, and if you just flow with it, most people won’t even notice that you have actually made a mistake.

1. Arrive at any networking events early, and stay late. The majority of the networking typically happens after or before an event takes place. If you arrive early, you can both prepare yourself mentally for the event and meet those others who arrive early. Afterwards, the discussion will likely be more relevant to what happened at the event and may lead to more opportunities for you to build relationships with these people.
2. Be prepared. Look into who else is going to be attending the networking events, to see what you could do for each other. Think up questions that you want to ask them. Practice your self-introduction and a 10-second description of you and the business you do.
3. Have a plan. What do you want to get out of this networking event? Is there someone in specific that you want to meet? Some objective that you want to accomplish? For example, some people attend networking events looking to meet 3-5 quality contacts.
4. Go for quality, not quantity. Sure, you could meet every single person in the room, but if that means that you don’t have time to speak with that one person who could potentially use your services, or purchase your product, then you’ve missed out on a great opportunity.
5. Don’t be afraid to give out more than one business card to each person. They may know someone who could use your products or services. Along the same lines, don’t be afraid to ask them to pass on your information to people they know.
6. Take note of the business cards you get. Stop to read them when they are handed to you before putting them away – this will show the person that you are talking to that you are really interested in them and what they are saying. This also could help spark a couple of questions from you to keep the conversation going. As well, make notes on the business card that will help you when it comes time to follow up with this new contact.
7. Remember that first impressions count. Make a good, strong one. Smile, be friendly. If you have had a hard day at the office beforehand, make sure your attitude doesn’t show it. People are more likely to communicate with someone in a good mood.
8. Choose the right networking groups and events. Make sure the event you are attending has the type of people you want to meet in it. At the same time, if the networking group is aimed at a certain group (CEOs who knit, for example), make sure that what the group is focusing on is of interest to you.
9. Don’t spend your networking time trying to sell. The goal of networking is to build relationships that will help both you and the person you’re building a relationship with at some time in the future.
10. Follow-up! The networking process is more than just meeting someone; in fact, it is a three-stage process. First, you meet the person. Second, you build the relationship with the person. Third, you get business or support from the relationship with the person. If you don’t follow up with the person after meeting them (and on a regular basis) then you won’t end up with a strong relationship that can bring you business. Remember, networking is a long-term process, and you won’t get the results overnight.