Kathleen Allen

Before you earn an MBA (Master of Business Administration) degree, you can still apply MBA-level knowledge in your career: Be a better business manager by efficiently delegating responsibilities among your employees and successfully rewarding those who do a good job. Hone your design and marketing skills by creating an informative and easy-to-use business website and a brief but clear marketing plan.

Prepared entrepreneurs learn as much as possible about their marketplace and what customers want. This cheat sheet helps you test new ideas and weed out the keepers from the also-rans. It poses key questions about your concept, the marketplace, the industry, and your team. It even shows you how to create a marketing plan, and more!

Being a manager is one of the most difficult — and potentially one of the most rewarding — jobs that anyone can take on in an organization. A successful manager must continuously improve systems and processes to make them more efficient, more effective, and less costly. Because the environment of business is always changing — new employees, new technology, new sources of supply, new competitors — managers always have to be alert to the need of restructuring their organizations to keep them competitive in the marketplace.

Without a doubt, annual reports are at the pinnacle of corporate communication. The point of the annual report is to provide a summary of exactly how a company has performed in the preceding year, and to provide a glimpse of the future. Building a compelling annual report is a real art and science, and more than a few consulting firms are doing very well, thank you, by hiring themselves out to create reports for all kinds of companies.

A budget is nothing more than a written estimate of how an organization — or a particular project, department, or business unit — will perform financially. If you can accurately predict your company's performance, you can be certain that resources such as money, people, equipment, manufacturing plants, and the like are deployed appropriately.

Every business, whether it has 2 employees or 2,000, has meetings as a regular part of getting things done. Although employees can communicate with one another in an organization in many different ways, business meetings — if they are conducted the right way — can be incredibly effective and efficient. Meetings are not only one of the most important ways for employees to communicate within organizations, but they're also the way that teams get their work done.

Technology affects practically every entrepreneurial venture, and savvy entrepreneurs know which tech resources to turn to. You use technology to help determine what to sell, how to sell it, where it's selling, and who's buying it. To keep on top of technology, browse these Web sites periodically for helpful information: Wired.

For entrepreneurs, an effective marketing plan is crucial. Entrepreneurs need to determine who's going to buy the product and how to let those customers know that you have what they want. Creating a marketing plan is manageable with these steps: List your options. Brainstorm all the possible ways you can make customers aware of your business and what you're offering.

Thorough entrepreneurs test their product ideas before they begin manufacturing. Even if you're in love with your idea, ask yourself the following test questions, which compel you to look closely at these areas: the product or service; the market it'll enter; the customers in that market; your finances; and your team.