China NNN Agreements: How to Get Them Properly Signed and Executed

How to execute a China NNN Agreement

This post is nothing more than as described in its title. It focuses on what you typically should do to by way of contract signing formalities for your China NNN Agreement. It answers this question we frequently get from our blog readers and from our own clients: What exact steps should I take to get a China NNN Agreement signed?

The below is the typical response from our China lawyers:

The next step is to send this bilingual agreement to the Chinese side for review. If the Chinese side accepts all terms (sometimes they will propose changes), the best way (for you) to proceed would be for you to go first. That is, you should sign, date and then submit the contract to the Chinese side. Then don’t do anything (do not send any confidential information s your product or your molds) until the Chinese side returns with a fully executed version, signed, dated and chopped. You are right that you will want to make sure the exhibit listing your confidential information is properly filled out and dated, signed and chopped by the Chinese side. And you want to make sure of this not only at the time of first execution but also every single time a new product item or a new mold item is entered onto the record. For your own protection, you will want to make sure you in the end hold on to at least one original, fully executed agreement.

Please note that though the above says “bilingual agreement,” the official portion of the agreement is strictly in Chinese. The English language portion is strictly a translation for the benefit/convenience of our clients. I am careful to make this distinction because nearly all of the contracts we draft call for Chinese as the official language and we never draft contracts where more than one language is the official language. For why this distinction is so crucial, I urge you to read Silly Rabbit, The Chinese Language Contract Is What Matter and Dual Language China Contracts Double Your Chance Of Disaster.

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China NNN Agreements: How to Get Them Properly Signed and Executed

Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business

In today’s business world, it is imperative that business owners have their eyes on the prize when it comes to finances.

That said you may find yourself at times scratching your head as to why your revenue stream is stuck in neutral or even going in reverse.

One of the ways to make sure your finances are not in the red on a regular basis is properly accounting for all of your expenses. In making sure customers pay their bills on time, you need to be a financial wizard.

When it comes to customers paying you in a timely manner, this typically involves two scenarios.

Many customers will pay you at the time of the business transaction, while others will be billed for your services and/or products. Either way; making sure you’re not running a deficit is crucial.

So, can you definitely take credit for properly running your business?

Avoid Piling up Various Expenses

In order to keep your business financially solvent, keep in mind the following pointers:

• Timely payments – First and foremost, make sure customers are paying you in a timely manner. While the majority of people doing business with you will be on the up-and-up, some will try and work things to their advantage. If you end up invoicing them for services or products (see more below), some may delay paying you for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons can include that they never intended to pay you in the first place, they didn’t leave the proper forwarding address for the invoice, and they are behind on other bills and you’ve been dropped to the bottom of the priority list. No matter the reason, you’re now left without a payment, meaning you have less money coming in for your own business and personal expenses;
• Disputed payments – Another matter that oftentimes arises for many business owners is the issue of disputed payments. In such cases, the customer will dispute the charges for the products and/or services you charged them for. By doing so, they reach out to their credit card issuer and ask for a stop payment, leaving you once again in a situation where you are a put in a financial hole until the matter is ultimately decided. In order for you to go about preventing chargebacks, there are options available to you. Most notably, you can use a chargeback management program, one where your payments are in fact protected. Not only does this mean that you will get paid for the goods or services you provided, but you can oftentimes avoid costly fees, not to mention wasting your time following up on such problems. Keep in mind that a number of credit card processors will grant you a handful of chargebacks each month without a fee, though you should definitely know ahead of time which ones operate like that. At the end of the day, chargebacks can have quite the negative impact on your business, so don’t brush them off.

Are You Billing Customers on Time?

• Invoicing Payments Due – Lastly, another crucial factor to help you take credit for properly running a business is making sure you are invoicing customers who do not pay you immediately for purchases and/or services. For example, if you have a set date each month when it comes to invoicing, don’t skip it. Yes, it can be easy to miss that date when you become overwhelmed with work responsibilities, but stop for a moment and think about the negative repercussions to doing so. Your invoices get sent out late, the customer receives them later than normal, and you end up scurrying to pay business and personal bills. If you find yourself getting too busy to handle the regular invoicing needs, consider hiring a part-time assistant to oversee that need. No matter what it takes, stick with a consistent invoicing schedule. Doing so not only allows you to get paid on time, but it lessens chances customers will forget to pay and/or possibly dispute paying you in the first place.

If you can’t take credit for properly running your business at this time, then you obviously have some work ahead of you.

For your business and personal well-being, never overlook the importance of being a financial wizard.

As a current business owner, how do you go about handling financial disputes with customers?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

The post Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business appeared first on Successful Blog.

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Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business

How to Properly Identify Your Target Audience

As an entrepreneur, you understand that market research is a must. What many business owners fail to realize is that they probably shouldn’t conduct market research themselves. You shouldn’t even hand the task off to an in-house marketing person or team.

Photo by Davide Ragusa

If you have the budget for a marketing department, it’s best to utilize that resource for content marketing or one-off marketing studies. When you’re just starting your business or rebranding it, it’s best to use a market research agency to find your target audience.

Why You Need a Market Research Agency

For many small business owners, the Internet is their sole reference source. But a Google search just isn’t enough when it comes to the longevity of your business.

There are hundreds of of online resources that provide instructions for the DIY version of market research. However, these how-tos and ebooks leave out the amount of time, patience, and money it costs to get research done correctly the first time.

Market research agencies go beyond survey results by asking “why?” in instances where businesses would accept results as fact. This is especially true when the results confirm the businesses’ own biases. For example, in one survey, an anonymous company found that price ranked behind several other factors when customers were deciding whether to purchase one of its products.

This discovery led the company to believe they could raise the cost of the item without making changes to the actual product or business. It wasn’t long before sales fell. It turned out that price ranked low as a factor because most consumers were accustomed to the price being the same across all competitors.

Agencies look for different ways to interpret information and don’t take results at face value. By asking why results turned out a certain way, they’re able to get to the root of a question. They thus help the businesses mold their models.

How Big Businesses Fail, Too

Market research mistakes aren’t just limited to small businesses. Major corporations have made big marketing research mistakes as well and lost thousands or millions in the process. For example, Coca-Cola’s team had more than 200,000 customers taste-test their line, “New Coke.”

More than half of the participants believed it tasted better than the original Coke, and even Pepsi. But when Coke began selling “New Coke” and nixed the original, customers weren’t very happy. Coke failed to understand that numbers aren’t everything. Customers valued the actual brand and were emotionally invested in Coke’s original product.

Even Google failed tremendously with its Google Glass line. The tech giant assumed they could translate the power of wearable and information technology into a simple everyday tool: eyeglasses.

But Google failed to properly address the concerns of many consumers, most of which were centered around privacy and price. And unlike Apple, which touts its products as an affordable luxury, Google further isolated customers by releasing early models to rich geeks of the West Coast.

Regardless of the clout you have as a business, appealing to the masses is about much more than building a cool product. The “if you build it, they will come” approach doesn’t work in the world of business. Thorough market research is necessary to increases chances of profitability.

Benefits of Market Research

One of the many benefits of market research is that it allows you to create relevant content that sticks. There is a wealth of information out there about your target audience. The difficult part is tapping into that data, analyzing it, and creating content based upon it.

Content reigns supreme. If you want any chance of appearing on the first page of search engine results, you’ll need a lot of it. Targeting the right audience allows you to mold your content towards people who will want to engage with your brand.

Market research also puts you ahead of the competition. In an economy where new businesses are sprouting at the rate of 543,000 per month, you’ll need a competitive edge. And with proper market research, it’s very possible to find success selling products (or services) at slightly higher prices than  those of your competitors by differentiating with quality, service, and research.

Most importantly, market research helps you minimize risks. With a wealth of information at your fingertips, you can change your product line, reinvent your services, or build additional features for your software. And if you wanted to open a new location, market research would be able to identify whether that particular spot already had a saturated market.

The post How to Properly Identify Your Target Audience appeared first on Growmap.

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How to Properly Identify Your Target Audience