Small business startup advice – SmallBusinessVoodoo.com

Business Credibility: Achieving Great Things In Stages

“A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.  A tall building arises from a mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Contriving, you are defeated; Grasping, you lose.” - Laozi Ancient Chinese philosopher

So for Man City, the bubble has burst. For the time being at least. Ka Ka has turned down a £500,000 per week salary and Robinho has gone AWOL.

It has been mooted that Ka Ka turned the offer down on moral grounds but I have a sneaky feeling that he has more business sense than the whole Man City board put together.

Ka Ka realises that if a business (in this case a football club) aspires to great things it needs to map out the journey in believable bite sized chunks. It needs credibility. And business credibility needs to be earned and not bought.

Ask a horticulturist and they will tell you not to plant a seed in a pot that is to big. Better to replant it repeatedly into pots that are progressively bigger.

If you’re launching a new small business into an already crowded market then aim to beat the competition in steps. Prioritise building business credibility. Find an energetic and competent intrapreneur to drive your business, but don’t throw money at Stuart Rose (CEO at M&S) and expect him to either say yes or actually be a good fit anyway. He may be right for a few stages down the line but not now. Read more »

Business Stripped Bare – Richard Branson

How did Virgin Mobile become the fastest business in United States history to reach a $1 billion turnover? (Yes, Faster even than Microsoft or Google)

How did a man who set out to sell records in the 70′s become one of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs with friends to count on such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama to name just a few?  Business Stripped Bare provides the answers.

Before you even make it to the opening credits you get a flavour of what being a truly global entrepreneur looks like. On the inside cover in rough handwriting (presumably Branson’s) are notes detailing some of the things he managed to achieve last year: Ordered 6 new 747 400’s; Opened a game reserve in Africa; Bought 5 miles of Majorcan coastline for new hotel; Secured site for largest cinema in the world in Tokyo;Opened first megastore in Beirut; Richard Branson is without question a truly global entrepreneur. Read more »

How many times have I heard small business management tell me “I don’t need a business plan”?

Let’s get this straight. All businesses plan. Whether they like to think they do or not. As soon as you order additional inventory or take on new staff in expectation of a greater workload, then you’re planning. So the issue is not whether you should plan or not, you can’t help but plan. The issue is how do you go about business planning ?

The only businesses who may legitimately say ”I don’t need a business plan” would be small scale and steady state – in other words not growing in turnover or contracting. In such a case everything stays more or less the same week in week out. Thus all the information is probably in the proprietor’s head anyway and that’s fine.

But as soon as growth or contraction is imminent, you can no longer say that you don’t need a business plan.  It becomes critical to make assumptions about how that growth is going to look and that means, you guessed it, planning.

Let me put it this way. Let us suppose that I have in my possession a piece of software that allows me to input your personal details. And from that I am able to map out a model of the next ten years of your life. Wouldn’t you at least be a little curious?

What if you could see that at the age of 39 you were going to die of sclerosis of the liver from excess alcohol intake. Wouldn’t you like to know that? Wouldn’t you like the chance to do something about it now and avert such a calamity? Read more »

How strange that we small businesses so often forget to target customers as a priority when hunting for that elusive increase in sales turnover.

Yet statistics consistently show that the cost of gaining business through prospecting is anywhere between 3 and 10 times as expensive as increasing sales through current customers.

Armed with that snippet of information it would be odd not to address the issue of how to target customers to maximise sales.

Target Customers To Maximise Sales In 10 Steps:

Make sure that you work through these steps in sequence. It’s important.

1- 80:20…Prioritise. Always remember that 20% of your customers will provide 80% of your profit. Work out who they are and focus on them. Now target customers who are in your bottom 20%. Ditch them.

2- Customer service.  I’m not just talking good customer service. I’m talking mind busting customer service. Good won’t differentiate you from the competition. 80% of customer service is giving the customer what they want when they want it. 20% is the personal relation building, touchy feely bit. Get the 80% right first without fail. Then worry about the 20%.  And don’t forget to give your customer some fun while you’re about it. Read more »