Thursday 21 February 2013

Personal development - an investment or cost?

This is always a good question for any training and development and I guess my response would be then it depends on what it is!

But some development will simply be seen as a cost because you have to do it and may not even see it as personal development. So for example, if you are responsible for health and safety, you may feel a course is not developing you but is more for ticking a box. But if we remain open minded, then I do not believe there is even training like this that we do not learn something from.

There are other areas that are very much a longer term investment. So for example, attending a regular meeting that gives you the skills and tools to develop your business may be seen either way, but I would suggest is more of an investment in a more successful future than a cost to bear.

www.entrepreneursmentor.co.uk

Friday 15 February 2013

Choosing a trusted adviser

This is always a good question and frequently asked by our clients.

Of course, check the person has the experience or qualifications (if needed) to support you in the role you desire. For example, an accountant will need a level of qualification to submit your accounts and calculate your tax, but what are their skills and experience in providing business advice in general (if that is what you want)?

The main consideration is whether you feel you can work with the person. so go and meet with them, get to know them and take the opportunity to explore their experience and see if what they say is what you like the sound of. Have a couple of meetings with different people and have a basis of choice.

In the end of the day, people buy people and you have to be comfortable with the person you are working with and the advice they are providing. The content can be checked in many ways with the internet, other advisers or professional bodies.

www.entrepreneursmentor.co.uk

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Profit and Cashflow forecasting

You cannot undervalue the process of completing a profit and cashflow forecast.
We recommend that this is a ‘live’ document in your business and not something completed when the bank manager requests.
This planning will help any business owner truly understand the numbers in their business such as which areas are profitable or not and which areas are generating cash rather than demanding.
As cash is king in business, then it is very useful to know how your trading will convert to cash utilising credit terms etc and knowing early if external financial support is required.
We recommend that you utilise the skills of your accountant to complete a full forecast of your business that is built with your goals and objectives in mind.
Then in preparation of the big picture we recommend that you really drill down on key areas such as staff productivity and return, cost of sales, fixed and variable costs, the bottom line!

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Test and Measure your marketing activities

In our experience, anything that you measure usually improves. Therefore we recommend that you test and measure your marketing activities to better understand what works, what needs a tweak and what does not work, so should not be repeated.
Many of our prospect meetings for A1 Marketing identifies that many business owners simply do not know which part of their marketing is working and what is not. It is common for all marketing activities to be viewed as one and no measure of how a new customer specifically finds you.
We recommend to measure your marketing activity to the level that you can tell for each new customer or sale, which part of your marketing worked.
Once you know this, you can then start to test different variations of that activity and then gradually improve this even further until your marketing becomes even more powerful and profitable. So for example, your last batch of new customers came from your Google Adword campaign, but by testing different alternative messages do you gain even more enquiries?
We suggest that you try and use codes or references, utilise online analytics and try specific landing pages for any online activity to get much closer to measuring your activity.
As a must, you need to ask each new customer how they found you and why they brought from you, but please ensure your questions drill down to find the true reason which may be the first reason they were interested in you and not the 5th time they saw your last marketing message or what actually made them make the contact to purchase?