Its all about business.

Archive for July, 2007

Your Business… Your success…

Jul 31

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, Growth, People!, Personal Development, Planning, Risk Management, Starting out in business, The Board Room | No Comments

In business the success you get is often based on what you do as the business Owner/Operator, Director, Manager, CEO… Sure there is a matter of Luck, being in the right place and the right time (serendipity) but mainly the L.U.C.K. boils down to Learning Under Correct/Constant Knowledge.

Over time you might be able to ‘fluke’ a few results that make you feel good, look good etc… However there is often a more logical approach that can be taken to ensure your business success.

Firstly lets look at a few starting points, one being Business Profiles the other being your efforts towards success at the level of the profile you are at or want to be at. If you start with a level one business (and many do) the writing can be on the wall if you allow yourself to not see growth potential or take into acocunt the principal of making a profit. Mind you, you could do yourself in if that is all you were to see.

Business is a wholsitic device, which requires a number of things to happen to get apositive result. No matter what level your business is at you need to be aware of the positive and negative forces at play that can make or break it.

I would suggest that as a successful business operator you need to be able to have your finger on the pulse of what’s is happening, what could happen and what you want to have happen to make your business be all it can be.

Business failure rates are high, and to overcome that devices like the Business Profiles can give some indicators as to how you might explore the level you are at and decipher what to so to get to where you want to be.

Success is many things to many people and if it is about working towards worthwhile goals then your goal must surely be to create a successful venture. Using the profiles above and developing a plan of action from that to provide you with your goals is therefore an important factor in getting to where you want to go.

Using Promotional Products As Retail Babysitters

Jul 30

Posted by Michael Crooks in Excellence!, Growth, Innovation and Creativity, Starting out in business, The Customer Service Dept, The Marketing Dept, The Operations Dept, The Sales Dept | No Comments

I almost laughed out loud. A clerk tried to explain the features and benefits of a hair dyer to a woman who had a small child with her. The clerk’s sales attempt was interrupted every 20 seconds with, “Mommy, look at this!”, followed by mommy’s horrified look as she foresaw three possible outcomes: 1) Junior was about to maim himself; 2) Junior was about to maim someone else; 3) Mommy was about to spend way more than she intended on something that she didn’t want — that was about to be broken into at least 5 pieces.

Since it wasn’t my kid, I found it hilarious. The salesperson was exasperated. And mommy? Well, mommy finally said, “hell with it”, took Devil Child by the arm and exited the store after a carefully stacked display of towels suddenly became un-stacked — because Junior wanted the towel on the bottom.

When children hinder the sales process, salespeople can’t effectively do their job and profits suffer. Smarter retailers know they MUST occupy the children if they want mommy and daddy’s attention. That’s where Retail Babysitters come in.

For a promotional item to serve as an effective Retail Babysitter it should meet the following criteria:

1) Be age appropriate;
2) Be clean and mess free;
3) Consume children’s time.

A fourth criteria that, while not mandatory to keep kids from sabotaging your sales efforts, is VITAL if you want to get the best R.O.I.:

4) Whenever possible, Retail Babysitters should contain a tangible component to aid in the continuing promotion of your business or service off-premise.

Logoed items that meet the above criteria include stickers, sticker sheets, waterless tattoos, coloring books, crayons, your letterhead and custom activity sheets.

Businesses such as flooring showrooms, vehicle dealerships and furniture stores where children remain visible, can create a children’s area with carpet, a table and chairs. Suggesting to small children that they make a card or picture for mommy and daddy can work wonders. You can provide your letterhead, 8 1.2″ x 11″ sheets of construction paper, logoed boxes of crayons and logoed stickers or sticker sheets.

Waterless temporary tattoos can also be used in this way as they transfer well to paper products as well as the skin. Themed coloring books with your imprint on them along with the crayons are another good option.

For older children, create custom activity sheets. For instance, the sheet for a flooring store could contain a word search where kids search for words such as flooring, carpet, vinyl, etc.; a word jumble; a maze and other activities.

If you can’t create a Kid’s Corner, placing a coloring book & crayons with some stickers and waterless tattoos in a logoed paper lunch bag can fill the bill. Many kids will sit on the floor next to the parents, look through the bag and begin to apply stickers, waterless tattoos, use the coloring books or decorate the paper bag.

To aid in off-premise promotion of your business, offer a monthly coloring contest. The kids either finish a coloring book picture while at the establishment or finish it at home. The parents can drop the finished picture off later. (This gets them back in the store). Pictures are displayed and once a month, one or more winners is chosen and goes up on the winner’s wall. Each child who turns in a drawing gets an entry prize of some sort with the monthly winners getting larger prizes. (Monthly winners must come in to claim their prize.)

To provide the most benefit to your establishment, all prizes (water bottles, plastic flyers, knit caps) carry your logo and contact information. You can also get lot’s of play out of featuring selected children’s drawings in your monthly newspaper/print ads and on your website. You can also use the drawings to create a custom business calendar.

If you work with a competent promotional products consultant, they can be on the lookout for and bring select items to your attention that are on closeout or are seasonal specials. This will also serve to keep your prize selection fresh and seasonally appropriate.

Children can be a salesperson’s worst nightmare. But with a little thought and the right promotional products to serve as Retail Babysitters, children can actually become an asset as you use them to leverage favor — and sales with the parents.

Make it real…

Jul 28

Posted by Steve Gray in Finance, Growth, The Board Room | No Comments

Busy in business? most are… But have you noticed that these days we are so used to $$ coming in and going out electronically that we don’t realise it’s happening.

In the ‘good old days it was cash and Cheques, now its eftops and credit cards, bank transfers and the like.

We could become a nation of people seeing numbers and not cash. So what if you were to take one months ‘cash flow’ and look at it as $1 coins… or $10 bills. How would it stack up? how high would the income and outgoings piles be? and the profit pile? and the wages pile… Get the point.

Its about becoming more aware of the real terms of business and how the cash really stacks up, not just the numbers.

Sketchcasting, a new way of blogging?

Jul 25

Posted by Bren Ryan in Excellence!, Innovation and Creativity | 3 Comments

I was getting my daily dose of Darren Rowse today and saw a very interesting new concept.

This has enormous potential, especially for those of us who can convey thoughts and concepts much better standing at a white board than we can with the written word.

I love it! I can’t wait to learn how to do this and give it a go.

A great idea from Richard Ziade @ Sketch Basement

Bullying no thanks…

Jul 23

Posted by Steve Gray in Growth, Health and Safety Dept, Human Resource Management, Leadership, People!, Personal Development, Risk Management, The Board Room | No Comments

Of increasing annoyance is the challenge employers face in dealing with Bullying in the workplace. No longer is it just a blue collar “stir up the new apprentice with some pranks issue” but it’s a bigger issue involving all business types. It seems there are as many bullies as there are workplaces.

Finding out you have a bully is one thing, but dealing with them is entirely another… Often you find out you have one or three bullies far too late and their manipulative ways mean they may have already infected a range of people in your organisation. Poor productivity, lots of sick days taken, higher staff turnover may be just a few of the indicators a bully is in your midsts.

To combat this employers, managers and supervisors need to be vigilant that 1. they are not the bullies and that 2. they have a process of some kind in place for dealing with them. Finally 3. they have a way of discovering if they have any.

Attached is a document that can give you some insights into bullies and the ways they do things, use that as a starting point to pinpoint the behaviours bullies have and then work towards ways to over come these parasites feeding on your business.
Workplace Bully Information

What level are you at?

Jul 21

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, Finance, Leadership, People!, Personal Development, Planning | No Comments

I took a list at the Australian Business Review Weekly’s top 200 rich list.

I was not in it… BUT plenty were (200 in fact) what struck me was the list at the back of the notables that were dropped off the list from last itme, one person still had a fortune of $121mil but it was no where near enough to get him into the top 100 list. In fact he was near the bottom of the ousted group.

So, I’m not at his level (no where near it…) but it got me thinking about levels, new businesses starting out and older businesses that have only got so far. I am fortunate to be able to have access to a lot of startups via a business forum and offer some assistance in their journey in business, they are looking up, I am looking back.

But with the higher groups I am looking up and want to find those looking back to provide me with the info to take me to the next level… Mentors? Coaches? Perhaps.

The aim here, to get  you thinking about your level and where you want to be.  Seek and ye shall find!

Sustainability and the start up.

Jul 21

Posted by Steve Gray in Growth, Starting out in business | 2 Comments

You got into business to do great things and then what do you suppose happened when you discovered it was all going “pear shaped…” You wondered what you had done to deserve the hassle, the pain, the torment, the lack of dollars, the lack of customers the lack of support… the list goes on, and on… and it happens way too easily.

Here are a few things to get you thinking and in your initial start up phase these things should be priority number one!

  1. Have I done enough research? – Not so much research that the business never gets started, but enough to know that what you want to do will be able to turn a profit, meet a need or want for the customers and provide the income you need to make a living and keep the business growing.
  2. Will I be happy? – In a job you can duck and weave, take holidays, take sick leave and so on to get out of a ‘dud period’, in business however, you are it. So will your business keep you happy, make you happy, or build up to happiness? If not, why do it? Any thing less than happiness is probably misery, and in business you cannot just walk away without losing something (lots of $$, self esteem, respect, etc.)
  3. Sustainability? Whats that? – You have a business idea, will it last, will it be something that peole want to have for a long while to come or will it be something that fades out in a short time frame (a year or two.) If you are in the research phase check out carefully if this will be the case, there is little sense in putting a lot of time and effort into something that will be gone in a year or two (e.g. some software ideas have come in and gone out in a few years.)

Now lets take a deeper look at what can be done.

  1. Find out as much as you can about the buisness side of the industry – For many going into business will mean they have worked in a role for many years, built the skills and so on, but not really built any buisness skills to assist them in their endeavours. No need to do a big fully blown business course that take years, but do get any short term training to assist you in business. Then ask questions about growth prospects for the industry as well as finding out why a business needs to grow to be sustainable. Do the figures, how much do you need to earn to make things REALLY viable, its not dificult to do, it just needs some thinking and a calculator to bring it to fruition.
  2. Happiness – Ask questions to find out what being in business is really going to be like, are other industry leaders in your chosen field that run businesses really happy? And how would you measure that? Too often I hear people say… “It will be ok, it will be worth it.” they set up and then fail… Is that worth it? “I would not change a thing…” Even though there was a lot of heartache and hassle? loss of $$ is that really worth it?
  3. Do more than the basic research – It’s easy to research on the internet and chat to a few business people, but what is life really like for the industry leaders in your chosen business area? How will you find that out? After all going into business is not just about the money and satisfaction, its about lifestyle. It’s also about sustainability, so you can create an asset that will be of REAL long term value to you. Ask more questions, get face to face with the RIGHT people, not just supporters of your ideas. Start asking questions about buisness plans and chat to business owners about what plans they have… (if any). And also ask how much money they had to put up to get the business started…

It might sound like I want to put people off going into business, (actually I doubt that I would stop anyone that has a head full of emotion wanting to start a business!) but really I want to make sure everyone with a buisness idea sets off on the task with a clear head and a solid set of goals, after all it’s the lifestyle choice that will probably be your biggest one (and hopefully the most profitable one), so do it properly.

To find out more about getting started in business, or planning for more buisness check out the business profile PDf file for more ideas and information.

Business Profiles

Strategy, tactics, methods? Which one???

Jul 19

Posted by Steve Gray in Negotiation, Planning, Starting out in business, The Customer Service Dept, The Marketing Dept, The Sales Dept | 2 Comments

I have fielded a few enquiries over the past few months on how to market products and services and have noted there are a number of organisations that have started a business but had no ideas about the sales side, what tactics, strategies and or methods they will use to get people to spend $$ with them.

step 1. Know that you need a plan of action.

step 2. Know that you NEED to build a relationship with people so they trust your organisation enough to want to buy from you.

step 3. Find out what their needs are, then propose a solution.

step 4. Take time to develop all this and get it running… otherwise you will be chasing your tail…

Hope that helps!

Ford jobs issue creating concern…

Jul 19

Posted by Steve Gray in Human Resource Management, People!, Personal Development, Risk Management | No Comments

The Ford Geelong issue will cause a few problems for a while yet. Local business identity Lawrie Miller who is part of the local Chamber of Commerce has suggested it will not cause a big ripple, that the people out on their ear may be absorbed in part, into “IT and Bio Tech industries…” (Geelong Advertiser 19/July/07)

Some might, but my gut instinct says its a bigger issue than that… Imagine being part of an organisation for 15 – 20 years making castings to be given the advice go into IT or Bio Tech… Yes it can happen and in some cases re skilling will take place, BUT if you have cast steel and aluminium for a long while, a ‘softer job’ in IT may not suit, you might want a more physical position similar to your past emloyment.

The issues around this won’t lay down in a hurry but what will happen in the messy business that is developing, will be interesting to watch, redploy or not there will certainly be some casualties. In what is histrocially a working class area there are those that are set in their ways and want things to remain the same as they have always been. Hopefully there are enough with the ‘improvise, adapt and overcome’ attitude, which will propel them forward into new roles.

Lets hope that people can see through politcal smokescreens (the company and the government) and see a clear way forward, so the security these people are used to can continue.

What’s in your blind spot?

Jul 19

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, Growth, Health and Safety Dept, Personal Development, Planning, Risk Management | No Comments

In a car you have a couple of blind spots that mean you have to turn your head to see out of a side window to see what is really happening, and I see the same in business, in retail it’s often called store blindness where the details become common place and things that need to be changed, cleaned up repaired etc are not seen. and I guess due to us being in our businesses so much many other things escape our attention.

Yet funnily enough the blindness disappears often when we go to someone elses business, we are able to turn on our radar and spot any number of minor things that irritate us.

So to be able to see the blindspots in your busness and then do something about them is vital. Here are some poitnsto consider.

  • Ask others – customers staff members, friends and family.
  • Use your professional support people – accountant – coach – bookkeeper.

Whoever it is get them involved in taking a look at what’s happening and give you real feedback. make a list of what needs work and do it or delegate it.

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