2021 | Teik Oh

Marketing Is All About Helping Your Customers

Apr 27 2021

If you have been at the receiving end of a bad car salesman, you would have received an ear-bashing about how good the car is, all the gadgets it contains, how fast (or safely) you can go, and what range of colours you can get it in.

If, on the other hand, you have met a good car salesman, you probably walked away with the car at the end of your meeting.

Why?

Because the good car salesman would have asked about your family and friends, talked about what cars you have owned before, asked about where you live and where you work.

This might sound like friendliness, and might have initially annoyed you (“I’m here to look at a car, not to have a chat!”), but at the end when he showed you the car and suggested how it and its features might fit with your lifestyle, you got to like him or her!

That good salesman knew that he wasn’t there to sell you something but to help you receive a benefit.

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Dealing With Overwhelm In A Small Business

Apr 20 2021

About 3 years ago I read an article in a small business magazine that said over 70% of small business owners were overwhelmed by their work and responsibilities.

Do you think that got better or worse in 2020?

At the best of times, small business owners have multiple responsibilities and have to deal with multiple issues and decisions at any one time. Even the most well organised of us sometimes feel as if they are ten different people in one body!

Stress and small business owners are two things that always come together.

From what I understand, stress actually affects your body on a cellular level. The change it affects on your body makes you physically as well as mentally tired, and it makes you more and more unable to cope with stress. So, the more stressed and overwhelmed you feel….. the more stress and overwhelm you will feel!

And if stress is not good for you, a stressed leader is certainly not good for your business!

So it is more than worthwhile for all small business owners to organise their affairs and workflows to reduce stress and overwhelm.

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Small Businesses And An Uncertain Future

Apr 13 2021

As small business operators, our world is impacted by uncertainty.

Sometimes, from day to day, we’re not sure of the long-term loyalty of our staff; overhead costs like rents can trend up or down quite quickly; new legislation that we had not expected can change your trading landscape.

Even as we write our annual or other short-term Business Plans, we sometimes feel unready to look too far ahead. While planning for next year may be reasonably reliable, really small businesses rarely write long-term Strategic Plans looking ahead 5 or 10 years because we feel that we are unable to reliably predict the stability of the future.

So what are we to do as small business owners trying to reach a vision of the future in as steady and as planned a direction as we can steer?

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How To Turn Around High Employee Turnover

Apr 06 2021

Employee turnover can be one of the highest costs of any business when you take into account the cost of separation, recruitment, training, loss of knowledge and experience, transitional loss of productivity, and reduced workplace morale.

For a small business, these real and hidden costs can be seriously multiplied. In a small workforce, any small business employer can testify to the fact of how disruptive it can be if a key employee leaves, and it is not false to say that often if they are a popular co-worker, it can lead to further resignations.

In different industries the average “poor” turnover rate can be anything from 13% to 30% – that’s 13 to 30 people out of a hundred who leave your employment every year!

In a small business with a workforce of an average of 9 people, that’s 1 to 3 people leaving the business every year!

On the other hand, a settled workforce brings many benefits including the retention of corporate knowledge – and the fun of going to work!

How do you turn this around?

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Turn Marketing Cost To Marketing Investment

Mar 30 2021

Often, when I talk to small business owners about the need for them to market their businesses properly, the conversation usually turns to how costly it can be.

People talk about the cost of marketing material, the cost of advertising, the cost of other marketing activities, and if they think to prepare them, the cost of preparing marketing plans.

I prefer to think of expenditure on marketing as an investment rather than a cost, and especially if what you spend leverages into multiple sale volumes.

But this is often difficult to see for a number of reasons:

Not many small businesses have focused marketing plans so their marketing activity ends up as a shot in the dark without any significant returns
As a result, their marketing is a scatter gun approach so the cost of running marketing activities is not met by significant increases in sales
When they do decide to prepare a marketing plan, they hire a consultant, at a significant cost, and the resulting plan is hard to follow because they are not actively engaged in the “advice” given
Consultant-prepared marketing plans don’t allow for the business owner to adapt and amend as they roll it out.

What these small business owners (you?) need is a cost-effective way to turn the cost of a marketing plan and its implementation into an investment in finding more sales.

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Archive - 2021

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Marketing Is All About Helping Your Customers

Dealing With Overwhelm In A Small Business

Small Businesses And An Uncertain Future

How To Turn Around High Employee Turnover

Turn Marketing Cost To Marketing Investment