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Category - Small Business

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1
5 Reasons You Need A Business Plan
2
Six Traits Every SME Leader Should Have
3
Small Business Strategic Planning – Thinking Big
4
Managing a Mature Business – Risk Management Planning
5
Managing a Mature Business – Marketing For Continued Growth

5 Reasons You Need A Business Plan

Do you own a small business and you feel frustrated that working hard every day is not getting you any closer to your goals?

If you started your business with a dream but now feel that you can’t even see the big picture, you need to read this.

Once you understand how a Business Plan can help you move from “just working hard” to a planned series of steps to grow your business, you will know how to remove the stress and frustration from your life. Read More

Six Traits Every SME Leader Should Have

Having a great leader is crucial to the success of a business. In fact, positive leadership has been proven to improve employee engagement, especially in Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which helps the company achieve its goals. A good leader also cultivates a positive workplace culture, which, in turn, encourages employees to be productive and loyal.

However, if you want to become a good leader, there are a few traits you should observe. Below are the six traits that every SME leader should possess.

Read More

Small Business Strategic Planning – Thinking Big

A small business and strategic planning – is that chalk and cheese?

“I’m not even sure I need a business plan,” you say. “Do I really need to look at the big picture when I’m in the trenches?”

Well, that’s really up to you.

With a plan – any plan – you can envisage where you want to go, and then prepare steps to get there, rather than staying “in the trenches” and seeing what you get if you just work harder.

But first, let’s be clear about what is a strategic plan, and what the difference is between a strategic plan and a business plan.

Read More

Managing a Mature Business – Risk Management Planning

This is the fourth article in our series of Managing a Mature Business. If you haven’t caught up, the other articles in the series, published so far, are:-

In this article, we will deal with identifying, prioritising, and mitigating risk – Risk Management Planning in a mature business.

But first, to recap what a “mature business” is. The business cycle of a business, starts with a new business, then rapidly moves into a growing business, and then eventually morphs into a “mature Business” and ultimately – unless you do something at maturity – goes into decline. Each stage of this business cycle has different challenges.

In a “new” business, those challenges are all about establishing the business – proving the product, finding customers, poor cash flow. In a growth business, the issues are around retiring debt, satisfying demand, larger customer bases and proportionately larger debt-collection problems, control over organisation and business systems.

In maturity, it is about fading demand, older products, reducing customer bases, reduced cash flow. If this is recognised, businesses can “kick-off” a new growth phase by innovating and finding new products and markets through expansion or change. In this way, they can stave off the ultimate slide into decline.

Risk Management Planning is important at every stage of the business, but why is it especially important in maturity?

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Managing a Mature Business – Marketing For Continued Growth

Welcome to our continuing series on Managing a Mature Business.

Last year we published two series of articles on Starting a Small Business, and on Growing Your Business, and we started this current series on Managing a Mature Business. We finished the year with Managing a Mature Business – How to Keep Innovating and in this article, we move on to discuss how to market for continued growth. If you want to catch up, all the articles in all three series are available at Teik Oh Dot Com.

As we have seen before, the challenges in a mature business are different from those of a business startup or a growing business. Activity has plateaued. Your product may have been superseded nor the market may have changed. Following our earlier articles on managing cash flow and continuing to innovate, you may have changed your product or business model and have to attract a new target market.

As you try to reinvent yourself so that you can start the cycle again with a new growth phase, you can no longer rely on past reputations and previous histories with your old customers. Even if you are continuing your marketing activities – these may need to change.

So, what do you have to do to continue effective marketing for continued growth?

Read More

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