Small Business | Teik Oh

7 Things You Need To Know About Starting A Business

Nov 12 2019

If you are thinking of, or about to start a new business, you must be excited!

I know I was when I left the international consulting firm I was working for in 1991 to start my own financial and management consulting company. I was excited and a little terrified!

But at least, I had an advantage over most subject-matter experts who decide to leave employment and start their own business – I was a qualified and experienced Chartered Accountant who knew about starting and building businesses, about tax and registrations and the law and agreements. For some years before I had led a team of 20 people in worldwide consulting assignments. While a little fearful about how I would be my own boss without an internationally established set of systems around me, at least I did not experience the overwhelm of many people where they don’t even know where to start!

That is the most common experience of my clients over the years who have started their own businesses. Whether they were highly qualified doctors or engineers, or very experienced plumbers and electricians, they all expressed to me the sense of overwhelm about what they had to know, almost overnight! They were aware that despite their strong subject-matter knowledge that they lacked knowledge about running a business, they were concerned about if they had enough finance, and they were wondering how to bring those first sales in through the door. They were overwhelmed.

At least they had me to guide them through the steps they needed to take, but what about you?

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7 Things About Marketing Plans Your Competitors Don’t Want You To Know

Nov 05 2019

If there’s one thing about marketing plans, they’re not very obvious.

Tell me if you know for sure that your competitors have marketing plans?

You don’t see them, but sometimes what you see is a marketing strategy that you admire – why didn’t I think of that?

Your true competitors have marketing plans – trust me. By “true” competitor, I mean the ones who are not going broke, who are not struggling day-to-day and just getting by. I mean those who are doing well, and dare I say it, doing better than you – what have they got that I haven’t got?

Instead of asking these, what I call, “catch-up” questions, ask what they know that you don’t know; what are they implementing that you are not.

Yes, your successful competitors do have marketing plans and this is what they don’t want you to know.

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How Leadership Wins Masterchef….And Grows Your Business

Oct 29 2019

I recently saw a rerun of Masterchef Australia. Have you seen the series?

For those of you who haven’t (what rock have you been under – the “I’m too busy because I’m doing everything in my business” rock?), it’s a series where every-day aspiring home cooks compete through several weeks to become Masterchef. In the journey, contestants are eliminated every week so that the number of contestants reduces to the best of the best until 2 or 3 are left in the Final. They are eliminated through different contests where they cook-off against each other. One of these eliminations – my favourite – is the Team Challenge.

In the Team Challenge, the contestants are put into different teams and they take over a commercial kitchen and compete against the other teams. The losing team goes into elimination.

Why do I like this?

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How To Build A Business Empire By Finding The Right People!

Oct 22 2019

OK, I know you started your small business to make your dream come true.

You had a vision of “the best” business in what it is that you do, you saw your future and saw that your successful business would be something you would be proud of, where you enjoyed working, and that brought you the rewards you and your family deserve, especially to have more time together to enjoy the fruits of your hard work.

Yeah, right?

But be honest, somewhere in that dream you also saw your successful small business grow into an empire right? You saw yourself, at the height of the success of your business, killing it with new and innovative products and services, with happy, productive people working in all corners of the business empire satisfying customers across the nation, if not the globe. Right?

But if you’ve been building your business over the last 5 or 6 years, and you’ve been successful in building sales, you probably know that the building of the “empire” is going to be a bit tough! Because no matter how good your product or service is and how well-received it has been, getting the right people to help you in all the places and doing the right thing has not been easy. Without you, let’s be honest, standards would slip. Without you, the office wouldn’t even be cleaned properly, the telephone answered with a little less conviction. Without you, the customers would not experience the amazing sales and satisfaction journey that you provide.

So, how do you build that business empire where you have the right people employed in all the right places, and they are all doing the right things over and over again?

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4 Steps To MacGyver Your Sales Strategies

Oct 15 2019

I wonder if you have to be a certain age to understand the reference to MacGyver?

You know, that 80’s series where every week “Mac” found himself in a tricky spot and somehow used whatever was available to get himself out of it?

Oh, never mind! You can Google it!

I want to talk about how you, as a small business, can MacGyver or innovate new sales strategies.

But before I start I want to make clear that I’ll be talking about sales strategies, not marketing strategies this week.

What’s the difference?

Marketing is about the whole system of filling your sales funnel – of making people aware of your business and your products, of defining who is your target market, of understanding what your product means to your target market, creating focused messages to warm your potential customers and getting them to your business so that your sales process can start.

The sales process is about having that final sales conversation, about collecting your warm targets and helping them make their final decision to buy. Sales strategies are initiatives you can take to encourage existing customers to buy more from you, or to tip an interested potential customer into becoming a new customer.

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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...

Category - Small Business

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7 Things You Need To Know About Starting A Business

7 Things About Marketing Plans Your Competitors Don’t Want You To Know

How Leadership Wins Masterchef….And Grows Your Business

How To Build A Business Empire By Finding The Right People!

4 Steps To MacGyver Your Sales Strategies