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Category - Small Business

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1
Twenty Minutes To Make a Proposal
2
How To Pander To Your Customers’ Guilty Pleasures
3
Three Lessons For A Small Business In A Competitive Market
4
What Are Your Challenges For 2017?
5
Contents of a Business Plan

Twenty Minutes To Make a Proposal

From time to time we all have to make a presentation or a proposal in front of someone. It may be a proposal for a sale or a new contract, it may be a proposal to your bank or to interested investors – some time or other, formally or informally, you will need to present to someone and convince them of something.

So how can you punch out a great proposal in 20 minutes – the average amount of time someone has available (or before their attention wanders)?

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How To Pander To Your Customers’ Guilty Pleasures

Chocolate?

A fine wine?

A good, tear-jerking rom-com?

We all have our guilty pleasures! We all harbour secret desires that we don’t always voice out loud because they’re too embarrassing or perhaps seem unrealistic.

Well your customers have them too, and they form the real deep-down basis of why they buy things. They want to be rich, famous, acknowledged, happy, sexy, buffed, clever, thin – so they buy products that will make them feel that way and outwardly say logical things like “I love that brand of dress because they are so well made.” What they really mean is “that dress hugs my curves and makes me feel great!”

What are your customers’ guilty pleasures?

 

 

Remember, people don’t buy because of what your product is made of – they buy because of the way they feel about it. So

  • Understand what they want and how else they get to feel that emotion?
  • How does your product give them that experience?
  • Clarify your message to tell them exactly how to get that feeling
  • Place those messages and the product exactly where they go to get that feeling.

If you want more great ideas, and free tips and tools on how to grow your business, go to teikoh.com and sign up to get them delivered to your inbox every week.

And if you want to know more about how to create appealing marketing messages for your customers – targeting exactly what they want, check out my online marketing planning course and online workshop here.

 

Three Lessons For A Small Business In A Competitive Market

It’s a tough world for small business out there right now. When you see global interest rates at record lows, you know the world economy ain’t exactly “booming”!

So if you own a small business and you see customers saving money and choosing wisely about how, where and when they spend their money, what can you do?

Well luckily we have three lessons we can learn from previous tough times.

The first lesson is how to cope with disruption. We know that whenever political, economic social, technological, legislative and environmental changes take place, old business models get disrupted. Take the old manufacturers of camera films – their business was being disrupted, so what did they do…or not do?

Then there’s the lesson about how people talking about you can carve a niche for your business. Early Apple computers became beloved by early-adopters because they “heard” so much about them.

Finally, what about the lesson from being able to provide customers with certainty. How many remember Coca Cola’s foray into “new” taste?

 

 

In a tough business world you have to innovate, stay relevant, and make sure people remember you – and you have to do it over and over again.

In a disrupted competitive market, small players can win if they offer a better customer experience.

Social media, depending on your small business, can be multiple times more effective than traditional advertising.

Find the right balance between flexibility and having established processes so that customers experience certainty, but also have a tailored experience.

Why don’t you go over to teikoh.com to check out more tips, tools, and resources to create powerful strategies, show leadership, and grow your business? Sign up by giving me your name and email and I’ll send these free ideas to your inbox every week. And trust me – I hate spam so I will never trade your details to anyone else!

What Are Your Challenges For 2017?

Well, the first week of 2017 is finishing – what do you mean you haven’t broken down doors and doubled your sales yet?

No, seriously, I thought it would be interesting to conduct a survey early in this new year to see what you see as the greatest frustrations and challenges for your business or organization in 2017.

Click on this link to go to a Google Form and answer 5 simple questions about how you see 2017. It is anonymous, you don’t have to give me your email, you don’t have to buy anything, just click on this link and let’s see what you see is ahead of you https://goo.gl/forms/FwdC71kYcggrfcrv2

I’ll collate the responses to the survey and let you know what people think in a later blog post, so stay tuned.

Contents of a Business Plan

People often ask me “what should I put into my Business Plan?”

I thought I’d deal with that this week and talk about the contents of a Business Plan.

This video is part of my online course “How To Start Your Own Business”.

If you are a startup entrepreneur, or someone who is good at what you do and while working for someone else you think that you can “do it better” it’s useful to understands the steps you have to take in starting your own business.

Of course, once you have worked out your personal strengths and weaknesses, tested the feasibility of your idea and designed the right business model for you, you will need to prepare a Business Plan. Your Business Plan clarifies for you what you have to do to get to your ultimate goal, and it shows others (financiers, supporters) how you have thought through the business-building process.

 

 

If you are interested in finding our more about my online course “How To Start Your Own Business” click here.

Even if you already have a business, I think you will find a couple of nuggets there that you can use, like how to design the right Business Model for you, and the questions you ask before you choose your accountant, lawyer or IT professional.

I give weekly tips and tools to grow your business from my blog, so if you don;t want to miss out, why don’t you go to teikoh.com and sign up to get these free ideas delivered directly to your inbox.

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