Lost Out On a Deal Recently?

Just the other day, yet another customer said to me, “I just lost a big contract on price again; perhaps I should reduce my prices when I quote.”

That’s just plain wrong!

What has happened is the customer was not convinced that they were getting anything better or extra for the higher price quoted.

People buy differences and perceived value, don’t believe me?

If you know a bit about cars here’s an analogy.

In the UK there are on the many cars on the market, 3 of them are:

The Audi A3
The Volkswagen Golf
The Skoda Fabia

The Audi is the highest price vehicle and the Skoda the lowest and the Golf sits at the middle price band.

The Audi is predominately bought by the young professionals or those aspiring to that image.

The Golf is most often bought by those people who want good reliable, stylish vehicles, which hold their value at a reasonable cost.

The Skoda’s market is often retired or middle aged people who want a vehicle that is reliable and budget priced.

If everyone was only interested in price we would all be driving a Skoda.

What people buy is the difference between your product/service and the competitors. If you don’t convince them of the additional value added benefits of your proposition then the decision will be made on price. That probably means they will not buy from you unless you drop your price.

There goes your profit margin…, and interestingly enough, the people who buy on price usually show no loyalty in the long run, (and take longer to pay). If you gain business on price, then you are likely to loose it on price.

Remember there is always someone selling a cheaper and more inferior product or service than you and that sort of customer are his rightful prey.

Don’t ever apologise for being more expensive, be proud!

For more information about how simple techniques could help your business e-mail me or visit my website today!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Getting Closer to Your Customers

One powerful source of help in developing your business is often forgotten, your existing customers.

I said recently that you should understand what influencing them, i.e their market trends, how their needs are changing, how they feel about you as a supplier and what makes them tick.

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen businesses that take their best and biggest customers for granted. The first time they know that the clients needs have changed or are disenchanted with them as a supplier is when they stop doing business with them.

Help is at hand, there is a powerful tool that allows any business that has internet access to carry out electronic surveys.

Check out Survey Monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com which is a user friendly website that has interactive tools to help design produce and manage online surveys.

The good news is there is no initial charge to sign up. If you only want to produce simple surveys and will only receive up to a maximum 100 responses per survey then the cost is zero.

Even if you upgrade to the next level allowing more functionality and up to 1000 responses per survey the cost is only $19.95 per month.

The top grade option with all the optional extras and unlimited responses is only $200 per year (less than £100).

Just think about all that information and customer knowledge and what you can do with it, for a start you will be ahead of your competitors.

Unless they read this blog of course………

Happy surveying!

For more information about how simple techniques could help your business e-mail me today!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Free Help for Businesses!

I knew that would get your attention!

As a business owner you are probably as suspicious as me when you see something for free but sometimes there isn't a catch or you just need to go in with you eyes open.

One of my clients showed me a letter from a Local newspaper group inviting her to a free workshop about getting the best out of advertising. Of course we know that the aim is to get you to book advertising with their publications. But hey you don't have to place any business with them if you don't want to.

This is an example of the sort of help that can supplement other advice or training.

Other sources like the free research that I mentioned that other day can be really valuable.

But don't forget to use the other advice and tips from Web-Blogs like the one you are reading now. I will be shortly launching some more services on line much of which will be free so watch this space.

I would also like to recommend two other Websites/Web-blogs that I visit on a daily basis.

Check out Ed Rivis website http://www.edrivis.com .
Also the other person who has a great blog is Jim Sansi, http://www.thekaizenbusiness.com .

Remember 'Knowledge is Power' and this what will give you the edge over your competition.

For more information about how simple techniques could help your business e-mail me today!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

2008 Downturn or Not

In the last few couple of weeks I have been working with clients and helping them to make sense of the scare stories in the UK press about the impact of the sub-prime crisis and what some pundits are saying about the prospects for economy.
I have just issued an article to a number of newspapers and business publications and the media. If you would like a copy of the full article, click here. Here is a taster of what I have written.

Of course I have already said that I don’t believe what some panicking journalists are implying ie crashes, recession etc.

But you should as a sensible business owner, take account of what’s happening and plan accordingly.

Here are the actions that you should take now!

Firstly plan your sales and growth realistically
Do a thorough review of your costs and overheads, (not a quick ‘back of the cigarette packet’ estimate).

Save costs and overheads but not at the cost of business, for example in a downturn a lot of businesses first reaction is to slash marketing dramatically but that can be counterproductive.

Manage your finances using good Cashflow and Profit & Loss forecasts and credit management records.

This business maxim is still true today, ‘Turnover is vanity, Profit is sanity, and Cash is reality’. Think Profit and Cash not turnover.

Do you have a big overdraft? Reduce this by converting the proportion of it that is constant to a commercial loan, it can save lots of money.

Are you reliant on one or two big customers? If so, could you tie them into a longer term contract or if you are a service business, into a maintenance contract.

What are you spending money on, are you getting the best deal?
Get three quotes for everything, ask for fixed price quotes from your service suppliers that includes your accountant etc.

For more information about how simple techniques could help your business e-mail me today!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Website Tips 3

Once you have designed your website you should check out how it is viewed by Google (the most used search engine) and compare it with the best competitors in your industry.

Using the search, site:www.yourwebsite.com/co.uk in Google, how many pages does Google know that exist on your website?

How many pages do your competitors have listed?

Using the search, link:www.yourwebsite.com/co.uk in Google, how many pages does Google know that link on your website?

How many links do your competitors have listed?

If you require more individual help in growing your business contact me via email or telephone

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

More Website Tips

Following on from my last post here are a few more tips to help ensure that you start your website off on the right track.

Good practice is to have the menu down the left hand side.
Do not have too many levels of information for each heading on your menu i.e. any element should be only 3 clicks of the mouse in.

Use lots of white space on the page too busy and it won’t get read.

As for page content, the page should have at least 120 words of content on it

Use bullet points and summaries.

More to come in later posts.

If you require more individual help in growing your business contact me via email or telephone

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

More Website Tips

Following on from my last post here are a few more tips to help ensure that you start your website off on the right track.

Good practice is to have the menu down the left hand side.
Do not have too many levels of information for each heading on your menu i.e. any element should be only 3 clicks of the mouse in.

Use lots of white space on the page too busy and it won’t get read.

As for page content, the page should have at least 120 words of content on it

Use bullet points and summaries.

More to come in later posts.

If you require more individual help in growing your business contact me via email or telephone

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Websites Some Basic Steps Before You Start

A lot of businesses that I help have a website but in many cases they have spent money before asking themselves some basic questions. This preparation ensures that the website does what it should ie attract visitors and gain business.

So here are some questions to get you started:

Why do you have/want a website?
What is your websites call to action?
Who are your potential website visitors?
Who might buy your products or services or be interested in your website information?

Now having established the basics how do you arrive at the right keywords for the search engines to find your website? They can then form part of the copy in your pages.

Which search terms (phrases) do you think are important to your target market?

Now put them in priority order.

Use the overture tool to see how often those terms were searched under.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

You can also check using the Google Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=64886&hl=en_GB

You should now be on the right track to see what words will be effective.

More website tips to come.

If you require more individual help in growing your business check out my website or contact me via email or telephone

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Knowledge is Power!

When I start working with clients one of the early pieces of work I do is to ask them is to provide me with what they know about their market, the size, growth, trends and what they understand about their competitors.

Guess what in many cases if they do have anything written down its out of date, often it’s in their head or is just gut feelings. So I always build a small amount of research time into the project proposal.

But the worst thing is that up until now these clients business management or business planning (if they do any) is based on this lack of knowledge.

When I talk to businesses in the first place the comments I get are:

We don’t need all that, we just want more sales
Well we don’t have time for research.
We don’t need/can’t afford a marketing manager.
We don’t have anyone with that expertise in house
We can’t afford to pay someone like you to carry out research

Let’s take the first comment

Trying to plan or run a business without research is crazy. To use an example that’s like driving a car blindfold down the fast lane of the motorway without any idea of your destination, that would be a pretty stupid thing to do.
For instance if the long term trends in your market means that its going to change radically you need to know about it.

Secondly time invested now can pay dividends and prevent expensive mistake or more importantly the knowledge gained can give you the edge over your competition.

Lastly costs money or time spent should be seen as an investment not a cost.

If you are a start up business and really have no money you can do it yourself for free.

You don’t have to spend a large amount of money. I don’t buy market research reports for instance. In the UK we have the library’s service and most counties have a least one which is designated as the County Business Library.

I am a great fan of these facilities. For instance they hold copies of Keynote Market Research Reports. These are major pieces of market research that have been funded by big businesses/organisations and you can view them for free either in hard copy, (or on the computer in my County library).
I spend a lot of time there making notes and you can take some limited photocopies.
I could of course examine Keynote reports via the Keynote Website but you can only see the executive summary to get the rest costs sometimes thousands of pounds, but why would I want to do that?

Of course you can also use the internet and do some free research.

So no more excuses, let your competitors stay in blissful ignorance and steel a march on them.

Do it today!

For more information about how simple techniques could help your business e-mail me today!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Successful Business Bucks the Trend

Earlier this week I had a review meeting with a client that I started working with just 12 months ago. The small independent business operates in the home improvement retail sector.

The business owner had hit the classic growth plateau, the business had been running 5 years was doing OK, but the owner was running around like mad and missing time with his family. He wanted to grow the business further but was unable to see how this could happen.

After carrying out a free diagnostic I identified that the business could grow with the right growth and development strategy but that he also needed to work on the business and not in the business. Also the business needed to work smarter not harder.

I worked with the owner to put together the clear vision, strategy and tactics to grow the business and rethink how the business operated. This was then translated into a robust business plan containing SMART objectives and accurate financial forecasts so that we could accurately measure costs and sales. The forecasts also allowed us to track the impact of strategy and tactics.

We also repositioned the business to concentrate on the higher net wealth clients and to turn away the lower value business to the big chains that were in the usual aggressive price war. The secret was to avoid competing on price and spending lots of time producing design layouts for business that would not be closed or if won would be on lower margins.

We projected a reasonable growth of 20% and to retain a good gross profit margin.

So how did this approach pan out?

We just examined his final end of year results he achieved 68% growth and exceeded the targeted good gross profit margin by 1%. The changes we made has meant that he is now able to take an extra day a week off, plus several breaks. He is relaxed, happy and is now looking at planned expansion funded out of profit. He now gets a very large proportion of business from recommendations and is spending a lot less on advertising.

The business is expected to hit the five year growth target that we set at least 1 year earlier.

Meanwhile his competitors both the small independents like him and the large national chains are all struggling even harder and fighting over low profit business.

To quote a character from the TV programme 'The A Team,' " I love it when a plan comes together," (and so do my clients)!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068

E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Company Website’s, Some Basic Preparation

With regularity I meet clients who believe that if they set up a great website it will bring in lots of sales and solve all of their problems.

The problem is that before you launch a website you need to start much further back.

Why do you need the website, what is it going to do?

Is it a just a sales brochure website?
Will customers want to order from it via an e-mail?
Is a full e-commerce site what’s needed and if so how will your customers pay, and what payment/credit cards will you accept and what’s the cost?

But more importantly often the website is built in isolation from the rest of the business.

Have you got the ability to handle a large increase in sales admin, dispatch and delivery wise? What about returns?

Can your suppliers handle the increase in sales have you got back up suppliers? If it all takes off as you hope can you cash flow the big increase in sales? More businesses fail through running out of cash as they expand than you would believe.

Does the website conform to the legal requirement’s, in the UK under trading law websites must have certain information in place.

Four vital elements that must be on every the website are:

Terms and Conditions, (accessible form every page)
The VAT registration number
The details of the company registered office.
If you are a Limited Company you must also show the Company Registration Number.
Lastly you can’t just show a non geographic phone number i.e. 0800, 0845, 0870 etc. you must also prominently show a normal non geographic phone number

All of these are requirements under UK law. If your website does not comply it is recommended that these compliance issues should be addressed with some urgency. After all you don’t want to Trading Standards Officers giving you a hard time

More to follow!
Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Pareto the Last Word!

I have shown several ways to use this simple tool on the top 20% of your customer base and previously even suggested that you sack a few customers from the 80%, but what do you do with the rest of the 80%.

Profile the customers in the top 20%, what are their characteristics? What are the common aspects?

Now examine the remaining group and profile them are there any customers with the same or closely similar characteristics? Group them together.

Now target this group as your secondary targets and try to covert them to add to your top 20%.

Any customers that are left over now should also be contacted but not as regularly or intensively as the others.

From now on any prospective customers that you find should be profiled in the same way.

Also you now know the profile and characteristics of customers who you should advertise to and hopefully the marketing messages that will attract them.

Remember the golden rule is to apply effort where it will have the most effect!


Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Maximising Your Sales

Remember that Pareto Principle (aka "the 80/20 Rule")?

Well here’s another use of this powerful technique

I said before that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers and you should concentrate the first wave of marketing effort on this 20%.

Firstly are you contacting them regularly or like a lot of businesses I meet are you being complacent?
Set up a regular contact schedule for this year.

What other products or services could you be selling to them after all the hardest and most expensive part has been done you have acquired them as a customer. Very often this group are not fully aware or have forgotten what else you can do for them.

Ask them why they do business with you and how you could improve the service further, you want them to tell you if there are problems not your competitors. Don’t assume all is well just because they are buying.

Apply these principles today and watch your sales grow, and don’t forget it hasn’t cost you anything to get this new potential business so it’s more profitable when you cost the sale against new potential customer sales for the same product or service.

If you want to hear other ways to grow your business then contact me today!

More later.

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

‘Sacking a few customers,’ Using the Pareto Principle

Yesterday I mentioned the Pareto Principle (aka "the 80/20 Rule")

Today I am going to talk about one exercise using this rule; I call it ‘sacking a few customers’.

What am I crazy? No I am deadly serious

When I start on a business growth project a large proportion of the clients that I work with are wasting vast amounts of money, valuable time and resources chasing and doing business with customers and products that bring I low levels of profit.

The big lesson is that I can pretty well guarantee that 20% of the profitable business comes from 20% of their customers.
But all of the marketing effort and activity is mostly aimed at the 100%.

This is what I call scattergun marketing.
If you were a hunter would you just go out into the fields with a big gun and blast away at the bushes and hope that you hit something?

Of course not if you were sensible you would go out with your snipers rifle go to the watering hole at feeding time and making sure that you were upwind of your prey you would use one shot to hit your selected prey.

So why not apply that principle to your business.

Firstly you need to have good information about who purchases what products and services and at what price, (do you have varying levels of discount?).

Then see who is giving you the best profit, often it’s not the customers who buy the most?

Now you know who to target and who not to, (are there some customers that you can’t change to become the 20% most profitable within the 80%? If so why are you dealing with them in the long term?

Does anyone have a problem with this logic? It works for most of my clients, so why don’t you take advantage of this powerful technique.

Remember it’s all in the numbers!

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

It’s all in the numbers!

If you are reviewing the performance of your business or trying to grow it there is one simple tool that can be applied to any business in a number of ways.

It’s called the Pareto Principle (aka "the 80/20 Rule")

80% of your business will come from 20 % of your customers.
80% of your profit will come from 20% of your products/services.
80% of your problems comes form 20% of your customers.(they are often the 20% of customers who are problem payers.

So the trick is to apply effort where it will have the most effect!

More of this in a later post.

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk

Gift Horses and the Charity Sector

As someone with several years expertise in what is now termed the third sector I was asked to run some workshops at an event just before the holidays for a group of charities. The delegates were establishing or had already set up trading arms to generate income.

The main problems faced by many UK charities are donor fatigue, (there are just so many charities competing for our donations), and reductions in funding form sources such as Local Authorities.

This wide spread set of challenges has resulted in the need to generate income form other sources, the only problem with that is the Charity Commission rules governing limits on trading activities.

So how do these organisations who are often small overcome this barrier, well the answer is to establish businesses that create income and then feed a large proportion of the income back to the charity.

When setting up these businesses the choices for charities are often a not for profit limited company, a company limited by guarantee, or latterly the new Community Interest Company.

Over the past few years I have though noticed a few challenges for the charities as they establish these businesses because they lack business skills or experience:

A lack of understanding of the market place that they are entering.
Under costing their products or services.
Because they are charities they don’t think that they can charge normal prices.
Poor business planning.
Poor business skills.
Poor financial and management controls.
Entrepreneurial drive and awareness.
Naivety so they are ripped off by suppliers and customers, (especially if they are supplying the public sector).

These organisations often believe that bringing in someone form the outside will be expensive but so is failure or loss of potential income.

Much of my work in this sector is at subsidised cost there are also networks of self help organisations who call in people like me to deliver training to groups of delegates and charge low attendance fees and in many cases free places. Sadly often organisations don’t take up these places at events or even turn up on the day especially if it’s free.

So today’s plea is don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and grab any help you can get!

For more information about available help contact me today.

Alan Briggs

Dynamic Business Strategies Ltd
Tel: 07917 446068
E-Mail: info@dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk
Website: www.dynamicbusinessstrategies.co.uk