Small businesses sharing ideas and writing their own news stories.
MAJESTIC IS A CLEVER COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE AND DATABASE SOFTWARE TOOL.
Centered around the concept of a communication journey, Majestic increases sales prospecting and response rates by an astonishing 1000% above the industry average.
Majestic is set up to be automated. Your business carries on as normal while the system grows, manages and communicates with your customers and prospects on a regular basis to stimulate sales. The system is customisable by you which means you don't have to incur large development costs or wait days for simple changes to be made.
By connecting you to other businesses using our software or by attending a free networking Coffee Group in your area, you will tap into an authentic community of business owners seeking to help each other become successful.
Interested in a career in Financial Planning? Initially most may well automatically respond "ABSOLUTELY NO WAY". But maybe its time to stop for a moment and consider this response.
Do you set yourself targets for the growth of your business? Or are you just a small business survivor? When people ask you how’s business, do you say “Okay, not too bad” or do you say “We are aiming at 10% growth this year and so far we’re on target”.Would you agree that, if your business is reasonably stable and you’re keeping your head above water, that you can manage to reach 10% growth? To use the jargon, do you have the capacity for 10% growth?
I want to show you what happens if you decide to grow your client base by 10% and get your clients to spend 10% more on average. We’re not looking at how to do this here; we’re just going to do some sums. The result may get you really motivated!
I learned this formula at a Nedbank small business networking seminar (watch out for them in the press, they are free) from a dynamic speaker, Bill Gibson from Knowledge Brokers International (KBI). He has an excellent website – www.kbitraining.com. His sales tools are top of the industry and his sales blogs are a must read.
Have you stopped to consider what would happen if your business partner suddenly died or became disabled? Most people assume that it would be business as usual. Just with one less partner and a bigger share of the business. But is it really that simple?
In the event of your business partner being disabled you would more than likely need to find a replacement for him/her. Someone to take over his/her workload. This would involve a cost to your business in terms of recruitment fees, salaries, and benefits. (Added to this would be the fact that you may well find it morally necessary to continue supporting your business partner financially!) Then there is the financial losses associated with a loss in productivity while the replacement employee "learns the ropes" and acquires the same or similar levels of experience and knowledge that were previously held by your business partner. Could your business afford all these additional costs right now?
On the death of your business partner life becomes more complicated. There is of course similar problems as has been discussed above. (Needing to replace your partner with an employee.) But there are also challenges such as:
suddenly finding your business partners spouse or children involved in the business and making decisions with you;
being forced to sell your business partners share in the business to a stranger because of the executors of his/her estate wanting to raise capital for dependents.
There are so many more matters that require discussion and attention. The point is that most small to medium business owners have not stopped to consider these and many other circumstances that could arise. There is enough going on with just running the business. But these are important items to consider and they are not that complicated to resolve.
There are thousands of SMMEs across South Africa, with new ones starting up every day. So what makes your SMME different or more special than the next and do people know about you?
The relationship is the currency in today’s rapidly changing and competitive business climate says Karl Smith, Business Networking and Referral Coach. The easiest way to grow a successful business is by developing profitable business relationships with others. By building a series of meaningful transactions, you can create long-term business relationships that turn your clients into your marketing and sales force. So the ability to develop and maintain a broad network of “business friendships” is a critical skill for every entrepreneur. However, to develop these valuable relationships, people must have the right attitude, the right introduction and the right message to encourage more people to do more business with them. With all the demands on our time made by our business, professional and personal lives, it is tempting to assign a lower priority to networking as an activity designed to meet new people. This thinking would be wrong because by not consistently widening our circles of acquaintances and contacts, we may be severely curtailing our chances for advancement and success. It is estimated that the average person knows about 250 people. And each of those people knows, in turn, another 250 or so people. Networking, therefore, is one of the most profitable activities in which one can engage. Fortunately, like any endeavour, one can get more proficient at it with attaining the required skills and practice.
A startling fact is that only 2-3 % of all patented inventions ever make more money for the inventor than they invested into it. Why? Most commonly we have found that many inventors simply do not understand many of the business principles that govern such transactions. Moreover, although they are brilliant in various aspects of engineering and the conception of their ideas, they do not know these important decision makers or how to present their inventions effectively.
We at ha√aplan will bridge this gap and become a critical team member in the licensing of our clients inventions
Visit our website for more info @ www.havaplan.co.za
I read a few days ago that most cell-phones nowadays are shipped with a mobile browser. The percentage of phones that are smartphones increases exponentially as well. So in essence in the future nearly everyone will have a computer in the pocket. With this comes the ability to do more things while on the go, and business software vendors are trying to publish software and features that easily run on a mobile device.
Fortunately this article is about SAAS – not SARS since nobody likes paying taxes. Although I must admit that South Africa has put some tax money to good use on the new and upgraded highways in Gauteng. What a pleasure to drive there now, even though not all projects are complete yet. Just think of what the airport in Johannesburg was like 5 years ago, and what the roads were like, and go there now. You will be pleasantly surprised.
While almost everybody I know are proverbially "painting their buildings green", I have found many great services & service providers in the industry; yet so many are over-priced, as these "Green Companies" are simply leveraging the oldest rule in the Marketing Manual namely: "The demand-, & supply-curve". This to the detrament of the potential buyers, as current "sell;ers" opf Green Solutions are aiming for High profits & little Turn-over!
I say in my opinion, that "fair profit" is not at the order of the day!
In the existing "Green Climate"; one would have to re-look at strategy & positioning, as "who" will "buy" if the "Green"market is proverbially "raped" year-after-year,wiht a silent disapproval & financial disposition of the buyers in the industry?
I say that "Green" MUST be affordable to the masses!
I say that people are simply giong astray a s a result of their lack of knoweldge.
Ever wondered what image your office location projects to those visiting and working there?
This will be greatly effected by whether or not you have the sort of business that clients come to you or if you go out and see them at their homes or businesses. However the condition and style of the office should not be cast aside because of this; the type of office you have is also important for your employees and their general state of mind, depending on the type of industry.
I had the misfortune of having to explain to a great elderly man that he was not a property investor. He had bought a house for his family about 40 years ago, paid it off and lived there not taking much notice of what was happening in the property market until a few weeks ago when he had his house evaluated because the kids had moved on and now the house was to big for him and his dear old wife and a burden to keep the house, garden and general maintenance up to date.
They paid +/- 20 000 for the house on a decent size erf back then and now had an evaluation done at between R1.2 – R1.5 million. The old man was proud as punch about what a great investment he had made. I asked him “was that such a good investment?”
One of my business partners asked me the other day that I should write a bit about why I sell HansaWorld and not one of the other well known ERP systems. There are many reasons and I will highlight them over the next couple of weeks. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain some of the features that make HansaWorld different, and I’d like to invite knowledgeable people working with other ERP systems to add to this discussion about what makes their system special, since some systems fit better in certain environments than others, and I do want to keep this column objective, its just that I know HansaWorld much better than the other systems.
Registered Debt Counsellor (NCRDC 165) Being accredited and licensed under the National Credit Regulator, Ubuntu Debt Rehabilitation’s key objective is to educate consumers to understand the importance of Self Responsibility and keeping their Financial Credibility. We peruse to protect and create positive attitudes within the consumer towards their financial obligations.Our focus is to assist consumers ensuring they become Organized and Disciplined concerning their financial decisions. We will further introduce a procedure to ensure consecutive payments are conducted in order to PAY all outstanding accounts.This process allows Peace of Mind and creates Credibility within ones self. This platform will primarily focus on creating effective awareness to employees regarding Debt Relief and the Debt Review Process. Along with the National Credit Regulator (NCR) it is the core responsibility of Debt Counsellors to enlighten and educate consumers that there is a relief forum pertaining to the Debt Crisis our economy is faced with. The objective of the presentation is to add value to both staff and management within your company. Being sales driven, staff is required to remain focused and productive within the workplace, having the added stress of one’s financial situation / status, it creates the opposite effect. Ubuntu Debt Rehabilitation will primarily focus on relieving staff members of that burden, thus leaving them focused, productive and driven.
I am confident that a positive rollout and educational process can be conducted in order to educate consumers / employees regarding the importance of financial budgeting. This will most definitely uplift our NATION.
Supporting European software in Africa is always exciting, and often very rewarding as one has a lot of contact with best practice in Europe vs. common practice here.
One such example is the amount of error checks required in the local software to prevent users from making mistakes. Another example is the amount of access controls and checks and balances one has to have in the system to disallow users from abusing the system. In Europe it seems there is much less need for these.
What is also interesting is the way sales and sales compensation are managed here vs. overseas. Any manager in a retail/wholesale environment here will be adamant that cost prices of the goods they sell have to be kept secret from sales staff. In Europe this is the exact opposite, managers WANT the cost prices known to the sales staff!
Brought to you by Immo Böhm from Afresh Consult. www.afreshconsult.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
The other day my wife and I went to buy some luxury goods and a sign in the door struck us: “We unfortunately no longer give cash discounts”. We did not expect to be given a discount, since we never ask for one, so we were quite surprised. Seems that a lot of companies still give discount for cash payment, although it is very expensive to handle cash, or transact credit card payments.
The cheapest form of payment nowadays are electronic bank transfers and businesses should offer discounts for that! So this brings us to our discussion about business systems and discounts.
Typically businesses either assign their loyal and large customers to a specific price-list, as we have discussed last time, or they assign them to a a discount structure.
Things can never be cheap enough – right? Well, not if you are a retailer, then things can never be expensive enough, i.e. you want to make the most money. So there is this tug of war between what the customer wants to pay and what the retailer wants to make. And this is not only the case with retailers, it holds true for any business.
Businesses therefore come up with many kinds of pricing and discount schemes in order to maximize profit. This is typically done by giving some kind of discount or a better price for customers that buy higher volumes. The more customers buy the more money you make. It’s as simple as that, or is it?
Over the next couple of articles we will explore this a bit. We will look at pricing today, discounts next week (since its not the same as pricing) and we look at the effect this has on the bottom line later.
Brought to you by Immo Böhm from Afresh Consult. www.afreshconsult.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
I had a sales demonstration with a prominent Namibian company this morning. The company will use their business management system on three continents and in multiple languages. They also need their customers to login through a web browser, read their statements and update information like contact details. Also, they need a scheduling system to schedule their staff for certain tasks. Systems such as these can be quite complex and costly, and therefore one needs to consider Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when choosing one. We discussed this 2 years ago in this column, but since it is so important, lets look at it again.
Total Cost of Ownership is a financial estimate designed to help a business and it’s managers assess direct and indirect costs commonly related to software, hardware and related services.
I am writing this sitting in a cosy guesthouse in Bulawayo, with the generator humming away outside. Power has been off for the afternoon, and it looks like its not going to come on again soon. We had the launch of our products here today and it is surprising how upbeat everybody is despite the hardships faced every day.
What was surprising is how many companies here have not made the switch to modern business management systems yet. Infrastructure might have a lot to do with this, and of course the recent economic turmoil. But now its time to look forward, even for Zimbabwe.
Needless to say the businesses here were very keen to see our demonstration and how powerful our ERP offering is. They realize that Zimbabwe’s fate is busy turning. Manufacturing companies have confirmed that order volumes are up, which is a sure sign of a growing economy. Now these companies are looking to set themselves up to compete using better systems, not only to compete with any competition they might face coming here to Zimbabwe, but also to set themselves up to venture outside Zimbabwe again to compete elsewhere in Africa.
The internet and specifically the world wide web continues its march into every household relentlessly.
With this in mind it does make sense to think about putting ones product offering on the web and allow customers to shop whenever they want. Very often the banks are the leaders in this field, with a host of banking services now being offered over the web and on mobile devices.
Setting up a web presence however is normally costly in terms of building the site, but also to put in place the service infrastructure to deal with the additional demand received via the web.
Brought to you by Immo Böhm from Afresh Consult (Pty) Ltd. www.afreshconsult.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
