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Is franchising suitable for your business? Find out with franchise specialist Tereza Murray

Rob Dorey: I'm here today with Tereza Murray from Business Success partners who specialises in the SME space with franchising small to medium sized businesses. Can you give us a sense of what sort of businesses are suitable to franchise? Tereza Murray: I think any business in theory is franchisable as long as you can take the essence of that business and bottle it so somebody else can run it, then it's franchisable. I think if you're looking at your business in terms of if you want to franchise,...

A Customer Board Will Help Your Marketing

Success comes from meeting customers’ expectations and satisfying their needs. Both expectations and needs change over time and keeping abreast of these changes is essential. The owner of a small business usually knows their customers personally. This is an excellent beginning for the development of a relationship that can help you with your marketing and in the acquisition of new customers. A customer advisory board A customer advisory board is a representative group of your own customers tha...

Fast 5 - Loulous

Our next FAST 5 with Angelique from Loulous Salon and Loulous Day Spa Cambridge 1. What’s the best advice you have ever received as a business owner?Don’t be afraid of change and taking calculated risks. 2. What’s the best advice you would give another business owner?As Richard Branson would say – Appreciate your staff, look after them and they will look after you. 3. What has been your proudest moment in Business?Winning 4 awards including the overall Top business award at the Waipa Bus...

Six Fundamentals to creating an Awesome SME Business

1. Develop a long-term vision – develop a business plan that maps out the long-term goals for the business. Also, develop the discipline to constantly be working on this vision and bringing your business plan to life.   2. Develop an effective Sales and Marketing Programme - Understand your target market, develop a comprehensive marketing strategy and create new and profitable clients.   3. Have effective systems and processes right across the business e...

14 Reason Why An SME Business Should use a Business Success Partner

They provide a “short-cut” to know-how, knowledge and information that does not exist in the organisation They provide solutions to specific challenges and situations They validate ideas that have already been created in the organisation Can analyse, diagnose or criticise (constructively) Will facilitate the search for ideas and solutions with existing team members Will facilitate, create and implement methodologies  that make the business more profita...

Fast 5 - Ace Electrical

CE ELECTRICAL Services in Morrinsville – Owner Alan Gellert 1. What’s the best advice you have ever received as a business owner? Don’t sweat the small stuff 2. What’s the best advice you would give another business owner? The above but also pay attention to your financial figures and use a good job management system 3. What has been your proudest moment in Business? Having the courage to start a business and seeing it become successful 4. What methods do you use to cope with Business S...

Fast 5 - Love my Kitchen Benchtop

We sat down with the owners of Love My Kitchen Benchtop Clive and Lisa Donaldson for our Fast 5 Questions!What’s the best advice you have ever received as a business owner? Don’t undersell yourself or your servicesWhat’s the best advice you would give another business owner? Get a business consultant / mentor – you’ll never look back.What has been your proudest moment in Business? One morning driving up to our painted, sign written, newly concreted workshop and thinking ...

Get Better Label Printing Results

Most small businesses do their own label printing and have experienced the usual problems of jammed printers or printing labels with text that goes beyond the borders.   There are some things you can do for your next label printing job that will reduce costs and help increase your chances for success.  Be sure the labels are intended for the type of printer you’re using. Laser printers get very hot and using the wrong type of labels means the adhesive can become liquid and the labels...

Hold More Effective Meetings

Meetings are a part of business, whether it’s meetings with your team members, with your business associates, or with community groups. Here are some ways that you can make your next meeting a success as well as a pleasant experience for all those who attend. Provide sufficient advance notice Plan your meeting well ahead of time and make your invitations informative. Include details such as the meeting venue, the starting and finishing times, the agenda and what should be brought by those atte...

Look good to lenders

Businesses borrow money for a number of reasons. Additional capital may be needed to increase production capacity or to open a new retail outlet. It might be necessary to borrow to expand overseas or to upgrade the business’ IT facilities. Whatever the reason, borrowing money involves the need to favourably impress the lenders you are approaching for finance. There’s never a guarantee that they will support your proposal, but there are some preliminary steps you can take to make a more conv...

Searching for Top People

It’s one thing to evaluate a tradesperson whose abilities and quality of work can be determined by giving them a short on-the-job trial. When it comes to hiring a senior person however, it’s a different story. You never really know how a new manager is going to perform until they have started in their position, but there are things that you can do as part of the selection process to lessen the possibility of making an appointment you’ll later regret. Know what you’re looking for Before ...

Leveraging Technology to Grow Sales

If your business has a website it’s probably recording valuable information that could be helping you to grow your sales – but you may not be doing anything with it. In fact you may not even be aware of it. Ten years ago the number of ‘hits’ on a website was the basic measurement of success; today’s metrics are much more sophisticated and consequently much more valuable. There are no standard metrics that apply to all websites. Each company needs to gain specific information from analy...

Think Before Growing Your Business

Growth is a small business essential. Without it a business will stagnate, then gradually die. But uncontrolled growth can bring more problems than benefits for the organisation by placing strains on areas of the business that may not be able to tolerate the pressure. Any decision to grow the business must be made carefully, recognising that it’s going to result in changes that will add to the workload of both the people and the systems in the business. You need to be certain that the ways you...

Review the Positions in Your Business

The positions in most SMEs have evolved into their present form rather than having been created with specific objectives and duties. This means that the roles of team members often overlap or don’t incorporate everything the person could be doing. A thorough review of each position will clarify these vital details and put your business in a position to run more efficiently. The review should be done in conjunction with the person in the position so that both of you gain a clearer understanding...

Don't Let Others Waste Your Time

Most business owners find there’s never enough time in the day. Your time is valuable and the demands of your business usually dictate how you spend it. The last thing you can afford is to have your time wasted by others. Time-wasters are people who take up your time in such a way that it distracts you from running your business. You’re unable to manage because you have to spend your time dealing with people who just don’t seem to understand that you have more important things to do. Busi...

Profit from a Niche Market

Operating in a niche can be very cost effective as well as enabling your business to become a leading player in its field.  A niche market lets you target your sales messages with greater precision; the more specifically you define your niche the easier it is to cater to the shared interests and needs of the people or businesses in that market. A great example of niche marketing comes from an entrepreneur by the name of Frank Kern. He markets a product for parrot owners that he guarantees w...

How to Write a Winning Sales Proposal

The majority of sales proposals fail because they’re focused on the seller – not on the customer. Writing a sales proposal that’s based on the customer greatly increases the seller’s chance of success. Here’s how to do it. Do it with style Writing a successful proposal requires a sound understanding of the customer. What you’re trying to do is to point out that your product/service is the one that best fits in with their needs, so your proposal should read like the description of a s...

Cash Management Pays Dividends

Managing cash is one of the most important tasks for any business owner and even if it’s not as glamorous as sales and marketing it is the job that makes sure the bills keep getting paid on time.  The cash position of a business at any time is easy to determine if you know just three figures – the cash in the bank, the cash that’s going to be received by the business, and the cash that has to be paid out. It sounds simple, and it is, yet it’s amazing how many business owners don’t...

Saving on Business Travel

Travel is now a part of most business people’s lives at some time or other but travelling can be an expensive business and searching for convenience and value should be part of your initial preparation. Thanks largely to the ability to make bookings for flights and accommodation over the Internet, there are now a number of ways to search out opportunities that can reduce business travel costs. Airfares can be slashed It really pays to shop around for airfares instead of just making reservation...

Safer Internet Banking

Many businesses do their non-cash banking via the Internet. It’s convenient and fast, but it can expose the business to fraudulent operators that use a range of electronic trickery to loot online accessible bank accounts. There are a number of things you can do to protect your business from these con artists. Protect your passwords Make your password hard to guess. Don’t use things like birthdays, telephone numbers or street addresses as passwords and don’t use the same password for more t...

Sharing means Saving

Small businesses can achieve some pretty good savings by sharing with each other. On its own, a business turning over a million dollars or so might not have a lot of clout, but when two or three small businesses team together to share something they can collectively reduce their total costs. Share space costs Most businesses require office space plus additional space for storage, warehousing or some other purpose. As businesses grow they tend to require more space and this often becomes a factor...

A Strategy for Managing Business Bills

A business depends on its cash flow to pay its bills. Cash flow can fluctuate greatly in smaller enterprises and there are often times when payments have to be made selectively. This is a strategy to serve as a general guide for paying bills at any time; it is especially useful for times when extra consideration has to be given to which bills are paid and which are delayed. Prioritise every bill that comes in when it comes in. Maintain a register of all bills that shows their priority ranking, w...

Loyalty is Created, Not Bought

Loyal customers have to be created. This can take some time and effort but the ROI can be immense. "Not only do loyal customers provide incredibly valuable referrals, they also generate word of mouth that simply can't be bought through advertising," says Roger Hallowell, assistant professor at Harvard Business School.  When a customer buys from you it’s a signal that you have something they want. They’ve responded to the value proposition you offer and there’s immediate potential to c...

Upgrades are a part of life

Anyone with a PC will be familiar with the term ‘upgrade’. It seems like there’s a new version of Windows almost every year, and unless we do constantly upgrade our computers it’s likely their operating systems will rapidly become inadequate to the demands of new software and hardware. To remain competitive, businesses need to upgrade everything from their computer setups to their motor vehicles. There are ways to approach upgrading that will help keep costs down and increase the value r...

Surveys Show What Your Customers Dislike

Surveys of customers can be very revealing even indicating danger areas for your organisation. This article summarises findings from some recent surveys that show just what it is that customers dislike the most about their interactions with businesses. When they’re on the premises There’s one thing that customers dislike more than anything else – employees who are busily conversing with each other and just ignore them. This is unforgivable and also very likely to cost the business a sale b...