Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
Gooroo teevee and radio business advisers tell you about known, familiar places to do business. But is this always the right advice?
Shopping centres, many industrial parks and online retail platforms can be lucrative but how come so many small businesses fail in these “comfortable” places? The competition is fierce. Customers have so many local shopping centres to choose from that they are sparsely spread out. Continue reading “Are you brave enough to do business in unfamiliar places?”
A business owner running a large factory was closed down because of cheap imports. He then decided to become an importer himself. Things turned out all right in the beginning but he made one wrong move with a container load of goods because of a sudden currency decline and lost millions. He sat down, did some hard thinking and to rescue his dire situation started a takeaway and restaurant business. This business owner knew full well that the restaurant business is risky and made plans to take as much risk out of his new enterprise as possible.
His secret was to start small and keep things small. After opening up in a down economy, a year later he has done exceedingly well. Even halfway through his first year trading he had so many customers that the temptation was they to double up the size of these restaurant space. But he didn’t do this. Having been bitten twice before, he decided to increase his retail space only marginally more. This is meant that he has so many customers that he has an overflow on the pavement outside. Continue reading “How much risk are you willing to take in this economy?”
The other day I was listening to an entrepreneur who was saying that in her company they give different customers separate and distinct levels of service. Is this a good approach? Can it work for a small business?
If you walk into a retail shop, restaurant or even barber, you’re probably going to get the same level of service that all customers receive. In a restaurant, for example, you are probably only going to get politeness, personalisation and maybe promptness. The same applies to a retail supermarket or discount appliances or computer store. In the larger chains you will be lucky if anyone helps you or if they do their level of product knowledge will often be absent. Continue reading “Do you give all customers the same level of service?”
A specialised company that keeps factories and production lines running and installs new equipment has a hard time finding and retaining technical labour with the oil sands industry in British Columbia, Canada.
The company Neutron Factory Works can’t compete with their $45 an hour wages against $75 an hour oil patch wages.
If a small to medium-size business like this is challenged to find and keep staff, just imagine the difficulty for start-up or small businesses in virtually any sector who have much less to offer. Continue reading “How does a start-up compete for qualified, skilled people?”
A wine merchant from Somerset West in the Western Cape called me enquiring whether I would like to buy wine from their boutiques wine service. It was a cold call. I didn’t know about the wine merchant and felt that the prices were too high.
Three months later the same wine merchant called me again asking whether I would like to buy their wine. I was again reluctant to buy from them but after I was presented with a special Pinotage I thought I would give them a go. I ordered six bottles of the Pinotage rather than a case of 12 bottles to halve my risk.
The wine merchant told me that they used a small courier company that was excellent and provided personal service. The wine would be delivered three days after I put the full value of the wine and delivery cost in their banking account. Three days went by and the wine wasn’t delivered. To cut the story short, the wine was delivered only three weeks later.
It turns out that this small entrepreneurial wine merchant didn’t have a follow-up system in place to check with me and the courier that the wine had been delivered. After sending a final email in desperation, thinking that I had been ripped off and would lose my money, a representative of the courier company called me to apologise and told me that my wine would be delivered the next day.
When I asked the courier company what had gone wrong, the representative said they had no excuses and the reason had been “negligence” on their part. I was floored by such an honest answer and decided to wait for the wine to arrive the following day.
The wine was delivered the next day but that is not the end of the story. The owner of the boutique wine merchant business called me to apologise after the wine had been delivered, blaming the courier company. It was frustrating to hear from this owner after she had not been available beforehand and had not followed up even after the first three days to find out whether I had received my order.
This whole incident of buying wine from a wine merchant has left a sour taste in my mouth. I won’t be buying from any wine merchant whether online or by telephone in a hurry. Once bitten, twice shy.
Yet the poor service from this small business does highlight an important lesson for other start-ups and small businesses. Customer service is not only about the interface that you have with a small business but also, more importantly, about the whole experience you have.
To deliver that experience, a small business owner needs to ensure not only that their staff or salespeople are friendly but that there are systems in the business that assist fast and cost-effective delivery of product or services. Customers, like myself, want to be helped in the buying process. They want to be informed if deliveries are late. They want to know the reasons why there are problems. And they don’t want hollow apologies and reassurances.
The opportunity that I see in this pathetic customer service from this wine merchant is that it always pays to buy from companies and test their service levels. Competitors in the Western Cape wine merchant marketplace can benefit from weak operators like this by jacking up their own service delivery system.
How could you test your competitors service and gain valuable information and experience from what they do?
Do this, and it might make an important contribution to your sales in this tight market.
Are you challenged to come up with new business ideas or want to start your own small business?
Will It Fly?
Look here before you take the leap.
In Australia a team of emotional resilience experts and a family business professional travelled more than 1,300 km across outback Queensland to give practical advice and inspirational to regional communities hard-hit by drought. The resilience experts provided practical advice on how to best manage personal and business change, challenges and opportunities.
One of the experts said that people can’t look after their businesses, family or property without looking after themselves. Their aim was to change the conversations around the dinner table on the need to focus on hope, strategy and action rather than despair and difficulties. The roadshow series reinforced the importance of emotional well-being and resilience during difficult times. Continue reading “How do you look after yourself in your business in hard times?”
How do you know if your product is going to be a winner? Do you know how to reach your market? What happens if you build your product or service and no one comes?
The high rate of product or service failure is a good indicator of how many would be start-up entrepreneurs put something out into the marketplace but quickly find out that the demand that they anticipated is not there. It could be apps, online courses, educational DVD sets or even books. Continue reading “How are you going to test your new idea?”
I was talking to John, a small business owner a few weeks ago. He told me how desperate he had been for a personal breakthrough in his life.
He ran a factory with his brother but it was over when the Asian imports destroyed their market. He moved cities and thought that he could trade similar products, importing them from different markets overseas. On one of these shipments, a full container load, which he had financed himself, was hit by a sudden drop in the volatile local currency. He had not taken forward cover on the currency. He was devastated.
John is not a quitter. Over the next few weeks he began to plan for his future. An image began to form in his mind. He realised that the idea that he had for a new business is what he wanted to do. He would start a small takeaway and restaurant business but keep it to a size where if things went wrong he wouldn’t be over his head. Continue reading “After enduring much trauma, this small business owner finally made a personal breakthrough”
A key source of information often overlooked for coming up with new business ideas is motivation.
Motivation can be the energy or fire that leads you to a new idea.
If you want to come up with new business ideas, perhaps it’s important for you to look at how strong your motivation is. Do you burn to find a new source of income? Are you willing to put in the effort to come up with a new idea that makes a difference?
An interesting example of motivation is how a team of women in France came up with an all-female garage outside Paris that offers manicures, massages and lessons in car mechanics. It is doing a roaring trade since it opened in May. The business is challenging stereotypes of car repairing being a masculine domain. Continue reading “How strong is your motivation?”
The other day I came across three manhole covers that were stolen in the road where I do my morning run. I later found out that thieves sell these manhole covers for about R500 to scrap metal dealers. New plastic materials that are worthless to thieves could make a difference to manhole cover theft when scrap metal prices are so high.
Time magazine recently reported on some of the world’s weirdest heists. People steal everything from beehives to syrup and beach sand. Police in France found 61 beehives stolen from a beekeeper. They held about 25,000 bees, estimated to be worth about $83,000.
In Québec thieves stole 2.7 million kilograms worth of maple syrup estimated at $18,000,000 from a warehouse. Police were able to track down two thirds of it. Criminals stole 5.5 tons of chocolate-hazelnut spread (Nutella when they robbed a parked trailer in a German town. The spread was worth $20,000. Continue reading “Is your business shrinking without you knowing about it?”
