Are you capable of “motivating” prospects to buy?

Scotland_fish_and_chip_shopFor a young man who had spent his first seven years working as a reporter and magazine writer and the next seven years in public relations, selling cooking oil to a fish shop owner in the industrial area of Roodepoort was world’s apart.

The managing director of the food group

I was working for at the time tasked a colleague and me to start a distribution business to serve the general trade.

One Friday afternoon after calling on the fish shop owner – this had been about the third or fourth call – he ordered eight 20 l drums of cooking oil from me. My heart lept. At last I had made a sizeable order and a regular customer.

I went back to our distribution warehouse, loaded the van and delivered the drums of cooking oil that same afternoon. Continue reading “Are you capable of “motivating” prospects to buy?”

Where do you find ideas for nothing?

Ideas can make millions. Where do you find your million dollar idea?

Well, the first place you could look for ideas is your hobbies and interests. What have you done, are doing that could be turned into a profit machine?

Many entrepreneurs have got their new business ideas from their hobbies. Small businesses have been started from hobbies in baking, gardening, cycling, collecting share certificates – you name it – people have taken their hobbies, found a market for what they have to offer and slowly built successful businesses.

Ideas can come from problems and customer complaints. A young woman in Australia once heard a shop counter salesperson say, “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked for matte lipstick, I’d be rich.” Well, Poppy King listened and built a lipstick business. Listening can unearth a goldmine. Continue reading “Where do you find ideas for nothing?”

How to get ideas on the run?

Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution
Simple idea but the innovation is in the execution.

Ideas can bring about new products and services, lead to forming a business and solve our pressing problems and challenges.

But where do you find ideas?

How do you come up with ideas, especially if you’re in a hurry and need them like now?

Really, there are mainly three ways:

• You can wait until an idea comes but you could wait until it’s too late.
• You can observe what is going on around you and hope that an idea will suddenly come from nowhere.
• You can approach idea-generation in a structured way using proven techniques that will increase your chances of coming up with a great idea.

Continue reading “How to get ideas on the run?”

How to get ideas

Human ear icon

Ideas can just pop out of the blue.

Or come to us when we are busy.

Reading, watching a movie or overhearing someone complain.

Let’s briefly go through the abilities all of us have to find ideas – observation, listening and questioning.

Observing for ideas

Observation is something we do all the time. We watch people; we observe what they do, observe how they are dressed and see what they buy.

From our observations we connect ideas with those we see to form new and better products and services.

We may, for example, come across a flower delivery service. Then observe at another time home-made chocolate being made, connect these two ideas and fuse them into something like a delivery service for chocolate gifts on special occasions. Continue reading “How to get ideas”