Dodo Loves Marketing

About one-fifth of households reported buying a figurine or sculpture in 2007, about the same as in 2003. A popular gift item for collectors, figurines often carry a greeting or social expression that makes them perfectly suited to gifting or as a remembrance. Figurines have been popular collectibles in the past, with lines such as Precious Moments and Hummel passed from generation to generation. But today, figurine collectibles are looked upon with disdain by many as something that one’s grandmother liked, but not something for me. ..more

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These levels of achievement will certainly help redirect an employee’s focus toward becoming world class. However, the manager’s efforts at career redirection will be forever hindered if all of the pay signals are telling the employee to look upward.

Although each of us is motivated by money in different ways, the fact of the matter is that few of us are repelled by money. All of us may not hunger for it, but only a tiny minority of us find money positively distasteful. Therefore the simple truth is that it will be much easier for managers to redirect employees toward alternative career paths if some of those paths involve a raise in pay. ..more

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b. Satisfactions

Everyone breathes different psychological oxygen. What is fulfilling for one person is asphyxiating for another.

Great accountants love the fact that two plus two equals four every time they do it. Great salespeople get a kick out of turning a no into a yes. Great flight attendants gravitate toward the tired, angry business traveler or the boisterous school sports team at the back, because they enjoy turning around the tough customers. ..more

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There are thousands of successful businesses that started on kitchen tables. Laura Ashley, for instance, started as a ‘corner of the kitchen‘ business and went on to make millions. However, just because a business starts on the kitchen table doesn’t mean it should end there. If you intend to spend ten hours a day at work, then it makes sense to give some thought and time to the environment you work in. If you plan to entertain clients, then making sure your office is presentable is even more important. ..more

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People often think of ‘networking‘ as something that is only done at high-powered levels. Not so. Letting mothers at the school gates know about your services, swapping information with friends at the rugby club is all networking. ‘I found that other mums were my best customers,’ says Sarita, a beauty therapist. ‘When my sons were invited to tea with their friends, they’d often mention that I ran a beauty business and I got plenty of of clients that way !’

You cannot afford to be too indirect about offering your services. On the other hand, old contacts may be put off if you continually pester them for work. It is better to engineer a meeting about another matter and then explain what you can do for them, rather than endlessly cold calling. Persistence may pay off — but it can also put people off. This is why ‘forums’ for networking are so important. ..more

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However skilled you are at the work you plan to do from home, your primary consideration in setting up your new business, must be to establish your market. Quite simply, that means finding your customers. In any business, whether you are a plumber, consultant or counsellor, you need customers to succeed. Tracking customers down — and holding on to them — is one of the most difficult challenges for any new business. If it is remotely possible, it is best not to leave your current job, if you have one, before you have at least one or two leads. ..more

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Licensing, registration and inspection

It is amazing how many businesses require some form of licensing, registration or inspection. Bed and breakfast establishments, for instance, may need to be inspected by fire officers, to be registered with the local authority, and may even need planning permission and official approval of their signs from local planning officers. That’s before they start taking on catering, in which case there is another host of rules to contend with. These rules have been set up for the public good, wisely or otherwise. But many people do not know about them. Unfortunately, ignorance is no defence and you could end up being fined heavily if, for instance, your kitchen is not up to environmental health standards for a catering business, or if you are an unregistered childminder. If you make toys which do not comply with safety standards or sell clothes without the correct labelling, you could also end up in hot water. ..more

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Market research is also invaluable in pricing your product or service. Ron Flounders, of Hertfordshire Business Link, which offers free advice to start-up businesses, says that all too often people work out their pricing ‘back-to-front’. They ask themselves how much they need to earn, what their costs are, and then price the product accordingly — regardless of what the market will pay. In fact, what you need to do is market research to establish what price the market will pay, then work out your costs and from that see whether it is worth going into business at all.’ ..more

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Once you’ve done your market research and worked out if you can make a profit from the business, the next step is to take advice. This will not only confirm whether your calculations are realistic, but can take a lot of the pain out of setting up. The good news is that there’s lots of advice available - and much of it is free. What’s more, experts on small businesses reckon that over 60 per cent of small business failures could be avoided if only people took advice in three areas - money, management and marketing.

1 TECs/LECs A good place to start is your local Training and Enterprise Council (TEC), or Local Enterprise Council (LEC) . These can also put you in touch with other helpful agencies; such as your local Enterprise Agency and Business Link. You can find them through your telephone book, Yellow Pages or local library. The Department of Trade and Industry also has a hotline. ..more

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It is a sad fact of life that most small businesses require capital to start up. There are a few businesses which require only the minimum of equipment and stationery (journalism, PR and teaching, for instance), but most will require some form of outlay either for equipment, for stock or both. Then there are other considerations. You may need a budget for advertising, for accountancy and legal fees, or even for adapting your living room.

Before you even try to raise money, it is well worth thinking about the minimum amount needed. If the business is in the fledgling stage, try to keep only to the bare essentials — there will be time for a mahogany desk and state-of-the-art printer at a later, more successful stage. ..more

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There are thousands of grants and low interest loans available for small businesses. The problem is finding out what they are and whether your business qualifies. Some fields are more liberally provided with grants than others. For instance, the Crafts Council has a setting-up scheme which allows selected craftspeople to receive a grant of £2,500 for maintenance and up to £5,000 for equipment (they pay half of equipment costs), provided they apply within two years of setting up. While this would not cover your start-up costs entirely, it could certainly be a very useful addition. Other areas where grants may be forthcoming include : ..more

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• First, do your homework. Find out if anyone else in the organization is working — or has worked — from home. Your union as well as the personnel department may know. If so, arrange to have a drink or meeting with them, to find out how they tackled the subject, how the arrangement works or, if it has stopped, why it ended.

• When I decided to move to the Isle of Bute, in Scotland, I thought I’d have to leave the bank,’ says Kevin Attwood, Strategic Planning Development Officer for Nat West who now works two days from home, and three in London. ‘In fact, I kept the move so quiet that when I told my boss I’d moved to Scotland over the weekend, he was flabbergasted. When we had lunch I said flippantly, that if I’d got my act together I would have come up with a strategic plan for teleworking. He told me to come up with a proposal. I rung up people in the bank who were already working from home some of the time and talked to them extensively before coming up with my plans. Listening to their experiences helped me make a convincing proposal.’ ..more
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Homeworkers also need to work especially hard at ensuring they know what is going on within the office and avoiding isolation.. When BT conducted a teleworking experiment, allowing some of its Inverness operators to work from home, they found that one of the main grumbles was that the operators felt they were not kept up to date with company news the way they had been in an office. For those who work only a couple of days at home, this can still be a problem. It pays to phone in on your days out and to take part in any social events in the office. When you are in the office, make sure everyone knows that you are there — and keep your wits about you. ‘I make sure that when I’m in the office, I listen very carefully to what’s going on,’ says Helene Hook of the computer firm ICL. Kevin Attwood of Nat West Bank has formalized the process by having an updating meeting with his boss every week. ..more

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Congratulations ! Now you will have to consider the nitty-gritty of arrangements necessary for your new working style to develop smoothly. The union for skilled and professional workers MSF have introduced some guidelines for homeworkers to ensure their health and safety at work. They may be a counsel of perfection — particularly if you are only working at home on a very part-time or informal basis — but they are worth bearing in mind. They include : ..more

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If you are fully employed by a company or on a contract, this will not be an issue for you apart from the initial negotiation of your terms and conditions. However, if you are self-employed, there is no doubt that lack of security is a major issue and it may be one that will never be completely resolved. This is because however successful you become, there will always be good times and mediocre - if not bad - times, and as the owner of the business, you will take the brunt of this. However, there are ways you can minimize the lack of security experienced by self-employed homeworkers : ..more

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Motivation is perhaps the single biggest factor in making the difference between success and failure in any business venture. Surveys have shown that poorly motivated employees, however hard they are worked, consistently produce poorer work than those who may work less hours but have better motivation.

But what gives us our motivation differs with our personalities. For some people, motivation is largely external. They work hard because they have external rewards to motivate them — a pay cheque, the approval of colleagues, or a boss breathing down their neck. However, when you work at home, you are largely out of sight — and possibly out of mind — of your boss. (This is the major reason cited by managers for their opposition to teleworking. In a recent Department of Trade and Industry study, many managers said that they did not approve of teleworking, because without a boss to manage employees their work would invariably decline.) Even more challenging, you may actually be your own boss. If you have been the sort of person who regards the boss’s holiday as a good reason to down tools yourself, you may well have problems working from home. ..more

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10. Wait for the call to come through

Stay at your desk until the call comes through. If you disappear the call charge is still ticking away. Nothing irritates the person at the other end more than hanging on for an incoming call.

11. Make maximum use of operator time

The operator is probably very busy at peak times but not so busy at other times. He or she may be busy for only 50 per cent of the time and may like to take on additional work for off-peak times. ..more

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Long telephone conversations are obviously expensive. Calls should be planned and precise but, in addition to keeping the conversation as short as possible, consider other ways of reducing the telephone bill.

1. Check for overcharges on your telephone bill

By keeping a close eye on all the detail and by checking against your own records it may surprise you how often you may be able to identify an overcharge. Perhaps you don’t even look at the telephone bill but please don’t leave it to the telephone company. Treat it like any other supplier’s invoice and subject the account to scrutiny. Get out the last three years’ telephone bills and compare the quarterly charges item by item, line by line. ..more

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Employ more than one travel agent

Some firms get locked in to one travel agent, but by giving them a monopoly you could be the loser. Go to several travel agents to get comparative quotes for the same journey. Then you will see just how complex air fare structures can be and how a travel agent with a competitive spirit can save you a small fortune. In-house travel offices give good service but are they working as competitively as they can in a non-competitive environment?

Plan overseas trips

Overseas travel is so expensive that the maximum amount of planning should go into each trip. How often have you seen export sales executives sitting around waiting in the hotel foyer for their contact to arrive? Perhaps the reason for his delay is that your agent is out making last-minute appointments around town — a job which should have been done weeks ahead. ..more

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Markets are becoming more international, distances are shrinking, more and more executives travel more frequently on overseas trips; travel expenditure is an area of potential waste that once brought under control, can significantly reduce your cost burden.

Check the necessity for the journey

Check the reason for a journey, check that it has been planned properly and that there are clear new objectives. Check that existing objectives cannot be attained by means of cheaper communication such as telex, telephone or fax. ..more

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