Dodo Loves Marketing

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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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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Operating procedures are about to be changed to meet a new production schedule. Senior members of your staff favor one solution, the younger ones defend an alternate option. Either one could work.

Each faction is jockeying for power, each wants your support and you are caught in the middle of office politics.

As manager, you want to resolve the situation without offending or alienating either group. “Uppermost is not being seduced by the politics of one group over another,” says Dr. Bill Knaus, a management consultant from Longmeadow, MA. ..more

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U.S. business spends billions annually to rev up workers. In the travel incentive business alone, there are now thousands of service companies that develop and/or run trips to reward employees, as opposed to a few hundred companies a decade ago.

What methods are most used? How can you choose and implement a motivational program that will match your needs and get results? Matt S. Walton III is a managing principal in Los Angeles for Sibson & Co. Inc. , a management consulting firm based in Princeton, NJ that develops compensation and incentive programs. He describes the most common types of programs and offers insights and guidelines:

• Rewards. Trips, televisions, cash—all can be powerful incentives to pump up performance and boost profits. “Reward programs are especially effective when used with sales and customer service representatives,” says Walton. He cautions that, for the reward to be meaningful, it should relate to specific performance measures established in advance. For example, bank personnel might be offered a reward for getting a certain number of customers to buy a CD within a 30-day period. ..more
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As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, most entrepreneurs have a very specific purpose for their business plan and, once that purpose has been accomplished, the formal planning process is over. The People Express business plan is theonly written plan the company ever put together. The question of why the company never assembled another plan to guide its astonishing growth is one that prompts extensive explanation from founder Donald Burr.

Quite simply, he begins, the company didn’t really need an operating plan once it had financial backing. Not even for budgeting purposes?

“We felt budgeting was one of the things that stand in the way of customer service,” he explains. “The mind-set of budgeting is that it’s finance driven instead of customer driven.”

Burr points to Continental Airlines, which acquired People Express, to illustrate his point. “Continental Airlines lives by budgeting,” he says. “From the food to the uniforms to the people, it’s budget driven. You end up with a seriously flawed product as a result of such a process.” ..more

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