New Business Opportunities Ireland Website
Are you thinking about starting your own business?
If so you are in good company. In 2006 there were almost 20,000 new companies started in Ireland, and many more smaller sole traders and partnerships. All businesses have one thing in common, you need the germ of an idea and then a plan to execute it.
Business Opportunities Ireland provides ideas and insights into all sorts of business ideas and opportunities.
If you are considering starting your own business but not sure exactly which business to start you might be interested to know that we have just launched a new website which will give lots of tips and ideas . You can find the site here Business Opportunities Ireland
Enjoy!
Look no hands!
I’m always interested in trying out new technology that can make my life easier. Having never learned to type properly, other than using one finger, I often find that my brain is going faster than I can type!
I’m now trying out a new speech recognition software called Dragon Naturally Speaking, it allows you to dictate what you want to say into a microphone, and then miraculously, it appears on screen. I’m hoping that I can use it in my business to speed up posting on this blog and creating articles, products and also for letter writing and other day to day things that I would normally type.
I have to say, having only spent about an hour with this software, is is pretty impressive. I have been able to write this blog post without having to touch the keyboard (except to copy and paste it into WordPress).
Hopefully, it is going to save me a lot of time and effort trying to find the right keys to press on my keyboard. If you do a lot of writing in your business, it may be worth considering, you can take pick up a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking on Amazon, and sometimes on eBay, fairly reasonably.
It really is a bit eerie, when you see the words that you are saying just pop up on the screen in front of you. It is as though, there is someone hidden away, typing everything you are saying!
What does keeping fit have in common with Marketing your business?
I’m very proud of myself, for the last 8 weeks or so I have managed to go to the gym twice a week. It was painful at first and I tried to come up with excuses not to do it. Now I feel much better and actually can’t wait until it is a ‘gym day’.
But what does this have to do with business growth and marketing? Well apart from giving me energy to get things done it occurred to me there are a lot of similarities with the results you get from taking regular exercise as there are with doing regular marketing.
I think it is human nature for us to want things and want them now. We tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can achieve long term.
Take a look at any gym in the first 2 or 3 weeks of January and you will see it is a hive of activity. Everyone is fresh with the new years resolutions and good intentions. People set themselves impossible goals of training for 1.5 hours per session 3 times a week. very quickly it all becomes too much and they give up too soon not getting to see any results.
The best approach, and the one I am taking with the gym, is to go only twice a week for 30 minutes at a time. This is enough time to give me an effective workout, but not so long that it takes a big chunk out of my day.
The same goes with marketing. If you try and do too much in one go it becomes overwhelming and you end up giving up, before achieving any real results. Instead you need to just do a little on a regular basis.
What if you were to send out 20 sales letters every day? Once the letter is written, printing and putting 20 into envelopes each day isn’t going to take any longer than 30 minutes. If you did this for a year then that could be 5000 letters out there helping promote your services. A 1% response would give you 50 new customers over the year. Customers that you wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Getting fit and keeping in shape doesn’t have to be difficult, neither does steadily growing your business. What we all struggle with is being consistent. But little and often is going to leave you both fitter and better off.
The Power of Free Samples
I was at the farmers market last week at the Liffey Valley shopping centre and as we passed by the fruit and vegetable stall the owner was offering everyone within ear shot free samples of fruit slices. We were lured over and before we know it we had purchased €15 worth of fruit that we had not originally set out to buy!
This reminded me of the power of offering a free sample, which works on an number of different levels. First of all the law of reciprocity where we tend to feel obligated to someone once they have given something to us.
Secondly by allowing your prospects to try your products or services for nothing you are eliminating the uncertainty and risk of them trying you out, which means one less barrier to them becoming your customer.
Finally by offering a free sample this allows you to engage with your customers and determine exactly what they might need so that you can help them.
What free sample can you give your prospective customers?
A good example of Irish Businesses Targetting their market – but poor execution and follow up
At the beginning of this year we couldn’t decide whether to move house or simply convert the attic. With two young children we needed more space. In the end we decided to apply for planning permission for the loft conversion (we needed to change the roof line to make it viable so needed permission) so that if we decided to stay then we had it or if we moved then it was something extra of value to offer a prospective purchaser.
In the end we decided to move but something interesting happened when we got our planning permission approved.
I started to receive direct mail in the post from builders and engineering companies offering their services. As a marketing expert I was pleased to see that these companies had taken the initiative to at least send me something, this puts them well ahead of the pack compared with most business owners. However in every single case each of these companies only ever sent one mailing piece. There was no multi step marketing campaign and no follow up by phone or anything.
I thought that this was disappointing, after all they had gone to the trouble of adding me to the list and sending me one piece. Clearly they don’t know that it takes on average 7 contacts between a business and a prospect before they agree to do business. How much more effort would it have taken to send out a sequence of mail pieces and perhaps follow up with a phone call.
Also most of the mailing pieces were weak with no real offer than call us for a free quote, no reason why I should pick them, and no testimonials, guarantee or other reason to compel me to call them.
Most of the companies concerned were offering services that would generate thousands of Euro worth of business but hadn’t bothered to spend anything more than what looked like 30 mins to knock up a basic letter and sometimes a brochure. If you have gone to the trouble of finding a lead then why not go the extra mile and craft a really good sales piece and multi step follow up campaign?
Automobile University
I was listening to a recording of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar and he mentioned the term ‘Automobile University’. This he said is using the time you spend sitting in traffic to acheive something useful such as learning a new skill. In Dublin it is not uncommon for people to spend 10-20 hours each week in their cars commuting too and from work. This is comparative to the number of hours that a 3rd level student will spend in lectures.
So why not reclaim some of this wasted travelling time and rather than listening to some DJ babble on use the time to improve yourself or learn a new skill? These days you can quickly and easily download seminars or other training materials from the web in MP3 format and listen to it on an MP3 player.
If you were to do this for just 5 hours per week then in a years time you could have covered around 250 hours of material, which is sure to help you improve and grow in whatever area you wish.
Here are some great resources to get you started:
Give your customers more than they were expecting and get feedback
I recently left my car in for a service at Liffey Valley Renault and thankfully not much needed doing to it.
Two things from the service stood out to me as being good service. First of all as soon as the car was ready for collection I received a text message to let me know. I think this is a good use of technology in keeping customers informed.
The second thing that impressed me was that they washed the car for me for no additional charge and without me requesting it. This is a very good examplae of giving the customer that little bit more. Even though this costs very little I thought it was a nice touch and it made me wonder why no other garage I’ve been to does the same. The little things can make a big difference.
Another thing that impressed me about Liffey Valley Renault was that about a week after the service I received a telephone call asking me if I would mind answering a few questions about my experience with their service department. This only took a couple of minutes of my time and was done very professionally and gave them good feedback to help them improve their service and find out what their customers think about them
If you are running a business then taking the time to look for feedback from your customers is a very useful project. Without asking your customers and clients for feedback how else can you be sure you are doing things the right way?
3 Business Lessons From a Badger
I watched Badger or Bust last night for the first time on Sky 1 last night at 10pm.
If you missed it the program is about Ruth Badger, the runner up in the BBC’s 2006 TV show the Apprentice. Ruth visits a different business each week and offers advice and coaching to the sales staff to help them improve.
In last nights episode she visited http://www.greentrees-adventurestore.co.uk whose sales team seem to have lost their way with petty squabbles and lack of confidence. In true reality TV style they initally looked hopeless and then with Ruths amazing coaching they completely turned around.
It was enjoyable to watch and there were 3 good business lessons that I was reminded of:
1. Attitude is hugely important – guess what if you think you are going to fail then chances are you probably will. Sure not everything will always go your way but chances are if you are positive in your approach you will have a head start on those that aren’t.
2. Set a target – One of the changes that Ruth suggested to the sales manager was to put up a board that recorded the sales targets for each day and allowed him to keep a track of them. It is not good enough to say this month we need to sell 100 widgets, or whatever it is your business sells. You need to put in place a plan to achieve it and then back that up by monitoring and setting goals and targets. Then if things slip you can keep on top of them or if you excel then you can give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.
3. Motivation – getting sales staff fired up and incentivised can work wonders. How often have you been to a shop or business with the intention of buying and been ignored by sales staff? Multiply this by every hour of every working day and the cost to a business of lazy and unmotivated sales staff is massive. If staff aren’t pulling their weight and meeting targets then you need to seriously consider letting them go, or reviewing how you motivate them.
It is important to note that motivation does not always have to take the form of financial reward. In this show you could see that Ruth was able to motivate the sales staff by offering praise and making them see the bigger picture of what could be acheived with a positive mental attitude.
Thinking of a new business in Ireland – test on a small scale to avoid losing your shirt
I sometimes like to read some of the posts on www.Askaboutmoney.com in the business section. Quite often I have seen posts from people contemplating starting a particular business and trying to find out how much it might cost to set up a retail store or similar business. They talk about getting loans or using their life savings to start the business.
I believe this is a fundamentally flawed approach to starting a business. I think it is much more cost effective to try and first identify a market and determine what kind of product or service they need and then provide it. Picking a business to start based on what you think you might enjoy doing can open you up to failure. This is because you get so wrapped up in the romance of what it would be like to run such a business that often the most important issue is ignored. Are there enough potential customers to sustain the business and is there a cost effective and realtively easy way for you to get your message to them.
I know someone who wanted to start a property website. They spent over €5000 getting a web site developed and a further €10,000 on an advert in one of the weekend property supplements. Guess how many customers they got? I’m sorry to say they got none – having spent €15,000 they generated no business and eventually had to abandon the project. Until you have people that are interested in your product and services and you have a systematic way to attract them to you then you do not have a solid business.
So next time you think you have identified the killer business idea that will make you your fortune take a step back and ask yourself ‘How can I quickly and cheaply test if there is demand for this product or service’.
A good example of this are the guys who started Innocent smoothies. Rather than go out and find premises and purchase expensive machinery instead the story goes they simply went out and tested their concept. They took a pitch at a music festival in 1998 and sold their smoothies direct to the public, guaging their interest and getting feedback at the vital early stage. The story goes that the had two big bins one marked ‘Yes’ and the other marked ‘No’ and they asked the public to vote on whether they should give up their day jobs to start a smoothie business.
Even to this day Innocent smoothies know that the success of their brand is built on sales and marketing, and a little known fact is that they in fact do not actually make the smoothies themselves. This is actually contracted out to a specialist food producer.
Follow this advice and you will save yourself no end of heartache. Start small, test and measure, and don’t give up the day job until you either have matched your earnings from the business or feel 90% confident that you will by following a proven and tested plan you have created.
Thinking of Buying a Franchise? Make Sure You Do Your Homework
For those thinking of starting a business, going the Franchise route can often seem like an appealing option. However people sometimes forget that those people behind the franchise are in the business of selling franchises.
Whilst this might sound obvious it is easily to get sucked in by a glitzy presentation and promises of riches.
To help you when considering a franchise we have put together a package which includes details of the pitfalls to avoid, questions to ask both the franchisor and existing franchisees and a calculator tool which will help you determine yourself whether a franchise is a viable option. For more information please have a look at the Franchises Exposed website.
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