Business Systems- When the Cat’s Away

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

What Happens When the Cat is Away in Your Business?

When the cat’s away, we all know what the mice do, but what do your staff do when you’re away? If yours is like most businesses, not a lot. Generally, they just go through the motions.

Why do the mice play when the cat is away? It is because there are no order or control systems in the barn if the cat is having a nap. The cat is the system. In its absence, the mice make their own rules and look after themselves. They pursue their own goals. While it might look like anarchy, there is still an element of self preservation. They would, for example, be careful not to disturb the cat’s slumber. When the cat awoke, they would return to their normal routine with the cat in control as if nothing had happened while it was asleep.

Does this sound like your business?

A client of mine who ran a membership business found after returning from a four week overseas holiday, not a single new sale was made. Sure the existing clients were looked after, but her staff actually claimed that there were no new enquiries during her absence, in spite of the fact that she had prominent advertising which generated a constant stream of leads, both before she left, and after she returned.

Sound familiar?

Like the cat, she was the system. When she was absent, none of her staff thought to disturb her on vacation to say they weren’t making any sales. Whenever she made contact from the other side of the world, she was assured that everything was fine. And of course things were fine. Her staff were having a holiday too!

At this point she realised that she was never going to have a business that ran without her without developing a Business Management System. Which included a robust sales pipeline.

Her staff were provided an Operations Manual with a complete documentation of her business systems along with reporting and performance measurement systems.

Her final step was to ensure that her staff were fully trained in the operation of these systems and were appraised on the basis of objective performance standards with appropriate rewards for excellence.

Now when the cat’s away, the cat can play!

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Home Based Business Australia

Barbara Gabogrecan

Would you like to have dozens of new potential clients to add to your list this month?

Would you like to access over $6,000 in prizes that are of real value to your business?

The fastest growing business sector in Australia is the home based business sector. If you are not one, then you should at least be targeting the sector to sell your product and services to. At the beginning of each year hundreds of people decide to start their own work from home business.

Mums finally have their youngsters start school (or leave home); employees get retrenched (or decide they want a new start); husbands want to watch their children growing up; people just don’t want to travel in the heat and don’t need the huge cost of petrol or public transport; they may just decide that they want to be their own boss – whatever the reason, there will be many ‘start up’ businesses from home this year.

Home Based Business Australia will become a very important portal for this growing sector, especially as the re-vamped website is already acquiring enormous interest – even before it is launched.

Home Based Business Australia is offering over $6000 of prizes during its launch. Starting at January 25th. There is no ‘Mickey Mouse’ hype here. The launch will provide prizes of REAL value to your business. If you wish to offer a prize and increase traffic to your website, please visit the Home Based Business Australia website and enquire directly.

So do your business a favour and check out Home Based Business Australia.


Barbara Gabogrecan is the President of Home Based Business Australia.

Australian Landscape Photography

Happy New Year to all business owners. Please enjoy another Australian Landscape Photograph kindly provided by Pele Leung Photography.

Hill Inlet Whitsundays, Queensland

The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Owners Christmas Party

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

At this time of year, we hear of all the extravagances of the corporate Christmas parties. Who says the self-employed can't have fun as well?

May Your Christmas Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Blog in top 75 Globally - Breaking News

Thanks to our contributers, readers and commenters, The Australian Small Business Blog was ranked as one of the Top 75 Business Blogs Globally. (We came in at 43 and represent Australian/NZ. Not sure how the Kiwis will react.) And a special Thanks to Google!!

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Dr Greg Chapman
Author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success

Owners Get Lost! And Grow Your Business.

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

An Interview with Dr Greg Chapman on taking time off for small business owners. The interviewer was Donna Page of Nett Magazine.

Q. The experts say taking a break is essential for mental well being and family life- how difficult can this be for small business owners?

Most small businesses depend on their owner’s being there- when they are not nothing happens. The staff look to the owner to solve all the problems and the owner brings in the business. So if the owner is away, sales fall and problems requiring the owner’s attention can’t be fixed until they return. That’s why so many businesses close over Christmas- it is the only time the owner can get away, and their staff must take their leave then as well.

Q. Can you please detail some reasons why small business operators don't take breaks?

Most business owners are micro managers- if they give someone else the work, they mess it up, and the owner spends twice as long fixing things. So that get in the habit of doing most things themselves, and anything they give to staff, they have to look over their shoulder to make sure that things are done they way they want. Even if they only go away for a short time, things don’t get done properly.

This is the owners fault as they don’t have systems in their businesses so their staff can run things when the owner is absent.

Q. From your experience, what are the problems associated with small business owners who do not take breaks and do you believe many do take holidays?

If the owners don’t take breaks, they end up burning themselves out. So most do take breaks, but their businesses do suffer when they are away.

Q. What strategies can be put in place by small business owners to ensure breaks are taken?

If owners put in place systems in their business, they can give much of the work they presently do to others. They also need reporting in their businesses to ensure that the work is being done when they are not there. All big businesses already have systems and reporting in place- or else they would still be small.

Q. Is slowing down the business a good strategy?

If you mean slowing down the business so they can take a break, that’s a cost to the business. So while the store is closed for business, you are still paying rent. If you can keep it open, and have staff properly trained in your systems, you can be making money while you take a break. After all staff get paid when they are on holidays, so why not the boss?

Q. If the owner takes a break, how can that help their business?

There is an old saying that owners need to work on their business rather than in it. When they take a break, they are not faced with the day-to-day pressures of their business. This gives them time to think. Not just about their business, but also their life goals. The break will also allow them to re-energise. Owners tend to come back from breaks with a new ideas and a new enthusiasm to implement them.

Q. What are the top 5 ways to make sure you get the break you deserve.

1. Start to delegate as many tasks as you can to your staff
2. Monitor your staff’s performance and provide training to support them
3. Create reporting systems – what gets measured gets done.
4. Have systems for all tasks in your business
5. Take short breaks before trying to take a long break

Q. Any final thoughts?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Remember all big businesses started as small businesses facing all the problems about taking leave from their business that you are. Everyone of them would have sort advice at some stage. Yes you will have to work to put all this in place, but then, you can take a holiday!

Learn how to make your business run without you Then you can Get Lost when ever you feel like it.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

A Winning Business Strategy - Losing

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Can you imagine a strategy for your business where you deliberately decided to come last? Does that sound crazy?

Most businesses struggle with strategy. Strategy is poorly understood and even more poorly executed. Strategy is all about positioning and not trying to win, or hit a six on every ball. Sometimes it is about surviving until the right ball comes your way, and then hitting a six.

That’s the strategy that Australian Steven Bradbury adopted in the final of the men’s short track skating in the 2002 Olympics. Australia had never won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. In the pool we are great, but on the snow, we are like the Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings. Our tallest mountain would be regarded as a foothill in the Swiss Alps, so our winter athletes have none of the natural advantages that the athletes in cooler countries have.

Under these circumstances, reaching the final was a great achievement for Bradbury, but he knew that he would be the slowest in the next race. He knew that on most occasions his competitors could out race him – but he also knew that in this highly aggressive sport, collisions were frequent. He was just hoping that if there was a collision taking out 2 of the skaters, he could pick up a bronze just by staying clear of the collision by holding a position at the back of the pack and waiting for his chance.

In this event, however, four skaters went down, and he was able to skate past all the fallen competitors to pick up the gold!



If this race was held again 10 times, in all likelihood he would not have picked up any medal nine of the times. He knew he could not win in a head-to-head competition with his more experienced rivals in playing their game. He would simply exhaust himself. So he played a different game. Not one that would work every time, but one that would work often enough to make it worthwhile for his more modest and realistic ambitions.

Having seen how the top skaters raced, he identified a weakness that he could exploit by positioning himself. It was not a strategy for the top ranked competitors, but one a competitor with less capacity could adopt.

Do you have a business strategy that allows you to compete with your bigger rivals, that exploits their weaknesses rather than trying to take them where they are strongest? One that does not exhaust your resources while you wait for your chance? If you deplete all your resources playing your larger competitors’ game, you will have none left to play yours.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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An Australian Landscape Scene

Please enjoy the first of a series of Australian Landscapes Photography kindly provided by Pele Leung Photography.

Lake Eildon, Victoria

The Australian Small Business Blog

How to Get the Best Marketing Advice for Free

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Is there an elephant in your industry? There is usually at least one. They spend $100,000’s on branding, customer surveys, demographic analysis and focus groups. They spend even more on campaign analysis, testing and measuring to work out what works and what doesn’t. If you are a small guy, how can you compete with that?

Well you can. Just become a flea on the elephants back. That is what “Crazy John” Ilhan did. In retail, probably the most costly decision is your location. Go for a low cost location, and you get no traffic. If you go for a high cost location, and it is the wrong sort of traffic, you go out of business. Rather than spending a lot of money on geo-demographic surveys to identify customer shifts, he waited for Telstra or Optus to open a store in a new expanding area, and then open a store opposite and offered every passer-by lower prices.

By being a flea on the elephant’s back, he let the elephant take him to the fertile feeding locations they had spent large sums identifying.

So how might this work for your business? Perhaps you have a motor mechanics business with half a dozen staff. You don't see yourself in competition with BMW, and BMW certainly doesn’t see you as a competitor. You worry about the guy who is about the same size half a kilometre away. So you spend your time checking out what he is doing. This will probably result in a me too strategy, and ultimately the death spiral of a price war.

Alternatively, you could look in another direct. You could pay the same high price marketing company that BMW uses for advice, or you could get that advice for nothing. Drop in to the local BMW service centre and look around. See how clean their service area is. Check out their comfortable waiting rooms. Look at how their staff is presented. BMW spends millions on developing their image.

Now how difficult would it be to give your garage a lick of paint. Supply clean uniforms for your staff. Clean up your waiting room and put in today's paper and a coffee machine? How much do you think that would cost you? Probably $1-2000.

You are still not trying to compete with BMW, just to learn from them. When you start to apply these ideas to your business, the guy down the road won't even be in the game. You will probably even be able to lift your prices! Savvy marketing does not mean high cost marketing.

It is always the little things that make a difference, and you can get all this high price marketing advice for nothing by just opening your eyes and turning your head in the right direction.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Defining Your Customers

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

An important part of any small business' marketing is understanding the nature of their customers. Are your customers Cats or Dogs?

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Never Forget Marketing 101

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

So Chicago lost the Olympics. What happened? Clearly there was a lot of backroom manoeuvring - offers made, deals done. Then the US President and his wife attended the final IOC pitch to seal the deal. What did they then do? They talked about what getting the deal would mean to them. This was particularly the case for Michelle Obama.

They both forgot rule 101 in Marketing.

It is not about you, it is about your buyer. It is about everyone’s favourite radio station WIIFM.
That is: What’s In It for Me?

Now probably the deal had been done with Rio well before the Obamas arrived in Copenhagen, so the final pitches were just for show and the aggrandisement of the IOC. If that is the case, the Chicago bidding team did not understand the bidding process. If the deal was already lost (and clearly comprehensively lost to be eliminated in the first round) they played their trump card for nothing, and in the end, humiliated the Obamas. Do you think Chicago will get any support for future bids or favours?

The Chicago bidding team were clearly not listening to the signals. They would have been there. You have to remember in any bidding process, the buyer will want the losers to stay in till the end, so they can extract the best deal from the winner, so they would be saying encouraging things even if they knew you had lost. Before they played their biggest ace, the bidding team should have known that they had the deal whether the Obamas were present or not, and their presence was just a payment of respect to the IOC for awarding them the bid.

It appeared, however, the Chicago bidding team must have really believed that great speeches by the Obamas would get Chicago over the line. If the speech was the thing that was going to change people’s mind and win the bid, it was the wrong speech. While the Obamas have a lot of goodwill in the international arena, the IOC still listens to WIIFM. Even the international general goodwill the Obamas have is based on WIIFM.

It is useful for small business owners to remember the lessons that too often the big guys forget. The same rules apply, no matter who you are.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Advertising - Can We Live Without It?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Imagine you walked into a supermarket, and you recognised almost none of the brands. There was aisle after aisle of goods to purchase, and you had to stop to read every single packet to see whether you would like this cereal or those biscuits.

This could only occur if you had not been exposed to any advertising before you walked into the supermarket. In our current world, of course, that is impossible, as we grow up with advertising around all around us, but yet this has happened to me.

I have encountered this situation a number of times when I have shopped in a supermarket in another country. I had no exposure to the local advertising and was confronted by a large variety of brands which were literally foreign to me. I was overwhelmed by choice. A simple buying decision, which might have only taken me a few minutes at my local supermarket while I located my favourite brands of particular categories, was greatly extended while I tried to determine which of these new brands would satisfy my needs.

Without the advertising, I did not know what the benefits of each brand were. I couldn’t find out the ingredients without lengthy label examinations. In a number of cases I just opted for the cheapest because I didn’t want to waste more time.

This is an interesting experiment you can try if you are travelling internationally, and you are looking after yourself, rather than just living in a hotel where everything is provided. I believe you cannot understand a country if you have not done your weekly shopping in one of its supermarkets.

Without advertising, there would be no range. Most products would become commodities with no points of difference. There would be only the most basic features. There would be no niche products for special needs. We would be unaware of all the benefits. Prices would probably be higher as there would be no competition.

So when your product is discovered on a store shelf, or on your website, can your buyers readily determine the benefits your product provides and for whom and your points of difference? Is your offer clear, and do you have a call to action? Ideally when they have found your product, they will have already been exposed to your advertising, so the final decision is quick and painless unlike the confusing frustrating ones I had to make without the benefit of advertising.

Enjoy this wonderful paean to Advertising – but a strong language warning at around second 6, after which all is ok and very funny.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Making Your Business Run Without You

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Most business owners waste their time doing low value work. They spend dollar time on penny jobs. Find out what brain surgeons do, and then change your business and your life.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Growing Your Business by Accident

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

All businesses go through predictable changes throughout their lifecycle. From being a solo-preneur to having 20 or more people in the business. At each stage there is a step change in the way the business needs to be managed, and until these changes are made, growth will be difficult. Many businesses have stopped growing and have deliberately shrunk because the owners did not know how to make these changes and how to handle the resulting stress. Unable to cope, they have retreated to the comfort zone that existed in the time when their business was smaller and easier to manage.

Often growth is accidental, not planned, and the owner starts employing many others to get the work done without having in place the structure to manage them. They continue to manage their business in the same way they always have, but find that the old ways don’t work in the larger organisation, and may even be counterproductive. It is like driving from your home to participate in Formula 1 racing, but continuing to drive your old sedan on the racing track, rather than changing the vehicle for the new conditions.

When considering the Lifecycle of a business the following milestone stages can be identified.



The first stage in a business’ growth is when a one person business starts regularly paying for assistance in routine parts of their business. That is they are using routine external support. At this stage, the support is part-time. This usually occurs at the Adolescence stage of the business, when survival is not considered to be an issue. Before then, the owner is trying to save money by doing everything themselves and don’t believe they have the cash flow to pay for outside assistance.

The second stage in the growth of a business is the first employee. This usually occurs during late Adolescence or early Growing Pains. At this point they are likely to be very busy and they can no longer avoid having full time assistance. During this stage they may in fact, increase their staff to four or five people. Having hired the first employee, the second and third are not so hard.

The third stage also occurs in Growing Pains. This is the point at which they may hire a salesperson to assist bringing in extra business to support the additional staff. A salesperson unlike other members of staff has a very different role and is more like the owner than anyone else in the business. They must be entrepreneurial and require different skills to manage.

The fourth stage, also in Growing Pains, is the appointment of a supervisor. For the first time, the owner does not directly control the work of their employees. There is an intermediary. During this stage, there may be other supervisors appointed, and the business can grow to 15 to 20 people.

The fifth stage is the exit stage from small business to medium sized business. This will be the Second Wind stage of the business where it is completely re-invented. Managers are appointed for the first time. This might start with a full time accountant. The issues become organizational and the owner finds their primary role is not as manager, or even entrepreneur, it is as a leader. Few small businesses make it past this point.

The risk for small business is when they wander from one stage to the next by accident. Without understanding the implications of their growth, they will struggle. However, when a business grows by design it is possible to avoid many of the growing pains.

This is an extract from The Small Business Achiever – Business Owner Brief Issue 119 where strategies on avoiding the mistakes of growth by accident are covered in detail.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Online Business Scam

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

As someone who owns quite a few domain names, whenever a domain name gets near for renewal, I get sent unsolicited offers presented like invoices for domain name renewals. They will offer to renew the domain for $245 with an incentive such as an iPod Shuffle. Details of domain name ownership and their expiry are available on public registers which is how they find out who you are.

Your website guru probably organised your domain for you when you first set up your website. They probably only charged you $40-50 for 2 years, which is quite reasonable if they included additional support which most do. If this is your first renewal, you may not even know how little the domain name cost you in your original website investment.

So when you see offers such as the one I mentioned above, remember the iPod is probably costing them $20, and bulk domain registrations wholesale below $30. Everyone is entitled to a margin depending on the service they supply, but $245 is just ripping you off.

I won’t mention the name of the organisation I received this latest offer from as I don’t want to give them a Google boost, but if you own domain names, they will find you.

If you are aware of other scams, I would be pleased to report them for the benefit of others here.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Can Business Planning Ruin Your Business?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When coming of age at Melbourne University many years ago, Lygon Street was a favourite haunt. One of our regular restaurants was Il Gambero. Unfortunately, due to a recent fire, it is no more. While this is obviously, significant for me, why am I writing about it here?


What struck me particularly was an interview with Frank Di Mattina, the owner. He made a comment (see video) that I am sure would resonate with all small business owners.

“Unbelievably, the whole family… it was the first time we have been away from the business, we have been on a business planning seminar.”

This comment raises a number of questions.

Had they been in Melbourne, would the fire still have happened? Fire investigators believe it was started by an old $3 power board in the kitchen. The fire had started 40 minutes after the restaurant had closed for the night. So if they had been in Melbourne, the fire would probably have still occurred. It was an accident waiting to happen.

Would business planning have prevented the fire? The owners may well have done business planning before, but had they undertaken a business risk analysis and developed a risk reduction plan? For example, did they have as part of their plan regular electrical audits by a qualified electrician?

If they had a risk mitigation strategy and plan, was it followed? If it was not, was it because there was insufficient training or some other factor?

Should they ever leave their business again? They should be building a business that does not require them to be present all the time. There should be systems for all parts of their business supported by training, reports and audits to ensure compliance. If these elements are in place, they should be able to be absent from their business as often as they would like.

This is not the family’s only restaurant and I hope they will be back soon, if for no other reason, I just love their Scaloppini Funghi.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Lifecycle of a Business

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

A recent interview with me on BTalk - CBS BNet Australia. This includes a discussion of the issues business owners face when growing their businesses.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Marketing Awards 2009

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Empower Business Solutions is a proud sponsor of the

Marketing and Communications Executives International Awards.

The winner last year spent two weeks on a dream trip to Italy with her partner – an awesome prize! This year the overall winner will go to Club Med in Phuket with a partner. That could be YOU!

Awards are also a great way of getting recognition for your business and creating a point of difference. Any Australian Business is eligible to enter. Even if you don’t win, you could be a finalist which is still a point of difference!

Categories to be judged are:-

-SME
-Small Business
-Micro Business
-Home Based Business
-Woman in Business
-Ethnic Business
-Young Entrepreneur (under 25 years of age)

The Awards close on October 1st, but start on your entry NOW so that you will be able to schedule it into your busy life.

Go to http://www.mcei.org.au/ then AWARDS for detailed information.

Please let me know if you decide to enter and feel free to nominate any of your business associates. When you find a good thing, share it!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Business Owner Winners July Blogging Competition and August Competition

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

I am pleased to announce the 3 winners of July's blogging competition. The winners will each receive a HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One printers valued at $499 each.

Firstly a special mention s to both Steve Osborne and Brenda Thompson for their posts. However the three winners are (in no particular order):

Cynthia Colli for her passionate comment on Coles controversial marketing campaign.

Peter Grant for some extremely interesting marketing data about how many contacts it makes to make a sale.

Nerida Gill for commenting on other comments in the best tradition of blogging.

Ladies and Gentleman, your printers are in the mail!

Thank you everyone elso for their contributions.

The August competition will be for 3 months subscription to the Small Business Achiever valued at $141 for the best commenter.

Post Early and Post Often. Carry on Blogging!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Last Week for July Business Owner's Competition

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

How would you like to win one of 3 HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One printers valued at $499 each?

All you have to do, is put a comment on this blog, on any posting you like. The more the merrier.

At the end of the month, the best 3 commentors will each receive one of these printers. The only catch is I can only ship them to Australian businesses.

*****Please Note: When you comment for the first time, just let me know that you have here so I can contact you if you win. (Blogger comments are usually anonymous unless you leave your email address in the post which I don't recommend).

Genuine commenters are also welcome to put a link in their comment which will help with their ranking from this highly Google ranked site for the Australian Small Business keywords.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Competing with Your Business Owner Customers

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Let’s say your business was to supply landscaping materials to landscapers and then you decided to get in the landscaping business yourself as a side business. What would your landscaper customers think?

For materials may be as much as a third of the cost of a job. So when they see their supplier competing with them, they will believe that they will have a significant cost advantage over them. They would also ask: “Why should I be giving money to a competitor to take business away from me?”

Which is why, most businesses in this situation go out of their way not to compete with their customers, even accidentally, as can happen sometimes. For example, distributors will in most cases refer retail sales to their retail resellers, but sometimes they may end up supplying a retail customer who has had a poor retail experience.

However recently, Google decided to compete with some of its customers, and they are not happy! Fairfax and News, owners of Domain and Realestate.com pay Google millions of dollars for keywords to send searchers to their websites. Now Google wants to provide listings of real estate directly on google maps for free. This will directly undercut the businesses of two of its largest advertisers. Another issue will be poor quality control from this free service on the accuracy of these free listings with out of date information appearing as well as allowing scammers.

A former CEO of REA a competitor of Realestate.com said:

"Google is moving from being a search engine to a portal," he said. "Instead of sending you to other websites - which have paid money to be there on its listings - it is now serving up the end data itself. That then raises the question: why would you need to go to the other sites and why would they then pay Google money [for search key words].”

A Google spokesperson said they have received “great feedback”. I bet they have!

So if Google is giving this service away free, what’s in it for them? It is just one more free service Google offers to make it more difficult for competitor search engines to compete with it. Services such as free email, news, calendar, YouTube, and many others. As it expands, it will inevitably clash with those offering a paid similar service. If they are small, they can just ignore them, but it is more and more finding some hard boundaries and now Google seems to have taken the place of Microsoft in internet demonology and attracting the attention of the regulators.

If you are small like the landscape supplies business, there will be other suppliers who refuse to compete with their customers who will get their business.

There is a saying in business: “Stick to your knitting”. Business history is littered with examples of failures of businesses which tried to take over their customers knitting. While it may appear that the grass looks greener in your customers pastures, inevitably, there are just as many competitors grazing there as in your own paddock, and they will know much more about this paddock than you will.

Respect what your customers do, and help them be successful, and you too will be successful.

What do you think? Remember, the best commenters July 2009 will receive a $500 printer.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Working with Your Business Owner Friends

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

While driving around I heard a song on the radio from my youth. I didn’t truly understand it then, but I understand it more today. Although it was not written about business owners, it has a message for us.

The song is about how we need each others’ help to get what we need and want. In business, this means finding others of a like mind who we can work with. For large businesses regulatory competition issues come into play…. and lawyers. Two big businesses can’t combine and work together without getting a lot of unhelpful attention. There are just too many stakeholders – which is code for people who want to tell the business how it should be run for their benefit, but are not so interested in its success as to want to invest in it!

Take the alliance between Coles and Shell, and between Woolworths and Caltex, there have been a lot of complaints by ‘stakeholders’, although not from shareholders! The biggest losers from this arrangement have been the independent supermarkets and petrol stations. Some argue consumers may also have lost, but after scrutiny by the regulators and the government’s ill fated GroceryWatch and FuelWatch schemes, evidence of that has been very difficult to find.

In small business, because we aren’t changing the marketplace, we can be far more creative. You can exchange vouchers with as many business owners as you want to extend your reach. You can work on joint projects and events. You can advertise in each others’ newsletters.

You can create a referral ring. A classic example of that is the wedding mafia. This often consists of a photographer, a printer, a florist, a venue, and an event planner. If any one of them gets a wedding, they all do! This type of arrangement could quadruple a small business’ reach, which is very difficult for big businesses to do in the same way.

These strategies are the most powerful ones available for small businesses. They cost little to organise, although they will take time to find the right partners and time to plan.

Remember a small business owner is never alone and when they work with other owners, they are far more likely to achieve the success they desire.

To be successful in business, all you need is a little help from your business owner friends.

(OK I admit it, this is just a thinly veiled reason for me to post a song that brings back happy memories. Enjoy.)



What do you think? Remember, the best commenters this month will receive a $500 printer.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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How One Business Spends 50 cents to Make $100

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

The best earning marketing dollars are spent on your customers rather on advertising where the money goes to some media mogul. Consider this example:

Coles is currently offering to pay the GST on feminine hygiene products under the banner “Why should you be taxed for being a Woman”. Why are they doing this and will it work?

This is a fairly emotional appeal, but as a male I can be objective on this (he says quickly ducking to avoid sharp objects being propelled at him by the females in his life).

Clearly many women feel this is an unjust tax. It was very controversial when first introduced, although the then opposition and now government has done nothing to remove it.

Firstly, by raising this issue, Coles gets far wider coverage than their advertising would otherwise reach. It becomes a topic for talkback radio and newsletters like this.

Secondly, the actual cost for Coles on a typical product of value around $5 will be 50 cents. Given the tight margins in supermarkets, this might be most if not all the gross profit on the item.

Thirdly, it is most unlikely that a woman will visit Coles to buy these products only and go somewhere else to do her weekly shopping. In fact she is likely to get her $100 weekly groceries at the same time as the purchase of these products.

Finally, would someone change where they do their weekly $100 grocery shopping for just 50 cents? If the 50 cents off had been for razor blades or Cornflakes it would just be seen as another special, easily ignored, but in this case, Coles are appealing to women’s feeling of injustice, and some might just change to support the principle.

Will it work? As in all these strategies there is only one way to find out.

Can you think of a way of spending money on your customers to get them to try you?

Will you convert to Coles, or do you just see this as cynical manipulation?

What do you think? Remember, the best commenters this month will receive a $500 printer.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Dangers of Passive Word of Mouth Marketing

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Word of Mouth marketing is important in almost any business big or small. Every business lives or dies based on their reputation. So why would you risk leaving Word of Mouth to chance?

While positive reports about your service will get out there over time and create new business for you, bad reports travel like a rocket propelled by hard feelings and anger. Most of your clients who have enjoyed your services will mention you to help out friends and colleagues, but they aren’t active unpaid promoters of your business. When, however, you have let someone down, not delivered on your promise, and have not made things right, their only recourse is to damage you as much as they can.

Studies have shown that when you do a great job, people might tell 3 other people. When you don’t, they will tell eleven others that you haven’t, and those eleven will tell three others because people like to spread the bad news as it helps empowers the disempowered and provides a way to strike back at ‘the system’.

What if you let someone down who owns a megaphone? That is what happened to United Airlines when they let down a touring band, Sons of Maxwell, when they damaged a $3500 guitar when it was tossed around by baggage handlers, an act they witnessed while waiting to disembark. United then passed the buck on responsibility, and after wasting many hours chasing their claim, the band gave up on United, but not on getting even.

The wrote a song about their experience and posted it in on YouTube. At the time of posting, this had been viewed over 2 million times!



The claim for repair of the guitar was $1200, but there seems to be a general policy with United, and probably with most airlines, to make it as difficult as possible to claim damages. Consider the damage in reputation that has occurred to United, and the pain is not over yet. The band’s leader, Dave Carroll, has written a second song (currently being videoed) and is writing a third.

Belatedly United are now looking what they can learn from this incident, examining practices that have obviously been entrenched for years. Will anything good come from it? Well this has made the band’s music become far more widely known and has probably been great for business for them. However, for United, my suspicion is that their spokesperson is just in damage control, and as soon as the fuss is over, it will be business as usual. Am I being cynical? Well the comment from United was from a PR flack not the CEO. You be the judge.

The message for business is that when you give poor service, anyone of your customers may own a megaphone. In fact, today everyone has access to this same megaphone, and if the message hits a chord (sorry about the pun), or a stereotype prevalent in your industry, it will spread before you know it and you will be considered guilty until proven innocent while everyone has fun at your expense.

So treat every customer as if they had their own megaphone so that if they decide to use it, they will just be singing your praises.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Entitlements of a Small Business Owner

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

It can be intimidating for a small business owner visiting their corporate clients. They take the lift to the 41st floor and in a marble clad reception, they ask to speak with the executive with whom they have an appointment. They wait in a plush chair in a reception lounge with a magnificent view where they are served a cappuccino in a fine china cup. Finally, the executive assistant ushers them into the executive suite in a corner office, beautifully furnished with expensive artwork on the walls.

This is not the office of a small business owner, as they know they have a choice. They can have their own executive suite, or they can re-invest in their business to increase profits or increase their own dividends.

An executive on the other hand sees these trappings as perks. Along with first class travel and a luxury car. After all, they believe they are entitled to be treated this way. It is proof of their importance and authority. Besides which all the other executives at their level are getting the same perks and the company should provide them to demonstrate its strength and position in the business world.

Most executives don’t own the business, although they may hold some stock. They did not build the corporation from infancy. They are opportunity takers, and if things don’t work out, they will take another opportunity. The opportunity creators are the entrepreneurs.

So what are small business owners entitled to? Apart form hard work, long hours, stress about meeting their commitments to their customers, staff and suppliers?

They are entitled to keep their customers happy and see them return time after time. They are entitled to the referrals their customers give when they send their friends and colleagues to their business. They are entitled to the recognition and support they receive from their business owner colleagues who understand them better than anyone else.

They are entitled to decide who they will work with and who they won’t. They don’t have to justify their actions to others who just want their job. They are entitled to the rewards of their efforts – without someone else claiming the credit and getting the bonus. They can take satisfaction in seeing their business grow and prosper as they do watching their children grow.

When business owners understand this, they no longer need to feel in awe of their executive clients. In many cases the have risked more and done more than many of the high flyers. They don’t have the arrogance of the corporate executive. Arrogance doesn’t sell. They have created a valuable asset with their own mind and hands. Of that, they are entitled to feel very proud.

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

July Small Business Owner Competition

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

How would you like to win one of 3 HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One printers valued at $499 each?

All you have to do, is put a comment on this blog, on any posting you like. The more the merrier.

At the end of the month, the best 3 commentors will each receive one of these printers. The only catch is I can only ship them to Australian businesses.

*****Please Note: When you comment for the first time, just let me know that you have here so I can contact you if you win. (Blogger comments are usually anonymous unless you leave your email address in the post which I don't recommend).

Genuine commenters are also welcome to put a link in their comment which will help with their ranking from this highly Google ranked site for the Australian Small Business keywords.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Hope is Not a Business Strategy

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

A record $90 million lottery has been announced for this week. Half the nation are buying tickets. Even my normally very sensible wife has asked me to buy a ticket, against my better judgement (although that is not the first time I have felt I have had to acquiesce to such things in the name of harmony at home, and I am sure it won’t be the last).

As someone who regards themselves as having good analytic skills, I find lotteries are an affront to commonsense. The only way they are commercially sustainable is that everyone on average loses. However with the odd ticket in a major jackpot and our annual flutter on the Melbourne Cup this is just a bit of fun for us. It is not our financial strategy. We are not banking on it to pay for our retirement, and our investment in it is petty cash, annually less than a nice night out.

Unfortunately, all too often, a lottery strategy is the one adopted by many business owners. That is something will turn up. One of their ads draw will draw in a whale customer. That their business gets profiled on a family talk show resulting in a huge surge of business. Maybe one time they do get lucky- but what happens next?

In most cases, not much. They blow their luck (like most lottery winners) and are back to where they started, because they were not prepared for it. They may have been depending on the luck, but didn’t expect it to happen.

Samuel Goldwyn once said to someone who commented that he had a lot of luck in his business “I agree and the harder I worked, the luckier I got”

Now that is the kind of luck upon which you can depend.

Luck starts with a vision, but doesn’t finish there. It must be backed with a plan. A vision without a plan is just a dream. How many of those have come true for you lately?

Your strategy is how you bridge the gap from your current state and your ultimate objective. So write out the key things you want to achieve in your business. This might be more profit or just more time off. Next describe your strategies for bridging these gaps. These would include your Marketing Strategy, your Business Structure or your Operations and People Strategy. If there are gaps you can’t bridge seek advice.

When you add an action plan to these strategies you have what I refer to as the Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

So with the new Financial Year just commencing, don’t just hope that next year will be better, plan for it.

Or just buy a lottery ticket and hope.

All you need to do now is to Empower yourself and take action ...

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The 2009 Australian Small Business Summit Highlights

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

The Small Business Minister Dr Craig Emerson was asked to summarise in one word what he thought described the sector. The word he chose was “Resilience”. While the other R word (Recession) was in common usage (it even passed the lips of the Prime Minister 11 times) I think Resilience described the mood well.

I have attempted here to provide a brief summary of the issues that caught my attention at this year’s summit.

Mr Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister

While a large part of the Prime Minister's address was a repeat of his regular talking points there were a few specific comments made for a small business audience:

• 35% of GDP is due to small business
• The 50% tax break for capital investment by small business extended to the end of this year
• Reduction of PAYG instalment in 2009/10
• Small business online program announced in the budget to help businesses establish an online presence with the national broadband program
• Tax credit of 45% on research and development for small business
• A small business banking complaints clearing house for businesses that believe they have been unreasonably denied credit
• Announcing the detailed implementation framework for the Small Business Advisory Committee
• All federal government contracts up to $1 million with small business are subject to the “on-time payment guarantee”. That means accounts will be paid within 30 days, otherwise small businesses will have the right to charge penalty interest.

Mr Richard Brooks, Chairman Council of Small Business of Australia (COSBOA)

Key areas of concern raised by the Chairman included:

• Impact of the Fairwork rationalisation of awards increasing substantially rates of pay, particularly in the hospitality sector with little recognition that Australian no longer just works 9-5 Monday to Friday.
• The lack of balance in bank contracts
• Expected increase in ASIC fees when it takes over regulation of business names
• Training incentives for employees don’t apply to business owners
• The need to pay a $900 upgrade fee each year for accounting software because the ATO keeps changing their forms

Mr Malcolm Turnbull, MP Opposition Leader

Again putting the expected politics to one side he proposed some interesting policies.

• The small business minister is in the shadow cabinet, and would be in the cabinet if they were elected (different to both the Rudd and Howard cabinets). It is in cabinet where the decisions are all made and currently small business, in spite of its 35% contribution to GDP is unrepresented.
• Improved incentives for apprentices
• A tax loss carry back (we currently have the ability to carry forward losses, but not to claim a rebate against past tax payments.)
• Revision of insolvency laws to offer the equivalent of the US Chapter 11 protections to allow businesses to restructure and avoiding a fire sale of assets where creditors get very little.
• Tried to introduce an amendment into the award modernisation legislation to ensure no additional cost would be imposed on employers, but this was rejected. Job losses are expected.

He invited ideas for helping small business at the website www.jobsforaustralia.com

Mr Michael D’Ascenzo, Commissioner of Taxation, ATO

The commissioner reviewed some of the initiatives that the ATO has undertaken to assist small business owners

• 12 months interest free payment arrangements for businesses with less than $2m turnover
• Ability to defer payment of activity statement liabilities where there are cashflow timing issues
• Maintaining a level playing field by identifying those avoiding their obligations. They now use industry benchmarks to find businesses in high risk areas who seek an unfair competitive advantage.
• Undertook 8000 audits of those in the cash economy and are developing more benchmarks and doing more audits this year.

Dr Craig Emerson, Minister Small Business

The minister made the following observations:

• Retail sales for the last quarter were up 4.8%, 5.6% for small retailers
• Saw the stimulus package as a ‘tradies package’
• PAYG has been reduced by 20% and there will only be a 2% escalation in 09/10 rather than the usual 9%
• Red tape reduction in 27 areas- three examples- national trade licensing and a national system for business name registration, standard and simplified business reporting online.
• ETS will only directly affect 1000 big emitters, but there would be flow on costs to everyone else
• Awards have been simplified from 1600 to 18, and there only have been significant issues in three which are currently under discussion

Damian Karmelich, Director Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Dun & Bradstreet

Damian provided some great insights on how the future looks, based on analysis of their substantial database, and devoid of political spin. Very sobering.

• Every 4 minutes, a new company is formed in Australia and every 35 minutes a business goes insolvent
• Perceives much greater risks in China with high levels on unemployment – risking political instability. There is an unwritten compact in China which forgives many of the governments shortcomings as long as it delivers economic improvements to the population
• Expects Australian unemployment to exceed 8%
• Businesses are clearing out inventory and not restocking
• Expects a 20% increase in business failures, and has assessed a 130,000 increase in the risk of failure in the last 12 months along with a 150,000 risk increase in paying bills late from their database of 2 million businesses
• The average days for payment is now 58 , with big businesses delaying to 65. Late payments for big businesses ultimately cause delays in small business payments
• There has been a 49% increase in debts being referred for collection on 2008.

He also suggested, not only getting credit checks for new customers, but also for old ones, particularly where you have seen payment days deteriorating.

My Thoughts

Apart from being able to hear directly from key players in our economy, it was also an opportunity to ask questions and give feedback. This is my third such summit, and it is fair to say each has its own character. Progress is made between each, but I am always skeptical about depending on others to make you a success. In the end, our success is up to each of us individually.

Ron Barrassi (not present at the conference) said:
If its to be - its up to me

What's your plan?

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Attention Small Business Owners – You can check out any time you want – but Can You Ever Leave?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Owning a business is a 24/7 job. Even when you are away from the office or store, it is hard to switch off. Almost everything you see somehow reminds you of something you need to do in your business.

You might be reading a book, and the hero enters a store that is selling in a way that gives you an idea for your business. The author may not own a store, but is likely to be very creative and wants to make their hero’s time in the store memorable in some way. Of course you would like that for your customers.

It is like the science fiction writer who dreams up all sorts of new devices to create a wonderland for avid science fiction fans. The funny thing is many scientists and inventors like science fiction, and are often inspired by the creativity of the science fiction writer who may have little or no science training. The scientist who reads about the idea then becomes intrigued by it, then obsessed, until they actually work out how to make it happen. There are numerous documentaries on inventions inspired by programs such as Star Trek.

When you leave your business at night, you too see ideas around you – what others are doing in the commercial world in other sectors, or even ideas dreamed up by TV writers. It is hard to switch off. The only time a business owner can switch off is when they sell their business when it becomes someone else’s problem.

However for most business owners they can check out – but they can never leave.
They are their business, and when they are not there- nothing happens. No-one wants to buy a business like this. Certainly, their family wants nothing to do with it, and the staff are just hanging around for a payout.

In order to be able to leave your business, you must have an Exit Strategy. The best time to create an exit strategy is when you start-up, but it is never too late.

Three things can turn your business into a Saleable Asset:

1. A Marketing System that generates predictable sales
2. A Business System that allows others to run your business without you
3. A Reporting System that enables you to manage your business when you are not there.

With these three systems you will be to check out from your business when ever want, and ultimately be able to leave it to some one else.


All you need to do now is to Empower yourself and take action ...

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Are Your Customers Cats or Dogs?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Our dog is not particularly active, suffering as he does from a touch of arthritis, but he loves his food. If you give him fillet steak, or just plain dog food from the can, he eats it with equal gusto. He will eat what our cat doesn’t finish from her bowl. In fact if she throws any of it up, he will eat that too. He is just not that fussy. In fact the only thing we have found he won’t eat is brussels sprouts. (I can’t say that I can blame him.)

Our cat on the other hand is quite fussy. She is rather partial to mince topside- and won’t eat cheap cat food. It has to be the type of food you get from those small containers which are twice the cost of the larger cheap brands. If you put out something she regards as inferior, she will leave it… for our dog. She would never go near the dog’s bowl.

So what are your customers like? Are they cats or dogs? Are they only interested in the premium cuts, or couldn’t tell the difference between topside and reprocessed meat.

The problem many business owners create for themselves is trying to sell a service that only felines will appreciate and pay for to their canine clients and then are upset when they focus on price. There is nothing wrong with having canines as clients, but they will not appreciate and pay for topside.

If you have canine clients (and there are a lot more of them than the felines) make sure that your service is designed to meet their needs rather than your ego.

You can of course have both feline and canine clients but make sure the message you present to each does not confuse.

When you understand if your clients are dogs or cats, you will know what food they will appreciate and pay for and be able to keep them happy and faithful for many years.



All you need to do now is to Empower yourself and take action ...

May Your Business Be - As You Plan It.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Comparing Your Business With Others

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

As a small business owner you probably regularly meet with other business owners. (If you don’t, you need to get out more as that is where the opportunities are.) However when you do, are you finding that when you leave an event you end up feeling disenchanted? Everyone seems to be doing so much better than you?

Are you comparing everyone else’s fiction with your own reality?

Think of it this way, if someone’s business was actually not doing so well, and in fact their sales had dropped significantly, do you they would tell everyone they know? Of course not as it would potentially make things worse for them. People don’t want to do business with someone who they think may not be around for long, so the talk is always positive and it is quite likely that many of the people who say things are just fine, are in no better shape than you.

Armed with this information, you can carry on attending such events with a fixed grin hoping that something will turn up from someone who may be even worse off than you, making promises to you that they will not deliver on. You can waste a lot of time at such events hoping for a big opportunity. It can be like someone who can’t swim hoping to be rescued by a drowning man.

Alternatively you can take matters into your own hands. If the things that you are doing are not working, you need to change them. Start to experiment more.
If you don’t know what to do you need to seek some kind of advice.

The Advice Catch 22

When things are going well, people don’t tend to seek advice. They see it as a cost (time & money) and don’t believe they need it. When times are tough, they need it but can’t afford it. Catch 22.

The correct approach is to regularly have a range of different sources of advice, from reading books, attending workshops or coaching. In the good times, you need to be prepared for the tough times. In the tough times, the need for advice is even greater.

While cash might be scarce in the tough times, if the person was convinced that advice they got would work, they would, of course pay for it. So how do you know it will work for you?

Here are some questions to ask:

-Are there others you are aware of that are doing well in your sector?
-Do you believe there is something they might be doing that you are not doing at the moment?
-Do you believe that if you could learn what they are doing, that you could also be successful?

When learning to drive a car, you start off being unconsciously incompetent. You really don’t know how hard it can be. Once you start to drive, you soon learn you need lessons. At this point you are consciously incompetent. If you answered yes to the 3 questions above, this is you. You know there are answers out there, you just don’t know what they are.

At this point you can decide to remain unconsciously incompetent and learn by trial and error (smashing up your car in the process), or you can get advice. People think advice is expensive.

Abraham Lincoln said; “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

Advice is a catalyst to change, and if you change nothing, nothing changes.

What’s your Plan?

Dr Greg Chapman holds regular workshops for small business owners:
Visit www.events.fivepillarsbusinesssuccess.com

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Best Salesperson in Your Business

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

A common myth in which many small business owners believe is that all they need to do is find a great salesperson to be successful. They already know how to make great widgets, and they are really good at providing their service to their clients, but if they just had someone who is good at door-to-door to bring in new customers, their business would be brilliant!

The problem is to find great salespeople. On average, most sales people are average. By definition, half are below average! You can, of course train a new sales person, but if you are not great at sales, it will be the blind leading the blind.

You may find a great salesperson – they certainly exist. A great salesperson may be good at selling lots of things, but the thing they are best at selling is themselves. They know their value. They know the value of the business they generate.

Unfortunately, many business owners truly don’t understand the value of great salespeople and will not pay for the best. They are expensive. They like to have uncapped commissions. They will probably be the most expensive people in the business. They will also most likely leave you when they realise you need them more than they need you. The really great salespeople work for themselves. The ones that stay are the average ones.

Large businesses with many sales staff know that they must continually invest in sales training and have sales managers to drive performance in an effort to keep them above average. In contrast, small businesses try to hire salespeople with these skills already in place. They try to get them on the cheap. Only the average ones are cheap.

For any business that has been around a number of years, the owner will have developed some sales skills. They are also likely to be the best salesperson in their business. This is as you would expect, as they have the greatest incentive. The profit goes to them. They are also responsible for the training and support of any sales staff, whose skills and motivation will almost certainly be less.

However, some business owners truly dislike the sales process. They would like to be left alone to build their widgets with someone else providing the customers. The only way that they can do this is if they get a job working for another widget maker.

Business owners need to make the choice on whether they want to stay in love with widget making, or fall in love with owning a widget business.

Marketing and sales is part of every business and the owner must take a lead in these areas. This is what differentiates the owner from the employee that just makes widgets.The owner must be prepared to be the best in marketing and sales so they can lead their sales team. This means investing in education and training for themselves if they are unsatisfied with their existing sales results.

In small business, the best salesperson must be the owner. It’s their business. If they can’t sell it to others, who else can?

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Reducing Your Small Business Debt

by Paul Jenkin

Choice has just released a report on managing personal debt in this time of financial stress. For some small business owners this debt may have been exacerbated by debt in their business caused by the slowing economy.

As for personal debt, in business there is good and bad debt. In most businesses some level of debt is necessary, firstly to commence your business, secondly to keep your business operating and thirdly to expand your business.

Business debt can be good as long as it does not get out of control. However, there are numerous reasons why it is not viable for a business to carry high debt levels for too long.

Often business debt can come with a ridiculously high interest rate, thus taking longer to pay and using up valuable cash flow. Carrying too much debt may also make it harder to reinvest when expanding your business or looking to purchase capital equipment.

Increased debt can take away from the quality of your end product or service as you take from your cost centres to meet debt repayments. As the owner of a business, high levels of debt may also cause higher levels of stress, affecting both your personal life and the decisions you make in your business, and once your business decisions become worse your final product suffers, thus affecting your reputation and ability to keep clients.

Debt may also lower the value of your business and make it less attractive to investors. Too much debt can become a cancer in your business and can cause your business to spiral out of control with the ultimate price being bankruptcy of your business and potentially yourself.
If debt does become a problem there are things that you can do.

1. Look at how your debt is structured and what it is secured against. If you can, your debts should be consolidated into one debt and secured against an asset, for example your house, this way you have the ability to finance your debt over a much longer period of time and at a lower interest rate. It should also be remembered that the good thing about business debt is that it is tax deductible so it is usually a good idea to pay off as much private or non deductible debt as you can and examine whether you may be able to just pay interest on your business debt. This also has the benefit of giving you more equity against which to secure your business. Any debt restructuring should always be done in conjunction with your accountant.

2. Look at your life style and take less from your business to prop up your personal life. For example, should you go on an expensive holiday? Do you need an expensive car? Do you need Foxtel? Again look at the Choice report for more tips on managing this.

3. See where your business can cut costs to make debt repayments. In taking this step, extreme care needs to be taken not compromise your quality.

4. Review your business structure with your accountant. This can affect the amount of tax you pay and you ability to defer tax whilst you repay debt. Your business structure will also play a vital role in protecting your personal assets if your worst fears are realised and a debt provider takes action against you.

The most important thing to do is to have a plan, rather than hope the problem will fix itself. It generally doesn’t at this stage of the business cycle.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Paul Jenkin is a partner with small business accountants Andresen McCarthy Partners

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Business Tip #3: Creating a First Impression

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Many people when they begin in business unconsciously send out signals that scream “Start-up”. No-one wants to buy from a start-up, because they are unproven. They could disappear at any time without a trace. So people learn to recognise the signals- you have a hotmail account. Your address is a post office box. You have printed your business card on your inkjet printer. You only have a mobile phone number on your business card.

You might think that rectifying all these things will cost you a lot of money. There is some investment, but it is small if you understand that people will run in the opposite direction when they see these signals.

Get a proper domain name. (It will cost you less than $50 to set up a domain name with an email account attached.) Get a virtual office address from the many virtual office providers that are around the country. They will even answer the phone for you with your business name and send messages to your mobile. This gives you a proper street address as well as a landline number for people to call you on. (It’s ok to have your mobile on the card, as long as it is not the only number.) All this is cheaper than you think, with some virtual offices as low as $100 per month depending on the services provided. You can top this off with a simple 1 page template website for a few hundred dollars. Internet printers will also provide you professionally printed business cards from under $100.

You can obviously upgrade as your business grows, but with these low cost steps you no longer scream start-up!

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The GFC and the Small Business Advantage

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

It seems every week there is news of more layoffs by large businesses. Feed into that announcements of burgeoning deficits and negative growth forecasts and it is no wonder that highly precious, but fragile commodity, business confidence is weakening.

The reaction from businesses when this occurs is to become risk adverse. It’s all very well to attempt to remain positive, but if the fundamentals are rotten, you just become like the Black Knight in Monty Python who has lost all his limbs and still thinks he can beat King Arthur. Therefore expansions are deferred. New projects are put on hold. Upgrades are delayed. With many businesses, the layoffs or liquidation, while directly as a result of the downturn, were often an accident waiting to happen. Decisions avoided until the cash flow pain made those decisions unavoidable. Evidence of this is being seen with the US automakers.

For small businesses, the impact is far less spectacular, however, it is still there. Until a few years ago, 70% of the employment growth came from small business which resulted in unemployment falling below 4%. While there does not appear to be a lot of evidence that small business is laying off staff in significant numbers, it does appear, with the fall in job ads, that they aren’t employing at the same rate.

However, there is reason that there should not be same doom and gloom in the small business sector as for large business. Larger businesses tend to be more highly financially leveraged and have tighter margins. These factors along with their larger market shares, mean they are the first to feel market shrinkage impacting on their bottom lines.

Without these pressures, small businesses are able to be more positive as long as they take steps to address the changes in the economy. This may mean repackaging their offers due to the changed market conditions.

They understand that while there is a lot to be concerned about, there will be oases of opportunity that they can uncover. One advantage of being small is that these oases don’t need to be large. (Small oases are uneconomic for big businesses and big ones are rare in a major downturn.)

While there might be a lot of desert between oases, if a small business can find one they can prosper for a long time while those around them dehydrate. These oases, niches in business-speak, may be different to the ones that exist in the good times, but they can be just as commonplace.

If you have a pre-existing niche, you may find that your oasis is turning to desert. If you stay where you are, you will feel the same pain that larger businesses feel: stranded as their green pastures die off.

Re-examine your strengths and look for the new opportunities that arise as the market place changes. How have people’s needs changed? They may not want to buy new equipment, but may be prepared to lease it. They will certainly need to maintain their existing equipment if they don’t replace it. People eat out less, but they still eat. How has your market changed and how can you respond? Small businesses can do this quickly. That is their advantage.

The oases will always exist and you may need a water diviner to find them, but sitting where you are waiting for an oasis to find you is wasting your advantage.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Sales for People who hate Selling

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Are you someone who could sell ice to Eskimos? Not everyone is a natural salesperson, but in business, nothing happens until a sale is made. So what do you do if you hate selling, or you can’t find staff to sell for you?

You can create a marketing strategy that does not rely on strong sales skills. Imagine someone just comes into your business and when you ask: “How can I help you?”, they say: “I want to buy that and here is my money.”Does that sound too good to be true? Well it happens all the time. Look what happens when you go into McDonalds. The person just says: “May I take your order please?” They don’t spend time explaining why their burgers are superior to everyone else’s or that their prices are the best. They don’t have to, because this is all done by the marketing that the buyer is exposed to prior to entering the store- and when they enter, they will buy.

McDonald’s has chosen this approach because they are using low skill labour and they don’t want to go to the expense of teaching their low wage, part-time and casual staff how to sell.

If you create a marketing strategy that sells your buyers before they contact you, you don’t have to be a super-salesperson to make a sale from an enquiry. The marketing does all the hard work for you and all you have to do is to take the order.

To do this, however, you must have a marketing system. A good marketing system will attract enquiries so you don’t have to cold call, and pre-qualifies buyers so that the tyre-kickers and time wasters are filtered out.

Then a sales pipeline is used through which you move your buyer, step-by-step. Each step is a test where the buyer must make a new commitment to you before they move to the next. At the penultimate step they have decided that they want your product and it is value for money. Then all you have to do is ask them: “May I take your order please.”

This requires a lot more planning than you will see from salespeople in a used car lot, where arm wrestling seems to be the most important skill. We are no longer talking about hunting the buyer – instead we nurture them.

There are few really natural sales people that you can hire. (The very best start their own business.) Yes, your employees should have sales training, but boost it with a well defined sales pipeline so even people who hate selling can sell for you. This also removes the dependence on a star salesperson who could leave your business at any time (and probably will).

So even if you have staff that could sell ice to Eskimos, don’t you think their skills would produce more sales if you also used a sales pipeline, and sold Eskimos something they really want, like central heating, and then you can sell them an icemaker for their drinks so they don’t have to go outside.

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Business Tip #2: Your Business Name

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

What’s in a Business Name?

When starting your business selecting a name can be quite problematic. Should John Smith call his business Smith and Associates? It depends what he wants to do with his business in the future. If he would like to sell it, a business name based on the name of its previous owner will be a handicap. He should also consider, if he wants his business to grow, he may find all the clients want to deal with John Smith rather than some other unnamed associate.

If the name John Smith is well known on the other hand, this may be good for marketing the business, at least in the early stages. Your name might not be well known, but if you intend to make a brand of your name, then this strategy would also be ok.

Whatever name you choose, you will need to check the ASIC website to make sure it has not already been taken. Also check to see if the domain name is available. If it close to another existing domain name, it is not advisable to make just as small change, as people often will type in the wrong name and may not find your website if a similar domain name exists.

Often naming your business after yourself, will only impress one person (and possibly also your mum).

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Business Tip #1: Taking Action

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When people plan some business activity, they, of course, want it to work. However, there is such a thing as overplanning. It is impossible to predict everything that will happen. While we might like to achieve perfection in what we do, this is business, not art! Comprompises must be made. The 80/20 rule should be applied.

After a while, pursuit of perfection just becomes procrastination.

Because we can never be sure how our market will react to what we do, we must, at some point take the plunge. We can always adjust later. So it is:

Ready-Aim-Fire-Adjust your Aim-Fire some more.

If we are unsure, we can always run a pilot, but in the end, it is more important to get it done than get it right.

Completion is more imortant than perfection.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Mastering the Strategy of Failure

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

There is a saying:

“If you owe the bank $100,000, you are in trouble but if you owe the bank $100,000,000, the bank is in trouble”

In this time of economic turmoil, the same goes in business. If you are a small business that employs, say five people, and you lay off one, ie 20% of your workforce, apart for the unfortunate person involved, no one takes notice. If you however employ 5000 people and you need to lay off 20% of your workforce to stay viable, and they belong to a union who funds the government’s re-election campaign, one of two things will happen. If you play the game, you get a bailout. If not, you are vilified in the media.

So the obvious choice, particularly for the largest businesses is to take the money. That works for a while. However, taking the money means that you don’t have to take the hard decisions necessary to have a sustainable business. Almost certainly, one bailout leads to another, where each time the stakes are higher. The management soon realises, they can afford to take risks because they know the government can’t afford to let them fail.

Just look at the auto-manufacturers. Each job is subsidised to the tune of $300,000. Apart from the sheer volume of jobs, why would the government subsidise so many unprofitable jobs? Well if your electoral fund providers would lose their ability to fund your next campaign if the businesses failed, you have to keep paying subsidies, albeit with other people’s money.

The other question to ask is why would the managers of such a business accept these bailouts that, each year, make their businesses more and more unsound? Just looking at the abuse received by the boss of Pacific Brands, you can see why taking the money is easier. However, the management of these companies must know that this is just postponing the inevitable, and in fact putting their businesses in a more difficult position to compete against others who have made the hard choices. Isn’t this against the long term interest of their shareholders?

Yes.

So why does it happen?

This is where we see a difference between small business and large business. In small business, the owners run the business. In a large business, managers run the business on behalf of the owners. Owners know that if the business fails, they have failed and they must bear the brunt of the consequences. Managers on the other hand, know they can leave the business and get another job. All bailouts come with strings, and business owners know that these will erode the value of the asset that is their business. They lose flexibility and control. They become answerable to stakeholders who have different agendas than a profitable business.

Managers know they can still make a good income while the bailout occurs. Their life is easier when they don’t have to stand up to big government and unions. They also know that as the business continues to struggle, as it will with a lifeline that becomes a noose, the government must continue to bail it out. The business becomes worth nothing, and is effectively is turned into a nationalised company worth nothing on the market. The owners, being many and with little influence, given these businesses are largely owned by investment funds, who are more interested in just keeping the business afloat, just watch this car crash from the sidelines.

Businesses can last many years following this strategy of failure, but at some point, the price to avoid insolvency becomes too high even if your re-election depends on it. This will occur at time of economic stress and the government is running out of other people’s money.

While small businesses may resent this support of failure, why should they care? Because their own money is being used to prop up their largest competitors who will undercut them. However unless you owe the bank a $100 million, no-one is going to bail you out!

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success. Visit www.FivePillarsBusinessSuccess.com for your Free copy of my Mission Statements Made Easy Tool.

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Small Business Tips

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Starting this week you will see a series of tips for small business. These will be short, easy to implement ideas. I look forward to your comments and suggestions, because at some point I will compile these into a book. But you will be able to read it here first, for Free!

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

The Australian Small Business Blog

Driving Business Growth with Calculated Risks

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Business is all about confidence. Confidence that the risks you must take will have a high chance of success. The reason this is essential is that you must provide all the resources (time and money) to make the strategy succeed. Too often, businesses are timid with their actions, and are looking for a 2-way bet.

More tightrope walkers fall while using a net than those that don’t.

An example of this was a residential program I attended during my MBA course some years ago. The program was run by 3 university lecturers. Two of these lecturers worked full time for the university and one only part time, and had his own property development business.

Each year they ran a business game for the course participants. The participants would be placed in teams and act as directors of a company in competition with the other teams. As they only ran this program once a year, the lecturers would have a dry run of the game beforehand, the three competing against each other. Every time they did this practice run of the game, the part-time lecturer always won. So this particular year, the two full time lecturers out and out colluded to defeat the part time lecturer, but he still won!

At this point the penny dropped, and one of the two full time lecturers said, that’s why he drives a Porsche and we don’t.

What the part time lecturer did was take risks, just like he did in his business. He did not wait to have all the facts before he made a decision, and when he made the decision, he backed it. Not every decision paid out, but he quickly cut his losses when he saw it wasn’t working rather than obstinately throwing resources at something that was never going to turn around. As he knew he was taking risks, he was also more vigilant in the signs that it was working or not.

The other two lecturers, by the very nature of being full time, were conservative, not wanting to take a decision until they had all the facts, by which time, they had missed the opportunity. They made fewer mistakes, but also made less money.

You never score goals from balls you don’t kick.

So understand the risks you want to take, put in place measure to monitor the strategy, and once you take the decision, make a commitment to provide the right effort that success requires. Like the tightrope walker who is halfway across Niagara Falls, turning around and going back to where you came from is not an option. You should have made that decision before you started.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Link Employee Motivation to Success in Customer Service

by Kevin Cahalane

Do you ‘motivate’ your people by delivering platitudes and sermons? Or, do you provide them with a ‘success motive’ by giving them the skills, knowledge and attributes required to excel at the work they do?

Motivation is a natural consequence of being successful, happy and focussed in your work (for most people anyway; you will never achieve 100% in any endeavour involving people and motivation – but you will come close!). Below are some thoughts to provide a motive to your team, and encourage their self motivation:

 Ensure that employees have the resources they need to be successful. Do staff members have the tools they need to succeed? Is company equipment up-to-date? Does it support efficiency and success?

 Provide employees with the necessary training. What skills do employees need, but currently lack? Is there a commitment to ongoing skills development at your company? Are employees encouraged to attend seminars or conferences to stay abreast of industry changes and trends?

 Put everybody on the same page … develop standards for how the work gets accomplished. Do employees know what is expected of them or does the company rely on common sense? Are standards documented, understood and agreed to by both employer and employee?

 Provide an environment that supports success. Is the workplace neat and orderly? Is their a sense of productivity or does chaos prevail? Are people provided the uninterrupted time they need to achieve success or do unnecessary disruptions limit their efficiency…and effectiveness?

 Develop your employees. Ask employees what their career goals are and help them achieve them. Why would someone want to excel at a job that is not rewarding and fulfilling?

 Promote success by providing consistent, open and honest feedback. Never miss an opportunity to acknowledge an employee. Employees need recognition and praise. Give ample feedback and public recognition whenever possible. When employees need to alter habits or change course, communicate with them as soon as possible; don’t wait for annual reviews.

 Be a model of success yourself. People will respond according to the actions – not the words - of their leaders. Effective leadership is difficult if a manager has one set of standard for themselves and another for everybody else

 Innovate! Foster an environment of creativity in the workplace. Elevate the self-esteem of your staff by asking them their opinions and ideas. Solicit, encourage, and implement new ideas and ways of producing results. Employees with high self-esteem tend to experience greater success in their jobs

Kevin Cahalane Sales and Customer Service Training Professional. See what Kevin can do for you at www.sasemo.com

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Why 90% of Your Website Spend is Wasted

by Ron Stark

Every visitor to your website is armed with a .45 calibre mouse. One click and your website is killed off. At that moment the impression they have gained from your website is the lasting impression they have of your business – good or bad. A website therefore has equal capacity to help or harm your business.

What is your website doing for your business?

When your prospect asks “What’s your web address?” they’re really asking “Show me your business”. However, when they find you through a search engine, they’re not looking for your business – they’re looking for the fulfilment of a need they have at that particular time.

Many businesses think that websites are somehow something that you need computer expertise to understand and IT skills to build. This myth is perpetuated by website developers who tout technology instead of business value.

The “language” of the Internet has rapidly evolved, along with the expectations of your clients and prospects. An obviously old or dated website will brand your business as being out of date or worse, out of business. No website at all brands you as a business not worth bothering about.

Your visitors have a unique type of relationship with your business while they’re on your website. In a matter of seconds they will quickly gather an impression of your credibility and who you are, whether you’re easy to deal with and whether you are able to resolve their needs at the time. In minutes they will come to a conclusion of whether they will bother to contact you.

Unlike a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation, you don’t have the luxury of body language, intonation, inflexion, eye contact or the multitude of other forms of non-verbal communication on which we all depend. Your website has to encompass the entire spectrum of communication and interaction you have with a person you can’t see, can’t react to and don’t even know exists. You don’t even know who they are, what they want or what their needs are.

It’s no wonder, then, that a website designed and built as a technology instead of a business tool will consistently fail to benefit the business that owns it. More often than not, such a website actively damages your business.

When your website succeeds in delivering enquiries and requests for information to your business, that prospect does so with high expectations that you are able to provide them with the information, product or service they’re looking for. After all, that’s what your website is supposed to do.

Your off-line business process must effectively deal with that enquiry, consistent with the expectations you have created; if you cannot, or neglect to do so, you have a disappointed customer as well.

Ron Stark is the author of “Websites are like motor cars, and technology doesn’t really matter”. He has extensive experience in business systems, website development and business process. Ron is the founder of Snapsite (www.snapsite.com.au), a provider that helps make your website an integral part of how you do business.

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Discount Price Wars

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When competition is stiff or times are tough, and businesses experience a slump in sales, the natural response of business owners is to reduce their prices. In response to this, they find their competition starts to do the same, and before you know it, you are in a price war.

Price wars are like trench warfare. You may gain a few meters in territory here, whilst the other side gains a few meters from you around your flank. And both sides incur large losses. In this type of battle, it is a war of attrition, and the last person standing wins while bleeding red ink. They also inherit a decimated market landscape with their buyers educated to expect discounts.
A number of negative impacts occur to your business when you discount. The most obvious one is the loss in margin, which you hope to make up with increased sales. In most cases, this does not happen.

The next problem that may occur is that you get a reputation as a discounter, with potential customers waiting for your sales times, particularly if they are seasonal. (I like to buy a new car when dealers are trying to get rid of their last year models from their stock. Major savings are to be had at such times and they are much more willing to negotiate.)

Discounting may also confuse your message to your best buyers, especially if you are attempting to appeal to an up market clientele who are price insensitive. An example of this is the upmarket department store David Jones who when they want to shift old stock, they somewhat snootily declare “As you know David Jones do not have sales, but next month is our annual clearance.” Clearly they do not want to be known to their up market clientele as discounters, but they still want to move their old stock.

Finally, after you finish discounting, how do you lift your prices again? If someone comes in after your sale has finished, and asks you to give him the same 25% discount offer this week as you had last week, it is hard to justify a negative response unless…. you have a clear reason for the sale in the first place. In the case of car dealers, it is to make way for the new model, even if the only difference is a cosmetic facelift. For retailers, it is selling off the last of their summer range before winter.

So if you are discounting, you must have a reason other rather than you are not making as much money as you used to. The reason must be transparent and short term so as not to damage your relationship with your best buyers. Your discounting may indeed attract more buyers, but many may be price shoppers who will not stay loyal to you when your prices do eventually return to normal. These people will be off finding bargains elsewhere, and in the meantime you may have damaged your brand in the eyes of your best buyers.

Most people lose money when they discount. Learn How to Discount Your Way to Higher Profits, by subscribing to The Small Business Achiever. Also in this month’s issue:

• How to Track Your Profits So You Can Drive Them Higher
• Which Online Directories should You Use to Boost Your Google Rankings?

The Small Business Achiever – Business Owner Brief is Your Shortcut to Success and Your Unfair Business Advantage.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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Your New Years Business Resolution

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

What a roller coaster ride for 2008. Never boring, and a bit scary towards the end! How did your business fare? Did you achieve your goals? Did you finish ahead of where you started in January?

Make sure 2009 turns out the way you want it to. Use my free New Years Business Resolution Tool located at www.FivePillarsBusinessSuccess.com to make sure that you start 2009 the right way.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Tips to Help SMEs Target their Advertising

by Christena Singh

Economic conditions are tough at the moment for small businesses, there is no doubt about that… In our latest Sensis® Business Index we found business confidence at its lowest point since we started the survey over 15 years ago.

Australia has been enjoying many years of strong economic growth, so if your business is relatively new, this will be the first period of significant economic slowdown that your business will have experienced. So you are not alone if you are looking for new business ideas to get you through this period.

The first thing to remember is not to panic – you will be hearing bad financial news every day in the news at the moment – remember that the majority of this is coming from financial markets – you probably don’t make your business decisions on what the Dow Jones did last night. The decisions that you make now for your business need to be able to see you through the next year and beyond.

The good news is that the Australian economy is in a much better position than most other advanced economies. We saw positive growth in Australia’s GDP in the September quarter and recent data on housing finance commitments and retail sales indicate that Australian consumers might be starting to regain confidence before the Federal Government’s economic stimulus package began distribution.

We are also measuring some turn around in consumer sentiment in the latest Sensis® Consumer Report – when we look at how consumers are feeling about the year ahead, they are now telling us they think things might be starting to improve moving forward.

Economic downturn mainly means one thing to many businesses – fewer customers. When we asked the businesses that had been impacted by economic downturn what they were doing about it, most told us that they were either cutting costs or advertising more – strategies aimed at addressing the two critical factors for any business – getting customers through the door and money in the bank.

Cutting costs aims to at least keep some money in the bank, and advertising more aims to bring businesses the ingredient they need most – customers.

So here are some key tips to help you target your advertising to keep bringing customers through the door during the current economic conditions:

• Your print directory listing is the core listing on which the majority of people search – you can use innovative solutions like mobile codes that people can scan to take them to your latest offers on their mobile phone
  
  
• ­ Make sure all your advertising, both print and online, have as much information as possible to make it easy for potential customers to choose your business – giving customers a good feel for the products and services they can expect from you, as well as locations, opening hours, payment methods and accreditation can all help customers call you first
  
  
• ­ Measure the return you get from your advertising to make sure it works for you – develop strong relationships with your advertising account executives so that you can tap into the knowledge that they have built up working for many customers over the years.
  

Christena Singh is the author of the Sensis® Business Index, Sensis® Consumer Report and Sensis® e-Business report. For further commentary from Christena or for some smart business ideas, visit http://www.smallbusiness.sensis.com.au/.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Problem with Business Targets

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

We often hear about targets and deadlines being set by organisations and governments that are never met. Most recently, there have been targets set for CO2 emissions reduction. The initial target equates to 34% per person reduction, and yet others are demanding targets double that. Even the initial target is heroic. (For example, 90% of Victoria’s power generation is from brown coal.)

Before that, most of the developed world signed on to Kyoto targets, and most missed by miles.

What is the relevance of this to small business? When you have targets with no mechanism to reach them, it is meaningless. In the case of governments, they often set ambitious targets to appease their political constituency and the smart politician makes these targets big, but sets them a long time in the future, long after they expect to be out of office. It might help them win the next term which is where their focus generally is, but at some point, like the widely missed Kyoto targets, reality comes home to roost, and a price must be paid.

When we set targets without a plan, it is almost guaranteed that we will miss them. If the plan is to do research to discover the answer (the government’s plan) rather than rely on proven strategies, we need to expect that it will take much longer, and there is a chance that it won’t work at all. (Which is why the government just loves 2020!)

When we set targets in small business, they should be ambitious, but we must have a mechanism to achieve them. If our target is to increase sales by 30%, we must have a plan to achieve it. Do we have a plan to increase enquiries- maybe a new advertising channel, or an alliance? Is our intention to increase our conversion to sales by improving our sales pipeline, or providing sales training?

If we don’t know how to achieve the target, the strategy would be to go get advice from someone who knows what strategies work. (For the government, this is not an option as on-one knows!)

So for each of your key targets, write down where you are today, and where you want to be in 12 months. For each gap, create a strategy and for each strategy write a plan to implement the strategy.

If you find this difficult, please use my free Mission Statement Tool on the Resources page of www.FivePillarsBusinessSuccess.com Now is the time to set your targets for the next year, but make sure you have a plan to back it up!

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Control your computer (don't let it control you)

By Mark Byers

See your computer as part of the solution - not the solution itself.

Computers and applications can make life a lot easier as they allow you to do so much more than ever before. The problem is that just because there are tools that allow you do something, people sometimes don't question whether they should be doing it themselves - ie just because accounting software is available I should use it because it is "cheaper". What is not often considered are the hidden costs and the distraction from your core business, which can be costly.

You can effectively become a slave to the software - ie you are working for it.

With the internet there is now a whole different way of looking at, and engaging with computer systems; with the potential benefit of it working for you, rather than you working for it. With its in-built communication system the internet allows you to use applications built specifically so you can share information internally and with external providers that can do the non-core tasks for you, but still keep you in the picture - reducing the risk of business blindness (loss of direction) through abdication

The situation most businesses face today:

With the people being both internal and external.

With an integrated business system based on the internet, you get to solve two problems at once, at a business system level moving towards this:

and because the system is a fully hosted internet solution you don’t have the issues traditionally associated with PC based solution, like:

 Installing the software

 Installing updates / maintenance fixes

 Doing backups

 Purchasing servers etc

 Managing hardware servers etc

With added benefits of a internet based hosted solution, like:

 Potentially don’t need as much office space for people to work from, as people can work where best suits them, including at home if appropriate - saving time, money and the environment (less cars on the road!).

 Don’t need office space for servers and hardware

 People can be more productive, as have the information they need when the need it and don’t have to spend time communicating it.

Just because you can - doesn't mean you always should... to find out more benefits go to dontdiyit.com

Mark Byers is the CEO of myworkspace which is an Australian service that allows you to take control of your computer systems, allowing you to share the work out where needed and allowing you to focus back on the reason you got into business.

Over to You. What do You Think? We welcome comments but you need to contribute in a meaningful way to earn a backlink. Blatant commercial plugs will be rejected. Post Your Insights, Critiques amd Questions Below.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Value of Your Big New Business Idea

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

I am often approached by people with a big business idea who want someone to pay them for it. How much is your big business idea worth?

Back in the early eighties, I worked for a year in the US for another company. Whilst there, I noticed that they had home delivered pizza. This was especially great in the winter when there was snow on the ground and I did not want to go out. It was when I first heard the Domino’s pizza slogan – delivered in 30 minutes, or its free!

This service was so taken for granted, that they talked of those dreaded areas in town which were pizza delivery no-man’s lands- outside the delivery area for any pizza shop. You wouldn’t want to buy a house there!

So what has this to do with great business ideas?

This was before the time there were any pizza home delivery stores in Australia. They didn’t exist. So I came up with the idea that pizza home delivery would work in Australia… if only I knew how to implement such a scheme. I was sure this idea was worth a lot of money.

Then I came back to Australia, but what do you think I did next? If you said nothing, you would be absolutely right. At that time, I had no idea how to implement such an idea, and there was no way I was going to quit a well paid job to risk everything on this great idea. Clearly there was one big impediment for me:

I was not convinced that I had the ability to make this idea work. It was safer for me to keep on doing what I had always done.

It was about 3 years later, Dino’s pizza home delivery started in Australia, which grew to be a national franchise which was within a few years sold for millions.

I had the idea 3 years before Dino’s started up. I had a first mover advantage, except for one thing…. I didn’t move! You can’t patent an idea. Someone else can have the same idea.

So how much is your great new business idea worth?

Nothing unless you do something with it. Prove the concept works. Set up a pronto franchise or a pilot. Once you prove the concept works, then the people with money will come along. People with money to invest in business are inundated with opportunities, and they would not invest in one without a track record, except with their own efforts and resources because that way they can capture most the value.

If you aren’t prepared to invest in your own idea, why should anyone else?

It’s not the idea that’s worth the money, it is the person implementing it, and if they aren’t implementing it, it will just remain an idea.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Customer Management is not Customer Service

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When you have many customers, you need to manage them, certainly, but this is not the same as customer service. Unfortunately, big businesses think this is the same thing. It is easy to recognise them.

When you call them, you end up listening to a recording telling you which button to push, and then in a phone queue listening to annoying ads for their business, interrupted every few minutes by a recording that says “Your call is important to us…” Obviously not so important that they will pay for more staff to answer the phones.

Then when you get to speak to a human being, they want to manage you in a particular way.
A recent experience with a phone company that will remain nameless (but think of a number between 2 and 4), illustrates this point well. I received a bill which said if I wanted to receive paper bills in the future I had to pay a charge. This was to “save the environment” they said, and then they said if I wanted a paper bill, I could print one from their website. Not much carbon saved there.

Well, I need a paper bill for tax purposes and I find it easier to check things on paper than on a screen bill that goes for several pages. Do you think this was about saving the environment or saving them money?

So I called the company, and said they had no right to increase the charge for my invoice. They then quoted a clause in the phone contract which they claimed gave them the right. I pointed out that this was a new contract, and this clause did not exist in my older contract. They did not have a copy of the old contract and tried to bluff me and intimidate me. After a terse exchange of words with the operator and supervisor, who tried to convince me I did not really want a paper bill, they relented and waived the fee. They said they did not have to and it was just a “good will gesture on their part”.

How gracious.

I guess they felt I would create a mass revolt and their cost cutting exercise was to be put in jeopardy if I was successful.

What it demonstrated to me, is they did not care about their customers, they wanted to manage them. They were prepared to be manipulative and deceitful in doing this. They cared more about saving $2 than bad word of mouth affecting their reputation.

(Why did I go through all this for $2? I have a professional interest in seeing how people manage their customers- in this case not very well, and I believe customer feedback on poor service helps a business improve and benefits the business as well as their customers. Whether they accept the feedback, of course, is another matter.)

When your customer service department thinks it is reasonable to argue with your customers and impute their motives, you have lost the plot. How many other similar conversations do you think occur on other matters with this company if this is their attitude?

What could have they done? They could have said, because we are interested in saving the environment, if you request an electronic account, we will donate the money we save on printing to an environmental cause. (There would be other costs beyond the printing which will still save them money). Does that sound more convincing and better marketing?

While it is important to manage the cost of delivering your service, it is also important to consider the cost of bad word-of-mouth. Don’t be petty. If the customer has a point, and particularly if the cost is small, be gracious. Learn from the experience. You might be surprised by the good word-of-mouth you get which is worth many times the alternative.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Buying a Small Business

by Stuart Bidwell

Q – I want to buy a small business, what do I need to prepare and look out for?

A – The first step is to create three budgets:

• the capital costs budget (to buy the business),
• the operating budget (for running the business) and
• your personal budget to calculate how much you need to live.

Then you need to arrange finance, find the business to buy, check the businesses assets and liabilities and then ask some smart questions.

The capital budget is what you need to buy the business. The valuation of the business will be based on the net assets plus any goodwill (the business reputation and customer base). A net asset is the value of all the assets such as cars, stock, debtors less the liabilities such as car leases, and property leases. The budget needs to allow for stamp duty.

Operating budget is basically the income and expenses of the business, typically this will be income from customers (turnover / sales / revenue) and expenses such as rent, insurance, phones, electricity, wages, stock purchases etc. Be careful to under estimate sales and over estimate expenses, this way you will have a “buffer” for unexpected costs.

Your personal budget is how much you need to live, once you know this you can now calculate how much you need to be paid in wages. For example if you need to take home $2500 per month you will be need to pay yourself $3,333 (and pay tax of $833). Also at the end of the quarter you will need to pay an additional $900 towards your superannuation fund. This means your budget for your pay will be $3633 per month.

Now you have set your budgets you can start researching how to buy and finance the business. Are you going to use a business broker or buy direct? Are you going to borrow money, find an investor or use your savings? Depending on your personal circumstances you will probably need to arrange finance. It is best to get an agreement in principle from your lender before you go looking at businesses. The lender will let you know how much you can borrow which will in turn help you to select the right business for you.

What do you need to look for in the accounts? Always insist on seeing the Financials submitted by the current owners tax accountant to the ATO and do not listen to any stories about “the real accounts” where the owner shows you another set of figures (they will always show a much higher profit).

Analyse the accounts and look at the net assets figure, check the tangible assets in the balance sheet (assets you can touch), and then ensure the assets reflect their true current market value. Next look at the liabilities and ensure they also reflect the current situation, be especially careful of leases to check when they are due to be renewed. You don’t want to buy a business and then find the shop lease runs out in 3 months and the building is going to be redeveloped!

The smart questions to ask are basically finding out the truth about the business without relying solely on the current owners accounts. For example if you are buying a coffee shop take a look at the number of coffee cups in the shop. Suppose he has 40 coffee cups that means he can have 40 customers at once right? No it means he can have about 25 customers at one time, and the remaining cups are being washed or are ready to be used right now. So if the owner tells you that he has 30 customers most days at peak time you can work out the real figures for yourself.

Before you commit any money to the venture appoint a solicitor and an accountant to ensure the purchase is managed professionally.

Stuart Bidwell is the CEO of Oxygen Bookkeeping, a breath of fresh air...

The Australian Small Business Blog

Does Advertising Work?

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

There has been a lot of controversy about the latest ads from the Australian Tourism Commission by Baz Luhrmann which many commentators say won’t work. These are ads that tie in with Luhrmann’s new film Australia. The general comment is that these fairly depressing ads won’t work, compared with the exciting ads by the NZ Tourism Commission which do appear to work. They are just too arty and self indulgent to actually attract any US tourists to Australia.

I would also suggest that Luhrmann has put one over the Tourism Commission. Think about it. Luhrmann is releasing a film in the US and he has effectively got the Australian taxpayer to pay for cross promotion of his film in a very expensive market place.

Nice. Where do I apply?

The Australian Tourism Commission has form in producing ads that please the Australian film critics, who would be the last people I would call for advertising advice since most the Australian films they praise bomb at the box office. The key in creating advertisements is not whether you like it, or your friends like it, it is whether it causes people in your target market to buy your products and services. That is the only test that matters.

Some critics of this campaign hark back to the wonderful days of the Paul Hogan promotions in the US. (I think Hoges must have been the first to cotton on to the scam of getting the taxpayer to promote his films which I am sure many more saw than will see Luhrmann’s.) However, John Richardson, the former assistant general manager of the Australian Tourism Commission, says Hogan was useless as Luhrmann.

Australia had a salutary lesson with the Hogan campaign in the United States in the early 1980s. That campaign aroused enormous interest in America, awareness of Australia went sky-high and was still high a decade later. And in that decade the growth in tourism from the United States to Australia was the poorest of any of our major markets – by far. Almost all of the growth you referred to came from other markets, where the Hogan campaign was not shown.

Too often, ads are made to feed the vanity of the people who commission them, and also to promote the agency that produces them. Agencies like to win awards with their ads, so they can charge more. Getting pats on the back from your friends is not what you want, unless they are also your buyers, and certainly you aren’t in the business of producing promotion pieces for your advertising agencies.

Awareness of your products or services is only of value if it results in sales. If you can’t measure the sales impact, there probably isn’t any.

The most successful ads seldom win prizes, and for you, the advertiser, it’s not about you or your agency, it is about your buyer. If the ad does not appeal to them, you are wasting your money.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Increase Your Prices by Packaging Value

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

In any buying decision, this is question that must be answered by the buyer: “Is the product or service worth it?” Or more generally, is the offer made by the seller is equal to the dollars that they are asking for it.

Let’s take a simple example, water. If you wanted a drink of water, and you went to a pub, and they served you water from a tap, what would you expect to pay? It would probably be free. If you went to a kiosk, you could buy bottled ‘mineral water’ in a basic plastic bottle, and it might be $2-3.

If you were at a boutique restaurant, you might be able to get water from the Greenland icecap, presented in a special designer bottle with a stunning label, a bottle that you would like to take home as a souvenir. It might cost you $87.

It is still just water. Only a chemist, with certainty, could tell the difference between the three by measuring the levels of trace minerals in them, (although the tap water may be obvious if it has a lot of chlorine in it).

Is the water from Greenland worth it? Sure there is cost to get it from Greenland to the restaurant in Australia, but the cost of the water, the packaging and delivery might be $10 with bulk production, compared with $0.50 for the bottled Australian mineral water production and delivery. You also have to pay for the restaurant’s overheads, but they usually provide water free anyway. Even if you could you really tell the difference between this water and the water from an Australian mineral spring, how can it be worth $85 more?

So why would people pay for $87 for a bottle of the Greenland icecap water? This water could not even be considered rare, since the Greenland icecaps are 3km thick and contain enough water to raise global sea levels by 100m, but it is novel and ties into the quest by some people for the natural and unusual. It would be for the ‘experience’. To be able to say that they have tasted it to their friends. They have the beautiful bottle on display at home as proof and an opportunity to recount the experience to whomever will listen. Perhaps to impress their guests. There may have been other reasons, but I bet it wasn’t because they were thirsty.

Do you think they would have paid $87 for the water if it came out of the restaurant’s kitchen in a plastic cup? Of course the waiter would have treated opening this bottle in the same way as an expensive bottle of wine, and it would be served in beautiful crystal water glasses. The waiter would have poured it reverently, stepped back while you tasted it, and nodded your satisfaction. In this process, the waiter is acknowledging your good taste and sophistication. This would have all been part of the experience— and the packaging!

While packaging is one of the most common ways to increase prices of a product, it also applies to services. You can either sell your time by the hour or package it and sell the value of your service, at a higher rate. To do this however, you must change your service so it can be offered as a package.

[This is an excerpt from Issue 106 of the Small Business Achiever – Business Owner Brief where strategies for packing your products and services are explained in detail. The Small Business Achiever is your Unfair Business Advantage, where all the steps are revealed.]

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Marketing in a Downturn

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

With all the bad news on TV, everyone is looking at tightening their belts. There is nothing wrong with that, as during the good times, we can all get a little bit flabby.

So is marketing a place where you should start the cutting?

It depends.

If your marketing is working, it will be generating 10 or 20 times its cost in bringing in new business and getting repeat customers. If that is the case for your business, why would you cut it? So the first thing to look at is whether it is working. If it is not, of course you should stop it, but you should do this anyway.

If it is working, should you keep it going unchanged?

It depends.

A recession may mean that your target market is buying less, or even buying differently. While it may still pay for itself, it may be less effective. It is possible that these changes create opportunities for you. By monitoring your marketing results and talking to your customers, you can identify these opportunities.

What often happens in a recession is a buyer who usually will take a premium offer will be more interested in a mid-level offer, and those usually focused on that level, will consider more budget offerings. This does not mean you should discount. A better strategy is to create offers that appeal more to this price sensitivity whilst maintaining your margins.

Look at the downturn as an opportunity to do the housecleaning in your business that you have been putting off because you have been too busy. It is also a good time to work ON your business, to not only bulletproof it against harder times, but also because it is something you should be doing ALL the time.

If all around you are slashing and burning, measured pruning, and focused marketing will allow you to continue to grow by taking your competitor’s share in a weakening market without following them downmarket with discounting. This, of course, does not mean that you should not take advantage of the discounts offered by your suppliers who have no other strategy!

Don’t follow lemmings. If you want different results to those of your competitors, you must do different things, and be different. Do a stocktake on your business today, and plan for where you want to be in the future.

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …….Yours is the earth” Rudyard Kipling

If you are unsure how to do this, please use this complimentary Mission Statement Tool.

Your action plan:

• Take some time out,
• Trim the fat,
• Eliminate marketing that isn’t working for you, and
• Use the opportunities create with the new environment.

"In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity" Albert Einstein

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The Getting of Business Wisdom

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Everyone wants to know the secret of business success. In fact there are many 'experts' out there pedaling their version of the secret to business success, but I am going to give the game away. There are no secrets, just stuff you don't know yet. The real issue for you is whether you have reached the point where you know what you don’t know. If you have, you are ready.

It reminds me when I first went skiing. I was about 20 years old and travelled to the snow with my mates. Most knew how to ski, and one even advised I should get lessons. One other of my mates had been up just once before and said you don't need lessons and he would come down the beginners slope with me for the first time. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

When we got to the top of the slope, I looked around and there were little kids whizzing around on skis, and being a young guy, I knew then, I didn’t need lessons. After all, all I needed to do, was point the skis downhill, wiggle my backside a bit, and I would look like those Olympic skiers whizzing through the flags. In fact I was embarrassed even to be on the beginners’ slopes where there were speed restrictions which were sure to cramp my style. I figured, I will just get to the bottom in five minutes, and then be up with the rest of my mates in a half hour or so.

Then I pointed my skis downhill. I hardly moved at first as it was so flat, but the speed started to pick up. Then I learnt the first thing I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to stop! I started to panic as I headed towards another skier, getting faster all the time. Then I figured out the second thing I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to turn.

So I tried twisting my skis with my body, and had my first fall. Then I worked out the next thing I didn’t know, which was how to get up with one ski off, and my other ski pointing up my nose. All this in about 60 seconds. At this stage the only thing damaged was my dignity.

I was determined to make it down the slope, so with a bit of advice and help from passersby, I was able to get to my feet and after about five minutes get my other ski back on to continue the descent. The next hour or so was spent repeating the experience again and again, 20 meters at a time, re-enforcing in my mind, all the things I didn’t know, but by now the falls were starting to hurt.

Each time I got up, I saw my 'more experienced' mate a little further down the slope picking himself up. I realized, although within shouting distance, I really didn’t want his advice!

By the time I got down the slope, I knew what I didn't know and had the bruises to show for it.

I decided to pay for a lesson. Even that was somewhat humiliating. At 20, I was the oldest in the class. The next oldest was about 10! And don’t get me started about the attitude of the sneering French ski instructor about the same age as me. However, I was committed to this. I decided, this was something I wanted to be good at and I was going to do it properly, rather than stumble around like my mate, who was trying to save money (we were students), and like all young men, too proud to ask for assistance.

The difference it made was remarkable. I learnt that there was an easier way, which was not obvious to a beginner. You could watch the experts all day. They made it look so simple, but until someone actually broke what they did into little steps, they might as well have been flying.

After the first lesson, I was better than my mate. Then I did more lessons, and very soon I was really enjoying the experience and become pretty confident. My mate, on the other hand, who still hadn't taken any lessons, having seen how well I was doing, started asking me for advice.

My advice was to take lessons!

The same applies in business. We all spend too far too long absorbing the bruises, and assume that the next time we do what we did before, the result will somehow be different.

We do try new things, and sometimes they work, but we don’t know why they work, or how to improve them some more.

You know there are answers as you see others doing well. Did you know, anyone doing well has received advice and assistance at some point? They may have had a mentor. They may have done a course, or even hired a coach.

Have you ever heard of a swimmer making it to the Olympics without a coach? Natural ability is not enough.

Yes I know education has a cost, but it is a whole lot cheaper than the school of trial and error. How many bruises are you prepared to take?

If you have been in business a while, you know what you don’t know. Here’s what you should do.

1. Write down the 3 biggest issues you face.

2. Work out how much this is costing you. Have a look at a similar, but more successful business. If you could wave a magic wand, and these problems were fixed, would you be able to make more money? Would you be able to take off more time? How much is that worth to you?

3. Work out how much would you be prepared to invest in time (and yes money- there is no such thing as a free lunch) to fix these problems. Note, if you are not prepared to invest any effort in fixing these problems, it must mean you are happy the way things are, or else why would you tolerate these problems?

4. Work out when you are going to do something about it.

When I go down that same beginners’ slope today, it now just takes me a few minutes, but I could be quicker, if I didn’t have to spend time trying to avoid the erratic movements of beginner skiers too proud or cheap to take lessons.

The definition of insanity is:

Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting something different to happen.

May Your Business Be – As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

The ABC Sneers at Small Business

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

As the self appointed mouth piece of state enterprise (is that an oxymoron?), it is well known that the ABC deeply dislikes big business. Now it is showing what it thinks about small business in their new program “Very Small Business”.

This is a missed opportunity. The program could have shown how the little guy puts one over the bigger guy with clever use of limited resources and fast decision making that just by shear nerve gets them across the finishing line to beat a larger competitor.

I remember a bank ad about a small business (probably husband and wife) and the husband is in a small pokey, drab office in very casual attire talking to some exec in a city office tower trying to convince them to use his services. The exec says he will round up his board for a teleconference in 5 minutes. Clearly the small business guy is panicked. He calls out to his wife that they are to have a video conference. She rushes in with a business shirt and tie. We see he is just wearing a pair of shorts as he is changing. He clears the desk contents onto the floor, and he pulls down the blind behind it and there is a painted image of Sydney Harbour on it. The call comes in and he looks very professional and cool after the frantic activity in the seconds before. Then you see his wife sidle round the back, avoiding the view of the web camera, to retrieve an old pizza box.

That’s the sort of fun that happens in small business.

In Very Small Business, the owner is a sleaze and basically dishonest. The writers have come up with an unlikely hero, a depressed writer who works for this small business. Give us all a break!

Small business owners have lots of great stories on how they succeeded against the odds with some highly inventive strategies. If you are not honest, you don’t last long as customers won’t deal with you and you get a bad reputation, which is the fastest way to go out of business. Small Business Owners have to think fast, work hard, and have a great sense of humour to out manoeuvre their larger competitors

With small business employing 50% of the private sector employees and responsible for 70% of the employment growth in recent years, you would have thought this is something that the ABC would want to celebrate rather than just sneer at.

But I forgot, it is their ABC.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

A Vision for Success

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Many small business owners go into business by accident. They saw an opportunity and grabbed it. The original excitement of the opportunity and even some early success may have sustained them for a while, but sooner or later, the need for hard slog becomes necessary. What happens next can make a huge difference to your business.

When the hard slog starts, most business owners just keep slogging a way in the direction they started, using brute force to build their business. Long hours, lots of money spent on advertising, and sheer persistence. Then after a number of years, they find out what they have is not what they want. Only then do they step back and do what their smart colleagues do right from the start.

The smart business owner creates a vision for their business. This will be in alignment with their own personal objectives. It could be to retire in 10 years with a million dollars. It could that it will generate enough income so they need only work 3 days a week and can take 3 months off overseas each year. To achieve these personal goals, the business must meet certain goals – to produce the income required and to operate in a way that allows the lifestyle desired.

This vision for the business then must become more specific and describe what the business does, who it does it for and how it does it. The business must be built upon the strengths of the owners and the opportunities they see. At this stage, the vision may still be cloudy, but you must start somewhere. Only once this vision for the business has been created, can goals and plans be developed.

Creating such a vision can be difficult for many people, but there is a simple free tool that owners can use to develop their vision. The Mission Statements Made Easy Tool steps you through a process to create your own vision, and then enables you to produce a certificate that you print, frame, and place where you can see it everyday, so you will have a constant reminder of why you started your business, and where you are going with it.

With a vision clearly defined, when the slogging gets tough, the owner can step back, re-affirm their vision: that they are on the right track, or whether there is a better path to take to achieve their objective. With a vision, you have a compass for the business, so that the owner does not spend years building something that they don’t want.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Achiever Issue 108

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Each month in the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief, we reveal strategies and tactics that will enable you to multiply your profits and make your business run without you. Unlike articles you will see in business magazines that are just teasers to get you to call the author and pay them thousands of dollars for their wisdom, in the Business Owner Brief, we spell out step-by-step, what you need to do to achieve your goals. Nothing is left out.

In next month's Achiever, learn how to:

-Make a Splash in the Media

-Decide whether an Investment in Your Business is Worth It

-Use Google Adwords to Get Business without Losing Your Shirt

Each month not only do you receive top quality briefs on how you can achieve your business goals and hundreds of dollars of bonuses, you can also participate in Group Coaching with Dr Greg Chapman, the author of
"The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success" where your personal business questions will be answered.

What value do you place on achieving your business goals if you could get a shortcut to success?

The Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief is your Unfair Business Advantage!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

The Importance of Presentation Skills in Small Business

by Judith Field

Did you know that other than technical skills, that is, being great at computers, selling, art, music, or what ever you do, the most important skill you can have in life is the ability to communicate confidently. Promotion depends on it; relationships depend on it; most important of all, personal self esteem and confidence depend on the ability to communicate confidence.

The good news is that it can be learned. Research shows that 80% of speaking ability is knowing what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Most of speaking is in the body language. Where you stand, how you look at the audience, what you do with your hands and feet, all count more, than what you say.

Then voice variety: tone, volume, pitch, pace, and timbre of your voice, all covey more than the words. Most people don’t know this. They don’t know how to vary their voice or even where to project from.

Finally, the content or material you say, is the least remembered and least important. So, simple, clear easy to relate words are the ones to say and the ones that are most memorable.

Now, it usually takes a while to learn these skills and most people think it is hard to learn. However, when you have a presenter who makes it fun, interesting and hands on, it can be learned quite quickly and can be life changing.

Judith Field is the director of Direct Speech. Check out her website at and learn how you can change your business and life through public speaking.

The Australian Small Business Blog

Buying and Selling on Price

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

All businesses should endeavour to create points of differences for their product or service, but what about if you are selling an undifferentiated product, something that is truly a commodity, such as petrol or even bottles of Coca Cola (which of itself is not a commodity, but you will get exactly the same product whether it’s from a milk bar or supermarket, here or across the country). Businesses that sell commodity products tend to sell with price as a point of difference.

There are two things that influence this:

• geographical location (convenience and cost of supply), and
• buyer knowledge of the market place.

Taking the first point, geography, this is about how far you are prepared to chase a bargain. You might drive across town to save $100 on a refrigerator, but would you do the same for a $1 saving on a six pack of Coke? Probably not. Economists call this the cost of shoe leather- this distance and effort you would give in time and money to achieve that saving.

What does this mean for your business? When setting commodity pricing, you only need to survey your competitors in your ‘economic’ neighbourhood.

The second factor influencing this is the buyer knowledge of your price difference. If they don’t know about it, they will not find you and may pay more than they should. This is why petrol stations have massive signs proclaiming their prices. Which brings me to the latest government efforts to increase consumer knowledge of prices. Will this really help small business and give lower prices to consumers?

First of all there is FuelWatch currently only operating in WA. Most motorists when they are low on fuel, like to fill up while they are already in their car on some other errand, rather than make a special trip. Generally this means they may pass half a dozen petrol stations (depending on the length of the trip) and will be able to see variations in price on station signage, and would be able to determine a good price for that part of their city at the time they are wishing to fill.

Service stations are highly competitive changing their prices several times a day. Can you think of any other product where that happens? The station owner will opportunistically drop their prices if their sales are low, and increase them when it is high. This is exactly how a good market should operate. By enforcing the price changes once per day, the motorist will be the loser. I would also expect that the independents will lose, as they are the most nimble. This will ultimately see a loss of competition- the opposite of what the government is trying to achieve.

The other scheme introduced by the government is GroceryChoice. In this scheme, the results that are reported are a month old, while grocery prices change at least weekly. (At least FuelWatch reported daily.) Also the baskets used are not transparent, so you have no idea whether this represents what you would buy. So consumers will ignore this, and still look to newspapers to see where the best prices are every week.

At one level, you might argue that this is a largely harmless waste of taxpayer funds, but there is a more ominous side. While people will not use this site much, when they do it will re-enforce the supermarket duopoly between Coles and Woolworths (Safeway). These two chains monitor their competition’s prices very closely. The website results prove this with only cents different between the two.

Where there is a significant difference is between the big chains and the independents whose prices are higher. Now there will be independents that are cheaper for some things than the big two, but because there are so many of them, the government has lumped them all together. However, from the consumer perspective, it ‘proves’ that they are cheaper than the independents. No wonder Coles and Woolworths love this! Once again, by interfering in the market, the government will drive the independents out and lessen competition, resulting in higher prices.

If businesses are selling commodities, and selling on price, advertising that fact is important, but when governments involve themselves in the marketplace to fix something that is not broken, casualties are inevitable and ultimately consumers and small business owners are the losers.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Turning Bad Publicity into Good

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Imagine you have a business which is constantly criticised by the politically correct who seem to be able to get airtime effortlessly. How do you compete? You can advertise, but this is just dismissed as self promotion, and of course the largest outlet for the politically correct, the ABC doesn’t allow advertising (unless you are flogging a book or a play on a politically correct subject).

Well there is a way. You can get someone that the critics admire, and have even used in their own campaigns to endorse you. Let me present a case study.

Recently McDonalds put out a press release that they had developed a range of meals that have the Heart Foundation Tick of Approval. The critics went ballistic. They criticised McDonalds, they criticised the Heart Foundation. They were on every airwave denouncing the big bad US fast food company. They had always hated McDonalds. It's an American company. It is a multinational. It promotes fast food regarded as unhealthy – there is apparently no safe level of consumption for this food. This last argument being the one they push hardest as the others are obviously political.

Then that most trusted judge of what is good and bad to eat, the Heart Foundation, endorsed a range of McDonalds meals. How could they? How dare they? They could not argue that the Heart Foundation assessment of the meals was wrong. Their argument was that maybe someone might order a big Mac with their Heart Foundation approved salad!

How would all this help McDonalds? Firstly, the reporting that they had earned the Heart Foundation tick was received well in many quarters, if not the ABC. Secondly, the ABC and other disapproving media when reporting on this news, did, to their credit, interview people from the Heart Foundation and McDonalds who were able to put their case. In much of the coverage, their critics just sounded shrill. For McDonalds, it created the opportunity to access media channels that would normally be closed to them unless it was a bad news story.

The final picture that was left with media consumers, is that you can get healthy meals at McDonalds. In the reporting, McDonalds had the news, and the critics were just replaying the same old arguments that had been heard time and again. The critics had been wedged, and thus their arguments were diluted. McDonalds had taken them on directly, and all they had left was their politics.

Was McDonalds devious enough to plan this reaction from their critics to massively leverage their media exposure from a single day to weeks? I don’t know, but the reaction of the politically correct critics on border patrol was entirely predictable. They just couldn’t help themselves.

You can use controversy to promote your business, but make sure you have someone in authority’s tick of approval to back you up!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Achiever 107

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Each month in the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief, we reveal strategies and tactics that will enable you to multiply your profits and make your business run without you. Unlike articles you will see in business magazines that are just teasers to get you to call the author and pay them thousands of dollars for their wisdom, in the Business Owner Brief, we spell out step-by-step, what you need to do to achieve your goals. Nothing is left out.

In this next month's Achiever, learn how to:

-How to Leverage Your Business with Other Businesses

-How to Create a Business System that Turns Your Job into a Business

-What to Put on Your Website to Make People Call You.

Each month not only do you receive top quality briefs on how you can achieve your business goals and hundreds of dollars of bonuses, you can also participate in Group Coaching with Dr Greg Chapman, the author of
"The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success" where your personal business questions will be answered.

What value do you place on achieving your business goals if you could get a shortcut to success?

The Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief is your Unfair Business Advantage!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Customer Service and Having a Nice Day

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

When you hear in a shop assistant say to you as you leave: “Have a nice day”, how do you react. Do you think:

“Thank you for your kind words”

or do you just think:

“This just a meaningless marketing gesture”

Well let me tell you a story from the land that created “Have a nice day”.

We lived for a number of years in the USA and our next move was to the UK. It is interesting to compare attitudes. Our relocation was organised by international removalists. The same company packed us up in the US that unpacked us in the UK, using local staff in each case.

After living in the US for 3 years, we had collected a lot of stuff. So much stuff in fact, it took three days to pack up everything, which gave us an opportunity to see how the employees of this company operated.

Each morning, at exactly the anointed time, there was a ring of the doorbell. Out on the doorstep, there was a team of five men, all smartly dressed in their uniforms, with the team leader, greeting us with a cheery good morning.

They explained exactly what the process was going to be, and over the course their time working in our house, they were courteous, acted on our concerns about fragile items, and silly knick-knacks which would look like junk to any normal person, and treating carefully the many, many books we had accumulated- which were real treasures for my wife. They also left the house each day as tidy as you could it expect it to be- with all rubbish removed.

At any time if they had concerns about the best way of managing something, they politely asked us how we would like it handled. During this stressful time for the whole family, these men made the whole process as painless as possible. Would I recommend them? Wholeheartedly, but with one reservation….

In the UK it was another story. Remember, this was the same company, but with UK staff.

Each day, the staff were late. They always had an excuse, it was those incompetents in head office. They were always taking breaks. They would disappear without notice. Half the team would be absent. There would be different people on different days. There was swearing (although not directly at us- but there was mutterings under their breath). There was resentment at the amount of stuff we had. There were breakages- things that crossed thousands of miles intact, were broken by rough treatment during unpacking. There was knocking off early, and leaving the house a mess. There was no communication on what would happen the next day.

The big difference between the two countries was attitude. In one, the staff new that customer service was part of their job. In the other, they were just putting in the hours. So my reservation in using this company, would be to steer clear of its UK branch.

I soon noticed this attitude in other employees I dealt with in other businesses in the UK. It was quite pervasive. I reached a conclusion about the attitude about the two cultures and my reaction as a customer to that attitude:

I preferred to be told: “Have a nice day” by someone that doesn’t mean it, than to be told; “Sod Off!” by someone who does.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Godzilla (ACCC) vs eBay

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

While the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission spends a lot of time keeping an eye on the big end of town, every once in a while it takes on an issue of interest to small business. A while ago I wrote an article on the ACCC taking on Google (Godzilla vs Google) where I said that while some aspects of the ACCC case were valid, I thought that the a big part of it was futile.

However, ACCC have now taken on eBay for an entirely different matter, and this time I believe they are on stronger ground.

eBay issued an edict last month that from now on all sellers would have to use Paypal, the eBay owned payment gateway, (except if they use COD). The issue with this is that Paypal charges higher fees than other payment gateways and the ACCC regards this is monopolistic bullying behaviour of eBays clients to force them to use its financial services provider to increase their profits.

Now if eBay did this as a start-up venture, and it was just a condition of selling on their platform, it would not be an issue as there may have been a number of other similar sized auction houses providing similar services, but it did not do this when they were small, as it may have scared off sellers with its higher fees. Instead, eBay waited until they dominated the market before they tried this on.

Initially, eBay was going to ignore the ACCC’s ruling, after all, Australia is a small country, and it did not want its really biggest markets getting similar ideas. However, there has been a worldwide backlash against eBay by sellers on this, and other countries competition regulators took a keen interest in what was happening here which is widely seen as a test case.

The current state of play, is that eBay has realised it can’t thumb its nose at the ACCC and just impose its plan on Australian sellers and will now fight this in court. With the ACCC having tasted blood in some very high profile recent cases, eBay is getting nervous.

Here is an excerpt from an email sent to eBay sellers this week:

Changes to eBay.com.au scheduled for 15 July are being postponed until the review process with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding its recent draft notice is complete. As previously announced, eBay.com.au is continuing to work with the ACCC to achieve an outcome that benefits buyers and sellers

Changes that came into effect on 21 May 2008, requiring all sellers to offer PayPal, will remain. These changes mean that all buyers have the option of choosing PayPal, the safer payment method for shopping on eBay.com.au. Payment methods that are currently permitted will continue to be allowed on eBay.com.au until further notice. (my emphasis)

How deliberately misleading is this? In the second paragraph they at first seem to be saying you have to use Paypal, and later on grudgingly admitting that you can use other options. Arguments can be made to favour the use of Paypal, making the transaction safer for all, but rather than making this case, it wants to force its customers to pay more.

From a customer service perspective, what does this say about eBay. Would you want to continue to use them if you had a choice?

Go Godzilla!

UPDATE: eBay now forcing people to include Paypal as a payment option and deleting auctions where a preference for another payment option is given. Game On!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Achiever 106

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Each month in the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief, we reveal strategies and tactics that will enable you to multiply your profits and make your business run without you. Unlike articles you will see in business magazines that are just teasers to get you to call the author and pay them thousands of dollars for their wisdom, in the Business Owner Brief, we spell out step-by-step, what you need to do to achieve your goals. Nothing is left out.

In this next month's Achiever, learn how to:

-More Ways to Increase Your Prices - How to Package Value

-Create an Extra Hour in Your Day

-Use Offline Promotion to Increase Your Website Traffic and Sales.

Each month not only do you receive top quality briefs on how you can achieve your business goals and hundreds of dollars of bonuses, you can also participate in Group Coaching with Dr Greg Chapman, the author of
"The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success" where your personal business questions will be answered.

What value do you place on achieving your business goals if you could get a shortcut to success?

The Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief is your Unfair Business Advantage!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Working Smarter, Not Harder

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

The idea of working smarter not harder is a mantra most businesses owners understand even if they don’t actually follow it. Small Business owners often believe that big organisations have this nailed. However, after an interesting time in politics this week, you can see that our prime minister has not got this nailed.

I don’t care what your politics are, no-one would disagree our prime minister works extremely hard. He also has a hard earned reputation as a micro-manager and a control freak. He appears very busy, but is he affective?

When you run a business as big as the country, you can’t do it on your own. However, the way it is currently run, all decisions are being made by Mr Rudd and his office. His ministers are being over-ruled and the advice of their departments ignored. Now the peasants are revolting!

How long can he expect them to work the way he does if he doesn’t value their input and expertise. Where this will end is the staff (the public servants) will go through the motions, doing just enough to keep their jobs, knowing that he will in the end change whatever they suggest and do it his way. Why would you put in extra effort if it is not valued and recognised. Note, in small business ‘staff’ also applies to your contractors and suppliers.

When a business owner, or even Mr Rudd, have a bad week like this, their response is usually to resolve to work harder. This ultimately ends up driving away their staff and destroying themselves. Do you really believe becoming more productive at being ineffective will improve your business? Does any of this resonate for your business?

So what should Mr Rudd do? Well he could learn how to work smarter by attending my

Get Your Business Into Gear This Financial Year – Business Owners Retreat

although I don’t think there will be enough seating for his retinue. Alternatively, here are a few steps he should take:

1. Step Back! Review where you are going so you can prioritise. Otherwise you will spend your time reacting to every event that could be handled by others. You will become a firefighter, rather than leaving your staff to fight the fires so you have more time to look at ways to stop them starting in the first place. By fighting them yourself, you will have implicitly told your staff that you don’t trust them, and think they are incompetent. If you really believe that is true, replace them, although most times, the fault lies with you.

2. Share your vision with your staff and align their personal goals with your business objectives. Remember, they will not be as driven as you because you get most of the recognition and rewards. Wherever possible share these with your staff. Don’t hog the limelight.

3. Clearly define their roles, responsibilities and authority and let them do their jobs. You can’t control everything. If you continually intervene, your staff will believe that this is not their role, no matter what you say and you will always have to do their jobs for them.

4. Manage your business by reports. This gives you time to work on strategy. You can use the reports to monitor performance.

5. Regularly review your progress and when the facts change, don’t be afraid to review your objectives. (Unfortunately this rarely happens in politics as they tend to lock themselves into ideological, as opposed rational positions. Don’t let this happen to you as a business owner.)

It is often easier to see what others are doing wrong and the impact that it has on them. Learn from them and if you want help working smarter, please find our more about my Business Owners Retreat, and how 2 business owners Doubled their business in a year!

May Your Business Be As You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Achiever 105

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Each month in the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief, we reveal strategies and tactics that will enable you to massively transform your business and achieve your goals. Unlike articles you will see in business magazines that are just teasers to get you to call the author and pay them thousands of dollars for their wisdom, in the Business Owner Brief, we spell out step-by-step, what you need to do to achieve your goals. Nothing is left out.

In this next month's Achiever, learn how to:

-Use a Sales Pipeline to Double or Triple Your Sales

-Expose Cross Subsidies that Destroy Your Profit

-Conquered Google in 2 Weeks with New Keywords.

Each month not only do you receive top quality briefs on how you can achieve your business goals and hundreds of dollars of bonuses, you can also participate in Group Coaching with Dr Greg Chapman, the author of
"The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success" where your personal business questions will be answered.

What value do you place on achieving your business goals if you could get a shortcut to success?

The Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief is your Unfair Business Advantage!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

The Forgotten Majority of Business Owners

An Occasional Editorial by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

In Victoria’s state budget last week, the government claimed to be providing assistance to business owners. Leaving aside for the moment, the fact that they returned in taxes only a portion of the tax increase since the last ‘handout’, even this was received by a minority of businesses. That is businesses large enough to pay land and payroll tax.

What about smaller businesses, the micro-businesses representing 61% of all businesses, and employing 26% of the private sector workforce? The government, as always treats the micro-business owner (those with less that 5 employees) as though they don’t really exist – as if they are not proper businesses.

Now the state government doesn’t really take much from them, so it can’t pretend to give anything back. Short of giving micro-businesses wads of free cash- dream on, what could it do? They could reduce red tape and regulation- but that also appears to be an impossible dream.

The most important asset a micro-business owner has is his or her time. How much time do you spend stuck in traffic? Along with most other Victorians, they suffer due to the lack of investment in road infrastructure. They suffer disproportionately more than larger business owners who have a lot more support so they can focus more of their time working on the business.

The cost of delays due to traffic congestion increases every year. A 2005 study showed that congestion in Melbourne cost business $1.4 billion in that year alone, with the figure expected to double in the next decade.

For the small business owner and their staff who rely on road transport, public transport being a non-option, spending several non-productive hours a day in traffic congestion is a major cost to their business. When business owners spend time in a car, rather than providing a service to their customers or finding new customers, this is a huge loss to their business.

While public transport funding is admirable, small business owners, like all road users, see funds raised through road taxes and charges largely diverted to other government programs. Most small business owners support the user pays principle and are not looking for subsidies. They do expect, however, a higher proportion of funds raised by road users to be spent in improving infrastructure.

The current budget, like all recent budgets before, refers to ever more studies and plans but no actual commitment to invest. There are 270,000 businesses with less than 5 employees in Victoria. The rate of growth in the number of these businesses is 11% per year. Small businesses are also responsible for 70% of the employment growth. Why then are the needs of this group always ignored?

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Segmenting Your Market’s Mind

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

One very well known marketing strategy is to segment your market and provide different offers to each segment specially targeted to that segment. If you were Ticketmaster, you might send information on the new opera season to the older segment of your database, and information on touring pop groups to the under 30’s. (Of course there are people under 30 who like opera, but when you want to get the most for your advertising buck, you go where the numbers are.)

Segmenting your market by age, gender, geography, income etc is done all the time by good marketers, but what if you could segment your market by the way they think? How powerful would that be? Saab have done just that. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a link to this novel online ad which is currently showing in the Faifax media, as they rotate their ads, but I will describe it so you will recognise it.

Have you seen the spinning ballerina test? See an example here. It is a rotating image which can be used to tell if your left brain or right brain dominates your thinking. Psychologists tell us that the person who is left brained tends to be more logical, methodical and organised. The right brainers, on the other hand, tend to be driven more by instinct and emotion and are more creative. They also say if you see the lady rotate anticlockwise, you are left brained, clockwise, you are right brained.

So back to the ad, which starts off with this rotating lady. It asks you to see which way the lady rotates for you and then asks you to select the appropriate button. You then get taken to a Saab ad in which the copy is tailored to whether you are left or right brained. If you are left brained, it tells you how many horsepower the car has and how fast it will accelerate and gives you details on the dimensions. If you are right brained, it explains the experience of power and the thrill you get with the acceleration, and the luxurious feel and comfort that the car gives you.

So Saab has created an ad which has been crafted for the way you think and you select the ad that is most likely to be a selling success for you!

For the record, I have seen the lady spin both ways.

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Small Business Achiever 104

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Each month in the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief, we reveal strategies and tactics that will enable you to massively transform your business and achieve your goals. Unlike articles you will see in business magazines that are just teasers to get you to call the author and pay them thousands of dollars for their wisdom, in the Business Owner Brief, we spell out step-by-step, what you need to do to achieve your goals. Nothing is left out.

In this next month's Achiever, learn how to:

-Increase Your Sales with Guarantees

-Delegate & Outsource so You can spend Your Time Working ON Your Business

-Use Follow-up eMarketing Strategies to get Your Website Visitors back to Buy from You.

Each month not only do you receive top quality briefs on how you can achieve your business goals and hundreds of dollars of bonuses, you can also participate in Group Coaching with Dr Greg Chapman, the author of
"The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success" where your personal business questions will be answered.

What value do you place on achieving your business goals if you could get a shortcut to success?

The Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief is your Unfair Business Advantage!

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

The Australian Small Business Blog

Get Your Business Organised

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Is this your business? You start your day with the best intentions- to complete an outstanding project which will improve your business. Then when you get into your office, you check your emails. Then you catch up on some paperwork and organising some orders that didn’t get sent out last night.

One of the emails is a complaint which you have to fix. Then a supplier calls to say there will be a delay in your order. Then phone starts to ring with everything from sales people to customer queries. Before you know it is lunch time, but of course you don’t stop for lunch. In the afternoon, it is more of the same- dealing with customers, following up on staff questions, and fixing problems. By the end of the day, you are exhausted. You know you have been busy, but is has been another Groundhog Day, and tomorrow you will do it all again, and if you have time, you might get onto that project.

This is a classic example of an owner working in their business. Everything they do is reactive. They can never get ahead of the game- just a hamster in a wheel going round and round, but getting nowhere. Unless you can find time to work on your business, this will be your fate.

OK, you know all that but how do you break the cycle?

The first step is to recognise that this is your situation. Diagnosis is the first step to cure! Next is to acknowledge that nothing will change unless You are prepared to change. Then you need to work out what outcome you are prepared to commit to for your business – an outcome for which you are prepared to make sacrifices in either time, money or effort – there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Subscribers to the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief learned in Issue 102 the 9 steps that they should take to organise their business. Steps such as working out where they should be spending their time and strategies that will actually create time so they can work on their business.

In the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief all the steps are revealed. Nothing is left out in the turnkey briefs designed for the busy business owner.

Get step-by-step advice that will improve your business every month.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog

Use Your Points of Difference to Stand Out

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

One of the biggest problems we all have in small business is standing out. Almost everyone has competitors of some description. It could be the person down the road that promises to undercut whatever price you offer. It could be the elephant in your marketplace- for example, if you are a small telco, the elephant is Telstra.

Or your competition could be a myriad of me-too suppliers in highly competitive marketplaces all driving the prices down to the point where no-one makes any money.

So how do you stand out from all this competition? You make sure your business is different in some way to all your competition, and you make sure potential customers who value that difference, and will pay more for it, know about it. The first step in differentiating your business from everyone else’s is to answer the question:

Why Should I Buy from You?

Can you answer this question? You must have an answer. If you don’t know, you customers certainly won’t, and you will find you are just competing on price and barely surviving.

The answers to the question: “Why should I Buy from You?” are your Points of Difference (POD). This is arguably the most important marketing strategy to get under your belt. In marketing speak it is also called your Unique Selling Proposition or USP. What this means is that you are defining why your product or service is different to everyone one of your competitors. When you have your USP, you actually have no competitors, because your offer is unique.

Great in theory, but just a word of warning. This also means that your product cannot be considered universal any more, and your USP will appeal to a more narrow group of customers, or a Niche.

So what does this mean in practice? You might be the cheapest. This will, of course, attract a lot more business, which will compensate for your lower margins. However, this will not appeal to everyone. Lowest cost, usually means no frills. Jetstar is a no-frills airline, but Qantas still has lots of passengers who want the extras, and are prepared to pay for it. So Qantas and Jetstar promote themselves to different audiences.

Maybe you said your Point of Difference was the quality of your service. I am now going to say something that may shock you:

Quality of service is not a good enough reason for people to buy from you.

Everyone says they have quality service. Have you ever heard anyone say: “Buy from me, my service is lousy?” Quality is a given, a pre-requisite today. Everyone says they offer a quality service. So what’s the answer? Surely ‘quality’ counts for something?

Regular subscribers to the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief will already know who their competitors are. In Issue 101 – where this full article is published, subscribers learned how to create Points of Difference for their business.

In Issue 103 of the Small Business Achiever I explain how these points of difference can be used o the fundamentals of how to increase your prices with your Points of Difference can be used in your ads and on your website.

In Issue 103 of the Small Business Achiever - Business Owner Brief find out:

The Anatomy of Ads that Sell

Creating a Structure that will Drive Your Business Growth

Designing a Website that Generates Leads for Your Business

Get step-by-step advice that will improve your business every month.

May Your Business be as You Plan It!

Dr Greg Chapman

Over to You. What do You Think? Post Your Comments Below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is Australia's Leading Advisor on Emerging Businesses and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems. He is also the author of The Five Pillars of Guaranteed Business Success.

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The Australian Small Business Blog