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Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 195
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| Thought for the week: "People want economy and they'll pay almost any price to get it." Lee Iacocca |
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In this week's issue:
If
you have any questions about your business idea or target market, or need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or business support
in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query and location to the EnterQuest
information team and we'll do our best to help.
Send
your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
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To
access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go
to www.scavenger.net. |
How to make an investor want to finance your business idea
Every new business needs capital to enable it to get started and trade viably in the first year or so while sales revenues begin to build up.
But not every new business owner will have sufficient personal resources to cover the amount that is needed to start up, making it necessary to seek external finance in many cases.
There are, thankfully, plenty of sources of external finance that a business start up can approach. Check out our practical factsheet to help you find the best option for your situation.
The high street banks are the most obvious starting point for an overdraft or a loan, along with grant awarding bodies, private investors such as business angels and venture capital companies for start ups with more ambitious growth and expansion plans.
Now while it's true that each of these sources of finance will require a slightly different approach or initial application procedure, depending on the type of funding source involved, there is one consistent factor and expectation that applies to all of them, no matter who you are approaching.
And this is that your business idea and proposal needs to excite them and fill them with confidence if you want them to consider backing you.
So how exactly do you go about exciting a potential source of finance for your venture, whether it's your own bank or a business angel investor who doesn't know you or your business from a hole in the wall?
The answer, of course, lies in what you say in your funding proposal (often referred to by business advisers as your business plan).
But how do you get a prospective funder to read your proposal when they are possibly getting hundreds of funding proposals sent to them every month? After all, they have to read it before they can get excited by it.
In general terms, this boils down to one thing.
The quality of your presentation.
The presentation of your proposal, whether it's for a £500 grant or a £50,000 loan from the bank, should be of the highest quality for the funding body or investor to bother reading or listening to it. A poorly presented proposal or business plan is destined for only one place - the recycling bin!
And when we talk about quality of presentation of your proposal, we don't mean the quality of the paper, or the graphic images, or the binding of your document.
We're referring to the quality of your pitch to a funder.
And by a long way, the most important part of your presentation is the summary of your complete business proposal. Since many full proposals can be up to thirty pages in length, it's absolutely vital that you attach a summary of your presentation, and ideally this should be no more than three pages.
The summary of your proposal is effectively an advert and sales pitch for your business, for your idea, and for you and your team.
Even though it may be just three pages long, your summary should be a complete, professionally written document backed up by vital factual information that sells your business story to the funder or investor, and compels them to read the full proposal.
When writing a funding proposal, you should always write the summary first, and then expand on this to complete the full plan. Once you've done this, you should then return to the summary to make sure the essence of it is still connected with the full plan.
But what is it in your proposal summary that is going to excite an investor and make them want to find out more about your business or idea?
There are four key ingredients that they will be looking for every single time:
1) What it is that makes your business idea, product, service or approach to your market unique or original, and gives you an edge over similar businesses and products.
2) What experience you and your team have in your target market, or in this line of business, that will give a funder the confidence that you are capable of making it succeed.
3) How you have demonstrated, or at least illustrated, that your business is going to stack up financially and will be viable and profitable.
4) How and when the funder will get their money back, or the investor will achieve an exit with an attractive return when you eventually sell the business or buy back their shares.
The key point with your proposal summary is to sell your idea to the funder or investor so that they want to find out more.
But you should avoid using superlatives and references to how great your team is. Simply present the facts that demonstrate your achievements and how much you understand your market now, how you propose to reach it and how this is likely to change in the future.
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For hundreds more practical tips and techniques to help you find new customers and increase sales on a shoestring budget, check out the UK Small Business Marketing Bible. |
Getting to grips with the smoking bans
With only a couple of months to go before smoking in enclosed public places is banned in Wales and Northern Ireland (which is happening on 2 April and 30 April respectively), and England following close on their heels on 1 July, small businesses are struggling to get their heads around what the changes will mean in practical terms.
The bans affect all businesses - from catering and hospitality ventures like pubs, cafés and restaurants, which will have to stop customers smoking on the premises, to ordinary businesses that currently allow staff to smoke on the job.
In order to comply, you'll need to take 'reasonable' precautions to ensure that employees, customers and visitors don't smoke on your premises. This could include:
- Displaying 'No smoking' signs.
- Removing all ashtrays.
- Implementing a 'No smoking' policy with staff.
- Telling anyone smoking on the premises that they're committing an offence, asking them to extinguish the cigarette/cigar/pipe immediately and, if they don't, asking them to leave.
- Refusing to serve individuals who are smoking.
Scotland has banned smoking since March 2006, and Clearing the Air Scotland publishes a useful guidance document to help businesses deal with the rules. Further information can also be obtained from Smokefree England, Smoking Ban Wales and Space to Breathe for Northern Ireland.
You can also check out 'A Breath of Fresh Air: Introducing a smoke-free policy at work', which has been produced by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
Finally, see our practical factsheet on smoking bans in the UK for more guidance on the remit of the laws.
Each
week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business
ideas in the UK.
Here
is this week's idea:
Food and drink trends for 2007
Food and Drink Towers is a website dedicated to news and comment about the food and drink industry, aimed at food producers, food businesses, food writers and public relations professionals. It makes the following predictions for the top food trends of 2007:
1) Going green - buying more organic, Fairtrade and locally produced fare
2) Mid-week 'premiumisation' - luxury items bought as a treat on weekdays
3) Responsible children's advertising - the Jamie effect seen in kids' food ads
4) Small is better - better times ahead for independent stores and producers
5) Restaurant-quality at home - more premium-quality, elaborate ready meals
6) Old-fashioned comfort food - stews, casseroles and puddings on the rise
7) Purity - growing popularity for additive- and chemical-free produce
8) Local sourcing - increased consumer interest in the traceability of food
9) Fusion flavours - combining different ethnic cuisines and regional flavours
10) Trans-fats eliminated - the end of the road for hydrogenated fats in food
In addition to news and features, Food and Drink Towers offers a PR service for new and established food businesses. If you want to take full advantage of the website, you'll need to register (free of charge).
Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.
Do you know what the word 'perennial' means?
a) happening once and never to be repeated
b) common or in widespread use
c) on the fringe or outskirts of something
d) happening repeatedly or lasting a long time
Answer at the end of the Bulletin.
The following topical business issues have been reported in the media over the past seven days. Did your radar pick them up?
1) Which of the following items is not on the shopping list of BBC reporters who have this week been tasked with finding out whether all the goods they need are available to buy on a typical high street?
a) Chops
b) Socks
c) A prescription
d) An iPod
2) Which leading retailer has announced plans to become carbon-neutral by 2012, in a move that will see it sourcing more goods ethically and locally?
a) Tesco
b) Marks & Spencer
c) Dixons
d) Primark
3) Who or what topped a nationwide poll by Rainier PR of the worst PR disasters of 2006?
a) Madonna's adoption of David Banda
b) The Mills-McCartney divorce
c) Delays to Sony's PS3 launch
d) John Prescott
Answers at the end of the Bulletin.
UK luxury food spending is on the up
'Posh' food and drink are growing markets in the UK, as Brits fork out an average £56 per person annually on items like speciality chocolates. The findings, from research by Datamonitor reported by ITN, show that the UK is now Europe's second-most food-obsessed nation after France. We spend £3.6 billion on speciality food as a country every year - and that's forecast to increase by almost 20% to £4.2 billion by 2011.
There's a £200 fine for not paying the minimum wage
If you have staff and fail to pay them the National Minimum Wage (NMW), you could face fines of £200 for each worker you've underpaid, the Government has announced. If a complaint about your business is upheld by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), you'll be ordered to pay wage arrears and will be fined if you fail to do so. HMRC reckons it recovered more than £3 million in unpaid wages last year for 25,000 workers who had not been paid the NMW.
Get your business gripes off your chest
The Weekly Gripe is a website where you can complain about the key business issues upsetting you or proving difficult to solve. Your gripes are then open to constructive feedback from other users. The site covers a number of different subject areas relevant to small businesses, including business/finance, industry/jobs and politics/law. There's also a list of tips for writing a good gripe.
IT tips for ordinary people
Time-saving computer tips for ordinary mortals as well as PC geeks are making a technology blog a big hit. The Lifehacker blog was started by Gina Trapani to dispense tips and shortcuts on problems such as moving from a PC to a Mac or creating automatic hard drive backups. The aim is to make your life more productive by providing practical, simple fixes for common IT stumbling blocks.
This bestselling copywriting guide has been newly revised and updated for 2007. It's aimed at anyone who writes or approves sales copy, from business owners to freelance writers, and covers dozens of proven copywriting techniques for ads, mailshots and brochures, as well as writing for the web. Topics covered include 'magic' headlines and how to use them, ways to open your sales letters, and how to make sales copy as readable as possible. Check out:
Just one word answer
The answer is d).
Perennial means something that happens repeatedly or lasts a long time.
It is a perennial problem that new business owners are under-capitalised and under-prepared when starting up. |
How's your business radar answers
1) The answer is d) - the BBC is conducting a week-long investigation into reports of the death of the British high street, and has tasked reporters with buying several staple items from their local stores, including socks, chops and a prescription.
2) The answer is b) - Marks & Spencer has pledged to offset its impact on the environment through investment in a range of energy-efficient and ethical initiatives.
3) The answer is b) - the Mills-McCartney divorce topped the national poll of the worst PR disasters of last year, with the Think Pink breast cancer awareness initiative scoring highest in the list of the best PR campaigns. |
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Good luck
The EnterQuest Team
This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate. |
