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Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 160

Thought for the week: "Live out of your imagination, not your history." Stephen Covey

• Five reasons why people won't buy from you
• Designing your business cards
• Choosing a business name
• Watch out for the virus hoaxers
• The DTI's new website reviewed

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 to the EnterQuest information team and we'll do our best to help.

Send your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

To access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go to www.scavenger.net.

Five reasons why people won't buy from you

Losing sales in a small business is like losing blood. If you don't do anything about it, your business will inevitably die.

So why would a small business owner who is losing sales, or more likely not finding enough new sales, allow their business to bleed to death?

Almost certainly because they don't have the know-how to do anything about it, don't realise where they are going wrong, or where they're doing the right things, but doing them the wrong way.

This is especially the case for new small business owners within their first year or two of starting up.

So what are the key areas where new business owners get their sales efforts wrong, where people just refuse to buy from them no matter what they try?

Here are five reasons why people won't buy from you and what you can do to put this right.

1. You are offering them too many options

Sales studies have shown that the more options customers have presented to them, the less they will buy. This is due to the fact that when people have too many choices, they find it difficult to make a decision. If they can't make their minds up, they won't reach a decision, and this will result in you losing sales that you otherwise should have won.

Wherever possible, try to narrow the choices your customers are faced with so their buying decisions are simpler and easier to make.

2. You are always offering the cheapest prices

This may seem to be counter-intuitive, but if being the cheapest on the market were the secret to selling more, only businesses with the cheapest prices would survive. This just isn't the case. Obviously there will always be a few bargain hunters, but generally speaking consumers have a keen eye for quality and are more interested in value for their money than bucket-shop prices.

If you can successfully promote the value and quality standard of your product or service, you should also be able to put your prices up. This won't just increase your sales revenue - it will increase your profitability as well.

3. Your sales pitch or marketing message is far too boring

Just stop and think about this for a minute. Let's imagine that through hard graft or good fortune you've managed to get in front of, or through to, your prospective customers. However, your sales pitch just sends them to sleep or out of your door to shop elsewhere. You don't have a proper storyline to follow, and are making no attempt to highlight the benefits and reasons why your customers mustn't miss out on buying your product or service.

If you can get yourself or your marketing message in front of a customer, make sure your sales pitch is compelling, interesting, educational, articulate or even fun. Whatever your pitch, make sure you don't bore your customers to tears. It's almost certain that they won't buy from you if you do.

4. You think your product or service is so good that customers will flock to your door

The problem for a lot of new business owners is that they believe what they are selling is so special that busloads of customers will automatically beat a path to their door. What ends up happening here is that these businesses don't carry out anywhere near enough marketing, and as a result, their sales just don't materialise.

The bottom line with any product or service, no matter how good it is, is that it's up to you to get off your backside and find your customers, because without any marketing activity your customers will certainly not find you.

5. You think your business is credible and trustworthy

If you think about the number of times people ring you up, e-mail you or write to you offering their unique version of a product that they claim is the greatest thing since sliced bread, how often do you stop and think that you haven't got a clue who these people are, how long they've been trading, or whether the goods will even show up? You're naturally sceptical and risk-averse, so more often than not you wouldn't think for a second about buying from these people.

And the prospective customers who come across your business for the first time will probably think exactly the same way when you're trying to sell to them.

An excellent way to overcome this natural fear in your prospects is to provide genuine references from satisfied customers who have previously bought from you. Customer testimonials have been proven to provide the credibility that results in you being a believable, trustworthy and reliable supplier.

You can find out more about how to thrill your customers by reading Chapter 7 of the UK Small Business Marketing Bible, which is also packed with hundreds of practical tips about promoting your business and finding new customers.

Designing your business cards

Your business card gives an immediate impression of your venture. But is it sending out the right message and providing all the relevant information? It's surprising what people forget to add - you should think about:

• Your logo.

• Your name.

• Your job title.

• Contact details - telephone, fax, e-mail and website. If you visit clients - like a mobile hairdresser does - you may not need to add your address. However, if you're a financial consultant, a lack of address may look dodgy!

• A tag line explaining what your venture does.

• A special offer - such as 'get 10% off by showing this card'.

Cards are still sized to fit into a wallet or purse, but you can put information on both sides, or have a folding card with more space. Before you order, consider:

• Colour - do you want it to be plain or bright and attention grabbing?

• Pictures or just writing?

• Font - the text should be big enough to be read easily.

• Finish - do you fancy laminated, glossy, plain or textured?

Before bulk printing, proofread the card - plenty of business owners have ended up with the wrong mobile number or e-mail address on their cards.

For more information about the issues surrounding the design of effective business cards, have a look at this article, or go to the Ziska Designs website for tips on designing your stationery.

You can also see this article from Good Print UK Ltd to learn about 'making your business card worker harder'. Finally, check out our factsheet for a range of practical tips for designing your own business stationery.

Choosing a business name

If you trade as a limited company, you must register your business name with Companies House but if you are a sole trader or a partnership, you don't need to do this.

Even if you are exempt from registration, you are not free to choose any business name you wish. Your name must not:

• Conflict with a registered trade mark.

• Be offensive.

• Constitute a criminal offence.

• Already be in use. Check that your proposed business name does not conflict with other businesses in your area or with the names of national organisations.

The Business Names Act 1985 will apply to your business if you are:

• A sole trader using words in your business name that are not your own surname.

• A partnership that does not use all the names of the partners in the business name. 

• A limited company trading under a name that is not its official company name.

Check out our practical factsheet about the Business Names Act for a comprehensive explanation.

If the Act does apply to your business, you must display the company name (or the name of each partner, or the individual owner's name), and an address where documents can be served, in the following places:

• At your place of business - where you deal with customers and suppliers.

• On business letters.

• On written orders for goods and services.

• On written demands for payment of business debts.

For further information, read our informative guide to choosing and registering a business name or take legal advice – the Law Society can help with finding a solicitor.

Watch out for the virus hoaxers

How many times have you received an e-mail, usually passed on by someone you know, which warns you about a new virus that's on the loose?

According to PC Hell, there are hundreds of virus hoaxes and myths doing the rounds on the Internet at any one time.

By forwarding these e-mails to contacts and friends, you are simply perpetuating the hoax. In extreme cases, firms' servers have been known to collapse under the weight of such forwarded messages!

Of course, you may have received a genuine message warning about an e-mail attachment you shouldn't open. There are a number of places you can go to check out whether you're dealing with a hoax or the real deal:

• Vmyths.com has information on how to spot a hoax, as well as a hoax A-Z. You can also sign up for its newsletter.

• Hoaxbusters includes definitions of hoaxes and what to do to check whether a warning is genuine.

• The big anti-virus software manufacturers, including Symantec, McAfee, Sophos and F-Secure, all have pages relating to hoaxes.

Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK.

Here is this week's idea:

• Islamic Shop

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 phrase 'lingua franca' means?

a) business communication in the French language
b) an archaic legal term referring to the language of a contract or agreement
c) a formal business speech, pitch or presentation
d) a language used for communication between groups of people who speak different languages

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

The Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI) new website (www.dti.gov.uk) The DTI launched its completely revamped and redesigned site a fortnight ago, heralding it with publicity that claimed the new site was much easier to use than the old version. When we reviewed the old site last year, it scored 9 out of 20 - so has the revamp improved things?

Navigation and presentation - press releases were previously quite hard to find on the DTI site, so a big effort has been made here to keep things fresh and topical by listing news stories on the homepage and including a rolling bar of 'breaking' news. However, this has been at the expense of navigation through the site, which is even less intuitive than before, particularly in terms of information about specific grants and funding for businesses.

Accessibility - the old site was available in text-only format, but this new version isn't, which may cause problems for users who can't see images. There is an extensive FAQ section covering accessibility, in which it is claimed that the site meets minimum standards, but the assistance given is not very practical - it mentions help available via organisations like the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), but doesn't link to relevant pages on its site.

Content and usefulness - the best parts of the site are the employment matters and confident consumers sections, both of which feature extensive guidance and practical factsheets about employment and consumer legislation. The business sectors section is a new addition that provides sector-specific market information and links, but coverage is patchy, with many key sectors (food and drink, for example) not covered at all.

Relevance - the site is definitely fresher than before due to the inclusion of news stories and recent updates - the inclusion of news stories about important legislative updates is particularly useful.

A score of 9 again for the DTI's site - and we're docking another point for the fact that the people behind it still haven't got round to redirecting all the old links - during our trawl through the site, we arrived a number of times at a dead-end page claiming that the information was no longer available.

Our rating - 8/20

Firms must check employees' CVs

Almost half of small businesses don't insist on seeing a curriculum vitae (CV) before appointing a new member of staff, which could cause legal problems in the future, according to a study. The Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS) said the practice was "foolhardy in the extreme", and that having a CV on file was vital in case of any future problems. If a member of staff starts tribunal proceedings because of a grievance, an employer who did not have a copy of their CV would immediately be at a disadvantage, ELAS warned.

Battery recycling mandatory in two years

Battery recycling schemes for businesses and consumers must be implemented across Europe by 2008, the European Union (EU) has ruled. Public collection points where local residents and firms can deposit used batteries will be established as part of EU efforts to recycle 25% of all batteries within four years of the scheme being set up. Firms manufacturing devices that run on batteries will have to make their products in such a way that users can easily remove used batteries - at their own cost.

Practical guidance on age discrimination rules

Advisory and conciliation body Acas has published a free guide to help business owners prepare for the regulations that will ban discrimination on the grounds of age from 1 October this year. The guide covers key issues such as recruitment, promotion, performance appraisals, redundancy and retirement, and aims to help firms develop good practice policies ahead of the new rules coming into force.

Brush up your vocab skills

Macmillan English Dictionaries' MED Magazine is a monthly magazine about words, how we use them and what they mean. There are regular features on new words in the English language, plus a look at the words associated with a topical subject - this month football. The site also has a huge resource under its index section, including top tips for business English.

Getting the most out of business blogging

Gaping Void is a website put together by Hugh Macleod, a creative director who is best known for his cartoons drawn on business cards. He talks about marketing, advertising and how ventures can get the most out of their blogs. The pages including loads of articles full of observations and hints and tips for creative types are well worth a read.

Franchising and direct selling website

Create Project is an interactive website set up to advise potential entrepreneurs about the business opportunities available in the worlds of franchising, direct selling, licensing and distribution. You can take part in online workshops and seminars, and find information about funding and mentoring services. The website, which is part-funded by the EU's EQUAL programme, also has sections for business advisers and policymakers.

Reading more like an amusing novel than a business manual, this book tells the story of how Irishman Bill Cullen went from market stall trader to millionaire. The tone is down to earth and practical, with plenty of insights and analogies that anyone can understand. There's plenty of detail but the book is so easy to read that you'll absorb it in no time - a great choice for summer. Check out:

It's a Long Way from Penny Apples, by Bill Cullen

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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.