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Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 378
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| Thought for the week: "Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error." Linus Pauling |
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In this week's issue:
Ask a simple business question...but will you get a straight answer?
A business adviser was one day called to meet his client, the owner of a small firm that imported and distributed ethnic food ingredients to restaurants and food wholesalers around the UK.
The business was now three years old, employed ten people, had grown quickly and created quite a nice little market niche for itself.
But recently things seemed to have stopped going so well. Sales had stopped growing, the firm wasn't finding new suppliers or customers, and the three directors of the company were spending more and more time on day-to-day admin and operational issues of the business.
So where were things going wrong? The MD of the firm had asked the adviser to come in and try to help.
The adviser arrived at his client's office and decided to approach things by asking a simple question to each of the three directors in turn.
He met with the MD first, and said to her: "What's two plus two?"
"Four, without any doubt," she replied confidently.
He then called in the firm's finance director. "What's two plus two?" the adviser quizzed.
"At the moment, four, give or take 10%," he replied in a way that only an accountant could do.
To complete the picture, he put the same question to the firm's sales director. "What's two plus two?"
"Well," the salesman replied, "it can be whatever you want it to be!"
By getting three different answers to a simple question, the adviser had uncovered the root cause of a problem. A problem that affects just about every small firm and newly started business.
A phenomenon known as the 'entrepreneurial myth', a mistaken belief that all businesses are started up and run by entrepreneurs.
In fact, in the majority of cases, small businesses are started by people who know very little about how to run a business. This is one of the biggest reasons why small firms fail, or fail to develop to their potential. And in the case of businesses where there is more than one director or partner involved, people are more often than not completely different from each other in the way that they look at and understand their enterprise, like in the story above.
To be a success in business, a sole trader will need to be competent at a number of things, including selling, finance and admin, as well as being technically good at whatever area their business trades in.
Unfortunately, most people don't have the right balance of attributes to make them effective or successful at running a business. It's not enough to be 'a bit of an entrepreneur', or good with the books and figures, or skilled at managing people, or handy at selling.
At the end of the day, you need to develop your skills, or your business team if there are a few people involved, to cover all of these essential business disciplines, so that you will not only be good at running but also at developing your little enterprise to its true potential.
To read more about the whole fascinating area of the entrepreneurial myth, you could do a lot worse than to read Michael Gerber's excellent book on the subject, E-Myth Revisited - Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.
To comment on this article you can click here to have your say.
You can view comments made by EnterQuest readers on last week's article Business advice you will be wise to ignore.
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Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK and elsewhere around the world.
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WiTHiNTENT is a UK firm which makes clothing from tents that have been abandoned at festivals. Its products include showerproof jackets, capes and shoulder bags.
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The Giapo Gelato parlour in Auckland, New Zealand, is using barter tactics to get its customers to supply it with organic fruit for its desserts, from trees in their own back yards, in return for free ice cream.
Pay With A Tweet service
Pay With A Tweet is a service that can be used by anyone looking to create a buzz around a product or service by promoting it via Twitter and Facebook. Useful for creating a viral marketing arm for social media marketers and start ups, it allows anyone to 'buy' a product or service by tweeting about whatever they have just bought.
Search engine shortcut tool
Cleeki is a tool that eliminates the need for having to search for terms via a traditional search engine. With Cleeki, pick out a word on any web page, hold down Alt and right-click on your mouse, and wait for the tool to search multiple search engines and display the results.
Marketing cheat sheets
This site contains several cheat sheets on various B2B marketing topics such as e-mail marketing, blogging, sales and social media. They're free to download and contain bite-sized chunks of information and glossaries, so they're handy for anyone new to B2B marketing.
Shortcuts for Google Analytics users
This article describes some shortcuts that be used to help speed up the process of analysing website statistics with Google Analytics. It also includes a link to a Firefox extension tool for website analysis.
Here's our weekly look at some unusual, daft and often ridiculous business ideas, products and news.
Win Acronis Backup & Recovery 10
EnterQuest has teamed up with backup solutions provider Acronis to offer one reader the chance to win a copy of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is a family of products for data backup, system recovery and reduplication.
To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, just answer the following question:
Q: Who is the author of 'E-Myth Revisited'?
E-mail your answer, together with your name, address and daytime phone number, using 'Acronis competition' in the subject line, to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
All entries must be received by 30 September. Full competition rules are available on request.
Claim Three Business-Building Reports Worth £90
Visit the link below to claim over 75 pages of FREE content, plus details of my Maverick Marketing Newsletter: fortnightly advice on practical client attraction strategies you can apply and profit from.
www.maverickmarketingconsultancy.co.uk/newsletter.htm |
International Enterprise Promotion Convention
8-10 November 2010
IEPC 2010 provides an opportunity for business creation and support professionals to network, share best practice, and exchange experiences.
www.enterprisepromotion.org |
To promote your products or services in EnterQuest Classifieds,
call us on (0191) 461 8000 or e-mail enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
Also from EnterQuest's publisher
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The UK Small Business Marketing Bible contains hundreds of tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell. |
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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. |
