‘The deal is closed’ is probably the favourite sentence for all salesmen and managers.  If you’re good with people and you enjoy working closely with them, you are likely to close more deals than others.  If you are not a natural salesman, here are few tips on how you can improve your deal-making skills.

 1.      Confidence and belief

Being self confident helps almost everywhere but perhaps most in marketing and sale.  When you believe in your company and its products/services, you have already convinced one person: yourself.  Starting with such attitude makes selling more a kind of recommendation; you are proposing something in which you really believe in.  Believing in what you are selling makes you come through as open and relaxed, which usually makes your negotiating partner feel comfortable and in turn more attentive and trusting. 

 2.      Thinking about the client

It is very important to think about your negotiating partner’s needs.  If you are selling, it is your customer’s needs, which probably sounds quite trivial.  But one of the worst sale techniques is trying to sell everything to everyone.  You will only gain by offering good products to the right people.  Think long term and think about sale negotiations like investments:  if you serve your customer well you can achieve more than just one deal, by building trust-based relationships and gain returning customers.

But you also need to consider your negotiating partner’s needs when you are not negotiating with customers, but for investment, loan, and other deals.  In business negotiations there are always two companies’ interests that must be considered and you must understand what the other’s is regardless of what that company’s business with you is. 

 3.      Use your emotions well

Using your emotions might be a key to success.  A good sense of humor, a few complements or a topical conversation in a subject matter that interests your client can go a long way in setting the tone for the negotiations.  Try to create a positive mood to start with and put your negotiating partner into a positive frame of mind.  He/she will then be more willing to see things in a positive way and focus more on the benefits in your offer/product.  Even if the deal won’t close, he/she will remember you and the meeting more positively.  To make it happen you need to have some knowledge about human psychology, but don’t worry it is something that you can learn through practice.

 4.      Play it down

Do not try to outsmart your client.  Don’t feel like you need to prove your knowledge about the product and resist the urge to talk about it for ever.  It is very common, especially in new businesses, to “hijack” a meeting by launching into a long monolog about the company or product.  Don’t do it, as giving a lot if superfluous information makes you or your product look ill-fitting; you need to address the specific questions that your client has. 

Try to start by saying just enough to create an interest in your products and make the client ask questions.  This will enable you to learn about the key points of interest for him/her and allow you to drive the negotiations in a more targeted manner.   Also, if you can make your client feel like he/she knows a lot and understands the product well, you make him/her feel good about the situation and can leverage it.

 5.      Stay in your comfort zone

It is important to anticipate well the nature of the discussions that will take place during the negotiation.  If you expect lots of technical questions, take the relevant expert with you rather than trying to fly with it or be forced into deferring the talks until you can find out the answer. 

One final word: The ideal salesperson is someone who not only has a solid product background, but has project management experience as well.  He/she can then add value to the deal by explaining how the product can solve a business problem, be integrated into an existing system or open windows to future applications/deals. 

Image: Renjith Krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If your looking for a designer to build (or rebuild) your website you may have already found that there are huge differences in price quotes from one agency to another.   You can get a new e-commerce site built from £500 to tens of thousands.  (And that is still nothing compared to the whopping £360,000 cost of the Supreme’s Courts new website – http://bit.ly/c27iv0 – or the NHS website’s £27 million a year running cost – http://bit.ly/hG8tFh ). 
Can you tell this price difference when using the websites… hardly.  So why do website development prices differ so much?  And how would you learn if the difference is really justified?  We need your help to resolve this pricing crisis.   Read on to see how…

“I get what I pay for” factors

There are essential components in every website, such as hosting, content, data security, design and bespoke functionality, where cost is directly related to quality.  The NHS website, for example, has 5 million+ visitors a month, and their hosting and data-security costs are rightly much higher than a new business’.  This makes sense, but do you get value for money when paying a web agency for building your website?  Why do some web developers get away with charging a lot for little?

“I don’t know any better” factors

It is simply due to the particular characteristics of the website market, which can be summarised in 5 bullet points:

1)         Websites are too distinctive in look and feel to allow small business owners make direct comparisons of their quality

2)         There is a lack of clarity in( most) website price quotations on what are the essential elements and what are the “bells and whistles”

3)        There is a complete lack of transparency on pricing;  e.g. while in a supermarket every item’s price is displayed for all to see, websites seldom come with visible price tags

4)        While most websites are built using pre-fabricated components, web developers don’t publish “component price lists” on their websites.  (Even surgeons and dentist publish their prices on their websites.)

5)         The lack of interactivity within the buyer community.  How many web agency sites do you know that allow customers to post feedback?  And how many independent websites are there for comparing web-developers?  Almost all other services, from plastic surgeons to IT hosting, have price/supplier comparison websites.

I see no reason why web (and apps) development prices should not be made more transparent.  And what better way to achieve that than starting a website price comparison database.

We need your help to build the website price database: be brave and post the URL of your website, its price, the name of the developer and your verdict on its quality/suitability below.  (Comments from home-made websites are equally welcome.)

Intuit UK has just announced the launch of Quickbooks Online for the UK market.  Intuit’s move is indicating a rapid uptake in cloud computing by small businesses in the UK.

Cloud computing (or internet-based computing) allows users to access software applications and infrastructure as a service via the internet and store data and software on the supplier’s servers instead of your own.  Cloud services are especially attractive to small businesses as they let you purchase just the amount of service that you need without making a large, upfront commitment to purchase licences, server space, and IT support teams.

Over one third (38%) of senior decision makers in UK small businesses are in the cloud – using one or more Internet-based applications (excluding email and online phone services) to help run their business, and one in 10 (9%), says they would like to use online services for all of their main business applications.  The shift to online for core business applications including online document, customer and financial management is expected to grow fast in next 12 months.

Setting up a cloud service is usually as easy as giving your credit card details and accepting the Terms and Conditions.  But what are the key issues you must consider before agreeing to a supplier’s standard terms and conditions?

Is your data secure in the cloud?

Since servers are shared across multiple users, there’s a risk that unauthorised access can be gained into the system.  While this poses a real risk on data security, it is far less serious than the risk that unsafe IT practices, such as downloading confidential records to laptops or emailing them to private accounts for home access, create.  For many organisations, the cloud may in fact be more secure than their current systems and version control becomes more reliable, too.  

Where is your data stored?

With cloud computing your data is stored where your suppliers’ servers are.  Thus it is important for you to know their locations as under the Data Protection Act 1998 transfer of data to outside of the EU jurisdictions is heavily regulated.  Most cloud providers offer geographically distinct data centres and you should ensure before singing up with them that they allow you to place restrictions on data transfer to outside of the EU region.  

Exclusion Clauses

Research comparing 27 different suppliers showed that a common feature of the cloud contracts was the extensive nature of exclusion clauses; often to the point of allowing dissatisfied customer hardly any redress.  For example, suppliers commonly exclude liability for any unauthorised access to, use, corruption, deletion, destruction or loss of any data or content.  Similarly, the suppliers commonly excluded liability for any indirect or consequential loss or damage or capped damages to the monthly fee paid by a user.  These will in effect, leave you without a remedy.  You need to read the small print before signing up and challenge such exclusions where necessary.

The hidden extras

Many suppliers charge extra for a number of associated services beyond your licence fee, from the amount of RAM and disk storage you use to network bandwidth, and so forth.  Check whether the cost of updating application licences and replacing servers are included in the price of your cloud computing bill.  Any cloud-based installation is going to be adding traffic across your Internet connection, so it is also important to ensure that you have enough bandwidth to handle the peak loads to your own network.  

Checking, responding and fixing

Some providers offer more in terms of monitoring of their virtual servers and providing you with reports on particular events and network traffic.  For the most part, however, you are on your own to keep track of what your collection of virtual servers is doing and thus it is important that you understand what kinds of support your service provider is willing to do for you. 

Based on the above, we suggest that you go for Amazon’s Web Services and Cloudshare.

We have asked over 1000 entrepreneurs of the FastTrack community about their favourite online applications for their businesses.  Click here to download the list with the name, description and price of the best 99 apps.

Full link: http://www.entelliz.co.uk/docus/Entrepreneurs-99-favourite-apps.doc

There are 4 simple, traditional ways to generate your revenues: sell more things, sell to more peo­ple, sell more often or sell for more money.   It is easier said than done of course, but the prin­ci­ple is straight for­ward.  But there is a more tricky, 5^th way that is rapidly growing in importance: innovate more. 

In Peter Drucker’s rather forthright words, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation.  Marketing and innovation produce results”.

Look ahead for new revenue opportunities

A large number of businesses owners go into business without understanding that having a great shop that sells great products (or services) does not automatically mean customers.  They have difficulties growing their businesses because they don’t consider the question as to why a potential customer would buy from them rather than from an established enterprise which is already serving the market.  There is of course a very simple answer to this question: because your product (or service) is more valuable to them.  To create that extra added value for your customers you need to 1) develop a better product 2) develop a better way to take it to them.  Innovate, innovate, innovate!

 A great example for how not to do it is Twitter. Twitter was launched in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey.  By 2009 it managed to raise $57 million funding but it still did not have a clear revenue generation model.  It took Twitter another year to settle for advertising based revenue generation and at last start generating revenues.  By that stage, some of its competitors were earning money that Twitter should have been earning had it done its homework on customer need analysis.   

There are around 150 million tweets sent each day, but only 58% of them are made via the company’s official applications (research by Sysomos, March 2011).  The remaining tweets are made using applications made by independent companies, like TweetDeck, UberSocial and Hootsuit.  Why is that?  Because Twitter failed to develop the tools that its fans were looking for to make tweeting easier, more effective and more fun; like for example twitter scheduling, auto-replies, list management, social media integration, etc.

Twitter is a great platform on which smart developers can build a “twitter” company of their own, but Twitter itself failed to capitalise on this.  It handed over lucrative revenue opportunities to 3^rd party applications and lost almost half of its market share to them. 

Twitter, as a company, is a great inventor but a lousy innovator.  It has all but lost the freemium-based service market and left to use advertising and API licensing as its main income stream or restrict access for developers to reclaim some of its lost market share.

Focus ruthlessly on the customer from the start

Selling and marketing are often seen as one of the same, while they are crucially different processes: marketing is much broader and more strategic.  Marketing should start with understanding what potential customers want.  Making a decision on how to shape your products (and services), as in what developments to invest your time, money and effort is part of marketing.  Get marketing right first, then sale becomes much easier and much more effective.  There are two real-life examples on how important and game-changing it is to get the relationship with your customers right:

Chris and Andrew set up a business in 2000 that aimed at providing permission-based mobile phone advertising.  After 3 years, the venture was still struggling and they were forced to either shut or change direction.  They decided on re-focusing the business on online research surveys, a service that was just starting to lift off in the UK.  A year later, the company’s revenue was a whopping £700,000 and after a steady growth period, by 2009 it was generating £47 million a year and employed 400 staff.  Research Now

Mitch launched a well positioned online veggie distribution business last year, which however struggled to reach the critical number of customers it needed to survive.  He decided that some major changes were needed and after analysing his customers’ shopping habits he decided on a drastic change in his marketing strategy.  The more relaxed, social media focused marketing was introduced just after Christmas and gave the business an overnight boost.  Within a mere 3 months, the business went from gloom to boom, reached full operational capacity and is now looking to expand. http://www.facebook.com/flemingtondirect

In summary, the best way to make money is by ruthlessly focusing on your customers and anticipating their emerging needs.  To succeed in 2011, you need to understand exactly 1) what your customers are looking for and 2) where they are looking for it.

George Osborne announced his 2011 budget this week.  Below is the list of key changes that will affect your businesses with notes on the how:

Investment in growth

21 new enterprise zones will be created

The jury is still out on the value of enterprise zones, as when they were first introduced in 1979 by the Thatcher government, the results were mixed, even with a budget that was several times larger than this time around.  The new enterprise zones will benefit from simplified planning rules, super-fast broadband and tax breaks for businesses.  The first 4 will zones will be Boots campus in Nottingham, Liverpool Waters, Manchester airport and the Royal Docks in London.

£2 billion pledged to the Green Investment Bank

The good news is that it will start in 2012, one year earlier than expected, and it will be funded with £3bn in total and not £1bn as planned.  But is it too little too late?  Ernst and Young and others say £350bn is needed by 2025, so it is most likely that the bank will needs to borrow heavily, much to the dislike of the all-controlling Treasury, which hates the idea of adding more notional billions to the deficit.

Funding for 12 new university technical colleges

Twice as many technical colleges than originally planned, creating altogether 100,000 apprenticeship places with creating an extra 40,000 apprenticeships specifically for unemployed young people.

Income tax relief for enterprise investment schemes (EISs) to rise from 20% to 30% 

The actual economic impact of the EIS scheme has been debated in the past, but it will undoubtedly help startups raise funding in the ever so important early stages for as long as interest rates remain very low.

Tax and business rates

Small business tax cut from 21% to 20% and corporation tax to 26%

Both are muchwelcome, no doubt, although I would have liked to see the return of the 0% starting rate of even if temporarily.  The 2% cut in corporation tax is twice the expected 1% cut, and will help businesses to hatch more ambitious growth plans, especially as there will be an additional 1% annual rate cut for the next three years.

VAT registration threshold increasing to £73,000, deregistration threshold increasing to £71,000

Great news again for all small businesses, especially for those new e-retailers that will now be able to  escape from the burden of the recently introduced rather complicated EU tax changes for a little longer.

Personal tax allowance to rise a further £630 to £8,015 in April 2012

That means 1.1m people will have been taken out of tax altogether.  However, it is argued that the cost of raising the allowance by £630 (£1.23bn by 2015-16) is almost exactly matched by the money raised by indexing allowances in line with CPI, not RPI (£1.08bn by 2015-16).  But hey, there is no change to air passenger and alcohol duties!

Doubling of entrepreneurs’ relief to £10 million and the small companies research tax credit

Both measures are in support of the government’s new pledge to support science and technology growth in the UK

No business rate for 5 years to businesses that move into an Enterprise Zone

A discount worth up to £275,000 over the 5 years – not bad if you can keep your extra train fare or fuel costs for traveling back and forth from the enterprise zone below the rate savings.

Fuel duty cut by a 1p per litre with immediate effect

The projected change meant to be a 5% rise, so you may say that it is a sort of 6% cut.  And the fuel escalator has been stopped as well, which was set as an automatic 2% annual rise.  This may however be counteracted by suppliers that will be keen to pass on to consumers any tax and cost rises they face.

Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) threshold is to be lowered from £18, to £15 with effect from 1 November 2011.

LVCR has been used by companies like Amazon.com and Play.com to import goods from outside the EU free of VAT.

 43 tax reliefs to be scrapped as part of simplification of tax code

The good news is that the government will consult on merging national insurance and income tax and Osborne says he does not want to increase taxes.  But don’t yet get too excited as the current plan for simplifications will only remove about 100 pages from the “book of regulations” that is currently about 11,000 pages.  And the implementation is expected to take at least 4-5 years.

Regulation

The right to request  ‘Time to train’ will not be extended to businesses with less than 250 employees

Well, depend how you look at it.  It will help businesses with financial hardship and those that struggle with implementing effective business growth plans for other reasons.  It will however undoubtedly reduce staff’s incentives to bring new skills and innovative spirit into those small companies that may most need it.

3 year moratorium on regulatory changes for firms with fewer than 10 staff

An estimated overall saving of £330 million in admin expenses.  Your accountant will hate it of course, since we were forced to use professional help with reporting and filing to keep up with the incessantly changing regulations and rules.

Your personality will define the character and direction of your business for better or worse.  The important thing is to understand the skills and attributes you bring to the business.  Business is about offering unique resources to your customers and where better to start than with its owner/manager.  Your personality will undoubtedly influence the style and image of your business, so you need to shape your business to play to your strengths and build its USPs around the unique skills and attributes you bring into it.

Identifying your dominant personality type will also help you understand how you operate in your business.  It will help you focus on those roles that you are best suited for and will make you enjoy business more.  Thes personality types  below were developed based on years of our experience in working with entrepreneurs and business owners and after seeing how they personality types influenced the progress of their ventures.  Which one is you?

 The High-flyer

You are at your best when on the move, juggling several tasks and deftly changing plans when you need to. There are so many ideas that excite you, it’s a wonder you find time to sleep.  Freedom and flexibility suit you and you dislike rigidity and structure.   Self-expression, personal fulfilment, pursuit of knowledge and success are your key drivers and you find true satisfaction in helping people through business or charity.  You are a born leader who’s bound to succeed.

Roles that suit: entrepreneur, creative director, community building, fundraising,

The Networker

You prefer to be on the go to sitting in the office and enthusiastic about meeting new people and seeking out new contacts.  You are a natural salesman and love to talk about your business and products.  You are not averse to partnerships, interested in learning about innovation and will try out new technologies but prefer to enthuse about your company’s own products and offers.  You’re a born extrovert, with social skills that most in the business can only watch and envy.

Roles that suit: PR, training, business development, marketing and sales

The Controller

You like schedules, checking financial statements and reading “small print”.  You are unshakably confident in your values, objectives and plans and that makes you into a driving force for the business to meet its targets.  For you, target is king and you are happy to work with anyone who is willing to work for your business on your terms.  Not overly excited about change or innovation but will adopt them if they offer you more lucrative deals than your current processes.   You prefer to work with people who are happy to let you do your own thing while they do everything else.

Roles that suit: operations director, financial controller, technical director, project manager

 The Influencer

You are naturally business minded with a good feel for business strategy.  Calm, inquisitive and analytical, you make people feel secure in your presence and look to you for guidance. You are conscientious, dependable and down-to-earth.   You are good at anticipating problems and finding solutions.  You love new ideas, mental challenges and brainstorming but cautious at implementing them in your business.  You are one that people reach out to when needing advice and help and to who most look up to.

Roles that suit: managing director, technical director, HR, customer services,

The Investor

You’re always on the look for new ideas and good at spotting opportunities. You are a hard worker and team player, who is quick to form partnerships for exploring new opportunities.  You are full of energy and enthusiasm and not afraid of hard work.  You thrive on pressure and uncertainty, like to take risks and not afraid of venturing into new directions.  Once you reach success or equilibrium, you go straight back to new challenges and start again.  You are charismatic and sweep people off their feet with your confidence and drive.

Roles that suit: entrepreneur, startup manager, creative director, business development,

 The Coach

You ooze calm, wisdom and personality.  You are optimistic, observant and introspective by nature and thrive on pleasing people.  You are ambitious and relentless in trying to make people appreciate your talent and knowledge.  You are patient, good listener and an effective educator.  You are ambitious to succeed, and this, combined with your communication and influencing skills, are powerful assets that you know how to exploit in your favour. 

Roles that suit: mentoring, HR, customer services, PR, marketing and sales

 The Operator

You like structure, clear expectations and being part of the team.  You are practical, unflappable and adaptable.  You always keep an eye on long-term stability and keen to seek consent from your team before making a decision.  You have got more staying power than most, determined to succeed and good at making and meeting long tem goals.   But stepping outside of your comfort zone is not one of your strong points.  

Roles that suit: corporate liaison, tendering and grants manager, non-executive director, HR,

The Idealist

Life is about “work to live” rather than “live to work” for you.  You are strong on social responsibility and passionate about ideas that help improve things.  Your goals and ambitions are strongly defined and almost nothing will stop you from reaching them, however you are not prepared to achieve them at the expense of others because of your strong ethical side.  You are seldom intimidated, always ready to voice your views and tireless about campaigning for ideas you believe in.  Your enthusiasm and commitment are infectious and you enjoy popularity in a wide social network.

Roles that suit: social enterprise building, lobbying, CSR, marketing and sales, PR

Let’s face it, starting a business is tough.  You have to build a client base, hire employees, find office space, get a website…. There are plenty of challenges, but the one that many find the most daunting is fundraising.  Since the days of dazing investors with hot new technology ideas are gone, finding investment now takes a lot of hunting, careful research, good negotiating skills, and, above all finding a win-win solution.

Many books and blogs have been written on fundraising knowhow but there is one piece of advice that cannot be repeated enough times:  treat fundraising like you would treat your job application.  Both are about people, matching drivers and the prospect of being tied together for years to come.  Investment is money with strings attached and it is very important that both you and your investors fel comfortable with each other, share the vision for the business and have compatible business drivers.  

How to go about fundraising right if you have never done it before?   Here is a brief summary of fundraising essentials for beginners:

-  Make sure that you research the targeted investors thoroughly and understand what it is they are looking for.  Does you/your company fir?  If not, move on. 

-  Research the objectives, past performance and investment profiles of the investor to make sure that they meet your expectations.  Not all investors are great to partner with and “help” from the wrong source may even ruin your business.

-  See how and where your project fits with the investor’s expectations.  Highlight these points.  Then prepare a list on why your venture is their best bet and why you are the best person to make it into a real success.  “Personalise” your business plan and pitch for every submission/presentation you have by incorporating these points.

-  Be a good salesman when you pitch.  Don’t lecture on your technology, but sell the idea  and sell yourself.  Remember to sell yourself/your company as the best vehicle for the job.

-  Focus on the person/organisation you are pitching to and try to meet their style and culture.  Don’t turn up in your best suit when invited for a chat and don’t wear jeans when got an appointment in the City; get it? 

-  Last but not least, be clear on what your non-negotiable expectations are and what are the point you willing to negotiate on.  Remember you are negotiating for far more than money and the strings attached are just as important as the money for the future of your business.