Importance of Gaining a Competitive Edge!

Competition is a fact of life. The best businesses set the pace and aren't afraid to go their own way. How do you and your firm respond to competition? Are you leaders, differentiators or do you follow the pack?

If you want to move ahead of your competitors, you need to change how your business positions itself within its sector of the market. After all, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a definition of madness.

Being in business is about running your own race and doing it your way. Have a plan and execute it the way you want and at the pace you want to. Running after the competition is no good if they are running in the wrong direction.

Many businesses struggle to identify their competitive advantage and even those that do manage to define it, tend to be ineffective at communicating that advantage. Consider what it is that makes your business unique. What is it that sets your business apart from the competition?

Identify, clarify, and communicate to your prospects and customers why they should buy from you instead of from someone else. Some firms will focus on being the highest quality provider, others will choose to offer the better service or the lowest price.

If you don’t focus on your competitive advantage and communicate that to your clients and targets, you could lose customers. If you don’t try to differentiate your firm, they could mistake your competitors as being the same as you.

Tell your clients why you are different and what that difference means to them. Create a marketing message which explains the benefit that using your firm provides. It is important to “sell the benefit” of the service rather than to sell the service based on its features.

The Art of Listening!

We all know that listening is an important business skill. However most of us are guilty of not listening to what our customers are telling us. Do you really want to understand what your customers want and why they buy certain products or services? Why not ask them for a customer feedback meeting and listen to what they have to say...

Before you start your feedback meeting with your customer(s), make sure that you have prepared for the session. It is helpful to run off a report that shows which products or services the customer has bought in the past. Write down what you want to achieve from the meeting. Do you want to understand why the customer bought from you? Maybe you want to understand more about their needs so that you can cross sell additional products or services to them (and to similar customers). Read through your list of questions before the meeting and be prepared to listen and to take notes.

If you are going to engage in client feedback make sure you are actively listening to what your customers are telling you during a session. Active listening means, as its name suggests, actively listening. That is fully concentrating on what is being said rather than just passively hearing the message of the person you are in engaged in conversation with.

Active listening includes things like making good eye contact, nodding / body language and saying things like, “I understand” or “yes, tell me more about that”. This type of feedback shows that you are engaged in the conversation and you want to hear more of what the other person has to say.

If you want to spend time listening to what your customers have to say about your firm’s products or services, do so in the right environment. It can be difficult to listen to another person when your phone is buzzing, there are lots of other people around or there is lots of traffic noise, etc. When you remove all of these distractions and find a quiet place to sit down and listen, it makes the whole process much easier and shows care and consideration towards your customer.

When asking customers to provide some feedback, it can be difficult to avoid interrupting. A little bit of self-control goes a long way. Avoid being defensive and try to take negative feedback as constructive criticism rather than a personal attack.

Remember, no business is perfect and you can’t improve if you don’t listen to the negative things that your customers might have to say about your firm. The aim of the exercise is to shine the spotlight on them, not you.

7 Tips to Manage Difficult Workplace Conversation!

Very often the only thing that is more stressful than having a difficult conversation in the workplace is the anticipation of that conversation.

Whether it’s a performance appraisal or a sales meeting to close a deal, here are a few tips to help you to manage difficult conversations:

1. Be prepared 

Spend some time considering what you want to achieve by having the conversation. Write down the key points you want to raise and list any further points in order of importance. What would your ideal outcome be for each point? If you would like the other person’s input, or if you have a proposal for a solution of your own, write these down next to each point. Picture yourself confidently raising the issues on your list and explaining your ideas for possible solutions.

2. Put yourself in their shoes

How would you receive this information? Anticipating their response will help you to consider carefully how you communicate and your body language.  This will enable you to be more prepared for their response, including the possibility of an emotional response.

3. Time and place 

Choose a time and place when you will both feel comfortable, will not be pushed for time and should avoid being interrupted. If necessary, reassure the person you're talking to that the conversation is confidential.

4. Stay focused on solutions 

It is better to ask “how can we do better next time?” than “why did it go wrong?” We cannot change the past but we can explore and identify the best way to learn from mistakes and move forward.

5. Don't skirt around the issue 

Be polite but stick to the preparation you did in advance of the conversation. Stay in control. If you find your tonality changing, either speeding up and getting louder (getting frustrated) or slowing and getting quieter (losing confidence), adjust your posture. Whether you are sitting or standing, change your physiology to be more relaxed or more assertive and your tone of voice and choice of words will follow suit.

6. Have a time frame in mind before you start talking

If it becomes clear that the conversation is going to take longer, don't be tempted to rush things through or run over time. The last thing you both want is to feel exhausted by the conversation and to make a poor decision. Instead, agree to meet again to continue the conversation at a suitable time.

Contact us if you need business help:
PJ | ☎ 020 89310165 | ☏ 07900537459 | ✉ info@apjaccountancy.com

How to play office politics ethically and professionally?

Keeping your head down and working hard is important but we all know that in business you have to “play the game” and develop effective personal relationships with the key stakeholders across your firm. As such, networking with internal contacts is as important as networking with external customers and target clients.

The number one word for managing office politics is diplomacy. Keep it professional at all times and find common ground with key stakeholders across the business.

It is important to make sure that you understand what is really going on. Pay attention. What do you see? Who talks to who? Who doesn’t talk to who? What does the gossip say? Notice who gets their way and who doesn’t. Talk in a way that ensures that you avoid being seen to take sides.

You should treat your stakeholders equally, do a good job for everyone and listen and respond to what they need. When you are chatting with someone and they are playing the political game, listen and talk to them about what they can do, how they feel, or what they want to do about it rather than agreeing or taking sides.

Office politics can sometimes create stressful situations and tension but it is important to keep your cool at all times. If you've been maligned, candidly address the issue at the source. Then shake hands and move on. Nothing that happens at the office is worth a heart attack. In the grand scheme of things, will the issue matter in a week or a month’s time? If you keep things in perspective, you will be less prone to turning incidents into catastrophes.

If you are building a team it’s worth screening potential new hires carefully. Ask candidates how they feel about workplace politics and how they might react in difficult situations.

Finally, bear in mind that regardless of the type of business that you work in, you will not like everyone and not everyone will like you. Always be professional and make sure you communicate clearly and consistently with them. Be direct and do what you said you would do.

Check whether you are making these financial and marketing mistakes that costs you hundreds, or EVEN thousands of Pounds. Click to Download the book below!

Contact us if you need help to increase your business profits:

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What Does Your Strategy Say To Your Customers?

Your business’s strategy says a lot about what you and your firm believe in and where you are going to invest your resources. But what does your strategy say about your firm from your customer’s perspective?

Your customers want to know that you and your business care about them. They want to feel important and that they are at the centre of your universe. Without your customers, your business wouldn’t exist. As such, it is important to build your firm’s strategy around your customers.

The very best businesses build every process and interaction around creating a great experience for their customers. Businesses such as Amazon and Netflix are well known for their customer centric business strategies, but you don’t need to be a global enterprise in order to create a strategy that puts customers first.

The next time you and your management team sit down to review your strategy, start with your customers. Think about who they are, the problems they face and what your business can do to help them. Maybe they are time poor so your strategy could be to save them time by offering the most efficient service in your market sector. Perhaps your customers want better value for money so maybe a strategy that focuses on delivering a low cost product or service would be more relevant to them.  

Regardless of the strategy that you choose to implement, make sure that it sends the right message to your target audience. That message should be bold and it should tell your customers (and target customers) that they are at the centre of everything your business does.

PJ☎ 020 89310165☏ 07900537459✉ pushkar.joshi@apjaccountancy.com

How to manage business information overload?

Today's hyper-connected business people are bombarded with more information than ever before. We are all faced with information overload.

Many businesses have tried to encourage their offices to go paperless. However, people still have stacks of paper, magazines, articles and reference materials all around their desks. Inboxes are overflowing with ever increasing volumes of emails. Businesses are spending more and more on digital storage (and physical storage). So how do you manage information overload?

Identify sources and create filters

Consider where your information comes from. You probably receive email, newsletters, industry publications, etc. Consider what information you really need then set up email filters which cut out the rubbish and only allow the relevant information through to your inbox. In terms of physical information – create a rule. If you don’t read an industry publication within a week you should pass it on or bin it (in the recycling of course).

Allocate time to review it

Put some time in your diary to go through all the data that you are collating. Go through those email folders. Review documents that you have stored away. Book a meeting with yourself to do this so that you’ve got some structured time in your diary each week to deal with information. If you use a mind map to organise your data sources into categories you could set up time to deal with each category one by one and therefore avoid jumping around from one topic to the next.

Act on it or delete / recycle it

During your review time your plan should be to act on information or delete it. Your options should be something along the lines of the following:

• Deal with it now
• Deal with it later - only if it’s going to take more than 5 minutes to do.
• Add it to your To Do list or mind map of tasks.
• Pass it on to someone else to action.
• File it away as information that is useful to know.
• Delete it.

What's your Business's Unique Selling Point?

Most good marketing campaigns will focus on communicating a firm’s Unique Selling Point (USP). In today’s crowded market, customers have more choice than ever before. This increase in competition makes finding, defining and communicating your USP more important than ever before.

So what is your firm’s USP? Do you offer the faster or better or cheaper product or service? Maybe your people are regarded as the best or most efficient? What is it that is truly unique about your business?

When it comes to your product or service, you will know how it works and so you should understand exactly what it is that you do cheaper/ better / faster than your competitors. The problem is that your customers are trying to decide between choosing your product / service or one from your competitor. They don't know as much about your product line as you do. Getting them to choose your firm can therefore be a real challenge.

The problem with most marketing campaigns that focus on a USP is that they try to communicate the “what” rather than the “why”. Most businesses will talk about what it is that they do. They probably won’t talk about why it is that they do it. However to really stand out, you need to differentiate your firm. Maybe you should think about using the “why” as your USP.

This is a point that is well made by Simon Sinek in his famous Ted Talk. Sinek, a bestselling author, set out to discover why companies like Apple have been able to achieve such huge success, while others with the same resources have failed.

He outlined how Apple focuses on “Why” rather than “What”. What is it that Apple makes? They make electronics. They make tablets, laptops, desktops, portable music players and watches that have a nice design. They make nice software. That isn’t any different to any other electronics manufacturer. However, Apple builds its core marketing message on “Why”.

The core marketing message from Apple would likely be something along the lines of “With everything we do, we aim to challenge the status quo. We aim to think differently. Our products are user friendly, beautifully designed, and easy to use. We just happen to make great computers.”

Taking this as an example you can create a USP and associated marketing message for your business which communicates “Why” it is that you do what you do and how this is of benefit to your customers (and potential customers).

4 simple & easy tips for Change Management!

In light of the recent Brexit decision, one thing is inevitable in business in the coming months and years and that is change.

Whichever way you decided to vote, the result of the referendum means that you and your business must be prepared to change and adapt to a new business environment.

Here are a few change management tips for your business:

Create a plan and set realistic goals

People tend to resist change so create a plan that outlines each step of the change process, the key stakeholders, the timeline and the deliverables. Ask different staff members from across the business to feed into this plan. Someone might have a great idea to contribute to the plan – sometimes all you need to do is ask.

Communicate

Communicate your vision clearly to your team. Identify what it is that you are trying to achieve through the change process. What is in it for your team? The best managers can explain this in a way that inspires the team to get involved and move forward with the plan.

Maintaining momentum

Your employees may agree with your vision initially, but they're likely to become frustrated or disillusioned along the way, especially if they don't see immediate progress. Find ways to keep the conversation going through short town hall meetings, staff surveys and casual conversation. Ask the team for their honest feedback regularly and be willing to listen. Be honest about what you don't know, and commit to updating employees when those details are finalised.

Get the team on board

Getting the senior management team on board is relatively easy. They should be able to see “what’s in it for them.” However to succeed in managing change in your business you need to get your middle management and your junior staff members on board too. Ask representatives from different groups across your business to get involved, share their views and take ownership of different aspects of the change process.

How to Reduce Business Costs to Increase Profits?

Competition in business is more intense than ever before, with tough economic conditions in most sectors and rival firms battling harder than ever for market share. There are new threats from online providers, new business models and global competitors. As a result, increasing profit levels is quite a challenge. If you can’t increase your sales volumes, consider how to reduce costs in order to increase profits.

Build a culture of cost saving

Everyone can and should take some level of responsibility for the costs related to their work. One way is to involve more people in the budgeting process. All employees could be partially accountable for the costs that affect them.

Negotiate with your suppliers

Renegotiating contracts with suppliers may bring surprising results. Every service provider will be keen to retain your business. As such, they may be open to renegotiating contracts. If you are in a position to negotiate a volume discount in return for another 6 to 12 months of loyalty, you may be able to benefit from some substantial savings.

Decrease waste

Depending on your business, this could be wasted materials, time, effort, money or team members. Everyone in your business should learn to identify and take steps to reduce or eliminate waste. Decrease waste further by “going green” to reduce utility bills by becoming more energy efficient.

Decrease stock levels

Stock is a dead cost and soaks up cash. Decreasing stock levels may require the streamlining of some of your business systems but it may produce some significant cost savings. If you carry excess stock / inventory you should be able to free up some cash flow in the business by reducing stock levels.

Overtime

Overtime is expensive, but a little preplanning of your work schedules will go a long way to helping reduce overtime costs. If you have more demand than you can handle, it might be cheaper to outsource some of the extra capacity.

Reduce debtor’s days

Cash flow tied up on the debtor’s ledger is effectively costing the business money. Reducing the average time it takes to collect outstanding debts from say, 60 to 30 days, can increase cash flow, reducing the need for expensive overdrafts and bank credit.

Check whether you are making these financial and marketing mistakes that costs you hundreds, or EVEN thousands of Pounds. Click to Download the book below!

Contact us if you need help to increase your business profits:

PJ | ☎ 020 89310165 | ☏ 07900537459 | ✉ info@apjaccountancy.com

4 tips to help Strategic Thinking for your business!

The business environment has been quite volatile since the financial crash of 2008. Strategic thinking is an area of focus for senior managers to navigate a way forward for their businesses, despite the challenges they face in the current market.

The benefit of strategic thinking is clear – competitive advantage. For most business managers, the first reaction is to deal with what’s directly in front of us (in our inbox). Maybe this is because it always seems more urgent and tangible. Unfortunately, while you concentrate on overcoming obstacles, you could miss opportunities, not to mention missing the signs that indicate the direction you are going is taking you off track.

Here are a few tips to help you to think more strategically about your business.

1. Ask questions

Ask questions that encourage new ways of thinking. One of the first questions to ask is “Why are we a good business?”  For the best answer, ask your customers. Find out why they use your products or services.  If you disappeared tomorrow, what would they miss the most about what you do for them? Another good question to ask could be, “How do I get my competitor’s customers to buy from me instead of them?” These questions will help you to think more strategically about the direction your business should take in the next few years.

2. Think critically

A critical thinker will question everything.  This means getting comfortable with challenging beliefs and approaches, even your own. Many business people will often respond to questions with answers like “we always do it this way”. You should ask, “Is there a better way to do it?” Following conventional wisdom is often considered to be a safe bet. However questioning convention is what creates new, disruptive business models such as Uber and Spotify. If you always take the safe option, your business could lose its competitive advantage.

3. Industry context

When thinking about your business it’s important to understand what strategy means in the context of your industry sector. In the accounting sector for example, it is important to understand contextual issues such as economics, key competitors, legal frameworks, technology and so on. Before developing the strategy for your own business, it’s important to understand what strategies work for your competitors and why. This can help you to create a very different, and hopefully more effective, strategy.

4. Create thinking space

Set aside time alone for strategic thinking/planning at least monthly, if not weekly. Use this time to reflect, research, consider ideas and dream. The focus should not be to “do” things. Getting outside or into a new physical space can make this time more effective. Try to get away from your desk and switch off your smartphone so that you can avoid distractions and think properly.

What to learn from your Business Mistakes?

Some of the world’s most successful business people have one thing in common, they celebrate failure and learn from it. James Dyson famously said, "Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success." James Dyson is no stranger to the power of prototypes and learning from mistakes. He made more than 5,100 prototypes of the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner before getting it right.

Albert Einstein said, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”. Wherever we look in the world of business, the most successful and innovative leaders have been the ones who weren’t afraid to fail and if they did, they learned from it.

In most businesses, even if management encourages experimentation, budgeting and risk management processes tend to promote predictability and efficiency. This leads people to do everything possible to avoid mistakes. Attitude to failure differs considerably from one country to the next.

The best and hardest work is often done in a spirit of adventure and challenge. Mistakes are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. As such, there is a tremendous source of value in determining if your people have the right attitude to failure. Here are a few ways to learn from mistakes in your business. 

Study unsuccessful projects

Document the lessons learned about clients, market trends, your firm, your processes, your team and yourself. This is likely to be a painful exercise until it becomes fully embedded in the culture of your business.

Make an impact

The management team should gather frequently to discuss their own failures, and then share the lessons learned with everyone in the wider firm. This builds trust and goodwill, and encourages future experiments across the business. Parameters should be set and communicated across the team - it is not okay to be reckless, but trying something new should be encouraged.

Identify trends

Conduct a firm-wide review to identify patterns. If failure rates are too high, you may need to tighten up systems and controls across the business. However, if they are too low, consider encouraging your people to be more willing to experiment.

3 Effective Tips for Successful Cross-Selling!

Customer retention and cross-selling is important in any industry, yet it's frequently overlooked. Here are a few tips to help you to cross-sell more products and services to your existing customers.

The cross-sell

Amazon.com attributes up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling. When purchasing you will see both the “frequently bought together” and “customers who bought this item also bought” sections, promoting related products. The key is to illustrate the value to the client of purchasing a complimentary product or service. For example, an accountant may wish to communicate to clients that in addition to audit and tax services, their clients can also benefit from payroll or business advisory services. There is a “value add” in that the client is buying all of these services from one accounting firm.

Data driven campaigns

The firms that are most successful at cross-selling unite insights driven by data with focused marketing campaigns. There is a fine line between timely offers and annoying spam, and understanding buyer timing is critical. Your marketing content strategy is key to cross selling to existing customers, but you also need to understand how you will measure success. Use a CRM system to record customer data including which clients bought what service. Use this database to identify clients who have not yet been cross sold to and create a campaign which focuses on creating a value proposition in the mind of those clients. Ensure your sales or business development people engage with the target clients at the appropriate time.

Listen to your customers

You can’t sell additional products or services to your customers if you don’t understand what they actually want or need. If for example, you are selling business services, ask your customer about their business plan. Where are they going in the next 3 to 5 years and how do they hope to get there? Consider some of the challenges that they will face and identify where your services will be able to make their life better in some way.

Listen and respond to each client and every interaction. This two-way conversation should extend to your own internal teams, as you ask questions and measure outcomes to continuously improve the customer experience.

Self-Employed or Starting a Micro Business?

Did you know that almost one in seven people in the UK are self-employed?

You might also classify self-employment as “freelance work”. UK research suggests that 30% of those who work in the media call themselves “freelance”.

Research by Skills Development Scotland noted that the creative sector is dominated by sole traders, micro and small businesses. Approximately 13,500 businesses employ 0 to 49 employees and accounted for nearly 98% of the total number of businesses in 2014. This is an increase of 35% in the number of small and micro businesses since 2009.

So why start a micro business or become self-employed?

The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) conducted a survey in which 27% of people who moved into self-employment within the last 5 years said they did so to escape unemployment.

The Government 2015 Workplace Employment Relations Study reported that micro-businesses accounted for 33% of private sector employment and 19% of total output. Although micro-business employees tend to earn less, receive less training, and have fewer benefits, it found that these employees were also the most satisfied group of workers in the labour market. Factors like job control influence in decision-making, business loyalty and even satisfaction with pay.

The benefits of a micro business or becoming self-employed include:

• Flexible working hours
• Ability to choose your work
• Developing a relationship with customers who you want to work with
• Ability to respond quickly to opportunities
• Making a greater impact

However there are drawbacks which include:

• No sick pay, holiday pay or redundancy pay
• Little or no support, training, no back up if you can’t work
• Not a 9 to 5 job - it’s 24 hours a day
• No company contribution to a pension
• What if I can’t get paid on time?

Micro-businesses and self-employed people need assistance and if you are starting up or feeling the pressure get in touch with us as we will be able to support you.

Incorporating Your Business? 2016 Updates!

Where a sole trader, partnership or LLP has established a significant value for the goodwill of their business, it was possible, up until 3 December 2014, to transfer that goodwill to a limited company and pay just 10% capital gains tax by claiming entrepreneurs’ relief.

The former owner(s) could then draw down on the loan account created with the transferee company over time as future cash was generated by the business. This tax planning strategy became less attractive when entrepreneurs relief was denied where the transferor and transferee were related parties, although the latest Finance Act has relaxed this rule where the former owner receives less than 5% of the acquiring company’s shares.

Now that the top rate of CGT has been reduced to 20% from 6 April 2016 for such transfers, rather than 28%, it may be worth reconsidering this strategy.

For example where an individual’s share of goodwill is worth £500,000 the CGT due would be £100,000 leaving £400,000 net of tax.

Note that for a transfer in June 2016 the CGT would not be due until 31January 2018.

Consider charging interest to the company on the loan account balance as that is now more tax efficient than dividends for higher rate taxpayers.

Note that although the goodwill would generally need to be written off against the company’s profits, there is no longer a tax deduction for the amortisation resulting in higher taxable profits.

Know more about Capital Gains Tax: changes to rules

Contact us if you need help while incorporating your business:

PJ | ☎ 020 89310165 | ☏ 07900537459 | ✉ info@apjaccountancy.com

5 tips to build an effective talent management strategy!

A good talent management strategy is all about acquiring, hiring and retaining talented employees. It involves linking various components of the business together to develop those people likely to drive future business growth.

The responsibilities should be spread throughout human resources, training, and selected management sponsors. Talent Management requires a mindset that goes beyond just talk, and moves the focus towards a holistic and integrated approach to leveraging the greatest competitive advantage from your firm’s people. It is about those thoughts and actions that, consistently, over time, become part of your firm’s organisational culture.

Managers should drive talent management

The cultural fit between an employee and manager is critical to the employee's job satisfaction. In a world where up-and-coming generations consider three years with a company a serious commitment, line managers, supported by the expertise of HR professionals, can enhance employee retention by ensuring cultural matches at both firm-wide and workgroup levels.

The best and brightest talent have technical competence, marketing savvy, passion, energy and drive. They also have the "soft" people skills that help motivate others and ensure effective execution of their roles. Line managers understand the particular skills and competencies they need to accomplish their business goals. They should drive the firm’s talent practices, working closely with HR, to recruit talented people, manage performance, provide career guidance and serve as role models. Line managers are also ideally positioned to identify and develop current employees with leadership potential.

Life long learning should become a cultural norm and expectation

When you think about the pace of change around businesses today, many traditional talent management processes are less relevant than they used to be. Some areas of expertise are changing every year, leaving many skilled employees struggling to stay relevant. And while competency management systems, career path planning, and multi-year development cycles made sense in yesterday's work environment, they are no longer enough. Employee development begins with an effective onboarding program. Competent, competitive firms take time to educate every employee about their products, customers, industry, market and competition. Annual talent reviews should be a core business process, as important as annual strategic business and operational reviews. Accelerated leadership development is now a business imperative and the role of succession planning is essential in ensuring a sustainable, competitive business.

Agile talent management strategy

It used to be that entrepreneurial businesses had to be nimble, and they often lost that agility as they grew into larger firms full of processes and bureaucracy. These days, competitive firms of every size need strategic flexibility to react rapidly to change. That means creating an agile talent management strategy that makes a multitude of solutions available in short timeframes.

How to Deliver an Interesting and Engaging Presentation?

The problem with an uninteresting presentation generally isn’t the content - it is the delivery. Any content can be made to be exciting, dynamic, and memorable. Rather than presenting facts and figures in a standard presentation format, think about how you turn your subject matter into an experience that relates to the audience.

Tell a story

Storytelling has the potential to help make a presentation come alive and therefore more memorable. Rather than PowerPoint slides, write out your presentation in essay format, then use just a few slides to emphasise key points. Become the narrator and take your audience on a journey with you.

A picture paints a thousand words

Sometimes a slide containing nothing more than a picture is all you need to convey your point. Strong images help to grab the audience’s attention. Video clips are also great tools to make points come alive, provoke a reaction or change the mood.

Share a joke 

Humour is a great tool to help you to grab people’s attention. Adding a few laughs into your presentation can break the ice, change the atmosphere and create a lasting memory. Even more so if the joke also helps to illustrate your key point.

Stimulate interaction 

Encourage your audience to get involved. They are far more likely to remember what you’ve been talking about if they can also describe it or interact with it. Ask your audience a question (and not just at the Q and A at the end). Maybe encourage the audience to consider a point in groups and to share their views with the room.

Keep it simple

Avoid jargon and cut out over complex facts and theories. Convey the key points in a simple manner. Present only what the audience really needs to know.

3 Tips to Develop an Effective Content Marketing Strategy!

Most businesses will at some point, consider creating a content marketing strategy in order to engage with customers. When you develop a content marketing strategy, you should start by thinking about your target audience rather than just looking internally towards your business. Here are a few tips to help you to develop an effective content marketing strategy.

Educational Content 

When it comes to your firm’s content marketing strategy, you should focus on creating well written content that is of educational value to your readers. If you are selling HR advisory services, for example, then you might consider producing content that provides your readers with useful tips on how to create certain HR policies or manage staff absences, etc. Your readers will then consider that you and your firm understand these areas and may potentially decide to use your services as a result.

Leverage your content

After you publish your content, you will need to promote it. Perhaps you could create a social media strategy whereby you publish your content to your company website, then post links to Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media pages so that people can share your content with their network. You may also want to share your content via an email newsletter or client update. The key is to find as many ways as possible of sharing your content and re-purpose it in order to maximise the potential readership.

The WIIFM concept

WIIFM stands for What's In It For Me? What that means is that regardless of what you are selling (product, service, etc), all that matters to your customers is that you have the ability to solve a particular problem that they are experiencing at that particular moment. The way that you phrase your marketing content has a tremendous impact on how that target audience reacts to what they are reading.

In today’s increasingly connected business world, content is becoming more important. Some clients are more likely to visit your website or social media page than your office premises. As such, creating the right content strategy for your business is key.

Business Strategy: How High Should You Aim & How To Accomplish Objectives?

Every business owner or manager knows that in order to succeed and grow the business, some big thinking is often required. But how high should you aim?

The process of setting strategic business objectives is harder than it looks. It takes a lot more than setting stretched goals to actually see any real achievement, and there are often hidden challenges, particularly when it comes down to the execution.

Aiming high helps

If you aim high in business, even if you don't quite make it, you will inevitably end up doing much better than you would have otherwise done. When setting your strategic objectives, thinking differently about goal setting can be a real game changer.

For example, setting a goal to double the size of the business versus one to increase in size by 10%, will push your business much harder. The 10% goal drives thinking about how to stretch the current business, using the existing tools and assumptions. It is merely building on an existing solution that many people have already spent a lot of time thinking about. In contrast, doubling the size of the firm requires a different mindset; one that moves away from the tendency to think in an incremental and linear manner. This opens up new possibilities that would never have been considered otherwise as the business must focus on creativity and innovation - the kind that, literally and metaphorically, can push the business to the next level.

Making strategic goals manageable

Stretched goals or targets are by definition very big. They are risky and can take several years to achieve. The details of how to accomplish these objectives will not be known when they are set.

Odds of success can be improved with a disciplined strategy execution, and a 'small wins' framework can often help. The objective is to break a larger goal down into smaller, manageable but interlinked parts. For each sub-goal, the team must define the various streams of work required, explicit outcomes, key deliverables, due dates, and a single owner for each component. As such, it will allow for visible and measured progress towards the completion of the larger goal while generating consistent action. Regular updates and team meetings will encourage people to be accountable for their part of the project. This will help drive consistent execution of tasks.

What separates great businesses from those that are merely good are not just the stretched target and strategic goals they set themselves to achieve but also the way they think differently about setting those objectives, and the discipline with which they implement them.

Key Account Management Strategy!

Anyone in business will tell you that it is easier and cheaper to sell more products and services to an existing client than it is to go out and find a new client.

Key Account Management or “KAM” is all about focusing on your key existing clients – your very best customers. In theory, this is the perfect way to increase your profits and develop better relationships with your most valuable clients. If we apply the 80:20 rule then, in an average business, 80% of profits tend to be generated by the top 20% of the clients. So, these key accounts are the most valued customers of a business.

KAM strategy

A KAM strategy is a marketing and business development approach which focuses on taking special care of these customers. Each key account should have a business plan, dedicated resources (such as an account manager or single point of contact in your firm) and should be identified throughout your business as being a strategically important relationship.

Choosing Key Client

The most important thing here is to select the right customers for investment. Many businesses tend to underestimate the importance of this step and often show a casual attitude when it comes to selecting the right clients to develop. Some firms simply select all their big clients. There is nothing wrong with that strategy; however, they often fail to consider the potential to grow those particular relationships. After all, just because a client is big doesn’t necessarily mean it is particularly profitable.

Key Client Relationship Plan

In creating a KAM strategy you should also consider resources. There is no point in creating a strategy to develop 60 key clients if you only have the resources to actively manage 10 key clients. These key client accounts will need to be managed in an active way and this will require time and effort. Ideally, you will want to create a specific business plan for each key client relationship and you will need to dedicate some financial and people resources in order to execute these business plans.

Key account management, if executed well, can be a very effective marketing strategy in that it focuses your firm’s business development and marketing resources on the targets where you are likely to make the biggest impact.

Are you looking to develop your business but struggling to find the key client and manage them? 

To know how we can help you, please contact us at:
☎ 020 89310165 | ☏ 07900537459 | ✉ info@apjaccountancy.com 

First Impressions Count!

You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Here are a few tips to help you to make a good first impression with new clients, contacts and during business meetings:

Focus 

Being known as a 'natural' at interpersonal communication is not just a gift that a select few enjoy. We can all enjoy the reputation of being a great communicator.
Focussing the conversation on the other person takes the pressure off you.
Avoid interrogating your new acquaintance, and even if you are nervous, make sure you always slow your speaking rate down.

Presentation is everything

Adjust your posture, stand up tall and adjust your voice and gestures to a positive setting.
Establish rapport with your new contact by mirroring their head nods and tilts.
Speak at their pace and volume level.
You'd be surprised by just how many different 'voices' a successful salesperson uses in a day - they spend a large amount of time mirroring the other person's gestures, voice, language, pace, intonation and volume.

It’s about them

Encourage your contact to talk about their business, their successes and their achievements.
Don’t make it about you - give them the opportunity to talk about themselves.
Do your research before you meet your new contact.

If their firm has been in the press for positive reasons then refer to it and compliment their business. Then step back and let them talk.

Ask questions and listen - you have two ears and one mouth so aim to use them in that ratio.

If you have any questions, please contact us at:
☎ 020 89310165 | ☏ 07900537459 | ✉ info@apjaccountancy.com