Month: June 2015

Good marketing leads to sales

Posted on by Sanlam

Article written by Jannie Rossouw, Head: Sanlam Business Market

In order to properly address this subject, we first need to understand the difference between marketing and sales.

Marketing drives the demand for a product or service; Sales fulfil the demand and create relationships with clients.

The recommended basic elements of every marketing mix are as follows:

  • A brochure (electronic and/or print)
  • Website (do search engine optimisation, apply Google Ads and doing search word campaigns)
  • Advertising (using the most suitable media options)
  • Public relations plan
  • Sponsorships that are suited to your target market

Here are a few alternative marketing elements to consider:

  • Vehicle advertisements
  • Marketing non-competitive products and services to your client base in collaboration with other businesses (while they do the same for you)
  • Thank clients for business (email, phone calls, discount on next transaction)
  • Do after-sales service assessments, at the same time asking for referrals
  • Give away samples to introduce clients to your product/service

Your marketing mix should deliver the following results:

  • Creating awareness of your product/service and business
  • Creating a 24/7 presence of your business
  • Educating your clients on your product/service
  • Creating credibility and giving clients peace of mind that your business will deliver on promises made
  • Showing that you understand the needs and requirements of your target market
  • Creating qualified referrals (in most cases this is a by-product, but you can launch campaigns primarily aimed at lead generation)

The well-known American writer and speaker Zig Ziglar once said: “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” These obstacles can be removed only if the marketing and sales functions are working together.

To support business owners with the important task of business planning, Sanlam gives you free access to the book Your Annual Business Game Plan for Success, which provides an easy and straightforward framework needed to draft a well-crafted game plan that will create the positive change and growth necessary for business success. Go to www.sanlam.co.za/gameplan to download your free copy.

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Five strategies for generating consumer demand

Posted on by Business Partners Limited

Generating demand for your product requires much more than simply releasing it onto the market. You need to conduct research, determine what consumers’ needs are, establish yourself as a leader in your industry and repeatedly prove your products’ worth.

Industry professionals recognise that before, during and after you introduce a new product, there is a lot of legwork to be done to pique consumers’ curiosity and get them interested. Here are five things you should be doing:

1. Pay attention to market research

Your company should aim to figure out what customers need and want through surveys, test groups and feedback on social media and reviews left on your website. If you notice certain issues that keep popping up, there might be a need for a new product to solve the problem.

2. Produce stellar content

If you’re just starting out, your business should promote its new product and prove that it’s solving a problem currently plaguing consumers through informative and educational content. Determine your target demographic and do some research to find out where they are active on social media and elsewhere online. Your content should aim to entertain and inform your customers of the value of your products. By producing quality content on a regular basis, you’ll begin to build trust with your audience and ideally increase sales from this newly established relationship.

3. Feature customers’ reviews

On your website, product pages and elsewhere, you should be featuring customer reviews. Customers are going to trust testimonials from their fellow shoppers. They won’t hesitate to purchase from your competitors if there’s a plethora of bad reviews about your products, which is why your employees should be apologetic to any customers who had negative experiences and respond quickly to any feedback that comes up. You also need to track their reviews and analyse them in order to improve products.

4. Give new customers a deal

Another method to get consumers to try your products for the first time is to offer them a discounted or special rate. Initially, customers may not be willing to try out a product at full price. If it’s offered at a rate lower than your competitors’ – they just might. Once customers have received your product and find it useful, they’ll likely be inclined to purchase from you again at the regular price. Make sure you’re clear that the deal is a one-time offer, because you don’t want customers to be discouraged when they decide to shop with you again and find your products priced differently.

5. Create an exclusive club

Once a person becomes a repeat customer, you’ll want to reward them and make them feel appreciated. Create an exclusive club for these loyal customers that gives them access to certain promotions, let them in on company news and secrets before they’re releases to the general public and communicate to them that they’re part of the process of perfecting your products. Ask for their opinions and encourage them to take surveys.

When attempting to generate customer demand, you have to realise that no one is going to listen until you substantiate your usefulness. Always keep the customers’ needs in mind and aim to please.

Source: Firas Kittaneh

Determination leads to a passion-driven life in coaching for 2015 EOY entrant

Posted on by Webmaster

Passion – the feeling that lights a fire inside of you regardless of all the obstacles – is something that resonates with all entrepreneurs. Without passion, entrepreneurs would simply not be the type of individuals that we have come to associate with hard work, strength and determination.

It is this passion that led Volente Morais, 2015 EOY entrant and owner of My Passionate Life (MPL) Coaching & Consulting, to start her own business. She says that although it may be considered egotistical, she believes that she was born with a talent to achieve what she sets her sights on, regardless of the obstacles against her.

“Passion has always been a favorite word and expression for me. I have journeyed through many trials and tribulations to realise that I want to live the most passionate life possible,” says Volente. She says this practice was a step in the right direction to do something that she has always wanted to do for herself. Part of this process is to serve the greater good, and follow a path that develops others too.

“I started my own practice because I wanted to define my own culture and outcome, something that is often defined for you when working for a company. Corporate companies align your thinking and monitor your sense of value by their own standards.”

She explains that often employees never ask the difficult questions such as “Is this my standard?” and “Are these my values?”. “I am not against companies that create their own culture as they do instill good work ethic and a sense of job responsibility, but this culture often doesn’t motivate employees to step out from being a manager – someone who checks you are fulfilling your role – to a leader – someone who coaches, supports and motivates you. I learnt as a young manager that I did not know enough about managing people, and I wanted to learn to be a leader instead of just monitoring or placing a value on my staff.

As the previous Head of Corporate Relations at a prominent medical business, along with experience in other roles within the corporate environment, Volente says she always knew that she wanted to own her own business. “I started my business by choice, not luck. Working for someone else just because you have a skill to do something, does not mean that is what you must do.”

She says that starting her business from scratch has been her greatest challenge to date. “I was no longer the Head of anything, but an entrepreneur in charge of my own staff, and everything fell on my shoulders. I overcame this challenge by setting up a daily routine and learnt to plan ahead.”

Looking to the future, Volente hopes to have her practice contracting and housed in a corporate business, and running internal development programmes. She says that corporate businesses are always on the cutting edge of innovation and new age practices. “The sustainability of short term programmes are not as effective as having a coach on a consistent basis. A coach will help companies identify the stumbling blocks and assist in developing skills and coping methods that will help enable employers to overcome internal obstacles over time.”

When asked why she decided to enter the Sanlam/ Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year® competition, Volente says she is putting her own methodology into practice: “If you don’t step up, then you cannot stand out.”

For more information on My Passionate Life (MPL) Coaching & Consulting, please visit their website, Facebook page, or email volente@mypassionatelife.co.za.

What measures need to be taken to improve entrepreneurship levels in South Africa?

Posted on by Webmaster

The latest South Africa Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2014 revealed that entrepreneurial activity in South Africa is not sufficient, and is not in line with other sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, nor the rest of the world – despite the level of activity increasing marginally over the last 10 years.

While the country has a good infrastructure and banking system, both of which are enablers of entrepreneurship, South Africa is faced with many other constraints hindering the growth of entrepreneurial activity.

South Africa’s largest problem is unemployment – officially reported as 26.40%. It is however believed that this figure is largely understated as it doesn’t include the percentage of the population underemployed – earning very low wages – as well as the discouraged unemployed workers who have stopped reporting their unemployment status, and are therefore not included in the official statistics. It is therefore estimated that the unemployment rate could be as high as 45%, and youth unemployment even higher.

Over the last few years, the private sector’s employment levels have not grown, each year either remaining at the same level, or shrinking. In order to improve unemployment levels there needs to be a call for the sector to become more involved with initiatives contributing towards growing the pool of interest in entrepreneurship.

While Government has implemented several initiatives to improve entrepreneurship, the most successful have been supported by only a few select private companies. Enterprise development and entrepreneurship must therefore be seen as a key area that can unlock growth.

When considering a statement by Small Business Minister Lindiwe Zulu on the aspirations for the Ministry of Small Business Development – “All of us must accept that we carry a joint responsibility to re-distribute the wealth of our nation” – it is hoped that civil society and Government will consider ways and means to ‘crowd-in’ the business sector’s considerable resources, skills and capacity to foster sustainable development.

There are six fundamental policy, legal and regulatory tools which Government can make use of to ‘crowd-in’ and engage the private sector:

  1. To celebrate, encourage and foster entrepreneurship – both commercially and socially – as one of the most noble human endeavours of all. This is the core to the reasoning behind the Sanlam / Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year® competition, and during the competition’s 27 years existence; we have strived to promote entrepreneurship as a viable, and rewarding career choice.
  2. Develop a SME-friendly, and business in general, enabling environment with fair, clear, stable and predictable policies, laws and regulations uniformly implemented across the different tiers of Government as found in most countries. This will mean that the private sector is protected and won’t be surprised with new regulatory compliance issues.
  3. Foster, encourage, regulate and police competition between businesses, with significant sanctions being enforced for uncompetitive behaviour.
  4. Reduce the proverbial red-tape which often places onerous burdens on entrepreneurs to register businesses, obtain business/trading licences, obtain tax compliance/clearance status, to list a few. Such compliance can discourage individuals from pursuing, or continuing, entrepreneurship as a career due to all the red tape.
  5. With governments being the single largest purchaser and consumer of goods and services in most countries – South Africa being no exception – Government can utilise the power of procurement to create markets for SMEs, ensure local community participation and benefits, and generally shape the behaviour of business as good corporate citizens.
  6. Modernise, improve and build infrastructure as these projects will employ and upskill many people, thereby creating skills and an infrastructural platform which will facilitate economic development in a competitive world. The same infrastructural projects would provide additional business opportunities for SMEs.

If we can increase the number of intentional entrepreneurs in South Africa (11.8% of South African adults in 2014 had entrepreneurial intentions vs. 58% in sub-Saharan African), as well as our nascent entrepreneurial rate of 3.9% (vs. in sub-Saharan African rate of 14.1%) for those that have taken steps to start a business, we can fill the entrepreneurial pipeline, and aid them to become new entrepreneurs, and later on, established entrepreneurs.

If the business environment is enabling – and the mentioned six points are being adhered to by civil society, government and the business sector – the failure rate and number of discontinued businesses will decrease as these entrepreneurs would be being nurtured, and not left to their own devises.

By implementing these six measures in a real and collaborative way, it will assist in lowering the levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality in the country, as well as aid in improving South Africa’s total entrepreneurial activity numbers.

*Commentary by Sanlam / Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year® competition spokesperson, Christo Botes.

What are you views on South Africa’s current entrepreneurship levels? Do you agree with the six mentioned methods? Share your views with us on our social media platforms: