Mark Gwilliam Articles

You Don’t have to Have all of the Answers; It is okay to Seek Help Once in a While - Click To Read Article
If you are too proud to ask for help in your business, you are missing out on many valuable learning opportunities. Mentoring is an essential tool to utilise in business. Mentors, business associates, friends and family can all provide valuable insight to assist you in your business success. Mentoring is one of the best sources for quality information and business wisdom on an ongoing basis and is simple to arrange.

Why using a virtual office assistant may be more cost effective - Click To Read Article
The cost of employing full-time administration staff is costing you more than you think. Added to their salaries, you will have to pay them holiday & sick pay; other government taxes; training costs and they will have regular “down-time”. And don’t forget the overheads associated with it - a telephone; desk & chair; insurances; software; stationery and many more expenses.

Why you need a unique selling point - Click To Read Article
Being Generic Hurts Your Business Having a business without a Unique Selling Point or USP is like running for office without a defining slogan. The result can be similarly devastating: you'll lose. Your business needs a USP. It’s your business’ unique promise to customers. It cuts through miles of marketing red tape and categorically tells your customers that "this is who we are and this is what we can do for you that any other company cannot".

Why your bank account may not reflect the sales that you have made - Click To Read Article
If you are just starting out with your small business, it could be that you are not too comfortable with the ins and outs of financial management. You may have been misled into thinking that your bank account is a good way to measure the sales that your business has made in a certain period of time. In order to understand why your bank account is not an accurate reflection of your sales, there are a couple of things that need to be taken into account.

Why you need a unique selling point (USP) - Click To Read Article
Having a business without a Unique Selling Point (USP) is like running for office without a defining slogan. The result can be similarly devastating: you’ll lose.

Why it pays to have a network of advisors - part 1 - Click To Read Article
Why do you need advisors? If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s likely that your training is in a specific specialty area. You’re brimming with ideas and very good at what you do. Your major weaknesses are probably in sales, marketing, management, law, and accounting…in other words, those areas most critical to running a successful business. The case for advisors is quite straightforward!

Why it's important to have a network of advisors - part 2 - Click To Read Article
In my previous article, I discussed why it’s important to have a good team of professional advisors on hand to help your business. This article follows on that discussion.

Why paying attention to where you are in the business lifecycle will help you - part 1 - Click To Read Article
Businesses form, develop, mature, reinvent or die. Different stages of the business life cycle are associated with different risks and expectations and they may need different management styles and strategies to meet the needs of their customers.

Why paying attention to where you are in the business lifecycle will help you - part 2 - Click To Read Article
My previous article looked at the traits of a business that has just begun, may be with just a thought, and how it moves into a start-up phase. This article looks at the next 2 phases as the business begins to take shape and grow, then reaching maturity.

Why paying attention to where you are in the business lifecycle will help you - part 3 - Click To Read Article
In parts 1 and 2, I discussed the first 4 phases of a typical business lifecycle; from its very first days to reaching maturity. In this article, the last of the series, I’ll discuss typical characteristics of a business that has developed to a stage where its owners are expanding. I’ll also discuss how to identify a business that has reached its peak and is now declining and the merits of reviewing exit strategies for its owners.

Why discounting is bad for business - Click To Read Article
Discounting is a short term fix with long term consequences! While there is some disparity among experts, most say that even in the current marketplace, discounting can cause long term damage to your overall business success. According to www.sm.com.au, discounting is a costly strategy for retailers. While the book called, You Can Compete, suggests that discounting will double retail sales, most data points towards a business disaster. There are several successful alternatives to discounting that are available for your business.

Why segmenting your customers will help in the long run - Click To Read Article
Every customer is different, so why treat them all the same?

'Why it pays to reward your customers' - Click To Read Article
Over the last 10 years, I have learned many lessons managing my own companies and consulting to my clients and by far the single most vital lesson is ensuring that customers stay happy. In this article I share my thoughts about this essential topic.

What your business card says about you - Click To Read Article
I am often asked about what details should go on a business card. This article attempts to give my views. In this day and age, information technology has become so advanced that everything, it seems, is done online. Marketing is no exception – search engine optimization (SEO); pay-per-click (PPC) advertising; article marketing; directory placements, and such internet marketing tools have become buzzwords in the marketing world as a result of this ‘going online’ trend.

What to look for when choosing an accountant - Click To Read Article
No matter how small your business or how terrible your cash-flow is, an accountant is one professional you cannot afford to be without. Accountants provide services that go way beyond frantic, last minute tax returns; or at least they should do. They are highly trained professionals who can be a tremendous benefit to your company. This article discusses some of the areas an accountant can help you and highlights some areas to consider when choosing the right one for your business.

What are your competitors doing - Click To Read Article
An important aspect in any strategic marketing plan is solid market research or analysis. Others may call it competitive research/analysis/intelligence, but they all boil down to one thing: knowing what goes on in your industry from trending to movement in your competitors’ businesses and such before laying down your marketing campaign.

Value your time as you can bet your customer’s won’t - Click To Read Article
Owning your own small business isn’t just a normal job, its 15 jobs or more all at once. You have to be your own PR specialist, marketing manager, bookkeeper, and receptionist in addition to the overseeing the primary product or service of your business – be it website design, marketing consulting, or pottery production. It is highly likely that you work 16 hours a day and only have time for the bare necessities. Maybe you even miss dinner every other day and hardly have time for your family.

Using a scorecard - Click To Read Article
Businesses of all sizes, be it a large corporation or a newly-established small business, spend a considerable amount of time and effort developing well-thought out strategic plans that work to pave the way for their business’s success.

Top 5 Warning Signs that Your Business Is Declining - Click To Read Article
The hardest thing to admit for a business owner is the fact that his/her business is slowly dying. After all, what business owner would want to admit that his/her once future hope of building an empire is forever to remain in the realm of wishful thinking? Thus, the owner of a failing business continues to hold on and on until his/her knuckles turn white and his/her face becomes so blue from holding his/her breath.

The good, the bad and the ugly of podcasting for your business - Click To Read Article
Small businesses have found their perfect marketing method – podcasting – or have they, really? Podcasting may be the next best thing since sliced bread but it isn’t truly that different from other marketing methods. Podcasting, just like any marketing method has a good, a bad and an ugly side.

The ABC of a book-keeping system - Click To Read Article
Book-keeping makes your paperwork easier. It provides a system that tells you – and your accountant – exactly what is going on. Whether you use a manual or computer-based system, the same principles apply. It is worth deciding if you are going to computerise your accounts at an early stage. While a traditional paper-based system will look suitable for many start-ups, the accounting function could soon swallow valuable time as your business starts to grow. If you start with computerised accounts, there will be no need to go through the time consuming process of transferring your paperwork onto a computer package.

Tactics to increase your sales conversion rates - Click To Read Article
In golf, your perfect downswing and backswing will end in a mis-hit if you don't have a proper follow-through. Likewise, in marketing, your marvellous ad and outstanding product launch will net you no sales if you don't have a great follow-up plan. Marketing experts will tell you that it takes more than one encounter to convince customers to buy. Thus, you should make not only a good first impression but also a lasting one. Here are a few tips to accomplish this:

The 10 Commandments of Goal Setting - Click To Read Article
Setting goals personally and professionally is a crucial step to implement to ensure success. Here are the 10 Commandments of Goal Setting:

The cost of poor service - Click To Read Article
Have you ever wondered how much money has been lost due to poor customer service? Does it happen where you work? Or do you own your own business and are unaware of your employees’ actions?

Proven tips to improve cash flow - Click To Read Article
Ever heard of the saying that “a sale is not a sale until the cash is in your bank account?” If we you were paid for your sales the moment that you made them, you would never have a cash flow problem. Unfortunately, that does not always happen in many businesses. Credit is a privilege (not a right) and too many customers seek to abuse this trust and often never pay for the service or product you have supplied.

Motivate your customers to buy from you - Click To Read Article
Too much "Hard Sell" can mean "No Sale". With the proliferation of advertising both online and off-line, customers have grown wary of products or services marketed through traditional sales methods. Entrepreneurs of today must therefore learn how to invest more time and money in soft-sell methods. Here are some real secrets to making your customers want to give you their money.

Motivate your customers to buy - Click To Read Article
Too much “Hard Sell” can mean “No Sale”. With the proliferation of advertising both online and off-line, customers have grown wary of products or services marketed through traditional sales methods.

Marketing definition - Click To Read Article
Marketing is “A management activity that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements, efficiently and profitably”.

Impress your bank manager! How to read your balance sheet - Click To Read Article
If you want to do well as a small business owner, it would help you if you could understand the basics of how to read a balance sheet. The balance sheet is an indispensable part of a business accounting information and is essentially a snapshot of a company at a specific point in time. The balance sheet lets you know what a company owns (“assets”) and what it owes (“liabilities”). It will also tell you how much the business is worth.

Impress your bank manager! How to read your profit & loss account report - Click To Read Article
If you are relatively new to the business arena, you’re probably not too good at reading financial statements. But for someone who is planning to start a small business, it is crucial to learn how to read financial statements and understand what they mean. Today, we are going to discuss one type of financial statement called the profit and loss statement. A profit and loss statement is a summary of your income and expenses over a certain period of time, usually a quarter or a year. The profit and loss statement is important because it helps you to understand the profitability or financial condition of your company over that certain period of time.

Improve your business with key performance indicators (KPIs) - Click To Read Article
For those of you who are constantly looking for ways to better manage and improve your business, key performance indicators could prove to be a good solution. Key performance indicators, also known as KPI’s, are financial and non-financial measurements that help a business understand how much progress it has made in achieving its goals. Before KPI’s are established, however, a business must clearly establish its mission, goals, and stakeholders.

Identify your target market for the best results - Click To Read Article
Before you begin, you must understand one thing. No matter how much money you spend on your marketing strategy, your attempts will be fruitless if you are marketing to the wrong audience.

How to Set up Effective Terms and Conditions Before you Sell on Credit - Click To Read Article
Setting up effective terms and conditions can be a challenge for many small business owners when they are formulating their payment infrastructure. Extending credit can be an effective small business strategy as it allows your business to establish customer loyalty and to increase sales with customers who would not do business with your company otherwise. Consider the following tips when you are setting up your small business terms and conditions:

How to write ads that sell - Click To Read Article
If you want to write ads and letters that fill your order book, you must study the classic ads of Claude Hopkins in his book Scientific Advertising. He still ranks as the greatest ad writer of all time.

How well do you treat your customers - Click To Read Article
Think about the last time you had a negative buying experience. Did it take forever for your call to be answered? Did an e-commerce site fail to respond to your email query? Were you left with a good first impression?

How to prepare a budget - Click To Read Article
There you are, running around in small circles with deadlines to meet and bills to pay. Can you really afford the time required to produce a detailed budget? Isn’t your time better spent generating revenue? Yes and no. To paraphrase Alice and the Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you are going, you are sure to get somewhere if you only walk long enough”. The budget provides you and your investors with a numerical map that leads somewhere specific.

How to run a successful home based business - Click To Read Article
Home based businesses have become widely accepted as an effective income generating alternative to traditional employment. Many business owners decide to run a home based business for the flexibility to work at their own pace and to have a better balance between family and work. Working at home allows you to work in your own time and at your own pace. There are several important strategies that you can implement to ensure that you run a successful home based business.

How to promote your business - Click To Read Article
As you know, customers are the lifeblood of your business. Without them, your business doesn’t stand a chance at success – and will crash and burn along with the many other small businesses that don’t survive their first five years.

How to get your Bank Manager to sanction your loan application - Click To Read Article
Financial skills are one of the most important skills to master in business. You will need financing at some stage in your business; beginning, expansion, or for equipment purchases. Understanding what a lender will be looking for and being able to provide it, will improve your chances of financial success.

How to attract new business leads - Click To Read Article
Hitting the right prospect-rich vein in business is like being given a get-out-of-jail-free card in Monopoly or a toll-free pass at the expressway. In other words, it's a fast, free ride to a successful business outcome. Just like a vein of gold, one prospect will lead to another until you're swamped with orders, customers and profits. The question is: how exactly do you find such prospects?

How to attract more customers - Click To Read Article
Attracting new clients, also known as “prospects” or “leads,” is the number one priority of almost every new and existing business owner. From sole traders to small and medium-sized businesses, large corporations, and global companies, every business owner aims to increase their customer base.

How to Create a Compelling Vision for your Business - Click To Read Article
Your company’s vision statement is the statement of its potential and of what you want your business to become. Your vision statement should be meaningful to you and your organisation. It should be shared will all of the employees in your organisation in order to create a unified direction for everyone to move in. Crafting a vision statement is a challenge for many business owners, so I have included several strategies in this article for you to make this process easier to complete.

How SKYPE has changed the way we communicate - Click To Read Article
Communication is the act of transmitting thoughts, opinions, ideas, and information (the message) from one person (the communicator) to another (the receiver). It is a process that requires a medium. Traditional communication medium Traditionally, business management communicated with employees through written memoranda. The boss would dictate or type the message, make copies of the memo and distribute the same to the employees. This day and age, however, a person reads, hears and sees so much that his mind is simply incapable of retaining every piece of information that it has received. Among the information that a human being receives, written messages have the least chance of being retained. This means that written memos can be very ineffective communication media.

Good financial management - Click To Read Article
Good financial management is essential to the survival and success of every business.

Determine if your product is profitable before you make it - Click To Read Article
However hard you run, you'll still lose the race if you're running on the wrong path. In the same way, however hard you work to start up your business, you'll still end up failing if you started the WRONG business. A business venture revolving on the wrong idea, product or service is certain to fail. The fact that only 1 out of 10 business start-ups survive the 5-year mark should prove this. Before you start your own business, therefore, find out if you are going to be the exception or the norm. Find out by doing the following.

Discover 7 Common Causes of Cash Flow Problems in your Business before it is Too Late - Click To Read Article
Cash flow provides the necessary fuel to propel your small business forward. Cash flow problems can lead to an insolvent business structure and are a leading indicator of a failing business. Here are the 7 most common causes of cash flow problems in small business and solutions to help you avoid them:

Do you reach a global market - Click To Read Article
It is widely reported that there are 6.5 billion people on the planet spread throughout 194 countries (I only have another 171 to see!) Follow this link to test yourself.

Business ratios - Click To Read Article
Business ratios are tools that help you in evaluating the current performance of your business.

Broaden your marketing efforts - Click To Read Article
This is another important concept. If you currently run one radio commercial or use only your business cards to market your business, you’ll have limited the number of customers you can reach.

An insolvent business is a bomb waiting to explode- how solvent is yours? - Click To Read Article
Every business, be it a huge corporation or a small home-based business, will encounter some cash flow problems at one point or another. It becomes a serious issue when your business seems to be in financial difficulties on a continuous basis. If this rings true to your business, then you may need to take a long, hard look at how solvent your business really is. Insolvency is when a company is unable to pay its debts when they become due. In other words, the business is spending more than it is earning.

Attract as many motivated prospects as you can handle - Click To Read Article
Hitting the right prospect-rich vein in business is like being given a get-out-of-jail-free card in Monopoly or a toll-free pass at the expressway. In other words, it’s a fast, free ride to a successful business outcome. Just like a vein of gold, one prospect will lead to another until you’re swamped with orders, customers and profits. The question is: how exactly do you find such prospects?

Am I in the Right Business? - Click To Read Article
Are you tired of working constantly without a vacation and having the money to show for your efforts? If you are wondering whether you are in the right business, consider the following questions:

5 Ways to Test Your Customer Service Level - Click To Read Article
Your customer service level is a significant measure of how well (or how bad) you serve your customers. Thus, it is a crucial determinant of how well your business will do - particularly how good you are at retaining customers and generating repeat business. Indirectly, it also contributes to your referral business - how well you serve existing customers will influence their inclination to refer you to their friends, family and acquaintances.

A profitable market - Click To Read Article
A profitable market has to be a hungry market. In other words, there must be sufficient demand for the product in place.

5 reasons why you need you to plan - Click To Read Article
A sound, well thought through, business plan is the cornerstone of any business…whether is it a start-up, growth or established business…as well as being a significant tool for monitoring the progress and growth of your company. Most people would not embark on a long journey to somewhere they have never been without finding out how to get there first. A business plan is effectively this road-map for your business. This article outlines 5 key reasons why you should have a business plan.

5 tips for clear and effective writing - Click To Read Article
Writing is one of the most important skills that a business owner can possess. Whether you are looking to write business letters, emails, blog postings, forum posts, articles, newsletters, eBooks, eZine, autoresponders or sales copy; your ability to be both clear and effective will determine your levels of impact on you readers.

3 Simple Steps for Creating an Effective Unique Selling Point - Click To Read Article
Creating a great Unique Selling Point or USP is much like making a love letter. You must, through words, create an image of yourself that the object of your affection will love in return. Unlike love letters though, you’ll have fewer words with which to accomplish your goal.

3 mistakes that most ads make - Click To Read Article
"Is a hand that can't grip still a hand?" asked Aristotle who believed that something is defined by its function or purpose. If you apply this belief to advertising, it will be right to say that an advertisement that doesn't convert is not an ad in its truest sense. Nonetheless, you'll see a lot of "ads" that don't convert target customers into buyers. The problem may be attributed partly to customers who have become jaded from the profuse amount of ads. The following mistakes that most ads contain, however, are another cause.

4 Ways to reduce your costs and to increase income - Click To Read Article
The little details can make a big difference in the world of business. It is more likely that a small business will experience a surge in profits due to its implementation of a series of small cost-cutting strategies rather than the acquisition of a huge new client. Cost cutting strategies for your small business don’t have to be complicated, they just require that you pay attention to some of the more trivial aspects of your business.

3 steps to create a unique selling point to compel customers to do business with you - Click To Read Article
Creating a great Unique Selling Point or USP is much like making a love letter. You must, through words, create an image of yourself that the object of your affection will love in return. Unlike love letters though, you’ll have fewer words with which to accomplish your goal.


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