Did you know that businesses with 5-249 staff could be eligible to access a grant of £1,000?

The funding is provided through Train to Gain’s Leadership and Management Programme which is designed to help owners and directors of small and medium-sized enterprises to enhance their business skills. (Incidentally, despite what you might have heard in the newspapers the funding for this particular programme has NOT been cut.)

You are invited to attend a 30 minute presentation explaining exactly how to claim the grant. You can attend easily from your computer, so there is no need to travel or leave your office.

Date:Wednesday 23rd June 2010
Time:9.30am UK

To attend, please complete the registration form below:

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy is one of the experts interviewed in this video by Business Link London. Also featured are Kanya King, Frank Furness and Anya Sizer.

The business world is changing! Today customer’s are better informed and much more demanding. The internet has made information readily available to customers and for the first time ever small companies are able to compete with the big boys on very small marketing budgets.

It is therefore imperative that your business is ready to respond and has an up to date and robust marketing strategy. In this week’s tip of the week, Serial Entrepreneur Patrick White introduces you to Module 4 of the Business Growth Course, which addresses these very issues and offers helpful insight.

Find Out More About the Business Growth Course

Session 4: Marketing

A good Marketing strategy is at the heart of a solid growth strategy. In order to increase your revenue and profitability, you first need to understand your customers’ needs, provide a product or service to meets those needs and let your customers know that the solution they are looking for exists!

What you’ll be covering in this session:

• The concepts behind a Marketing-led approach to business and the POISE model of Marketing
• Contents and Structure of a Marketing Plan and how each section is relevant to your business
• Marketing Research—working within the process, different types of Marketing research
• Using Marketing Research tools and techniques
• Applying analytical tools to your Marketing Plan
• Understanding Buyer Behaviour and what makes people decide to buy from you—you’ll be shown how this applies to both B2B and B2C customers
• Classification and segmentation of customers according to type and buyer behaviour
• Setting strategies according to the current stage of the Product Life Cycle and planning for New Product Development and Launch
• Applying the Boston Matrix and Ansoff’s Matrix to your business to identify which products you should be offering to which markets
• Pricing Strategies—you’ll be shown 13 different short-term and long-term strategies for using your price to position your products and services in the marketplace; as well as in the minds of your customers, and to generate sales
• Channel and Distribution Tactics—selling via agents, wholesalers, retailers and other intermediaries
• Communicating your message and promoting your products and services through appropriate media
• Relationship Marketing and Business Development strategies for forging strong business contacts
• Creating your own Marketing Flowchart which illustrates how you will execute your plan

Find Out More About The Business Growth Course

Are certain people making life difficult for other people at work? SME Academy offers a solution.

Problem behaviour at work affects everyone. It affects the people on the receiving end and it also affects those who are bullying and argumentative in the first place.

But how do you deal with it?

The first step is to take a pro-active stance, take command and control it in a positive way. It used to be that punishment was the only way forward and indeed some form of disciplinary action may be required. But prevention and support should also be provided, along with a strong and positive management style that will go a long way towards preventing such occurrences happening in the future.

Both coaching and mentoring have led to positive changes in such individuals, as they are offered practical and supportive solutions to change the behaviour that has so affected them and their colleagues. While it will take time to get back to a workplace which is more positive in nature, if you can provide leadership that everyone looks to for advice and support you will be setting the stage for that to gradually evolve.

It can be a tricky balance to present a face of management that is both firm yet supportive in the right ways, but it is vital to do so. You should also keep a close eye on how things are progressing and be prepared to meet with members of staff who have concerns or issues about any kind of detrimental behaviour they are experiencing at work.

Many businesses are now turning to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to produce better results over both the short and the long term. NLP is designed to help you understand the behaviours of others from both audio and visual signs, and can therefore help in two ways. Firstly the offending member of staff will learn how their behaviour affects others in a detrimental way, and secondly they will also learn how to make positive changes that will help to eradicate the problem behaviour altogether.

As far as your role as a manager is concerned it is vital to ensure that you learn to identify problem behaviour as soon as it arises, rather than finding out about it from staff members. By providing a hands on management style you can learn more about how your team works and thus get to know your team a lot better than perhaps you do now.

By looking at long term solutions to problem behaviour rather than quick fixes, you will find that your team works in a more harmonious way as a result.

SME Academy offers a range of Coaching and Mentoring packages that can be adapted to your needs. Call us on 020 7939 9910 or click here for more information about coaching

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2010

Marketing your business via Social Media and Online Networking has become a popular and cost effective way of growing your business. The platforms available such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook allow you to establish your niche and communicate to them directly. Watching your customers online and following their live feeds and discussions provides you with invaluable insights into their interests and concerns. Something that previously would have cost you thousands to find out is now freely available to you.

However – and this is a big warning to you! – while there are a great deal of people finding new business contracts and profitable relationships online, there are also others that are losing out BECAUSE of online networking. How? Because they haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect their own personal brand and online identity.

When looking to enter into a new business relationship it is quite standard to ‘google’ someone to find out who they are. The results can bring up all sorts of images and information that you would prefer people not to see. When you’ve finished reading this, try Googling yourself and see what comes up.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or Bebo, your profile came up (it may have been hidden a few pages into the search results). Even if the person viewing your profile isn’t a member or isn’t signed in, they’ll probably have seen your profile picture. Anyone starting to sweat at this point?
Just taking Facebook as an example, your public profile page appears on Google and in many cases displays a selection of your friends. Hmm…even if your profile pic is perfectly presentable, what about the photos of your friends? Would they impress a potential business associate?

Ok, so if you’ve now started to think about what you can do on a practical level to undo any damage to your reputation, here are some things you can do right now. The tips are about profiles on Facebook, but the principles apply to all social networking sites.

•    Change your profile name so that it doesn’t include your full name as it appears on your business webiste – abbreviate your name or use a nickname. Your real friends will know who you are.
•    If you do want prospective clients or customers to find you or you’re using the site for professional networking, seriously think about having TWO profiles, one for friends and one for professional contacts.
•    Check your privacy settings and put them up to the highest level. If your friends have a habit of tagging photos of you, go onto the page where the photo appears and click ‘Remove Tag’. Then go to your Privacy settings and alter the settings relating to who can view your pictures and videos. I recommend you set them at maximum privacy if you can bear to.
•    Look very carefully at what comments and pictures other people have posted on your profile. If they aren’t saying the right things about you or they are likely to reflect badly on you, delete them and make sure that you check regularly to see that the amusing but crude pictures, jokes and YouTube videos people tend to share don’t keep coming back to haunt you!
•    Now go to your Applications. If you’ve added applications that won’t impress people, remove them straight away. Business contacts are rarely interested to know which person from ‘Friends’ you are most like.
•    Now to your Groups. Even if you’ve got your privacy settings up to the max, the instant you join a Group, you’re appearing on the online map. The Groups you join say a lot about you and in many cases mean that your full profile is visible to any other members of that Group. If you in a moment of madness joined the ‘Why I hate my boss’ group or ‘interesting places I’ve had sex at work’, it’s probably time to leave that group.
•    Now to your Friends list. Do you really have 347 friends who you see on a regular basis? You’re probably giving every one of them full access to your profile. Just because you’ve decided that photos of you will only be visible to your friends, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to show them to anyone else. Especially if you’ve accepted a Friends request from a colleague or ex-colleague. If you really don’t want certain people to see what’s in your profile, you can either adjust your Privacy settings to restrict what people can see or consider removing them from your friends list.
•    If you communicate with your friends via the Wall feature, remember that you are having a very public conversation. If you post something like “I was so drunk last night I can’t remember what I did” on a friend’s wall, you have absolutely NO control over who is going to see it. Use the private message boards or old-fashioned e-mail for personal communications.
•    Finally, if all else fails, close your account and start again (although it is easier said than done to get your profile data removed from a social networking site).

Now, before you rush off to update your profiles to make them squeaky clean, if someone is searching for you online, you still need to come across as you. If you’re a fun-loving person who only wants to deal with people and companies who have a sense of humour and have some energy about them, that’s what they are going to be looking for on your profile. If you only include air-brushed professional studio photos as profile pics and have no applications at all on your profile, there’s a danger that you’ll come across as a bit dull or not their kind of person. So there’s a balance. Be yourself, but within reason.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2010

“Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail” this is advice we’ve heard since our school days but how many of us really believe it and follow it in our business. In this video Patrick White discusses just how important it is to have a strategy if you want your business to succeed.

Have you got a Strategy? Is it right for your business?

On Module 3 of the Business Growth Course you’ll be introduced to eleven potential strategies and evaluate which one is right for your business based on your Vision and Goals, and the Diagnostics you created in the previous session. Having the right strategy for your business if fundamental to your success!

What Does Module 3 Include:

The saying goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. When preparing for growth in your business, it is essential to know exactly where the business is heading and how you are going to get there.

In this session you will be building on the work you have already done to set your Vision and Goals, and combining that with the in-depth knowledge you now have about your business from the Diagnostics session, to create a realistic plan for growth. During this session, you will start to work on the Strategy Document for your own business.

What you’ll be covering in this session:

• How far ahead can you realistically plan for?
• The key elements of Strategic Planning—Competitive Advantage, Adding Value, Mass markets vs. Niche Markets, Cost-Based Strategies & Market-Based Strategies
• Examining Contingency Plans and Growth Plans
• Corporate Culture—what is it, what drives it and how do you go about defining the culture of your company?
• Integrating your Strategic Plan with your Vision, Aims and Objectives
• Using Analysis tools such as SWOT and PEST within your Strategic Plan
• Porter’s Five Forces model and how this can be applied on a practical level within your business
• The resources that you need to implement your strategy
• 11 Different types of Strategies and how to choose the strategy/strategies that will enable your business to grow and meet your objectives

Find Out More about the Business Growth Course

There is more to business success than having a great idea.  For some people, their ideas translate instantly into a profitable business and for others, years of hard work and study. Often entrepreneurs who find success quickly are considered lucky, but as Patrick tells in this video there is more to it than just luck, and early success does not dictate ongoing success.

For more information on the Business Growth Course and upcoming start dates, click here.

Knowing where you’re driving your business is just as important as driving it. Having a clear vision and mission for your business allows you to make decisions that are right for the long term growth of your business, rather than short term ones that feel good.

In this video Dr Patrick White introduces the first module of the Business Growth Course and explains just how important having a clear vision for your business is.

To find out when our next Business Growth Course starts Click Here

Or call Lenka on +44 (0) 20 7939 9910 to discuss whether the course is right for you.

It can be very rewarding and exciting when your new business takes off and experiences fast growth, but as Patrick White explains in this video, its not always a good thing.

The Business Growth Course, led by Patrick White, takes place over 6 weeks. The 2 hour sessions are perfect for learning the theory and then applying to directly to your business.

To find out when the next Business Growth Course starts Click Here

Or call Lenka on 020 7939 9910  to discuss whether the course is right for your business.

Read Testimonials for this Course

Funding is available via Train to Gain. A Home Study Course is available.

Watch the Full Video by Clicking Here

Patrick White, a Director here at SME Academy, opens up about his background and how he learned the skills that have helped him to dramatically transform businesses all over the world. With 14 successful businesses of his own, each selling for millions, he now shares his tools and techniques with you on his unique Business Growth Course.

To find out when the next Business Growth Course starts Click Here

Or call Lenka on 020 7939 9910  to discuss whether the course is right for your business.

Read Testimonials for this Course

Funding is available via Train to Gain. A Home Study Course is available.

To hear the full interview Click Here