National Small Business Summit 2011

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

Once again I attended the National Small Business Summit, held in Sydney last week.
The general mood was sombre. Retail is clearly doing it tough, which flows through to other industries. This is due to a variety of factors such as:

• The high Australian Dollar
• International uncertainty
• A weak Australian Government
• Large increases in government controlled and influenced charges (Electricity prices have increased by 16% in a year.)
• Unlike our government, consumers are preferring to pay off debt and increase savings rather than spend on non-essentials
• Natural disasters (regionally)

All this results in squeezed margins, wide scale discounting and, unsurprisingly a big dip in small business confidence.

Here are some of what some of the speakers said at the conference.

The fourth profit driver: Increasing the number of times a customer buys

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

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In an earlier article I described The Five Profit Drivers Marketing System. Although it’s easier to sell to existing customers than to sell to new ones, most small business owners spend more time and effort trying to find new customers than returning to existing ones. Dr Chapman’s Fourth Profit Driver shows you how to stay in touch with your customers until they need your services again.

The third profit driver - Increase Average Value per Sale

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

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In an earlier article I described The Five Profit Drivers Marketing System. The third of the Five Profit Drivers is Increasing the average value per sale. This article provides strategies that small businesses can use to cross sell, upsell and package their products and services to increase their value.

The Second Profit Driver - Increasing Conversions to Sales

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

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In an earlier article I described The Five Profit Drivers Marketing System. The second of the Five Profit Drivers is Increasing Conversions to Sales. The second of Dr Chapman’s Five Profit Drivers, increasing conversions to sales. This article offers the tools you need to close the deal with the leads resulting from the first profit driver.

July Newsletter - Multiplying Your Margins - A Controversial Article

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

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How would you like to make more money from one sale than your competitors make from seven? That is what Apple does with their Mac’s.

For each Mac sold, Apple makes $370. Hewlett Packard makes just $52 from each PC it sells. HP’s selling costs for the 7 sales reduce this profit even further. Apple’s selling costs for the same margin are for just 1 sale.

A Director’s Risks on a Small Business Board

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

An interesting article has been published on the liability of directors based on the recent court decision on Centro.

Many small business owners will consider that these types of rules do not apply to them, but in fact they do. In this case, the non-executive directors relied, at least in part, on the results of an external audit by a highly reputable external accounting firm, that their company was not insolvent. Clearly, for a large company which is likely to consist of multiple entities, this can be extremely complex to assess, and hence the need to resort to a top tier accounting firm to pick through the structures and accounts.

Ad of the Month - Educate Your Customers

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

What do you do if you have introduced a new product you want customers to start using that will also save you some money? This company decided to educate their customers with a spoon full of humour to make the message go down. This way they can keep all their increased margin for themselves.