Cartoon courtesy of shorelines art

What do consultants do and do you need one?

Apart from the knowledge and experience they will bring to your business using a consultant will also bring a new perspective. A good consultant will see the bigger picture that is your business and in the long term save you money by making your business more efficient and prosperous. What consultants are available and when do you need one?

Recruitment – worth their weight in gold. Making recruitment easier and finding the right staff for your business should reduce the difficulties that can arise when you take on staff.

Training – It is tempting to put yourself and your staff on every course available. A training consultant will assess the needs of your business and will have the knowledge and experience to make sure you get the training you need. Good to use on annual basis, they will also be able to commission specialist training.

IT – Invaluable but make sure you find one who can communicate the minefield that is IT in a way that you understand. Use this consultant when you start out to make sure that you have the right equipment for your business, they should save costs in unnecessary or ineffective IT.  Maintain a good relationship with them and they will help you when you come up with inevitable difficulties from computer crashes to excess spam.

Property – Don’t even think about buying or renting premises without consulting this one. Use a property consultant to avoid potential difficulties with adapting buildings, rental agreements and changes of use.

Funding – More difficult to track down they come with a variety of titles from business advisors, business consultants to business development consultancies. Tracking down funding for businesses can be difficult and the application forms take some completing. A consultant in this field will find the right grant for you, will save you time in completing forms. Often grants submitted by consultants are more successful simply by the volume of their experience.

Marketing my favourite! – Look for someone who can advise you on the best markets for your business, can define what it is you actually can do for your customers, will tell you how and where to communicate what your business does effectively on and offline.

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Montezuma's

From break even to a turnover of £5m in 7 years is not bad for any business. This is what Helen and Simon Pattinson achieved with their business Montezuma's which was started following inspiration from a visit to the Andes. Their success was not achieved without difficulties. The original ideas was to open a shop and sell high quality chocolates in the style of the shops they had seen in Peru. However their original British supplier went out of business days before they were due to open. The Pattinsons knew their was no other supplier in Britain to fill the gap so they took the decision to make the chocolate themselves. This involved finding a production unit and equipment, then teaching themselves how to make chocolate. 'It was weeks of practice and rejects and chocolate up the wall' Helen Pattinson said.

The Brighton shop they opened was a success and in the first year Montezuma's broke even from an initial investment of £160,000. In year 2 they opened a shop in Chichester. Following a loan of £250,000 they now have seven shops in the South East of England.

Today wholesale accounts for most of Montezuma's sales. They supply delicatessens, farm shops and the supermarket Waitrose. 'In hindsight, said Helen Pattinson, having to produce all the chocolate themselves has been the making of the business. Obviously we make a better margin on it, but more importantly it means we have control of what we are making. We can do small trial runs of products and test them in just one store if we want to.'

Source the Times online

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Web Site News

Watch out for Squatters

The Internet operates like no other market place. While the rest of work hard to make our web sites work our business squatters are quietly moving in on businesses selling electronics, computers, telecoms and financial services. Not only that they are making lots of money in the process.

The squatters buy domain names similar to those of the business they are targeting, but with added extensions at the beginning and the end of the original domain name. The domain names are so similar that both the original and the squatters site will come up on  a search.

The squatters have taken it one step further and choose extensions that people looking for goods and services will use in a search. For example my(brandname) and (brandname)online. For and example check  myapple.com with care! The squatters also buy domain names similar to the bigger brands they are aiming to steal business from but with common typing errors.

When you click on a squatters domain name you won't find an inventory of goods and services, but a page of pay per click ads. .coms are the most targeted domain names but .co.uk are coming up quickly. The squatters are mainly targeting bigger brands but there is another way they operate that affects can affect us all.

This involves the buying up of lapsed domains using the optimisation history accrued with the search engines.  This is not as unlikely as it sounds. In one case a 3 year established web site was made in effect useless when the domain name was allowed to lapse in error. The day following the lapse the domain had been bought up and within days a new site appeared full of pay per click ads offering the same type of product as the original site. The business affected had to buy a new domain name, reprint  marketing material and build up up a new optimisation history with the search engines.

Source Trademarkworld

What can you do if your web site has a good ranking with plenty of visitors but you the number of enquiries you receive is poor

       1. Check the navigation of your site - is it easy to move around your site

      2. Make sure your site makes it clear what it is you do

      3. Review the text on your site. Does it sell the benefits of your products and services while making it clear exactly what your customers receive.

      4. Make sure it is easy to contact you and clear what it is people should do to get in touch.

      5. Check your web stats. Are the visitors landing on your site really looking for your products and services?    Check the key words they have used in finding your site

      6. Compare your site to your competition and the keywords they use.

      7. Review the way you invite site visitors to join your mailing list. Does it make it clear what you are offering and what they have to do to receive it?

      8. Review the content of your site. How often do you change it? Are you providing fresh and interesting? Does it show your expertise? Have you included quality testimonials?    

        Summ it up Marketing Web site analysis and competitive site analysis from £75

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Curved Cucumbers

The European commission has a reputation for strict regulations and standards when it comes to food production. Provocative headlines criticising the EU regulations about the size and shape of fruit and vegetables sold. The EU now has plans to scrap the rules on 26 products grown in the EU. If this happens it will affect fruit and vegetables such as apricots, avocados, onions, plums, cucumbers, courgettes and garlic.

Instead the EU plan to introduce a more generic set of standards. However the strict regulations regarding the size and scale of the top ten biggest selling fruit and vegetables that can be sold as class one remains unchanged. These include apples, citrus fruit, tomatoes, peaches, strawberries and grapes. Rules affecting fruit and vegetables grown outside the EU remained unchanged so bananas will still have to conform to strict size and curve standards.

source the Grocer

And finally..............

exboyfriendjewelry.com is a web site set up by a Japanese entrepreneur where women are encouraged to offer jewelry for sale given to them by ex lovers. the site also has a section called 'Gifts that should have been jewelry' where you will find vacuum cleaners and salad spinners.

Source the Week

And.......

Bogof has hit the housing market in America. One house builder is offering a $400,000 centrally located bolt hole in San Diego if you buy a $1.6m mansion in the same area.

Source The Guardian