Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Tips On Finding Quality Clients - The Key To Business Success


The biggest concern for e-businesses today is finding quality clients for their products and services. What or who are these "quality" clients? How do you go about finding them? Why are they important to your e-enterprise? How do you attract them to your products or services? These are some of the questions that pop up in your mind, right? Well, let us find the answers to these questions and understand this novel concept.

Every business needs to multiply its customers and broaden its market coverage then gradually narrows down the niche to get the real “niche”. The brand building can be a slow and painful process, which requires not only your 100 percent attention and effort, but also creativity and time. Quality is usually a term associated with excellence, high value, superiority above similar products, and the like. When this term is applied to clients, it means loyalty, dependability and recurring business.

Loyalty – a quality client would stay put and remain loyal to your brand, even when the market oscillates or introduces other competitive products. They do not navigate away from you because they are satisfied and want more.

Dependability – a quality client would promote by word of mouth your product as one of the best. You can depend upon them to create a huge 'personal circle' marketing which would boost your sales through ripple effect and this is what you want. To get this you need to put a process on the ground to finding these quality clients.

Recurring business – these clients are high end users of your products. They keep coming back again and again and again; they also rope in family, friends, colleagues and whoever they can into the same enthusiastic circle.

You are probably wondering where you could find these types of clients. You need to do a few things and like I mentioned earlier it’s on a continuous basis, it then becomes a way of life.

You need to go out and find them! How? Where? You may ask – They are out there.


a. Plan – we all know if we don’t plan we have already planned to fail.
b. Network – get yourself known, become comfortable in self advertisement and if not hire someone to announce you.
c. Get client’s testimonial- this assures potential clients.
d. Promotions – offer free stuff, give them more than they expect.
e. Advertise – In Strategic places
f. Do researches - Find out what others are doing and follow carefully? Learn from others.
g. Find a mentor – An expert in your field that you can build rapport with and comfortable to speak to about your huddles.

They will also find you ,provided you are able to advertise yourself as an expert in ONE particular field and maintain an unchallenged leadership in that particular field.


A few things you need to know :


The more you follow your strategized plan, people begin to know your name and what your business is all about.
Remember your plan is a continuous process until it becomes a part of you. In today’s world there is a lot of competition you will find loads of people who know more than you do (in your field) and that might make you feel: you are in a cage. I am right?


My regular phrase is- Take one step at a time and like a baby you will find your bones get stronger.
Get a business buddy to boost your confidence and kick you in the back when you are giving up – not your mentor a colleague.


Think about this for a moment – “If you don’t try you die” before you even start out. I don’t think that’s what you want.

Finding quality clients as you can see is possible with the steps above and is the key to your success without them you cannot capture and rule the market in your particular niche; with them you your business excel.

The ABC of Business Financing


Any business needs three basic things to get it off the ground: finance, ambition and a good plan of action. Ambition is what keeps you at it when you encounter obstacles, and a good plan would help you apply for financial aid. Business financing is critical to the success of a fledgling business, yet most people pay only superficial attention to it.

Three Things You Should Keep In Mind About Finance

How much? When you are launching your business, the projected amount usually includes the initial operational costs until the break-even time. What most people tend to neglect is that until that time, you need to support yourself as well. The gap unless carefully addressed, would eat into your capital (meant for your business) and you end up with shortage of funds. This is further aggravated by the fact that your business has not yet reached its break-even point, which would further condemn it to failure. This is why when you calculate the projected amount you need to add to it your sustenance costs well past the breakeven point. You should not depend upon the earnings from your business until it provides a reasonable profit.

How? The first thing that comes to your mind when you think of ways to raise finance is banks. However, that should be your last resort. Many business fail because the profits are buried in the repayments of loans availed for capital funds. Try to launch your business in baby steps, using whatever money you have saved as the initial investment. Expand gradually with the profits gained. In this way, you learn strict financial discipline and avoid the pressure of loans at the same time.

When? "This is easy", you would say. "Of course, in the planning stage". You will be surprised to learn that this is one of the most popular myths today. You should try your best to launch your business based on your own funds. Apply for loans only after you are satisfied that the business is on track and gives you reasonable returns. In this way, you would need less effort to sell yourself to your bankers, and have better chances of steering your business towards success.

Business financing is all about these three factors. You pay attention to these, and everything else will fall into place.

Thursday, 5 March 2009

Mergers & Acquisitions in the turmoil: trends and perspectives through these days of crisis


How Do mergers and acquisitions work today?

To answer to this question first it is important to understand what they exactly are and what their goal is.

Mergers and acquisitions have in general the objective of maximizing the wealth of the shareholders: it means that an acquisition should create an added value that exceeds the
cost of acquisition.

So what possiblilities can you create with M & A?

Synergies for example that increase the competitiveness far beyond what the two companies are expected to accomplish independently with the value of new company created exceeding the sum of the two previous companies.
It could mean operating and financial economies; and also less or not tax (if for instance the company acquired has accumulated losses).

And looking at the terminology we can identify as Corporate restructuring, all activities involving expansion or contraction of a firm’s operations or changes in its asset or financial structure;
and a Merger as a transaction in which at least one firm ceases to exist and the assets of that firm are transferred to a surviving firm so that only one separate legal entity remains; an Acquisition is a transaction in which both firms in a transaction survive but the acquirer increases its percentage ownership in the target; for Consolidation we mean the combination of two or more firms to form a completely new corporation; and last but not least we have the Merger of equals.

We can distinguish also between a Strategic merger that is a transaction undertaken to achieve economies of scale and a financial merger that has the goal of restructuring the acquired company to improve its cash flow and disclose its hidden value.

A hostile merger is a merger not supported by the acquired (we can call also it target company) firm’s management, forcing the acquiring company to gain control of the firm by buying shares in the marketplace.

But does it exist a secret for successful mergers, mergers that create value?
From the observation experts say that often companies that acquire with frequency and make it a major core competency tend to do well and perform better than their peers, but this is not a rule. We can add that buying without studying the possible creation of value and the future performances can lead to mergers and acquisitions that are destroying value.

We can conclude that we are facing a challenging and complex issue. Judging if an M&A will be successful or not is very difficult and needs a serious and wide analysis.

Today it is probably not the time for big mergers and it is instead probably the time for mid corporate mergers; sometimes the economic crisis can create new opportunities.
Author¬ Andrea Campione