Victoria’s Small Business Mentoring Service provides an affordable avenue for small business owners to gain outside expertise.

The non-profit organisation links volunteer mentors to businesses seeking help.  Typically the mentors are retired executives with a wealth of experience to share.

Started in 1986, the service claims to have helped more than 15,000 business owners over its 25 years of existence.

If you are a business owner operating a business with less than 20 staff, you might wish to consider contacting the Small Business Mentoring Service for help and support.

Heard about Self Managed Super and want to find out if it’s right for you?  Why not download our free ebook – SMSF’s – Australia’s most popular way to save for retirement

Guidance Financial Services – specialist financial planning advice for business owners and the self employed

Photo by Dan4th’s

I don’t know about you, but our household is being bombarded with telemarketing calls at the moment trying to sell us insulation.  We are getting up to 4 calls in a single night.  As immensely annoying as these calls are, surely the fact that they continue suggests that the businesses responsible must get sufficient results to justify the time/expense.

None the less, telemarketing is not how I would choose to promote my business.  So what other prospecting options are available to Australian businesses?

A useful article can be found here http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/company-structures-ownership/13401252-1.html

The data is US based but it offers some useful insights.  I found it interesting that cold calling was almost twice as successful to businesses as it was to households.  I wonder if that is because businesses make more purchasing decisions, or perhaps are more time poor.

Not surprisingly the personal referral was the most successful method of gaining new customers, but it was interesting that when it was up to the customer to contact the supplier, the results dropped off, even though a personal referral was made.

So given referals are the most successful, here is a great article by Wendy Berry – 7 Tips for Effortless Prospecting.  Her referal book is a great idea, as much as anything just to keep the issue of asking for referrals front of mind.

Have you come accross any great prospecting tips?  Please share via the comments.

And don’t forget, Guidance Financial Services specialises in the advice needs of business owners and the self employed, so if you need any help with Key Person insurance, Self Managed Super, Income Protection, Business Expense  insurance, or any other wealth creation or protection item, give us a call on 03 9870 6544 or email. Remember, appointments can be held via Skype or phone, so we can help you wherever you are in Australia.

A great article here by Nina Hendy of Smart Company Magazine.  Input from various Australian business owners including yours truely.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/entrepreneurs/20100121-the-entrepreneur-s-to-do-list.html

Whether you run a business with numerous staff, are a self employed “lone wolf”, or an entrepreneur with an idea so strong it will barely let you sleep, one essential ingredient we all need is inspiration.  The business owner needs to keep his staff motivated and focused on the company’s vision, the lone wolf needs to overcome the challenge of isolation and demonstrate enthusiasm and energy to her clients and those around her, and the entrepreneur needs to be able to take failures in their stride, recalibrate, and find a new way forward.

So how do you find inspiration?  Having recently had a couple of weeks off over Christmas with the family, I have certainly returned with more energy and determination to reach our goals.  Your kids can certainly inspire you with their enjoyment of life fresh perspective on the world.

Biographies can be great.  Sir Edmund Hillary’s biography View From the Summit is one I would recommend.  Certainly a life lived to the full.  Many people tell me Richard Branson’s biography is a great read.  A great web site for business biographies is Evan Carmichael’s.  This site has an enormous catalogue of articles on successful business people (with admittedly an American bias).  A 20 minute flick through this web site is sure to get you off and running again.

A site I have recently discovered is TED – Ideas worth spreading.  This is a site of filmed speeches – from Steve Jobs of Apple, to Martin Luther King Jr.  They seem to usually run for 10 to 20 minutes, so easily something you could watch will having your lunch.  The site looks a little confusing when you first view it, but give yourself 3 minutes and you will realise how clever it is.  Pick a subject area you are interested, then how you would like the options filtered – newest, most comments, most emailed, etc.  The larger the icon of the speech, the more highly ranked it is.

I have mentioned Mixergy in a past posting.  This site has interviews with mainly IT entrepreneurs.  The interviews are typically around an hour in length, so this one requires a bit more commitment, but the interviewer is able to really dig deep and there is always some nugget of an idea that you can run with.

Other business owners are another great source of inspiration.  In my role, I speak to business owners every day of the week.  Just hearing how they picked up a new contract, had their best month ever, or won a new award, inspires me to strive that bit harder.  Similarly, I catch up for lunch with a couple of groups of business owners, one group is specifically within my industry, and the other is a group of business owners from entirely different industries (a condition for entry was that your business did not compete with any of the existing participants).  Again, hearing about other peoples successes, and the innovative techniques they’ve used to achieve those results, never fails to refill my energy reserves.

Don’t under estimate the importance of inspiration.  You need it, and to really succeed, you need to be giving it to others.

A good article here on strategies to build trust on-line.  This is a real challenge for on-line businesses.  In the real world, consumers can see, touch and feel the merchandise.  Even if they are dealing with a pure service business, they still interact with a person, and so reach a decision on whether to make the purchase with some confidence.  In the online world, most of these triggers are removed, which is why things like “Testimonial” pages become so important.

Let me know your thoughts if you’ve had experience building a successful ecommerce site – how did you build trust?

Employers are required to meet minimum Superannuation Guarantee obligations under Australian law.  Failure to do so can result it quite severe penalties.

The ATO have published a very useful and concise (for a government department, these things are all relative), article on your obligations including links to applicable forms.

Visit:

http://www.ato.gov.au/super/content.asp?doc=/content/19818.htm&page=3#P36_3559

Information on award changes as part of the Rudd government’s election promises can be found at: www.fairwork.gov.au

Changes to unfair dismissal provisions are the most prominent, however in the super space you should note the following (provided to us by Colonial First State technical team):

• From 1 January 2010, employers with employees covered by modern awards must pay their employees’ super contributions to a fund nominated in the award if an employee doesn’t choose their own fund.
• The nominated default funds are any named in the relevant award plus any fund to which an employer was contributing for its employees before 12 September 2008.

You would be hard pressed not to have seen one of Seth Godin’s books.  His blog is equally insightful.  Here is an example.  Seth posts most days, usually just a few paragraphs, occasionally a full page.  It is a good one to get the RSS feed as the topics are short and to the point.

I haven’t read all of his books, but Purple Cow was certainly one I found interesting.

A business doesn’t exist without customers.  And gaining customers requires a marketing effort.  Often today, that involves a web site.  The problem is their are millions upon millions of web sites.  How does your target client find yours?  Well the answer (in Australia especially) is that they look up Google.

So how can you help Google find your page and have it come up when a target clients is looking for your services?  Well there is a whole industry built up around Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  The attached article gives the best insight I have thus far come across as to how this all works.  Within it, it also has a link to a more in depth article if you have  the interest and time.

http://blog.dinkuminteractive.com/search-engine-ranking-factors-what-really-matters/

Please comment (click on the above headline), we’d love to hear your feedback.

A great blog is www.mixergy.com

Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs about their business.  The interviews are a good depth and there’s not been one I’ve watched where there hasn’t been something I’ve found useful.

The content is certainly biased towards US based internet start-up’s, but their is the occasional “real world” business covered.  The challenge is finding the time view his regular posts.

Good, inspirational stuff.  Would highly recommend.