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Hub You - Turning On The Lights
Shrink wrap sealers are machines developed for sealing shrink wrap films or bags. Shrink wraps are one of the most inexpensive types of packaging available today. Shrink wrap sealers are basically classified into two - impulse heat shrink wrap sealers and direct heat shrink wrap sealers.The impulse heat shrink wrap sealer is used for sealing thermoplastic materials that need low temperatures to shrink. The direct heat sealer shrink wrap sealer, better known as constant heat shrink wrap sealer, is commonly used for sealing thick thermoplastic materials such as polyethylene.Depending on the type and speed, shrink wrap sealers are categorized into portable shrink wrap sealers, hand shrink wrap sealers, foot shrink wrap sealers and continuous band shrink wrap sealers. Of these, the portable shrink wrap sealer is the most compact and lightweight device and hence very popular. It operates very quickly, but the size is limited.A hand shrink wrap sealer is the simplest type of shrink wrap sealer, resembling a large stapler. Hand shrink wrap sealers, a
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will
One of the tactics I love to employ in the landing of new clients is something I call an "Info Storm."Here's the basic idea. You meet a new prospect, go over the solutions you have for and then jointly decide on some next steps involved in them hiring you. Now, most people go away promising to send a proposal or follow-up in some manner. But, what also happens it that 3 other people slip in later that day and make a fine proposal for that same piece of business. So, what do you do to keep your name on top of the stack as the decision process unfolds?Most people just do what they said they would do or worse. Others pick-up the phone and "check-in." Here's what I suggest you do.Don't beg for the business, make yourself the obvious choice.* By the end of the week, find a way to refer a prospect or necessary contact to your lead* Send them an article that discusses some point of interest you know they have* Drop them a copy of a press release you just sent to the media* Send them a free report, checklist or tool you kno
For those with the will to start a new business the rewards, both financial and emotional, can be excellent, but the risks can also be significant to both sanity and mortgage. Of course, the chance of success increases if a company has a good, well thought through strategy before they strike out.
Any business has processes with lead-time, and the longer the lead-time from receipt of an order to despatch of goods or services, the more money will be tied up in the business in the form of materials, salaries and overheads. Therefore, one of the earliest things to think about is how you will finance the operation and the key investments you need to make, which in turn requires you to have a detailed breakdown of the processes required to deliver value to your customers, which will allow you to determine the types of assets you will require, both human, financial and technical.
Financing The Beast
Obviously, your financing choices at this point depend very much on both the risk associated with your product (or service) and your own approach to risk. If you are determined to ‘own the assets’ you will need a completely different financing plan from a strategy based on having your products/services managed by a sub-contractor who has already made the investment in equipment, premises and people. Whilst the former strategy will significantly increase the risk of overstretching your finances, the latter has a number of associated risks, not least of which are the selection of the right supplier and ownership of intellectual property as well as possible risks the sub-contractor may pass onto you through the contracting process.
Having said this, unless the risks are very low or you are extremely confident about the minimum sales level (which is a function of the marketing/sales element of your strategy), it is often better to use a sub-contractor to start with as the overall start up costs and time to ‘first despatched sale’ are much reduced. Consider the converse of this in that you ‘own the assets’ and, for most new products, you will need to finance premises, recruit people and purchase materials before realising any revenue from sales.
If you do decide to purchase your own assets, having a good understanding of the sales demand for your product will help determine the amount of capacity required, which in turn will help determine the amount of finance you require for your investment. Because calculations for capacity impact directly on the amount of finance tied up in the business, it is prudent to get some advice on how to increase capacity and decrease lead-time for delivery as this will directly impact on the financing requirements.
Marketing Madness
Your ability to predict demand will depend on whether you are delivering a ‘radical new’ or ‘me too’ service or product, meaning is it an innovative new product on the market (such as the first Sony Walkman) that no-one has seen before or an update of an existing product (such as an improved washing-up liquid).
Obviously, for a product that is an upgrade to an existing product the size, shape and channels to market should be well understood, although your competitors in this market may have created ‘barriers to entry’ through regulation or ownership of some of the channels. However, you should be able to determine how much demand there will be, although your strategy will need to focus on taking market share from your competitors (if the market is not growing) or how you will get customers to ‘switch’ to your product. A subsidiary benefit is that a ‘me too’ product with a well thought through marketing strategy will often get a better reception from financiers.
For a ‘radical new’ product you may find it impossible to find out any information on the size of the market without significant investment (which by the way should have been done before you started developing the product or service). You could consider doing product testing on sample customers to determine their levels of interest, at the risk of losing your intellectual property. Whatever approach you take to determining the reception your product will get from customers, your strategy for marketing must focus on establishing channels to market (ie how will your customers get your product, who are your customers etc). Unless you can clearly show how your product will be put before the customer and how you will create a market for your product, you may get a hostile reception from financiers.
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will
The mandate for businesses in today’s volatile economy is to do more with less: cut costs, save time, trim waste. And while small businesses can’t afford to keep doing things the way they’ve always done them, most companies continue to rely on the same outdated, expensive and inefficient marketing tools they used when carbon paper and typewriters were the heights of office technology.At a time when the growth and success of most businesses is dependent upon the ability to deliver timely and targeted information to current and potential customers quickly, easily and as inexpensively as possible, the majority of companies continue to settle for the same direct mail tactics used in the fifties. According to the Direct Marketing Association, the average direct mail program takes more than three weeks to launch. Factor in delivery time and an additional fortnight to receive a response and you’re well over a month before the first person-to-person conversation takes place. Still, many small-to-midsize companies lack the time and resources to deal with traditional
Having said this, unless the risks are very low or you are extremely confident about the minimum sales level (which is a function of the marketing/sales element of your strategy), it is often better to use a sub-contractor to start with as the overall start up costs and time to ‘first despatched sale’ are much reduced. Consider the converse of this in that you ‘own the assets’ and, for most new products, you will need to finance premises, recruit people and purchase materials before realising any revenue from sales.
If you do decide to purchase your own assets, having a good understanding of the sales demand for your product will help determine the amount of capacity required, which in turn will help determine the amount of finance you require for your investment. Because calculations for capacity impact directly on the amount of finance tied up in the business, it is prudent to get some advice on how to increase capacity and decrease lead-time for delivery as this will directly impact on the financing requirements.
Marketing Madness
Your ability to predict demand will depend on whether you are delivering a ‘radical new’ or ‘me too’ service or product, meaning is it an innovative new product on the market (such as the first Sony Walkman) that no-one has seen before or an update of an existing product (such as an improved washing-up liquid).
Obviously, for a product that is an upgrade to an existing product the size, shape and channels to market should be well understood, although your competitors in this market may have created ‘barriers to entry’ through regulation or ownership of some of the channels. However, you should be able to determine how much demand there will be, although your strategy will need to focus on taking market share from your competitors (if the market is not growing) or how you will get customers to ‘switch’ to your product. A subsidiary benefit is that a ‘me too’ product with a well thought through marketing strategy will often get a better reception from financiers.
For a ‘radical new’ product you may find it impossible to find out any information on the size of the market without significant investment (which by the way should have been done before you started developing the product or service). You could consider doing product testing on sample customers to determine their levels of interest, at the risk of losing your intellectual property. Whatever approach you take to determining the reception your product will get from customers, your strategy for marketing must focus on establishing channels to market (ie how will your customers get your product, who are your customers etc). Unless you can clearly show how your product will be put before the customer and how you will create a market for your product, you may get a hostile reception from financiers.
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will
While the average business plan ranges from twenty to thirty pages in length, on average, investors only read one page of each business plan they receive. Obviously, for a business plan to receive funding, investors have to be encouraged to read the entire business plan, and then take additional action such as setting up a meeting with the company’s management.In figuring out how to get investors to read more than the first page of a business plan, soap operas quickly came to mind. Soap operas are very effective in getting viewers to keep watching over time. They do this by making their content addictive. That is, they have cliff hanger episodes, they pique the interest of viewers, and they make viewers eager to learn what will happen next. By making their business plans addictive, ventures entice investors to want to learn more and best position themselves to reap an investment.So how do you make a business plan addictive? They key is to bring up, in the Executive Summary, exciting factors regarding why the venture is a great investment opportunity
If you do decide to purchase your own assets, having a good understanding of the sales demand for your product will help determine the amount of capacity required, which in turn will help determine the amount of finance you require for your investment. Because calculations for capacity impact directly on the amount of finance tied up in the business, it is prudent to get some advice on how to increase capacity and decrease lead-time for delivery as this will directly impact on the financing requirements.
Marketing Madness
Your ability to predict demand will depend on whether you are delivering a ‘radical new’ or ‘me too’ service or product, meaning is it an innovative new product on the market (such as the first Sony Walkman) that no-one has seen before or an update of an existing product (such as an improved washing-up liquid).
Obviously, for a product that is an upgrade to an existing product the size, shape and channels to market should be well understood, although your competitors in this market may have created ‘barriers to entry’ through regulation or ownership of some of the channels. However, you should be able to determine how much demand there will be, although your strategy will need to focus on taking market share from your competitors (if the market is not growing) or how you will get customers to ‘switch’ to your product. A subsidiary benefit is that a ‘me too’ product with a well thought through marketing strategy will often get a better reception from financiers.
For a ‘radical new’ product you may find it impossible to find out any information on the size of the market without significant investment (which by the way should have been done before you started developing the product or service). You could consider doing product testing on sample customers to determine their levels of interest, at the risk of losing your intellectual property. Whatever approach you take to determining the reception your product will get from customers, your strategy for marketing must focus on establishing channels to market (ie how will your customers get your product, who are your customers etc). Unless you can clearly show how your product will be put before the customer and how you will create a market for your product, you may get a hostile reception from financiers.
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will
Cereal manufacturers know how to grab your attention: bright colours, simple and compelling messages (“Source of 5 essential nutrients!!!”), catchy headlines. What about the ingredient list with all the nutritional information? That’s on the side; easily found, but obviously secondary.The lesson: Ingredient lists don’t sell cereal. Look at your business features as you would the nutritional information on a cereal box: people only look at it when they are already considering buying the box. It displays important information that needs to be communicated, but it does not answer the first questions in the client’s mind.For service providers, marketing is a challenge: you know your service is useful and has value, but because you don’t have a physical product, the benefits may be harder to define. After all, your client will only experience what you do once they actually hire you, which they won’t do if the benefits of using your services are not convincing.How will you, as a service professional, deal with this fact? You must communicate with yo
Obviously, for a product that is an upgrade to an existing product the size, shape and channels to market should be well understood, although your competitors in this market may have created ‘barriers to entry’ through regulation or ownership of some of the channels. However, you should be able to determine how much demand there will be, although your strategy will need to focus on taking market share from your competitors (if the market is not growing) or how you will get customers to ‘switch’ to your product. A subsidiary benefit is that a ‘me too’ product with a well thought through marketing strategy will often get a better reception from financiers.
For a ‘radical new’ product you may find it impossible to find out any information on the size of the market without significant investment (which by the way should have been done before you started developing the product or service). You could consider doing product testing on sample customers to determine their levels of interest, at the risk of losing your intellectual property. Whatever approach you take to determining the reception your product will get from customers, your strategy for marketing must focus on establishing channels to market (ie how will your customers get your product, who are your customers etc). Unless you can clearly show how your product will be put before the customer and how you will create a market for your product, you may get a hostile reception from financiers.
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will
WOW!! Can you believe it is 2006?Doesn't it seem like yesterday that we were drinking champagne bringing in the new century??6 years have gone by since then. What have YOU filled them with?This Is Going To Be Your Felt-Marker Year!You've seen them - those fabulous huge felt markers that little kids love coloring with. They leave a BOLD mark!One thing this Sales Diva knows - that unless you plan something BOLD every year- life has a way of tip-toeing past you.And all you are left with is bills, excuses and the odd gray hair (Ok - a heck of a lot of gray hair!)This decade is almost 60% over - wouldn't you like to KICK IT UP A NOTCH?Why Is Selling About Being Bold?Listen - being "vanilla" in this world gets you absolutely nowhere.Your customer - and potential customers - want to buy from people/companies they trust, admire, respect and overall LOVE!If you are blending in with the crowd, copying what others are doing and basically COASTING - I have some tough news for you.
Managing The Customers & Suppliers
Having determined your marketing and financial strategies, and before you visit the financier, you should have thought through how you will establish and manage your value chain, in this case taken to mean your suppliers and customers.
What terms will your suppliers require (or what terms can you get away with) and vice versa for customers. The ideal scenario is that operated by the supermarkets where the suppliers are often paid 90 days after receipt of goods whilst the products are purchased within days and the supermarket then is able to earn interest on both the profits of the sale and the money to pay for the goods for up to 85 days before having to pay to supplier. Suffice to say it is unlikely that you will be able to extract such terms from your value chain and you may actually be on the receiving end of such an agreement, which places a different slant on your financing strategy.
A further consideration in this area are your terms and conditions for sale and purchase and an understanding of contracts and credit rating of customers and suppliers to determine their ability to pay (in the case of a supplier, if they go bankrupt what impact will it have on your business?).
In addition to the legal aspects of managing customers, you should also think heavily about the emotional aspects of customer management, for example how you will handle complaints, warranty claims or even after-sales service. It can be shown that the way that these aspects of business are handled will result in greater customer retention and improved profitability.
Having said everything above, it is worth looking at some of the common problems new businesses encounter in their early years.
Typical Start-Up Issues
One of the biggest problems encountered by new businesses is the time taken from investment to sales (lead-time) and an under-estimation of the financing requirements of this operation.
Significant over estimation of demand is another big problem, especially if this had led to investment in redundant equipment or the purchase of excess materials. Conversely, an under estimation of demand can cause the business to go bust even though it has a full order book as they fall foul of the cash impact of servicing runaway demand. A better strategy in the latter case is to create your own growth strategy by limiting the customers you introduce the product/service to or even raising prices to limit demand.
Selection of people and the adoption of the ‘right’ management style is another cause of problems for new businesses. In the early days the focus is on minimising costs, so you hire people who you can afford by who may not be as skilled as you need and then remain stuck with them when the business takes off. In terms of management style, a new start-up requires a style based on drive, responsiveness and the use of an intuitive management style, whilst growing businesses need to look at their processes and introduce structure to their operations. It is often the case that the management style used for the start-up is still used as the business starts to become established with the resultant effect of stifling progress or even worse, encouraging failure.
Being tied into premises that rapidly become too small, or too large, for the operation is a major problem for small businesses, although with the former problem, looking at the layout of your facility will often release significant amounts of floor-space and may help to ‘put off’ the day when you need to find bigger premises.
Lastly, although there will always be a need for a sense of urgency in starting up a new manufacturing business, trying to do too much, too quickly, will result in over-stretching your finances and your emotions. It is not essential for most businesses to have an IT system installed on day 1, a PC with email and a fax machine is as much technology as the average start-up business needs – so keep cool, stay focused and plan strategically if you want to be wealthy!
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