4 Basic Marketing Principles

1.  Targeting

It’s better to have a single, well targeted bullet than to spray randomly all over the place. It’s more efficient and less wasteful – of both resources and time.

In practice this means getting to know your market and what they want and need (which may not always be the same thing). Then it means designing or adjusting your products appropriately.

     2.       Be in it for the long haul

Marketing works over time, and if you keep building on it, can go from strength to strength. It’s not

something you can just do a short burst of and then leave it forevermore. It should also have a many pillared approach, rather than relying too much on a single ‘prong’. Look at all the alternatives that are available to you, including: social media, website promotion, direct mailing, print advertising, networking etc.

   3.       Focus on benefits, not features

People don’t care that a car has a state of the art alarm system, they care that the car isn’t going to get stolen. They don’t care if they website is W3C compatible or future proof, they want to know that it’s going to improve their bottom line and not be a money sink.

In summary, don’t focus on the features of your products and services, focus on the tangible benefits they bring to your customers.

  4.       Be consistent and specific

Don’t try to be all things to all people, a constantly changing chameleon. By spreading yourself too thin, you’ll end up appealing to nobody instead. It’s better to decide what your brand represents, whether that’s based on your own intrinsic principles or what you’ve ascertained your market wants, and stick with it.

Click here to read about Chelsea Singh.

More Entrepreneurship Quotes

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

– Winston Churchill, British Politician

“The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect.”

– Adam Osborne, American Author

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

– Henry Ford, American Industrialist

“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

– Vince Lombardi, NFL Coach

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

– Winston Churchill, British Politician

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

“The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning – to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki, Entrepreneur, Investor, Author

“Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

– Confucius , Thinker and Philosopher

“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

– Richard Branson, British Industrialist

 

“Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them.”

– Anonymous

“The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.”

– Michael Gerber, Author and Entrepreneur

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

– Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

– Chinese Proverb

Click here to read about Chelsea Singh.

Doctor Xpress Launches!

CS Investments is pleased to announce the launch of Chelsea Singh’s latest business: Doctor Xpress, providing medical services to your home, hotel or place of work.

Doctor Xpress is a new concept in medical care, aimed at providing convenience and efficiency that matches the needs of today’s demanding modern society.

When you’re feeling poorly, the last thing you want to be doing is traipsing over to your GP, and it’s probably one of the worst things you could be doing. Not only are you putting yourself at risk of the elements and exertion, but if you’re contagious, you’re putting others at risk as well. And once you get to the surgery, you’re exposing yourself to all kinds of other illnesses – whilst in your weakened state!

Doctor Xpress addresses these problems and offers a unique new service, where medical services and experts are mobile, travelling to where they’re needed most.

Services include flu vaccinations, travel clinics, sexual health consultations and private GPs. All our staff are professionally trained and registered with the General Medical Council.

The service is available 24/7, every day of the year, so emergency medical help can be with you as soon as possible, when you need it most.

Check out our new website to find out more about the service and what it can offer you.

Starting a Business

In the current climate with even long established businesses going to the wall and many companies struggling to stay afloat there are increasing number of people being made redundant and many of those people consider starting their own business with their redundancy package.

But most businesses fail within the first year – why is that?

Unrealistic expectations

Some people think that running your own business means being able to do what you want to do all the time. That it means waking up at whatever time, staying in your pyjamas all day and taking days off willy nilly. Unfortunately this is pretty much the opposite of the reality of running your own business.

People who start businesses usually work longer hours than those who do 9 – 5 , and  a lot of entrepreneurs are naturally workaholics. If you’re choosing starting a business because it’ll be an easy option, it’s the road to disaster.

Lack of Planning

Many startups think they’ve got a good idea, but fail to do the nitty gritty maths and calculations that are required to work out whether it is actually a viable business or not. Sure, projections of new startups are notoriously difficult and can be wildly wrong, but if it’s going to be literally impossible to make it add up, it’s better to see it from abstract calcultaions than a year later in your bank balance.

Another area where inexperienced people fail is by not checking out the competition properly and assuming customers will be battering down their door. Knowing what you’re up against and having a clear reason for people to buy from you instead of them is critical and you don’t want to be discovering your nemesis later down the line.

Lack of adequate funds                                                             

Businesses need funds to get started. Even starting on a shoestring means having at least a few hundred or thousand. The minimum a business needs to start is a phone, a business card and a website. But most successful business people know that to make a business a success you need to start off by investing.

With the right funding for marketing and giving a professional impression, trust is built quickly and customer bases can be expanded quickly, turning the company into a profit maker rather than having it creep along without breaking even for years.

If you want to give your business the best chance of success, then why not contact Chelsea Singh, via his personal website or check out CS Investments.

Could you run your own business? Part One: Discipline.

Chelsea Singh knew from when he was practically a child that he was going to run his own business one day, and that being employed was simply not an option.

For some people it’s simply something they know, something they feel from very early on, the way other people know they want to be a doctor, or a pilot.

For others, they may start in a more normal route of employment and then later in life decide they want to try their hand at striking out alone.

So what sort of traits and skills does it take to run your own business?

Arguably, the most important traits in someone who is going to start up and run their own business are discipline, a thick skin and determination.

In this article we will explore the first of these; discipline.

A business owner needs discipline

This is absolutely critical for people just starting up. It’s so easy to slump down to the home office in your pyjamas, then spend the morning making coffee, doing the laundry, tidying up – basically anything other than getting on with work. Then, as the days go by and there’s no one else there, punctuality slips and soon you’re rocking up at 10.30am and taking three hour lunch breaks.

This sort of behaviour a successful business will not make.

To get your business up and running and not vanishing into nothingness before you’ve even gotten started, you need to have discipline. Each of us has different levels of natural discipline, but there are a few habits and patterns you can train yourself into to help.

Here are a few tips for getting your habit of discipline into place:

·         Get dressed as if you were going to the office, even though the only person who’s going to see you is the cat. This has a huge mental impact and helps separate ‘work’ time from ‘home’ time.

·         Be strict about hours. Have a specific start time and – and this is much more important than you may think – finish time. And decide on a lunch hour, that you take at the same time every day. Don’t be late and don’t stay for hours of overtime every day. Doing overtime is fine if it’s necessary as a one off, but it shouldn’t be a habit.

·         Have monthly meetings with someone where you have to explain what you’ve achieved that month and what your targets are for the next month.

Read the next part of the article here. 

Click here to visit CS Investments

Sections of a business

Most businesses are split into a few common sections, here is a brief explanation of them:

Sales

The sales department should assess the sales environment, set out the sales pipeline and key performance indicators. There should be clear sales targets and sales staff should be trained in techniques and make regular contact with clients. The sales department will work closely with the marketing department.

Marketing

The marketing department is responsible for the public image of the company and ensuring the right people see the brand at the right time. They need to take advantage of a range of media, from traditional to modern technological in order to improve reach and reputation. The marketing staff will work closely with the sales department.

Human Resources

Human resources or personnel is responsible for the people in the business. This includes contracts, sick pay, pensions, benefits and boosting morale. If a member of staff has a complaint, the HR department should have a process in place for dealing with it, and if a member of staff is caught doing anything anymore the HR people must carry our disciplinary action.

Management

They may jokingly be called ‘manglement’ but in reality, management is absolutely critical. The management team need to make sure all the other departments work consistently and towards common goals. Without management tying everything together, the different areas will go off in random directions and the business can get pulled off course.

Operations

Operations is different to management in that it is preoccupied with processes and procedures and making them ever more efficient and standardised. The more standardised the operations, the more stable and resilient the company will be.

Finance

The finance department will include accountants and accounts assistants, whose job it is to number crunch and take care of all financial transactions, projections and recording of results. They need to be familiar with the complex rules governing accounting in whatever country their working in, to ensure they pay the right amount of tax and categorise everything correctly.

Click here to visit CS Investments website.

Business Basics – The Business Plan: Part One

If you want to start a business and you’re looking for investment, either from  banks or from private investors, you’re going to need a business plan.

A business plan is a document that details various aspects of a proposed business, including the aims of the business, the background of the individuals starting the business, details of the products and services that are on offer, the market, competition, strengths and weaknesses, operations, pricing strategy and financial forecasts.

Aims of the business

This will include a summary of the business, its aims and a brief financial summary. This section is called the executive summary, and although you have to spend hours, days, even weeks preparing your business plan, at the end of the day, this page may be the only part that the investors actually look at.

The background of the individuals starting the business

The business plan should set out why the individuals are the best people to start this business. They must demonstrate that they have the appropriate skills and experience required to make this business a success, including previous work experience, qualifications and education, hobbies and interests and anything else that’s relevant.

Details of the products and services that are on offer

Naturally a key part of the business plan is details of the products and or services that are going to be sold. There should be a single line description and also a more detailed description. Ideally there will be information about Unique Selling Points (USPs) that will give your company the edge over competitors.

The market,

A sign of a serious entrepreneur is one that knows the importance of knowing their market. It’s no good just assuming the market is there and will be beating down your door – you need market research and hard data to crunch. This should include a description of your typical customer, their profile (individuals or businesses, age, wealth levels etc), what their priorities are, whether you’ve sold them before, location and much more.

Competition

The better the devil you know, as they say. New businesses need to know exactly what they’re up against. That means how much competition there is and what it looks like. Who currently holds the market share, how big are they, how long have they been in business, how do they make a success of it? You can learn a lot from your competition, and you need to be very clear about exactly why your customers should buy from you and not them.

Click here to read part two.

Click here to visit CS Investments

How to reach success - more quotes from Chelsea Singh

 

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
Swami Vivekananda
 

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
Ross Perot
 

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles
 

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
David Frost
 

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
George S. Patton
 

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 

Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.
Eileen Caddy

Business Advice - What is a Unique Selling Point?

Once you get into business and start meeting other business people, you'll quickly find that you're asked about what you USP is.

USP stands for Unique Selling Point, or in other words, what is different about your business that will make people buy from you instead of your competitors.

The best businesses will really have a completely unique USP that their competitors can't imitate, meaning they corner a section of the market that simply can't go anywhere else.

However, it's more common that businesses will portray a unique selling point that isn't actually unique at all - but is perceived as so. The key to this is to be the first to do it, and / or to do it more convincingly than your competitors.

A genuine unique selling point may be a unique patented design, which nobody is allowed to copy for some time, or it maybe a family secret recipe or simply a particular location.

More common unique selling points might be price (though competing on price can be a dangerous game), quality or customer service - though obviously these are harder to prove and arguably not unique.

Some businesses come up with something completely original such as being the only ethical player in the industry, the only one to make the product completely out of soap or the only one to deliver a bunch of flowers with every order.

Read more about what it takes to be an entrepreneur on Chelsea Singh's site.

Chelsea Singh Invests in Stack Cup

Chelsea Singh is always looking out for new investments opportunities, and new inventions that change the landscape of insutries, so he was very excited when Stack Cup was brought to his attention.

Before Stack Cup came along, events such as rock concerts and sports agems had a problem - and that problem was cups. Thousands of people wanted to drink beer and water, but you couldn't possibly give them glass in that sort of situation, so the caterers had to resort to cheap plastic cups.

There are many problems wit thes,e including the fact that they are so flimsy means that the contents spill out everywhere, and being disposable they are bad for the environment and work out very expensive, for both supplier and customer.

But now Stack Cup is here! As well as being made from strong durable plastic, which means they are sturdy and reusable - which is good news for planet and money costs - they also have a brand new unique feature - they stack!

That's right - the special shape of the handle allows them to neatly slot into each other and form an elegant spiral, so a single hand can carry half a dozen full cups in one go.

You can find out more about Chelsea Singh's investments here.