We are different. We would like to brand our cars with tasteful designs that is in keeping with the profession but at the same time are not boring and stuffy. Here is where you come in.

We would be grateful for your views (feedback) on the  car branding design links below. Please indicate which one you like. The one with the highest number of votes will be our chosen design.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Here are the links:

beetle_rosette This file has 6 pages

lines This file has 2 pages

A big thank you to Bison Bison (one of our clients)  for the designs.

They should reflect what you are trying to portray with your décor and choice of furnishings. This doesn’t always mean you want them to look expensive, as you may not want people to think they are paying for your luxury premises.

Use posters and blow-ups of adverts and press articles about you inside the building.

Your premises need to be tidy both inside and out. An untidy premises infers an untidy disorganised business. How often do you see the team at McDonalds tidying up outside – they know it matters.  Tax Inspectors are trained to interview people in rooms without any other files. What this does is create an impression they have all the time in the world to look into your affairs. Take a look at how tidy your premises look and whether it conveys the impression you want.

Not all businesses need special premises, and many self-employed people can work from home, creating convenience and cost savings. You may need to notify your house insurers as working from home can change the risk and your mortgage company. However, they are not normally a major obstacle. You could also look at using a shed in your garden and there are many suppliers of garden offices and workshops. Insurance for these will be a bit higher because of there being less security.

Serviced offices are also a very flexible way to take premises without any long-term commitment, often taking a licence for just one month at a time. They also offer services such as typing, reception, furniture, phone lines, etc.

If renting, get a solicitor with commercial experience to look at the lease. Areas to consider include…

• Length of the lease.
• Rent level.
• How often and the terms of rent reviews.
• Restrictions on use of the property.
• Can it be sub-let?
• Can you sell the lease on?
• Who is responsible for repairs and renewals?
• Who is responsible for internal decorating?
• Who pays the legal fees in connection with the lease?
• Consider the need for a survey, especially if it is a full repairing lease.
• What are the rates?

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This is where the power of testimonials and case studies comes in. It’s praise from your existing customers, the media, other experts or even a celebrity. They are extremely powerful.

You must have systems to collect them and then leverage the power of them by using them in all your marketing materials.

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Now, we’re agreed you are the most important person in the world.

The problem is that the customer thinks they are and that’s why you have to treat them that way if your business is to be successful.

Would you believe that if your customers are satisfied, you’re in trouble? That’s right, you read it correctly…

Let’s say you have a 95% customer satisfaction rating. Sounds great, but what it means is that you have 5% going round telling everyone how awful you are. The other 95% felt ok about you so they may shop with you but they could shop anywhere – they don’t have any special loyalty to you.

What’s more, a dissatisfied customer is 20 times more likely to tell someone. So if 95% of your customers are happy, you’ll have more negative than positive message out in the market place.

It’s loyalty you should be after, not just satisfaction. For example, the typical customer satisfaction question may ask “did you enjoy your stay?” or  “were we friendly?” The only answers these give are ones of satisfaction, not designed to find out if the customer felt great and had a memorable experience that creates loyalty. You must use questions designed to find out how loyal your customers are.

Here are typical examples of how most businesses treat their customers and why their customers will never be anything more than just satisfied…

“We’ve done all we can…”

“You’ll have to…”

“That’s not my job…”

“The person who deals with that is on holiday”

“Our policy says…”

“We’re out of stock, I don’t know when we’ll have some more”

“What seems to be the problem”

“Let me transfer you”

“I’ll have to check if that’s OK”

“Sorry, that offer ended yesterday”

“Why didn’t you…”

An insincere “Sorry about that”

“You don’t have to be rude about it”

“I’m just doing my job”

And aren’t those computerised phone systems great for customer service, not!

The list is endless. So many people seem to act like they’re doing the customer a favour.

The best rule to follow is…

If you wouldn’t like it done to you, don’t do it to someone else.

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Customer Dedication

Successful businesses all have an understanding of their customers needs or rather perceived needs and a total dedication to their customers.

Their marketing strategy is built around the customer – “what must the business be for the customer to choose us?”

Everything they do is focused on the customer and they are continuously improving how they do it.

In order to do this they need to understand the demographics (who they are) and the psychographics (why they buy) of their customers. Only then can you build your business to serve them.

Adding Value

Customers buy perceived value, which is the difference between the perceived benefits and the price. The more you increase the difference the more value that is added to the customer. The benefits are unlimited but there’s only so low the price can go which is why it’s often better not to work on the basis of price-cutting.

Explaining that a pair of shoes are made of leather, why they are more comfortable, shock absorbing, will last, etc will make their perceived value higher than the same shoes that are not so described.

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You have to operate a PAYE scheme to deal with the tax and national insurance on their wages.

The national insurance includes the employees national insurance which is deducted from their wages but the additional cost to you is employers national insurance which you have to bear.

You will also find you have other obligations…

• To adhere to the minimum wage legislation.

• To adhere to the Working Time Regulations that control how many hours a worker can work. Generally, most employees cannot work more than 48 hours per week and must have one whole day off, although the employee (not the employer) has the option to opt out of this. Employees are entitled to 28 days annual paid holiday.

• Redundancy pay if you have to lay off any of your employees.

• The employee has a right to a written statement of the terms and conditions of their employment.

• To provide itemised pay statements.

• To take out compulsory employers liability insurance.

• You must not dismiss the employee unfairly.

• The employee has the right to join a trade union.

• The employee must be given time off for certain public duties.

• You must operate a PAYE system to collect tax and national insurance from the employee and pay it over to the Inland Revenue.

• You must also deal with statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay.

• You have to administer the repayment of student loans and stakeholder pensions as well as payment of Tax Credits through the PAYE system.

With all this you may be tempted to do away with employees and just use self-employed contractors to work for you. However, you need to ensure they are properly self-employed. Just because you say they are does not make them self-employed and the Revenue are wise to this. There are ways of improving your chances but if you get it wrong, the consequences can be substantial including the Revenue demanding from you all the tax and national insurance that you should have deducted and your chance of now reclaiming it from your employee may be minimal.

You can create a system that your employees are capable of following but only if the employees are motivated to do so, will they actually do so. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

You must create an environment in which the employees want to follow the rules and are motivated to achieve their full potential. People work harder when they are motivated. Just imagine the impact you can make if you change the attitude of your employees from “I have to go to work “ to “I get to go to work”. You don’t want people whose spirit dies as they enter the office door.

People’s basic needs have to be met first which comes from the cash you pay them. However after that, it’s all down to motivation.

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You do firstly have to decide if the business you are in or are looking at is capable of delivering what you are pursuing. If it’s not an opportunity worth pursuing, it doesn’t matter how much you plan it, it won’t deliver what you want.

Your business strategy should be based on your standards and values if it is to tie in with your life plan.

Without this plan of where you are aiming to get to, it makes it far harder to get there. By having goals, it makes it easier to determine if what you are doing is moving you towards that goal or not and you can plan to put everything in place to get there.

It enables you to identify the key challenges that need to be overcome if you are to reach your goal. Once you know the challenges, the cause and the real effect of not meeting them, you can identify the most fundamental challenges and then establish how to overcome them.

Here are the kind of things to consider in the strategic objective for your business of what your business will look like in 5 years time and when it is complete…

• What type of business will you have?
• What products and services do you offer?
• How large is the business with reference to turnover, gross profit, costs and net profit?
• What will the growth be over the period with regards to sales, new products, new markets, and number of employees?
• What will be your market position?
• What reporting systems will you use?
• How will your employees be trained?
• What geographic markets will you supply?
• What will be unique about the business and what will be your unique selling points with regards to distinctive products, marketing, operations and customer service.
• How much is your business worth now and on completion?

Research on goal setting has proven the following helps people achieve their goals…

• It’s better to set your goals high rather than low.
• Write down your goals. People who write down their goals are far more likely to reach them. There is a saying, “if you don’t write something down, it doesn’t exist”.
• You can keep refining you goals and reviewing them as you go along. Things do change.

• Goals should be SMART goals to achieve the best results.  This stands for:

1. Specific – how much, for whom, for what, etc
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time framed – by when

For example, having a goal to get rich is not a smart goal. However a goal of “to have £100,000 in the bank in 5 years time” could be a smart goal. It’s far easier to put the specific steps in place to achieve this type of goal.

• Goals such as “to be the best at what you do” or “to love what you do” tend to lead to people being more successful than “to make lots of money” goals. The money does come but it is a result of having more meaningful goals in the first place

Now we know where we’re going, we have to get there…

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Or the 20% of customers who give you 80% of your grief.

Pareto’s Law can help to identify the 20% that most of your effort should be concentrated on. You may not even need the other 80% at all.

Perhaps the same is true of many of other things – 80% of your sales come from 20% of your sales force or perhaps 80% of your employee problems are caused by 20% of your employees.

Always look to see with everything if the extra 20% you get is worth the 80% of input. It can be a very useful law for identifying where you can make the biggest changes in your business.

Please view our Bookkeeping system video

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• Prioritise your workload.

• Write a priority action list at the end of each day, ready for tomorrow.

• See the job through – don’t start, put it down and come back to it as it wastes time getting started again.

• Delegate wherever possible. Especially unimportant jobs.

• Hold efficient meetings. Consider if they are needed at all? Holding meetings standing up or on the phone will shorten them and avoid wasted chitchat.

• Say “NO” if you’re not the right person to ask.

• Put time aside when colleagues know you’re not to be interrupted each day.

• Don’t do everything to perfection. Being 100% perfect takes twice as long as 90% perfection, which is often good enough.

• Use call logging sheets, not scraps of paper, to record phone calls.

• Distinguish between urgent and non-urgent interruptions. Something that is important isn’t always urgent.

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However it is overlooked that to run a successful business, especially in the early years you need…

• Motivation
• Focus
• Capacity to work hard
• Self –reliance
• Support of your family
• A skill or a good product.

Starting your own business takes determination, perseverance and self-discipline. Beware if you are starting for negative reasons, perhaps just because you dislike your boss or you like drinking in pubs and so thought it would be great to run a pub. Running your own business is a big step. Take time to consider and plan.

It’s not playing golf when you want and taking holidays when you want. There can be a lot of admin and red tape to deal with. The customer becomes your boss and they pay your wages.

Of all the tens of thousands of people who still start a business of some sort…

• By the end of the first year, 40% will have failed.

• Within 3 years, 56% will have failed.

• Within 5 years, 76% will have failed.

Of those who go past 5 years, there’s no guarantee they will survive the next 5 years.

So what are the common problems suffered by small businesses…

• The owners work too hard and for too many hours.

• Personal objectives of the owners such as hobbies and spending time with their family end up low down on the list of priorities.

• The owners spend too much time doing the day-to-day technical work rather than planning and managing the business.

• The owners don’t know where their business is going.

• The owners don’t understand that in order for a business to have a good sale value it must work without them.

• Many owners get frustrated and simply give up and go back to being an employee.

• The rewards don’t match the effort.

They often face common problems in managing their business…

• No consistency in delivery of their product.

• Can’t depend on their employees to get it right.

• They focus on people rather than systems, which creates problems when the people leave.

• Systems that are in place are not documented but in the head of the person who leaves.

• The owner ends up doing everything.

• Employees are not as diligent as the owners.

• The owner spends too much time filled up with other people’s problems and administration.

• The owner always has to supervise and guide employees.

• They have no idea how they compare with other similar businesses and competitors with respect to financial performance or non-financial areas such as human recourses, production, marketing, etc. They therefore don’t know where there are areas for improvement.

With regards to marketing these are common problems for small businesses…

• It’s done ad hoc rather than in a systematised way.

• They don’t know what works.

• They don’t fully understand why their customers buy.

• They don’t know who their most profitable customers are.

• They don’t measure their marketing results against costs.

• They take on customers they later regret dealing with.

• Bad debt problems.

Then there are the dreaded financial problems…

• Relying on short-term overdrafts to try to support long-term growth.

• Over relying on the bank due to over trading.

• No system for projecting income and expenditure.

• No system for measuring key financial indicators against their plan.

• Accounts are not useful to the business.

• Accounts are not produced quickly enough.

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• Believe you can.

• Create the right environment at home and at work.

• Enjoy yourself.

• Expose yourself to what’s new and keep learning.

• Plan what you’re going to do.

• Stick at it.

• Be willing to take risks.

• Take responsibility for your actions.

• Take action – follow Nike’s “just do it” slogan.

Please contact us to support you to make your business a real success.

Start by imagining your own funeral and what you would like to say to all your friends, colleagues and acquaintances about your life, once it’s too late to now do anything about it.

• What would you like your life story to be?
• What would you like to have achieved?
• What would you like your life to have been like?
• What battles would you like to have won?
• What moral values would you like to have lived up to?

Only when you answer these types of questions can you move onto your business and develop that to fulfil your personal objectives.

It may be that you stop there. If a business isn’t going to be the thing that helped you fulfil your life’s ambitions. Better to sort this out up front, than waste precious time going down the wrong road.

Particularly with businesses owned by more than one person, it’s important that each individual owners’ personal objectives can be met by the same business. For example, do you know when your partner wants to exit the business and does this work for your business strategy. If individual goals can’t be met by the same business, it’s time to think again.

You need an open and honest discussion of each other’s personal goals to identify any problem areas at this stage and to then identify a business strategy to deliver those goals for all.

It’s important the business serves the owner, so personal goals must come first.

Here are some questions to answer personally to get you going…

• Are you happy with what you do in the business?
• If not, how would you like to change what you do?
• Do you have a planned retirement date and exit routes and what are they?

• Do you spend enough time away from the business?

• Is there anything you would particularly like to do, success trappings you would like or experiences to have over the next 5 years?

• What don’t you want in your life?

• What do you want out of life?

• What are the most important things for you and what gets in the way?

• What income do you want in each of the next 5 years?

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Everybody makes mistakes. Don’t listen to those who say you’ll learn from them. May be you will, may be you won’t. After all, Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before becoming a success.

Don’t worry about making mistakes if you want to succeed in business. You need to decide for yourself if you can live with failure knowing you tried your best. Is that not better than not to have tried at all? Many successful entrepreneurs believe it’s better to have tried and failed than never have had the courage to try.

You need to take action and get started. Sure, you don’t know everything but don’t wait forever planning or you’ll do nothing.

If you don’t know about taxes, so what? There’s no tax to worry about until you start making some money anyway.

And don’t beat a dead horse. Recognise when something is not going to work, cut your losses and move on. There’s no rule about you can only start one business in your lifetime. You have 365 new chances every year to accomplish your goals.

Read And Learn From Others.

The most successful people have an insatiable need to know more, rather than defending what they already know. Read books, magazines, learn from others and continue to move forward. Try to learn something new everyday.

You can learn a lot from what other businesses are doing, especially those that are not in your industry. What ideas can you take from totally different types of businesses and apply them to yours. In sales, manufacturers tend to have used a field sales force, retailers use adverts and professional services use referrals but think how much more successful they could all be if they added methods from other businesses. Use the principle of duality by looking at other businesses. That’s what we’re doing in this report.

Fed Ex copied the banks method of clearing cheques overnight to develop an overnight package delivery service.

There was a double-glazing firm who offered free window installation if you signed up to have your windows fitted before the World Cup started and England happened to win. A firm of accountants copied the concept but applied it to accountancy services, adding the bonus that if Scotland won, it was free accountancy services for life – a totally risk free offer! In reality they placed a bet at the bookies to cover themselves and this was their marketing cost. This beat their conventional marketing offers many times over.

So look and learn from others. Adapt and adopt what you read here as makes sense to you.

A grant is when an amount of money is given to an individual or business to be used for a specific project or purpose. It normally only covers part of the cost or service with the balance paid for by the person receiving the grant.

There are many sources of grants for business development, often linked to specific business activities like exporting, training, specific industries and specific geographic areas in need or economic regeneration. Many grants are limited to small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – typically one with fewer than 250 employees.

The government provides support through not only financial support but advice and training.

The following are key areas of government support…

1. Grants for research and development, and innovation.
2. Grants for training and skills development. You can read about funding for training on the Learning and Skills Council website.
3. The New Deal
4. The Princes Trust for young entrepreneurs. Anyone unemployed or employed in a part-time or low-paid job, aged 18-30 and with a business idea, can apply for funds to the Prince’s Trust.
5. Economic regeneration.

Competition for monetary grants can be fierce. They come with strict terms and conditions that must be followed or the grant repaid and they are normally for specific proposed projects and not those already started.

The amount of matching funds to be provided by the receiver of the grant will vary from grant to grant. Sometimes it could be half and other times considerably less. The matching funds can come from the the business, a loan or from a new investor.

Grant Applications

When you have identified the right grant to apply for you will need to provide:

• a detailed project description
• an explanation of the potential benefits of the project
• a detailed work plan with full costings
• details of your own relevant experience and that of other key managers
• completed application forms where stipulated

The application is normally judged according to the following criteria:

• significance
• approach
• innovation
• their assessment of your expertise

Local grants are processed more quickly but grants can take anything from a few weeks to a year to get a decision.

What not to do when applying for a grant

The following are common reasons why grant applications are rejected…

• The area for which the grant is applied for is not relevant to the body awarding the grant.
• The explanation of how research ideas will be translated into an achievable plan of action is unsatisfactory.
• There are not enough facts in support of the proposal..
• The amount of work is unrealistic.
• The impact of the work on the wider community/industry has not been communicated effectively.
• Information provided in the application is not up-to-date.
• It has not been made clear how important the funds are to the project’s success or failure.
• The applicant cannot prove they have matched funds.

If your application is declined then it is important to get feedback to help you in structuring future grant applications.

How We Can Help You

We can assist you in drawing up an effective business plan and grant application. Please contact us.