Negotiators Are The Key To Success For A Business – Here’s How To Be A Good One

Businesses use negotiation in a number of different ways. You can negotiate in business for both informal day-to-day interactions and formal transactions. These could include negotiating for things such as negotiating conditions of sale, lease, service delivery, and other legal contracts.

Negotiation should not be your enemy. In business, negotiation can be the difference between a deal that creates the best outcome, and a deal that leaves both sides exhausted, resentful and dissatisfied with the outcome.

Good negotiations contribute significantly to business success, as they:

  • help you build better relationships
  • deliver lasting, quality solutions — rather than poor short-term solutions that do not satisfy the needs of either party
  • help you avoid future problems and conflicts.

To be a good negotiator, you will need to be flexible, creative, a good planner, honest, win-win oriented and a good communicator.

It’s important to ensure that your negotiation skills are up to par. You will want to be certain that you are using them most effectively. The key here is to focus on three critical areas:

  • People –  Listen actively, and speak to be understood when negotiating. You need to both understand the other’s perception of what is involved, and keep a rational, cool head.
  • Opinion – Work with the other party to brainstorm a variety of options that could work towards an agreement. Look for ways to dovetail differing interests by exploring options that are of low cost to you and high benefit to the other party and vice versa.
  • Interest – Behind each negotiation position lies a compatible as well as a conflicting interest, so make sure you understand why the other person has taken their position.

Marketing PR Strategies That Use Your Greatest Asset: The Employee

There’s nothing better than a quick and easy marketing strategy that boosts your business’s visibility. But are you using all of the PR strategies that are available to your business?

Small marketing initiatives can be just as effective as large-scale press conferences and advertising if handled effectively, and often far more affordable to small businesses.

Use the assets that you already have. A simple marketing strategy that your business can employ is, upon hiring new staff, encouraging them to promote the business on their personal social media. Turn your employees into your brand advocates. 

Their self-promotion of the brand will foster a better image of your business to their friends and audience, and give your products a spotlight in an alternate arena.

Gifting them branded accessories as a “congratulations” for starting their new job may lead to them linking back to your business – promoting a positive internal culture, a company value of appreciating your employees, and a spot of free advertising on top of it. You can also elect to gift your employees small products throughout the year (as a thank you, or congratulations for example) that they may have mentioned in passing.

Use your employee’s social media to your advantage. Create shareable moments that your employee would promote, such as company events, sports teams and other activities. These can be shared via social media or word of mouth and can feel far more authentic and personal than company-driven promotion.

You can also acknowledge your employee’s contributions and achievements on the business’s social media. This personalises the account, and grants faces to the brand. You can also choose to make these acknowledgements face to face, over internal channels (such as company newsletters) or on the public social media account of your company (such as LinkedIn or Facebook). This will enable the employee to share their success with others outside of work, including friends and family. It is also a great way to build brand reputation externally, and through networks outside of your own.

These PR strategies involve your employees, which is a resource you really should utilise more in your marketing. If you’ve built a strong internal culture for your business, your employees are more likely to take pride in their work and show off their achievements themselves.

Take the time to consider how you can strengthen your employee’s sense of belonging within your business culture – the benefits will speak for themselves.

Choosing A Structure For Your Business: The Co-Operative Explained.

Sometimes you might want to set up a structure where you will share in the spoils with everyone that deals with that structure.  There is a specific type of structure for this and it is known as a Co-Operative

A co-operative business structure (or co-op) is a legally incorporated business entity that is designed to serve the interests of its members. Co-operatives may be profit-sharing enterprises or not-for-profit organisations.

A cooperative business serves members by providing goods and services that may be unavailable or too costly to access as individuals. There are two types of cooperatives that businesses can be set up as.

Distributing cooperatives are able to distribute any annual profits to members of the cooperative. They are required to share the capital that they make, and members of this type of cooperative must own the minimum number of shares specified in the co-op’s rules.

Non-distributing cooperatives cannot share their profits with members of the cooperative. All profits must further the cooperative’s purpose, and the cooperative may or may not issue shares to the members. Members may be charged a subscription fee if there is no share capital

Some popular cooperatives business structures include:

  • Consumer co-operatives, which buy and sell goods to members at competitive prices in a variety of sectors.
  • Producer co-operatives, which may process, brand, market and distribute members’ goods and services, or supply goods and services needed by their members, or operate businesses that provide employment to members.
  • Service co-operatives, which provide a variety of essential services to their members and communities.
  • Financial co-operatives, including co-operative banks, credit unions, building societies and friendly societies, which then provide investment, loan and insurance services to their members.

Planning Out Succession For Your Family-Run Business

Family-run businesses form an essential part of the economy. Tradition, success and history along with their unique dynamic can create a thriving business that many may wish to see continue.

 

 However, as with any business, the conversation about succession and how to continue the business into the future needs to be had. 

 

With only 1 in 4 family-operated businesses considering their approach to succession formally, succession in a family business is one of the greatest viability risks to the actual business and needs to be addressed accordingly.

 

Every family and family-run business is unique, and every transfer or succession of a family business will also be executed differently. If you are thinking about what your family business’s plan is for succession, you may want to consider keeping these critical factors in mind:

 

  • Where is your business going? What do you want for your family and business? What are your goals and your time frames for achieving those goals?
  • Is the vision you have for your business shared by your family? It is important to consider this for the succession of your business, as a mutually shared vision will ensure that the business continues on the projected path even after the business has been passed onto the next generation.
  • What obstacles and challenges will your family business face? You need to be able to understand the different perspectives and motivations of each individual that the succession impacts. Ongoing communication is vital to gaining this understanding, but an advisor can be employed to unbiasedly look at the situation independently and take the emotion out of a conversation.
  • Create a plan to plot out the path of the business’s future, and the challenges that the business may face along the way as well as what it is currently facing. 
  • It’s important to remember that a family business does not have to be succeeded by a family (though it’s an outcome you may want). Always consider what the members of your family wish to do, and consider alternatives if none wish to take over the business.

 

A succession plan for a family business needs to be created to move forward and should detail all of the actions you intend to take (including the steps involved with both management and ownership succession). 

 

It needs to be flexible, adaptable and ready to evolve, as businesses (as well as families), change over time. Your succession planning process should be transparent and understand and align with the goals you have set out for the business’s further development across the generations. 

 

The most effective succession plans:

  • Preserve and generate family wealth
  • Minimise disharmony and disruption
  • Minimise the impact of tax
  • Encourage personal growth of family members 
  • Fund the retirement and family lifestyle
  • Bring clarity to where the business and the family are heading.

Boosting The Business With A Free Resource: Your Customers

More and more Australians bought local products during the past year and rallied behind smaller businesses, which buoyed many shops that may have otherwise struggled to stay afloat. 

To create this kind of loyalty and support it’s crucial to develop and maintain a strong connection with your customers. 

If you are a small business, this is a vital aspect of business management that you will want to have occurred to strengthen customer relationships. 

Make The Customer Feel Special

Customers want to feel special – you can achieve this by approaching each customer as an individual rather than as a customer per se. Making the user interactions tailored to suit each customer’s specific needs/usage of your products will enhance the relevance and improve the authenticity of the interaction. Your customers will feel heard by your business and seen.

Let Your Customer Feel Heard

Always ensure that the customer feels heard – if the customer has a complaint, treat it the same way that you treat a good review, and respond accordingly. This builds trust with the customer and future customers that you will hear them out, and act the best you can to assist. 

Reward Customer Loyalty & Strengthen Connections

Go above and beyond for your customers – if you’re a small business, you can use the closer connection you may have with your customers to your advantage and offer additional loyalty discounts, recommendations, and phenomenal customer support. 

Follow Up With Your Customers

Follow up with customers (new and current) to ascertain reception of products and services, spearhead a proactive approach to appraisals and determine if a poor customer experience has been had. Following up allows customers to feel acknowledged while also granting you access to potential data that you may not have received otherwise. 

Connect Via Social Media 

Ensuring that you remain actively involved on your social media for your business with your customers should increase interaction. With many looking to online platforms to browse products, leave reviews and share favourite products via social media, it makes sense to turn your social media platform into a way to make your brand shine. Actively engaging with customers, responding to comments and questions, and directing your brand’s narrative are great ways to use social media to strengthen your connection.

Your Existing Customers Should Come First

Prioritise the customers you already have over the accrual of potential customers. If you’ve already got an established customer base, one of the best ways to maintain it is to keep them happy. You don’t want to risk losing them during the growth of your business due to less attention and more subpar customer service. The best way to maintain customer loyalty is to ensure that you can meet their needs, follow up with their requests (to the best of your ability) and satisfy their customer service needs. 

What Can Engaging A Business Adviser Do For You?

Feel like your business is stuck in a rut? Unable to solve a problem that you know is going to cost you in the long run?  It might not be financially tanking, and it’s highly likely that your revenue stream isn’t down, but if you’re not sure what direction to take, it could also mean that you need a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at particular issues that your business is facing to deal with them.

Business advisers can be engaged across many fields with specially focused advice or strategies to a specific area (such as accountants, business bankers or commercial lawyers) or be a business adviser who is dedicated to considering the overall goals and long-term ramifications of your business’s strategies.

A business adviser can be hired on either a one-time basis (to deal with one-off problems your business is set to face) or on an ongoing basis to provide continued support.

Suppose you’re only looking for a particular solution to a problem. In that case, one-time advice from a business adviser can be an easy and cost-effective solution to solve that particular problem. However, suppose you’re looking for long-term ongoing support that’s backed by years of experience and a perspective that’s looking to preempt these issues. In that case, ongoing advice may be more appropriate for your needs.

Engaging a business adviser can provide your business with fresh ideas based on an objective analysis of your business’s current performance and situation.

As an example, contracting an accountant in a business adviser role means that you are looking for strategic and financial advice like profitability improvement, tax planning and advice regarding business performance.

An adviser who can offer timely and relevant advice to your financial situation can make a huge difference to your business in the long run.

If you’re looking for assistance in plotting out the financial future of your business, you can come and speak with us. We’re well-equipped to assist you in mapping out your business’s plan for the future, so start a conversation with us today to see how we can help.

With The End Of Financial Year Approaching, Now Is The Perfect Time To Plan Your Business’s Future

With the end of the 2020 financial year rapidly approaching this month, many businesses will be reflecting on how they managed to navigate and meet the challenges of a turbulent time (namely, the COVID-19 pandemic).

By taking what they have learned, what worked and what failed, businesses should be able to plan for their future for the next financial year and understand how to take their learnings from the previous year forward with them to create preventative strategies and coping measures.

A good business plan recognises these periods of change as opportunities to innovate, challenge the business and engineer a plan that allows them to take chances but remain safe at the same time.

Planning For Your Business’s Financial Future This Financial Year

  • Ensure that you are legally compliant with your approach to your employees by conducting an audit of all employment contracts.
  • Plan out and undertake a risk-management plan to identify vulnerable areas and what strategies you can employ to mitigate their effect. Include potential exit strategies for the business and a succession plan for worst-case scenarios.
  • If there were any excellent habits or innovations developed throughout the pandemic, retaining them should be a priority
  • Manage financial obligations, such as commitments to leases, staff, debt etc., and see how those can be managed in the event of volatility or turbulence. Revisit grants and support packages and see if these are still available/useful to you
  • Plot out guaranteed, likely and potential projects or income and your expenses, taxes, overheads, wages and subsidies that should be accounted for ahead of time.
  • Surplus cash generated can be used to pay down debt or take advantage of opportunities through reinvestment in areas such as hiring new staff or purchasing equipment (especially with the instant asset write off scheme being extended for another year)
  • Consider implementing reliable financial software (such as e-invoicing) to ensure everything from expenses and invoices to taxes and analytics are meticulously organised.

We are here to help you plan out your business’s future for the next financial year, including how to prepare financially for any eventualities, what might be the best path forward to deal with potential or existing debts, and what schemes or grants your business could be helpful to your business. Contact us for an appointment today.