Year: 2021

Be Pleasant, Attractive, and Knowledgeable (PAK)

Too often small business owners forget this. They’ve spent some amounts of dollars placing ads in various places and figure that’s enough. Business promotion will take care of itself. It doesn’t. If you want to improve your sales figures or get more clients or keep the customers you have coming back, you have to actively work at business promotion all the time.

But promotion isn’t just advertising, marketing attending sales events; promotion is also how you present yourself.

So how do you present yourself by being:
Pleasant – to everyone.
Attractive- in terms of your value , branding & offerings.
Knowledgeable- Understand your brand strengths, brand sector, competitors and your weakness (to work on them).

1. Ensure Positive First Impressions – But remember, people take in new impressions about your business in terms of how it confirms what they already know about your business. To create an impression, your offerings must have been visible in some way.

2. Promote your business everywhere you go-

Whether while shopping, on a phone conversation , always wear your business mantra. Do the people around you know what you do? Does your hair dresser know what you do?.

Be your business mascot

3. Take advantage of organizations and events to promote your business.

Attending events and joining organizations like Business Women Hub gives room to network with other business people. We all know how to conduct ourselves in a roomful of others like ourselves.

Do not also forget that by doing this, we could also be making valuable contact. Contacts are a real time contact. Talk to people wherever you go; show an interest in them and they’ll respond with an interest in you… and an opportunity to promote your business.

Today, determine to be Pleasant, Attractive & Knowledgeable.

We are available to support you in doing the above. Let’s hear from you!!!.

Take a positive stance

Hi ladies, some time ago, last month, we focused on understanding our business finances, debt ratio, profit margins, etc.

This October, we will focus on ways to ensure this money hits our account…. Yes ladies, how do you ensure you get paid after delivering that service? This is actually very important for service providers , where the client says I will give you 50% now or you get paid after you have set up the decor (for event planners & decorators).

Hate collecting your money? Join the club. Recent studies shows accounts receivables is the top cash flow concern of small business owners. To ensure that we get paid, we will share some debt collection tips and best practices this month of October.

First on the list is :

• Take a Positive Stance

Don’t take it personally if your customers aren’t paying their bills on time…(remember not to lose your customer service tact ,even when this can seem very difficult to do). Look into why the bill is late.

It could be your client simply forgot( I always like to give the benefit of the doubt , this way I remain positive). To help avoid these types of missed payments, provide a gentle reminder immediately following the invoice due date.

Yet to access simple tools for free invoice creation? You can speak to us, as we are always available to support.

Stay connected with us as we share some more tips tomorrow.

Keep winning!!!.

Increase Directness Gradually

Good morning ladies…. Welcome to an exciting Tuesday.

Following our first tip of ensuring we get our outstanding/balance payment from our clients is being direct. However this comes with a skill.

One of the secrets of small business debt collection is to gradually increase the assertiveness of your follow up communication over time. Your first call, letter, or email should give your customer the benefit of the doubt with a positive and helpful tone. But by the third collection letter or correspondence, the tone may be more direct and assertive (but never offensive or unprofessional).

Using the step above will ensure you have ongoing conversations about your bill as well as keep you in the mind of the customer, while not burning brigdes.

Remember, we suggest you send out quotes and payment details through invoices.

Do have a fantastic day.

Keep winning!!!

Use Multiple Channels

Good morning ladies, still on ways to ensure debt is properly collected , small business owners should not that in today’s electronic age, handling invoicing and debt collection over email is simple and quick, but it’s not without its concerns.

Email correspondence can easily become buried in an overstuffed inbox. Use additional means of reaching out to your customers who have missed a payment. Picking up the phone is a great first step, whereas a certified letter may be used after weeks of no response.

Wishing us a great week. This week, endeavour to empower a girl child, knowing that when you do so, you build a nation.

Keep winning!!!

Empower the right people

Hi ladies, we love to see your business bloom & so we will share some more tips on how to handle debt collection for your small business.

As a small business owner, the temptation is great to have the salespeople handle their own accounts receivables, but it’s much better to assign one person to the task of debt collection. Designate your debt collection lead and provide proper support, training, and incentive to do the job right.

Also endeavour to have the sales person handling debt collection send invoice emails for your business through a specified email address… E.g account@aytfarms.ng or aytfarmsaccount@gmail.com.

This way, you can actually process all invoices separately.

Have a great Wednesday & remember you can reach out if you have any questions.

Keep winning !!!

Collection starts when you send the invoice, which should have a due date for payment. When that date passes, it’s time to start thinking about following up with a collection letter. Don’t wait too long. It’s better to send a reminder notice sooner rather than later. Remember, this is money owed to you. The longer you put off collecting it, the more strain it can put on your business.

If you’re not sure what to write, you can use the sample below. Remember these letters are to be short, precise and end with a thank you.

January 8, 2020

Linked Group
123 Lekki Road
Anywhere, Nigeria

Account# or Invoice #:123
Balance due or Past Due Balance:
100,000 Naira

Dear Kola,

This is a reminder that your account balance of One hundred thousand Naira was overdue as of November 28, 2010.

Please pay this amount today, I have enclosed a stamped payment envelope for your convenience.

Thank you for your payment.

Sincerely,

Shade Smith
Linked Group

We remain your #numberone support community.

Hey ladies, it’s been a tough couple of days for our country.. aside from its effect on individuals , it has highly affected business owners at large.

It is thus very important that businesses have a crisis communication plan in place for their customers. This goes beyond minor adjustments to marketing messages. The plan must extend to customer service teams, your website, social channels, customer-facing staff, and more.

While we often can’t control the societal crisis at hand, we can control our response to it.

In this post are 5 tips you can adopt in formulating a plan that communicates the crisis as well as your business to your customers.

Our hearts are with all of us in this times and hope that a better Nigeria is birthed.

Stay safe.

Hey ladies, welcome to a new week to conquer. With all the recent happenings in Nigeria, for small business owners who have employees, as well as those who do not have , we generally may be reluctant to return to work this week, after the entire mayhem for several reasons. One, of course, is fear of a mishap or a security threat.

We have thus put together some points that can help business owners and employees navigate this period.

Do read through and remember you can reach out to us if you have any questions or require any support.

Keep winning!!!

Hey ladies, in this post we have listed some tips for content creation for your business.

Anyone can create irrelevant content. Creating content that has been published, republished, reworked, and repurposed a million times is easy and not very good for your brand – with copyright laws & the risk of it not been the right one for your brand.

But creating valuable, relevant, quality content is hard. It takes time, effort, energy, resources, and knowledge. Most of this—in small businesses—is wrapped up in the owners who are also tasked with running the business, serving the clients, and managing the marketing and sales.

Also, in all honesty, just the thought of content creation can make many business owners cringe in horror.

Writing and content creation, especially if you’re out of practice, is not fun. Then when you add on the pressure of making it something your audience will drool over and engage with can be incredibly intimidating.

Studies have shown that :

•Website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters.
•73% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did one year ago.
•95% of B2B enterprise marketers use content marketing.
•86% of B2C marketers use content marketing.
•60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each week.

Your audience and prospects are using social media, they click links, read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, subscribe to newsletters—and they share the high-quality, high-value content with their friends.

Consumers buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready for them to buy.

If you’re not there, top of mind when your prospects are ready to buy through content creation, know that your competitors will be.

Keep winning ladies.

Kindly tag a friend who should see this. Cheers!