Many times it happens that you have been followed up for umpteen number of times and finally you ended up buying that product/service ?  Yes, that’s the power of consistent follow up. On a daily basis an entrepreneur meets many people around. Obviously he has  huge business cards collection with him. But not everyone is converted into leads.  This is due to lack of  proper follow up.  Your business  is your asset.  When you set your target audience,  you need to have follow ups with them to reach your ultimate goals of selling your product/services. An entrepreneur may feel Follow up as a weak task to complete and sometimes quite demotivating.  But remember that it’s an art to convince people with your constant perseverance, positive attitude, and with right approach. Research shows  that only 20% of sales leads are ever followed up and 80% of potential opportunities are lost merely due to lack of follow-up after the first meet. Some observed statistics on this are : 44% of sales people give up after one “NO”; 22% give up after two “NOs”; 14% give up after three “NOs”; 12% give up after four “NOs”. Means that 92% of sales people give […]

Incepted in 1952 by Mr.G.K.Pendharkar, Chairman, Vicco Laboratories (Vicco Ayurvedic products) company had the major goal to make the boons of Ayurveda available to every home within India and also in outside world. Today they are the makers of the best products of Ayurveda all over the world conquering Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Australia. The successful businesses are based on goals, as it define the purpose of the business and help analyze necessary action plans. For my business purpose, I visit entrepreneurs every day. My observation is that most of these entrepreneurs do not have clear goals. Unless you have clear goals about what and when to achieve, it is very difficult to reach there. A goal can be defined as an expected state that a company endeavors to achieve. There are objectives to be set, to reach a goal. An objective is a short-term target to accomplish, with a deadline. If you are going for a business meeting, unless you fix the time and venue of the meeting, you will not be able to conduct the meeting.     In your business, where you spend your 60 percentt. time, it is critical to set goals, i.e. where and when […]

Salute to the  SPIRIT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP  !!!!! Entrepreneurs create Jobs. Entrepreneurs bring Innovation. Entrepreneurs contribute to National Economy. Entrepreneurs generate Investments. As CEO of Meduyojak which is a Business Networking Platform, I keep on meeting entrepreneurs every day. Some of them are well established while some are startups with dreams to make it BIG. I also meet or speak to people who are working in corporates and are contemplating about starting their own business. They always enquire about the challenges a startup faces. I am writing this article to just highlight some of the typical challenges faced by startups. However I believe that all these challenges can be overcome if they work smart during their foundation days. Starting up your own business is quite complicated. Startups have to face lot of initial challenges till they establish themselves as successful business owners.  An old saying goes ‘A smooth sea never makes good sailors’, similarly an entrepreneur’s journey towards success is never straight or smooth.  He has to face and withstand plenty challenges to become a successful businessman. Nearly 90% of startups fail before end of three years. There are many reasons why startups fail.  Here are few major difficulties faced by […]

The average business loses around 24 percent of its customers annually simply by failing to attend to customer relationships. Irony is that the company invests a huge amount of time, efforts and expenses in building that initial customer relationship.  Then this relationship goes unattended.  Sometimes immediately after the sale has been made, sales-person loses interest in those clients.  Eventually then those clients tend to forget your company and opt the other options open in market.  This drops down company’s growth rate drastically. Most companies don’t realize that the fastest, cheapest and lowest risk way of protecting their business is not only finding new customers, but nurturing existing customers as well.  This is Customer Retention. For startups, the customer retention is crucial in order to build the strong customer base to pull profit from. Customer Retention begins with the first contact a customer has with a company and continues throughout the entire lifetime of the relationship, earning and maintaining their loyalty continuously. Customer Retention is the measure of customer loyalty and the capacity of the business to keep its existing customers satisfied by good quality and good services offered after the product is sold.  It is influenced by how many new […]

Do you tend to lose control of your daily work agenda and create a mess of your day? Do you find your plans going haywire again and again, due to distractions, overloading and under-planning of tasks, and most often, procrastination</p> So how are you going to deal with it ?  What is the way to extract the maximum efficiency from the limited time in hand? Basically increase in productivity means working smarter. So, here’re some techniques to increase productivity by managing your time skillfully : 1]   Avoid procrastination  — One of the major reasons of procrastination is failure or afraid of trying for the goals you set when you foresee all the hurdles coming in way.  The best way to avoid this procrastination is just start doing it. Instead of getting overwhelmed, plan for short goals.  It will accelerate  your work power and increase productivity. 2]  Don’t be multi-tasker  —  When you toggle back and forth between tasks, you tend to commit more mistakes. Researches show that people who try to accomplish two or more activities at a time end up distracted and results in poor quality work. Your ability to get things done depends on how well you can focus […]

  Established business get more than 70% of their business through word of mouth. The heart of all businesses is relationships.  The successful business people understand the value of referrals when it comes to growing their business.  Referrals are strong leads that come through trust earned, and by developing relationships with people.     Your referral strategy should emphasize more on strengthening relationships. Create your customers in such a way that they create more customers for you.  Automatically there will be constant flow of referrals in your sales pipeline. Here are few easy ways to get more referrals for your startup  :   1]  Accessible and approachable contact information  —  Make sure that your contact information is easily available, accessible and approachable for the people to share or interact with you.  This means that your contact information (email, website) is mentioned in all your business materials, including your invoices, marketing materials, email signatures and social media.  Give your business cards freely even if the person may just be an acquaintance.   2]  Get out of your comfort zone and pitch at the right place  —   Every one of your business contacts has the potential to connect you to plenty […]

  A steady stream of customer referrals can transform any struggling business into a profitable one. Building a strong referral network in business is one of the most effective strategies that any size of business should have.  Researches show that most of the SMEs get their biggest boosts from customer referrals, not Facebook, Linkedin or other social media sites. People influence people.  A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message.  A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.                                                               Mark Zuckerberg,    Founder and CEO, Facebook    Getting a business through cold calls is tough.  It is always easier when someone recommends your product/services to someone else.  The word-of-mouth marketing is most basic yet quite effective form of marketing.  It brings in new, comparatively loyal clientele for a company.   Fearless Referrals, by Matt Anderson, cites a study by Sandler Sales Institute regarding how different types of prospecting activities turned into business  : 5 %  from cold calls 15 % when you use a colleague’s name […]

Teamwork — Combined efforts of a group for a common cause, where every member trust each other enough, to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘WE’ and the result is just amazing…!!     Mumbai   Dabbawalas                          Together Everyone Achieves More  .  They are a group of people who are part of a delivery system that collects lunch boxes from the residences of workers in the late morning, delivers the lunches to the workplace and returns the empty boxes to the worker’s residence the same day by late afternoon.  Every person in this team acts as a picker, sorter, transporter and deliver of tiffin boxes. There is nothing called my work or your work. It is all our work. It’s an epitome of Teamwork. Defining Teamwork – It is an activity wherein different people or different groups come together to work towards a common goal/set of goals. In today’s knowledge-based economy, which is so diverse, most of our jobs involve interacting with others that are not even in the same line of profession. The need for effective teamwork is critical for any business for its success. Teamwork divides the task […]

At Meudyojak networking meetings I see some people just handing over their business cards and speak about their business. They should also listen to other entrepreneurs .     In a networking event, if you go with the intention just to talk, talk and talk about your product/service, and make the sale, then it’s not networking..  But if you go in to have a two-way conversation and build a trusted relationship with the prospects, you will have paved a path towards success. The point of sales pitch at a networking event is to give prospects enough information that they need to know more.  This is the beginning of building a relationship.  So if you get this right, you really can start the conversation which will lead to opportunities. Here are some tips for an effective sales pitch : 1] Do Your Home-work  –  Know who you are pitching to. If you are not researching your customer, you are reducing your chances of  making the deal.  82% of sales people are not aligned with the needs of their buyer.  Study their business and its need, prior to executing the pitch. You may start by pursuing their website or Linkedin profile. 2]Give your best first […]