Often the size and sector of business isn’t the factor that holds it back. More often that not, it’s a case of changing the attitude and approach. Just look at Apple, which turned its fortunes around in the midst of the dot.com boom. Whatever your business, it is possible to buck the trend and take control in 2012. By starting the year with the right approach to sales and by implementing the best techniques, the opportunities to win business are endless.

Here are some tips for winning new business in 2012:

• Putting together a prospecting plan. It’s imperative to get the foundation right, to define the sales focus and agree best practice – as well as breaking the large annual sales down into manageable bite sized pieces. Gear the plan towards getting in front of your ideal prospect – it's a lot easier to go out to find clients when you know exactly what you're looking for.

• Learn from lessons. Debriefing is imperative, whether a sale goes well or not. If it goes well, analyse why so that lessons can be implemented across the board. If it doesn’t go well, identify what could have done better so that you can practice it thoroughly.

• The 'people element'. If you sound, smell, look and act like every other salesperson your prospect has ever seen, this is how you will be treated. So from the beginning, it’s imperative you personalise the whole experience. Focus every meeting on listening to them and their problems. Talking about you and the feature benefits of your product is a one-way track to protracted sales, stalling and objections and ultimately, failure. The number of sales you make is proportional to the amount of information you gather, not the information you give.

• Be picky. Unfortunately some people cannot be pleased – and to boot they can take up huge amounts of your time and resources and then pay you very little in return. Sometimes, it pays to be discerning. In the business world, there will always be time wasters; the trick is to spot them early and not let them waste your most valuable resource – your time.

• Relax and enjoy. The sales meeting or the sales calls do not have to be a gritty, hard-won, exhausting experience. You may need to be gutsy for a few seconds at a time, but learn to relax and bring some humour into things. If you enjoy what you are doing, it comes across in your speech, body language and your whole persona.

Believe in your business and your product. We are all human at the end of the day and the whole process is infinitely more enjoyable when the buyer and the seller treat each other with equal business stature. The best sales strategy has a screening process whereby the fit between your prospect’s needs and your solution is a 'win win' for both parties.

This downturn, apart from being deeper than usual because of the financial disconnects, has been accompanied by major waves of technological and structural economic change. Waves have been caused by innovation or disruption to sectors that are in the throes of major disturbances, such as retail or the media sector (courtesy of the internet and Twitter sphere) or education and health sectors (courtesy of the government).

But the encouraging aspect about disturbances and technological change is that they can throw up winners as well as losers – and these sectors in the midst of turbulence can provide healthy opportunities for new businesses to be founded and to flourish.

The decisions of individual business owners, multiplied thousands of times, and the announcements of global business leaders imply that unemployment will continue to rise over the next year. But many new, innovative businesses can be founded by people who experience redundancy. While a very important factor for success in a small business is previous knowledge of the sector and business that you start, turbulent sectors can be another fruitful searching ground for opportunities that could provide the kernel of your idea for a business.

As someone who was last employed by the Consumers’ Association as a financial researcher more than 30 years ago, I can tell you that I don’t regret for a minute the decision to turn my back on ‘secure’ employment. If you’re currently faced with unemployment, let the extensive team at SmallBusiness.co.uk hold your hand to help you make a success of a new business venture in 2012.

I’ll be writing regularly on SmallBusiness.co.uk from now on, so please let me have your comments and views on what you’d like me to cover.

Sara Williams is executive chairman and founder of SmallBusiness.co.uk parent company Vitesse Media plc, which she started in 1997.

There is an irony to the fact that, while it didn’t hit the shops until mid-October, The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future – Just Enough by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney was already top of the Amazon.com seller list in early September. It is a treatise on how the difference between 'good' and 'excellent' comes down to matter of just seconds – with, for instance, exploration of how it is that great ice hockey players are distinguished not by superbly accurate shots but by early anticipation of where the puck will be at particular moment. It also chimes with a theme I have written about before elsewhere – the arrival of the 'one-second economy'.
 
It may be a truism that our lives have been increasingly ruled by accelerating speed. Since the advent of industrial modernity, immediacy has been the touchstone of progress – whether symbolised by the electric razor, microwave oven or, heaven forbid, the drive-through Vegas wedding chapel. Now even two seconds is a long time and responses to news events are measured in 'tweets per second' (the breaking news of pop star Beyonce’s pregnancy brought a record of 8,868 tweets per second at the end of last month).
 
Many businesses are still yet to respond adequately to what a 'one-second economy' means for them. Too many think that 'next day dispatch' is a signal of immediacy – it isn’t. Or that scheduling a Monday morning meeting to address issues that arise on Thursday is speediness. How many garages still ask a driver to come back the day after a car’s been dropped off in order to get a quote of work to be done? And do they really expect repeat business if there’s a nearby competitor that can undertake, say, to instant message a quote within minutes?
 
I was at a management training session where the following exercise was done. Divided into two groups with a ten-metre gap, one group was given a piece of paper with a highly complicated phrase that they had to communicate to the other without saying anything. The 'communicating' team flailed around, trying to signal the phrase by use of charade actions. 'We had a team that managed to get the message across in under three minutes,' the instructor interrupted. The charade went on. 'Actually, we had a team that did it in just one second,' he added. And with that piece of extra information it clicked – a team member screwed up the piece of paper and threw it across to the other group. He hadn’t said a word.
 
A 'cheat' perhaps, but the point remains – there’s every chance that the tasks your businesses undertake can be done more efficiently and speedily. Force yourself to look for solutions. The brothers who founded the first Borders bookstore in 1971 did this by developing the first sophisticated bookstore inventory and stock-ordering system. Of course this subsequently became the norm, and we all know the rest of the story: the company itself fell victim to the rise of firms such as Amazon, offering a far more immediate and speedy book-buying experience.
 
Companies that allow customers to buy and transact online looked ahead of the curve say five years ago. Today if you don’t also have an iPhone or Android app to complement this as a business you could soon struggling, falling behind your competitors.
 
The explosion in social media, which will only gather pace, is one of the key trends at the forefront of this compression in action and response time that companies now have if they are to keep their customers happy.
 
Easyjet, for instance, has a dedicated twitter feed – @easyJetCare – that just responds to customer queries and complaints, woe betide a customer service department that these days just relies on phone and mail.
 
The spread of techniques such as just-in-time manufacturing to other areas, such as retail, where the demands of young ‘fast fashion’ trends insist that shops need to re-stock with new varieties of clothing, often within hours, has led to stores such as Primark stocking the ultimate in disposable clothing.
 
Whatever business you’re doing now will be done more quickly in a years’ time. Can you find the ways – and there are ways – to do it quicker first? Because as the one-second economy tightens its grip, you’re going to have to.

Sir Ian McGeechan, the former coach of the Scottish rugby team who guided them to a Grand Slam victory in the 1990 Five Nations tournament and who was five times appointed head coach of the British and Irish Lions, is a strong believer in the value of getting the small things right – ‘world-class basics’ is his mantra.

Espoused in his autobiography Lion Man as well as in the management talks and seminars for which he is famous, Sir Ian’s philosophy of people management and preparation centres on ensuring the minutiae are dealt with. Every small element of routine was carefully attended to; the right food, kit, personal items the team members needed, clothes, ties, aftershave, as well as emphasising to each player his individual role and responsibility for the team performance.

The office environment at Google’s Googleplex has become the stuff of legend, with its slides, water lounges and massage chairs and the rule that no employee may at any time be more than 100 metres away from food. Shuttle buses serving employees around the Bay area, bicycles dotted around the campus for workers to use and a host of evening activities from dance to rock climbing; all these serve to make for a happier and more productive workforce.

If attentive detail to employees’ wants makes them happier while at the same time improving the company’s bottom line, it’s churlish to ask if an organisation is being genuinely altruistic or somewhat Machiavellian. But there are companies that get it wrong.

One example is a US media company that, although it pampers its workers with banquet-loads of free, fresh food and the use of luxury gizmos, has made a point of having very few chairs in the offices’ communal areas. The arrangement has caused resentment among some employees. Likewise the conical paper cups at water coolers that some businesses use – a means to discourage workers from putting their cups down and nattering – are also a misjudgement in the art of people management.

As Sir Richard Branson has said, ‘The only difference between merely satisfactory delivery and great delivery is attention to detail’. Branson was known for taking notebooks with him and noting down any things he thought were sloppy or sub-standard at any of his operations.

The Pareto principle, the idea that some 80 per cent of effects come from 20 per cent of the causes, has become a mantra for some businesses. See to the big issues, they say, and don’t worry about the details. The results, however, are often mediocre. Of course businesses should have an eye on grand strategy, should look to the big picture and should look to grow. But don’t let this be a distraction from excelling throughout the 100 per cent. Do sweat the small stuff.

Promising trade figures for August from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that UK exports have risen by 1.3 per cent compared with July. As unemployment continues to rise and UK inflation hits a three-year high, this growing demand demonstrates there are opportunities for British businesses to expand into overseas markets while domestic trade is still sluggish. Statistics show that this increase was driven by a growth of £200 million in exports of food, drink, tobacco and intermediate goods (raw materials or partly-finished goods used in production), as well as fuels.

Go West

During difficult economic times, exporting is often a smart move for SMEs to take, as it massively broadens markets and spreads risk. Even if the market at home is weak, your business can be boosted by overseas sales.
British exporters are continuing to focus on several key trading partners, notably the USA which remains the strongest. Although the US economy is still facing problems, British exports to the USA grew by £42 million over August to a total value of £3,240 million. Recent DHL Express research into the global fashion market showed that 43 per cent of British fashion SMEs saw the USA as their strongest market, demonstrating the importance of close cultural and social links in supporting and promoting trade.

However, the same survey also showed that 23 per cent of British SMEs were concerned about customs charges and complex trade regulations, particularly in relation to the USA.

West meets East

As the Eurozone’s economic problems continue to make the front pages, it is unsurprising that the ONS trade statistics show trade to Germany, France and Italy has fallen significantly. This suggests that SMEs should also consider emerging markets when planning future expansion. Most businesses are aware of the much-touted BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), whose economies could become larger than those of the world’s six most developed countries in less than 40 years’ time. Combined with other, smaller emerging markets the BRIC nations offer real opportunities for British exporters. The IMF World Economic Outlook predicts that the ’12 hotspots’ of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Turkey, Russian, China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, India, South Africa and Brazil will command a 38 per cent share of global GDP by 2015. That’s 2 per cent more than the G7’s global GDP.

Forewarned is forearmed

Taking the leap into exporting, whether to the USA or the UAE requires careful forethought. Businesses should plan extensively when preparing to export.

The first step to take is to research which international markets you wish to enter and at which point of the business cycle your product or service fits. It’s then essential to comprehensively investigate the countries you are planning on entering before beginning to promote and sell your services within it.

One of the most important decisions to make when exporting, which often goes overlooked, is choosing the right carrier as you need to ensure the right method is used to distribute your product effectively, at the right price. You should see a shipper as an extension of your business and not just a commodity. A larger shipper has a wholly owned network including its own customs clearance staff and aircraft meaning that the package stays within that carrier’s network from start to finish.

DHL Express’ top tips for SMEs exporting

1) Research: you need to know your sector and strengths and weaknesses of potential markets.
2) Plan: define everything step by step, from entering the market to the final distribution of goods.
3) Finance: make sure you have working capital in place for every stage – and don’t forget to keep an eye on exchange rates.
4) Customs and regulation: these can make or break your success. Make sure you’re aware of the rules relating to the markets you are expanding into.

The knock-on effect of these changes is creating both unique opportunities and specific challenges for employers, as well as employees across the entire spectrum of the workforce. An ageing workforce increases the risk of opening up critical skills gaps. With a visible shortage of new graduates in certain disciplines, such as science and engineering, this represents a significant risk to companies, including a number of established industry giants. For those who have recently retired, many older people are now choosing to supplement their income with part time employment in what was once considered a ‘young person’s job’. McDonald’s, for example, is seeing a marked increase in customer satisfaction levels in those restaurants staffed by older employees.

Deferred retirement also means fewer job openings for those at the other end of the workforce – be it casual labour in a fast food chain or in a white collar entry level position. With fewer people retiring at 65, there are fewer internal promotions, resulting in a trickle down effect of fewer entry level opportunities. Many graduates with ‘generalist’ degrees are struggling to find that first foot on the rung of the career ladder, which is obviously exasperated by the fragile economy. And there are less of them. With a sustained decline in birth rates, there are fewer people aged between 17 and 25 to fill such openings. Delayed retirement is also impacting career experience. As more senior roles are retained by longer tenured employees, the next generation is being denied opportunities at the next level. This in turn poses a risk for employers both in terms of retention, as well as the development of required capabilities.

I’ve always thought tenure in senior positions tends to favour alternate generations – a bit like the royal family. Queen Elizabeth is enjoying a long reign, which means Prince Charles will probably have a comparatively shorter reign. It’s the same for corporate management. For the most part, the current generation of senior managers will have been in their jobs for a long time, and are likely to stay in their roles longer than their predecessors. Consequently, the generation behind them will typically have a much longer career in the same role due to their succession getting deferred. An ageing workforce can be a major obstacle blocking career opportunities for younger employees. Like most things in life, from an employee perspective, your next promotion is somewhat dependent on timing – luck of the draw on when you were born, and waiting for us Boomers to move out of your way.

In addition to lack of opportunities for promotion, other factors are destroying ‘traditional’ careers, such as the flattening structure of organisations. The majority of companies today have less than six levels of management compared to 15 levels a generation ago, largely thanks to the efficiencies of technology. That means you’re likely to stay in a middle job for longer today than your predecessors did.

This is why organisations need to change the paradigm of what they consider to be a ‘career’. Most people think of a career as sequence of promotions that people move through. In today’s labour market, this is not sustainable. In the future, a career will be more characterised by promotions, transfers, secondments, and projects that allow individuals to build portable capabilities in the workplace. Research by business execution software specialists, SuccessFactors, reveals that more than 50 per cent of the workforce is not likely to have more than one promotion for the rest of their career, and 65 per cent will not have more than two promotions. A career today is not about a sequence of promotions over a life time. A career today is about building the employment value proposition of the individual through the mix of experiences individuals are provided.

From an organisational perspective, however, it’s not so much about timing as it is about planning. This is a workforce going through significant and unprecedented change. With a fragile yet recovering economy, planning for growth and executing against business strategy are paramount. Organisations need to make decisions about their workforce with the same rigour, logic and confidence they make about money, clients and policy. The problem is that the majority of companies are trying to do this blind.

We all know that people represent both the largest asset and the single biggest operating expense in a company – typically between 30 per cent and 80 per cent depending on the industry. Organisations usually have a lot of workforce data, but struggle to turn it into actionable insight because it’s locked away somewhere in siloed systems and IT doesn’t have the time, budget or expertise to deliver it. SuccessFactors also points out that the ability to execute on business strategy is now a CEO’s biggest concern. This means having the necessary granular insight for planning and executing against business strategy.

Aldus Huxley famously said, “Words are like X-rays. If you use them properly, they’ll go through anything.” It’s the same with workforce analytics. If you use them properly, they’ll give you all sorts of insight – from knowing who your key talent is, which roles are critical, forecasting future gaps, predicting employment costs for various business scenarios, to how engaged employees are and how they stack up against their peers. The answers are all there. You just need a common workforce language and a single source of truth to deliver insights you can execute against.

Best-in-class firms for workforce analytics experience a 17 per cent improvement in employee performance, an 11 per cent increase in profit/FTE, and a 7 per cent increase in revenue/FTE (The Aberdeen Group). Similar findings by SuccessFactors reveal that best in class analytics has some core foundations. The first is having a single source of the truth for all workforce implementations. No one will have confidence in the system without quality data. The second is segmentation of workforce data, so you don’t have the same HR initiatives across the board, but rather tailor different initiatives for different groups of employees with different requirements.

Most savvy business leaders instinctively know they have a ticking time bomb when it comes to workforce planning. It’s just that most of them don’t know where to start and every department has a different perspective. By creating a common workforce language, and a single version of the truth, organisations can create a reliable data foundation that measures the things that matter to the business – such as developing needed skill sets for the future, reducing turnover of critical roles, and building bench strength in key talent.

The ageing workforce issue is not a blip in labour supply. It reflects growing competition for the available workforce. Companies that fail to address this issue risk future staff and skill shortages, and any competitive edge they now enjoy. It’s not so much the cost of implementing a strategic response to changing workforce dynamics that companies should be focused on, but rather the cost of not implementing one.

One strategy that you could adopt is to find or create an unfair advantage. When you are trying to get a sale, there are many factors over which you have no control. Until the check clears you may not be able to figure out how to actually get the sale. Many times in the sales process, I have seen everything done right, only to have the sale fall apart for no apparent reason.

How does this happen?

It is all about people. Somewhere along the sales cycle, you must find or create the unfair advantage. Remember that at the end of the sales process someone is going to sign off on the purchase order and until that actually occurs, you cannot count on the sale. At the end of the day, the key to getting the sale is to get an unfair advantage that no competitor can ever overcome.

This will allow the buyer to sign off on that purchase order. This key idea, creating the unfair advantage, may be as simple as getting the support of all of the customer’s technical staff. Or, it may be something as simple as your wife’s conversation with the buyer’s wife at a charity function (where your wife reiterates how committed your company is to the success of the buyer’s company). Or, it may be having an exclusive territory or product agreement with the manufacturer.

There are many types of unfair advantages and ways to create them!

Another simple way to create an unfair advantage is to have your supplier create a product that only you have available for sale. You can have special features added to the product that insure the product you are selling is totally unique from the product that any other seller has available. This is especially powerful when you can have a number of distinguishing features added to the product you have available.

In the consumer retail space you may be able to create a very distinct product differentiation. Auto manufacturers use variations on this strategy all the time when they build packages of options that are added onto basic car models. You want to make it difficult to find a comparable product at a similar price. Sometimes a simple strategy based upon price will suffice as the unfair advantage.

One such strategy is buy two products get one free. In this case you are trying to hold onto both your sales volume and margins instead of the simple strategy of just offering a 33 percent discount. All product environments are competitive and if the area that you are trying to bring your new product into is really hot, competition will develop very quickly so you must get all of your sales closed quickly to get the buzz and market momentum that you need.

Anything that you can do to stop the competition from closing in on your sale is key to your success. An advantage that I always liked is understanding the competitor’s positions and then positioning my product or service away from their strengths. This understanding can help you create an unfair advantage.

• What does the competitor really do or sell?
• Are they stronger in manufacturing or service?
• Do they manufacturer their own products?
• What is the state of their product?
• When will a new model come onto the market?
• What problems are your competitors having?
• When was the last time that they delivered a product on time?
• Is there a time when the competition would be vulnerable to a new product introduction or price cut?

You want to think of what factors will give you any type of advantage and then try to magnify the advantage until it looms large in the eyes of potential purchasers. The magnified issues will create your current unfair advantage.

Remember, if you create an unfair advantage, the competition will not rest or give up easily. They will counter and you will need to stay nimble and continually modify your strategies to be successful.

Create the unfair advantage and you will succeed!

By Kenneth J. Thurber, PhD
http://www.bigwavesurfingbook.com/

The next 12 months in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics could provide a much-needed opportunity for SMEs to boost sales against a slow economy. For SMEs in the South East of England, particularly retailers, the London Olympics will offer a great opportunity to take full advantage of the growth that half a million visitors to Britain will bring (consumer spending is expected to rise by £750 million in the coming months according to Visa). But b2b companies also stand to benefit – there are opportunities to provide services and products to both the companies and the public sector bodies involved in the Olympics project.
 
Many SMEs are already benefitting from the Olympics, in fact, according to the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics, small businesses will make up 70 per cent of all Olympic contractors. However there is a potential downside for the host nation of such a huge event that smaller businesses should be aware of. Historically, Olympic cities experience an economic boost prior to the Games followed by a slump. So while companies see a boost in turnover in the months leading up to the event, SMEs may need to be prepared for the downside that may ensue once the festivities come to a close.

Companies will need to make sure that they manage their finance carefully during the prosperous Olympic months in order to be ready for the year after the event where growth traditionally drops off. Careful cash flow management can make sure that there are no nasty surprises. The post-Olympic blues will not necessarily hit businesses straight away, but could do so up to a year down the line when companies will have to face the tax implications of a boost in turnover in the previous year.

Small businesses should certainly take full advantage of the opportunities for growth and development that the London 2012 Olympics can bring. However they should also have a ‘post Olympics’ plan to ensure that the after-effects of a slowdown do not outweigh the positive effects that the Olympic Games could generate.
 

The last few years have left many SMEs feeling like ‘rabbits in the headlights’. A lack of confidence in the economy and a perceived lack of available funding means many businesses are static and afraid to grow or seek out new opportunities.

SMEs could be the engine of UK growth, but not if so many are left at the starting line. Small businesses are understandably nervous but rather than waiting for a second recession that may never come, companies need to kick-start growth by getting their finances in order and exploring the increasing opportunities that recovery presents.

Four major trends for businesses to consider are refinancing, M&As, exporting, and of course securing cashflow.

Refinancing
As the economy picks up, managers are shifting their focus from the day-to-day realities of keeping their company viable to the future, refinancing to put themselves in the best possible position for growth.

This can only be a good thing. No one can blame businesses for battening down the hatches during hard times, but today’s ‘progressive’ refinancing is just as likely to be triggered by market opportunities or a forward-looking assessment of cashflow, costs and economic conditions. In other words, businesses are beginning to look at their financial requirements proactively rather than reactively.

M&A
Many businesses have come through a difficult two to three years in reasonably good shape given the battles they have faced. These companies should be looking to the future and, in particular, at some of their competitors who are not doing so well.

There are certainly M&A bargains to be had and, now that a few green shoots are starting to show, an increasing number of business owners will be looking to sell. To make the most of this opportunity, acquisitive businesses need to organise their finances so they are ready to move when the opportunity arises. They need to look beyond the traditional forms of funding by understanding the assets they possess that could help structure a merger or acquisition – without sacrificing cashflow at the crucial post deal stage.

Exporting
As well as growing at home, many companies are looking for opportunities outside of the UK. Emerging nations continued to power ahead throughout the ‘global’ recession, while countries closer to home like Germany and France seem ahead of the UK in terms of economic recovery.

This demand from abroad, along with the downward trend of the pound, has created new opportunities for companies that have never exported before. Those that are already selling abroad are now exploring markets even further afield. This said, selling overseas can create as many challenges as it does opportunities. Arguably the greatest concern for businesses entering new markets is uncertainty surrounding payment.

On the face of it, the process of collecting money from an overseas customer is similar to a domestic transaction. However, there can be significant differences, particularly in terms of debtor days. In some European countries, the norm is typically 90 days from the date of the invoice. This will have clear cashflow implications for UK companies that are more accustomed to a 30 to 40-day turnaround.

Ensuring cash flow via outsourced credit control or maintaining a cash buffer is vital when selling abroad. With the right finance, and guidance, exporting could provide a real boost to UK businesses.

Cultural and business differences must also be considered especially if venturing beyond Western Europe. The government is keen on fuelling this kind of growth and is providing very useful advice for those that care to look.

Securing cash flow
Above all, businesses need confidence and sustainable finance in order to grow. Small businesses continue to face tough times because cashflow remains a serious issue and they are still struggling to access the financial confidence needed to move from a survival mentality to one of growth.

For whatever reason, traditional financing methods are not meeting today’s business needs and it is essential SMEs understand the full repertoire of funding they can access. The banks have been singled out as the obvious ‘villains’ for continuing business difficulties, but to lay all the blame on them is wrong. The missing part of the puzzle is education from all involved. Businesses need to know about the support and other forms of finance available, to help them handle this new business environment.

In the last few years, businesses have adopted a defensive formation as their survival instincts have kicked in. Now, many are recognising opportunities for growth. Having the confidence, and funding, to invest in success is not only crucial for individual businesses but also for the wider UK economic recovery.