The ability to negotiate the highest possible fees without risking a client relationship or an instruction has become increasingly important to individual professionals and professional service firms in recent years.
The rising influence of procurement on the buying side has squeezed margins for many service providers. Those best able to withstand these pressures are usually those that have the ability to negotiate robustly on fees.
Clients often ask what makes someone a great fee negotiator, i.e. someone who is able to get clients to agree to pay as high a fee as possible without losing the work, or the client. Continue…
While “entrepreneur” may occasionally be a euphemism for “out of work”, there are more and more individuals working in earnest to start a business of their own. Indeed, statistics show no fewer than 400 million such individuals globally, with over 2 million in the UK and 20 million in the US.
Sadly, many of these ventures will never get off the ground at all. Of those that do, the majority will fail. Of those who submit business plans to venture capital investors, less than one percent will get the funding they seek.
Those elite few who do raise finance give away large portions of their company and control in return. Worse still, many business founders who receive venture capital money get fired within a year of the investment.
Despite the challenge of raising money, and the serious potential downsides, there is a widespread notion that if you are an entrepreneur looking to build a high potential business, you need to write a business plan and raise a few million pounds. But this vision is essentially wrong.
Despite the challenge of raising money, and the serious potential downsides, there is a widespread notion that if you are an entrepreneur looking to build a high potential business, you need to write a business plan and raise a few million pounds. But this vision is essentially wrong. Because, if you are smart you can get your customers to fund your business.
Starting a new business is hard work, and one of the toughest tasks is to generate a good flow of sales. You need sales to bring in the revenue to cover wages, pay overheads and invest in growing your business.
As a new business, the first sales are also vitally important as they prove that there is a demand for the product you are making, or the service you are offering. Once you have made your first sales, selling more is pretty simple as long as you can understand the process and the numbers.
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There’s nothing more demotivating when you’re doing your own PR than spending hours getting the perfect press release put together… only for it to be completely ignored by journalists.
Has this happened to you?
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When you are starting a new business, you will constantly need to learn new skills and tackle lots of issues that you’ve never dealt with before.
It’s fair to say that as a small business owner you will spend the majority of your time well outside of your comfort zone, so to be successful you’ll need to be adept at breaking new ground.
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While many business start-ups focus on trying to come up with a single ‘killer’ business idea and attempting to raise funding for their grand vision, this is the wrong approach according to the author of the fastest selling business book of 2013 so far.
Here’s why entrepreneur, and author of ‘The Millionaire Dropout’, Vince Stanzione, thinks you should forget about the big business idea and just get on with starting your small business -
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In this article, we look at what Groupon is, how you can use it to market your products and services, and what you need to do to get the best out of it – should you decide to go ahead and use it.
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If you think lack of time is stopping you from launching your own business, think again. In this guide, we look at how you can realistically start your own small business by working in the evenings.
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Although the sole trader route, which is commonly referred to as being self employed, is the most popular way of running a business in the UK, there are significant advantages of operating as a limited company.
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A dormant company is one that doesn’t trade and has no accounting transactions.
There are two main situations where owning a dormant limited company can be useful for start-ups and small business owners;
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Starting a new business is fun. It’s a world of learning and discovery as you set out on your own and try to build a brand new business from scratch.
Many people are so caught up in building their business that they don’t really consider where they want it to go in the long-term. And very few people are forward thinking enough to plan the finish – their exit strategy – when they are starting up.
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One of the main benefits of becoming self employed is the ease with which you can start up and run your new business.
You can even become a sole trader (another term for self-employed) whilst working as an employee for someone else, so you can test the water and see if you’re suited to working for yourself.
Here are 5 things you need to do when you decide to go self employed:
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Take a close look at any business that has been thriving over the last few years, and there’s a very strong chance you’ll see it has a clear USP, or Unique Selling Point.
It’s something you need to develop as you start your own business. A USP is much more than just a way of positioning your business in marketing materials. It’s something that needs to be at the very core of what you are doing – part of your business’s DNA, if you like.
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Professional indemnity insurance is an insurance policy that will protect you from claims made by clients who are not satisfied with the work you have done for them.
If you are starting a new business, freelancing for the first time, or simply wondering whether you should take out a professional indemnity insurance policy, this concise guide will help explain how this type of insurance works and whether it’s relevant to you.
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The Angel CoFund, which provides investment capital for businesses with the potential for rapid growth, can now be tapped by companies from all over the UK.
Previously, only high-growth businesses in specific geographical areas of the UK were eligible for funding through the CoFund. However, a £50 million finance boost from the government’s Business Bank initiative sees the fund being opened to businesses from all parts of the UK.
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When it comes to selling a business, the most important question you need to ask is – how much is it worth?
There is no single formula that can be used to precisely value every private business. The seller will want to drive the price up, and potential buyers will want the opposite.
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HMRC have provided a range of special schemes that apply to smaller businesses. They are designed to reduce administration, but also (in some cases) to assist cash flow.
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Once you’ve made the decision to start your own business, the natural instinct for many is to charge headlong into getting it off the ground right away.
Starting your own business might have been something that’s been at the back of your mind for years, and now that you’ve finally decided to take the plunge, you don’t want to waste any more time.
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Here (in no particular order) are some handy tips from the Bytestart team, based on our findings working with small businesses over the past decade, and from our own personal experience.
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Unless human resources is your line of work, you almost certainly didn’t go into business to devote your time to HR. In this article, David Webb, from work expert Acas, explains how small firms can hire without fear
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