Why Car Showrooms are so Important

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Admin

Nowadays the purpose of a well-designed showroom is about more than just marketing products. With so many consumers choosing to purchase goods online, it’s difficult enough just to get people to the stores.

There’s been much talk about the threat online shopping poses to bricks-and-mortar retail, but a well-designed showroom demonstrates how retail can play to its strengths by offering consumers an experience they don’t get online.

Creating an immersive environment

One effective design trend is to convert the showroom into something that resembles a real-world environment appropriate to the product being advertised.

An example would be a showroom designed to promote furniture, its approach being to create a realistic living room or dining room area. In some cases the designers even use mannequins gathered around a model dining room table or fireplace to capture the family environment.

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How IT can Benefit South African Agriculture

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Admin

Farming with Google

Agriculture is about harnessing the land, and that requires knowing the lay of the land. Of course, nowadays thanks to Google Maps, the average Google user can see the lay of the land in the most random parts of the world, so one can imagine what benefits Information Technology provides for the agricultural industry.

Geographic Information systems and Global Positioning Systems can chart the topography of the region in the form of detailed digital maps, allowing farmers to determine where to plant crops and what crops to plant. They can use GPS to track livestock and stay alert to threats. According to Wikipedia, an example come from a Kenyan farm that used a combination of GPS and SMS technology to track a rampaging elephant bull and alert authorities when it drew too close to the crops, enabling them to protect the farm without harming the creature in the process.

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Are You Serving the Right Food at Your Business Functions?

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Admin

Food is a very important part of a business function, whether it’s a seminar, workshop, product launch, or dinner. If you don’t plan it properly, your food could very well break your event – it’s that important. Your options are finger foods, light buffet lunches and set menus. Either way, you need to consider things like ingredients, dietary requirements, and the type of event, not to mention spillage. Guests don’t like sitting through several sessions with tomato relish or bacon stains on their shirts.

ECG has a handy mnemonic to help you remember the most important considerations when planning a menu: EATS

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Big Data is Important, but it’s not Everything

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Admin

Big data. Big data. Big data.

You’ve been living under a rock if you haven’t heard that phrase before. It’s the new big thing when it comes to analysing business data to determine the effectiveness of everything from marketing strategies to business operations.

Unfortunately, many business owners have taken to big data so zealously that they’ve excluded virtually everything else. They now favour cold hard facts over things like customer feedback, social media reviews and even their own gut-feel when it comes to making decisions.

And this is a very big mistake.

Facts vs. feelings

We don’t live in a black and white world. Things are never completely one way or another. You can’t exclude all emotions and rely solely on quantifiable data and you can’t chuck out all the data because your instincts are telling you something different.

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How to Use Case Studies in B2B Marketing

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Admin

Business to business (B2B) marketing poses some challenges that are absent in business to consumer (B2C) marketing. For one thing, the products are not as sexy (industrial lathes vs. a designer wood bookcase or sewing cotton vs. haute couture). For another, the audience is extremely knowledgeable and extremely demanding and not even remotely easily won over.

Your products, services and professionalism play a role in their success. If you sell them malfunctioning lathes, they can’t produce their products on time. If your plumbing service doesn’t fix their pipes first time round, work continues to be disrupted. If you are late meeting a deadline, they are late for theirs.

So, you can understand why they treat marketing with some suspicion. And why they might be swayed by your proven track-record, which you can show to good effect in case studies.

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Pre-Sales Consultants Predict the Future

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Admin

If you’d kinda like to get into sales but you’re not sure that you want to spend heaps of your time pretending to like people, or you like the idea of sales but your true talent lies in statistics then perhaps you should consider a career as a pre-sales consultant.

What does pre-sales consulting involve?

It involves a lot of research, including market research and competitor research.

It also involves a lot of strategising, which means you need to be able to a great problem-solver; a creative problem-solver.

And, it involves marketing.

How important is pre-sales consulting?

Very important.

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Make Job Applicants Jump through Hoops with Candidate Testing

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Admin

Few employers enjoy recruiting new staff. It can be a long process and you can never be sure that you’re going to hire the right person for the job. You have to wait a couple of weeks before you know if they really fit in with the company and whether they really have a good grasp of what it is the job requires. Granted, in some instances it only takes a few days for the mistake to become clear, but it still means that a lot of time and effort has been wasted.

This is why many people test applicants, either before the first interview or between the first and second interviews. They might use personality tests, skills tests, language tests, and sometimes even drug tests. Some employers go the whole hog and throw in lie detector tests and emotional intelligence tests.

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How to Make the Most of Your Window Displays

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Admin

Does your store have a window display? And by window display we don’t mean the dusty product offerings that have been forgotten on the window sill for the past five years. We mean a creative, eye-catching display that is changed regularly so that passers-by can’t wait to see what you’ll do next; a display that makes people want to come into your store and spend all of their lovely lolly.

What makes a good display?

A theme

Valentine’s Day, Easter and Halloween – they’re obvious themes, aren’t they? But they’re very broad and are open to generic (read boring) interpretation. Jane Porter (entrepreneur.com) quotes Noelle Nicks, who says that you need to narrow your theme if you want to make it stand out, especially on major holidays.

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How Well Does Your Performance Review Process Perform?

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Admin

Business owners are obsessed with performance; with good reason. They need employees to perform to the best of their ability so that the business can perform optimally. A business that performs well is a business that enjoys good returns. This means that owners have to regularly review the company’s performance and employees’ performance to determine if they are in alignment.

The problem is that no one likes performance reviews, especially not employee performance reviews. Even hard-working employees who know that they’ve done well dread having their work critiqued, in case they’ve unwittingly done something wrong that has brought the company to the brink of collapse and which will result in immediate sacking.

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The Single Most Important Tip for E-commerce Sites in 2013

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Admin

E-commerce, like all forms of online activity, continually evolves to attract more consumers and be more relevant to consumers’ needs. So far, it’s been wildly successful. E-commerce is growing exponentially, raking in billions of dollars, and with further increases predicted in double figure percentages. People love its convenience, the special offers, and the free shipping. Unfortunately, they don’t always love the online shopping experience. This is because not all retailers have got the hang of e-commerce platforms.

What is an e-commerce site to do?

According to predictions for 2013, personalisation is going to be a key factor determining e-commerce success.

This is a preview of The Single Most Important Tip for E-commerce Sites in 2013. Read the full post (486 words, 1 image, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

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Category Archives: Business