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In today’s competitive business landscape, attracting and retaining top talent is crucial for organizational success. While competitive salaries and benefits are essential, they’re not the only factors that contribute to employee satisfaction and loyalty. Employee engagement and retention strategies play a pivotal role in fostering a positive work environment, driving productivity, and reducing turnover. In this blog post, we’ll explore effective strategies that organizations can implement to enhance employee engagement and retention.

1. Cultivate a Positive Work Culture:
   • Foster an inclusive and supportive work environment where employees feel valued, respected, and appreciated.
   • Encourage open communication, transparency, and feedback to foster trust and collaboration among team members.
   • Celebrate successes, milestones, and achievements to boost morale and reinforce a culture of recognition.
2. Prioritize Employee Development and Growth:
   • Offer opportunities for professional development and skill enhancement through training programs, workshops, and mentorship initiatives.
   • Provide clear pathways for career advancement and growth within the organization, allowing employees to see a future for themselves.
   • Support continuous learning and upskilling to help employees stay relevant and engaged in their roles.
3. Promote Work-Life Balance:
   • Encourage work-life balance by offering flexible work arrangements, such as remote work options, flexible hours, or compressed workweeks.
   • Promote wellness initiatives and employee assistance programs to support physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
   • Lead by example by respecting boundaries and encouraging employees to prioritize self-care and personal time.
4. Foster Meaningful Connections and Relationships:
   • Facilitate opportunities for team bonding and relationship building through team-building activities, social events, and cross-departmental collaborations.
   • Encourage mentorship and peer support networks to foster connections and knowledge sharing among employees.
   • Create avenues for employees to voice their ideas, concerns, and feedback, fostering a sense of belonging and community within the organization.
5. Recognize and Reward Employee Contributions:
   • Implement a robust employee recognition program to acknowledge and reward employees for their contributions, achievements, and milestones.
   • Provide both formal and informal recognition, including praise, awards, bonuses, and other incentives, to reinforce positive behaviors and performance.
   • Ensure recognition is timely, specific, and personalized to make employees feel valued and appreciated for their efforts.

Employee engagement and retention are essential components of building a thriving and sustainable workforce. By prioritizing strategies that cultivate a positive work culture, support employee development, promote work-life balance, foster meaningful connections, and recognize employee contributions, organizations can create an environment where employees feel motivated, fulfilled, and committed to their roles and the company’s success. Investing in employee engagement and retention not only enhances organizational performance but also strengthens employer brand, attracts top talent, and ultimately drives long-term success.

It is sometimes difficult to know if your business idea is feasible, whether it can be turned to a profitable venture if the right foundation is in place. In order to turn your passion into profit, we have enumerated some steps that you need to follow to make it work out. You will need to research more on any area that you are unable to address.

THE STEPS

1. CREATE A CUSTOMER PROFILE

Your customers might be consumers, wholesalers, manufacturer etc. List as many points as you can about who you think will buy your product. If you are selling to a consumer market, list their age, gender, marital status, and income, and try to describe their lifestyle.

If you expect to sell to another business, you need to assess the industry type, the age of the business, its staff strength, annual sales and also their customer base.

2.  LIST THE FEATURES AND BENEFITS OF YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

State both the features and benefits of your product or services and how they would benefit your customers. Why should the customer patronize you and not your competitors? You will create a list of the selling points that you can use in your brochures/fliers. This will help you establish why your customer might buy your product or service over that of your competitor.

3.  DEFINE YOUR GEOGRAPHIC AREA

Are you selling your product or services within your state, out of state or to other countries? Your budget should restrict your geographical location. Defining this area makes it much easier to figure out what your needs are going to be. It will also help focus your area of concentration when conducting market research.

4. WHO ARE YOUR COMPETITORS? Your target market

Once you determine who and where your customers are, you must determine your actual competitors? Find out if similar products are already in existence, their weaknesses and the gap that your product/services can fill.

5. WHAT PRICE DO THEY CHARGE?

Establish what your competitors charge and list the selling points of their product or service. Try to find your industry’s wholesale and retail prices.

6.  WHAT PRICE CAN YOU CHARGE?

Determining how competitive you can be is a big step toward establishing how feasible your idea is. If your product is superior to your competition and your market is not very price sensitive, then you may be able to charge considerably more than your competition. If you are selling to retailers or wholesalers, you will have to leave enough room for others to mark your products up.

7. DEFINE YOUR UNIQUE SELLING POINTS (USP)

What is unique about your offer that would benefit your customer? There may be something about your product, your price, the friendliness and speed of your service, your hours of operation, your level of quality, the skills of your employees, or other aspects of your business.

8. IDENTIFY TRENDS IN YOUR MARKET OR INDUSTRY

Knowing trends in your market or industry will help you determine where it’s going and how your business can take advantage. Check business and industry/trade magazines for recent articles.

9.  ANALYSE YOUR GROWTH POTENTIAL

Is your industry or market growing or declining? Are trends or new fads peaking or declining? Generally, you will be more successful as part of a growing market. Check business and industry/trade magazines for recent articles.

10.  HOW WILL YOUR CUSTOMERS KNOW YOU EXIST?

So now you know who your customers are, where they are and why they will buy your product. How are you going to communicate your offer to them? Will you rely on having a good location? How will you promote or advertise?

11. ESTIMATE SALES FOR THE FIRST YEAR

Base your estimates on the size of your market, level of competition, your price, your plans for promotion, and trends in your industry. Create a pessimistic, an optimistic, and a conservative forecast.

12.  GOVERNMENT APPROVALS

There may be some extensive or expensive regulations involved with your type of business. Find out the regulations regarding your industry.

13. MANUFACTURING, PURCHASING, OR PRODUCTION

State how you will make or acquire the goods, or produce and deliver the services, you plan to sell. Use your sales forecast to help you plan this part of your operation. Think about potential growth in future years.

14.  FULFILLMENT

How does your customer get their order and how do you get paid?

15. CAPACITY OF YOUR OPERATION IN THE FIRST YEAR.

How big will your operation be? What is the limit of what you can produce, stock, service, and sell. Can you meet your sales forecasts? Have you taken future growth into consideration?

16. POTENTIAL SUPPLIERS.

Your concept may rely heavily on the reliability of your raw material suppliers and/or your subcontractors. How dependent will you be? Figure out who your suppliers will likely be and try to find back-up suppliers.

17. RESOURCES YOU MAY NEED.

List the employees, floor space, leasehold improvements, equipment, vehicles, inventory, supplies, and services you will require to open your business. Estimate the costs of each item on your list. You will need this list to determine your start up costs.

18. RESOURCES YOU WILL FINANCE, LEASE, OR RENT

You will probably not pay for large purchases outright, but will instead lease, rent, or finance these items. You will need to estimate your monthly payments to help you prepare a cash flow worksheet.

19. FINANCIAL STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES.

How much of your own money do you have for this business? What assets can you use as collateral to secure a loan? Do you already own the vehicles, computer equipment, or tools needed to start your business? Do you have family, friends or others who are prepared to invest in your business? Do you have a strong personal credit rating?

20. MONTHLY CASH FLOW FORECAST FOR YOUR FIRST YEAR

A cash flow forecast shows the critical “when” of cash coming in and cash going out during a certain month. Preparing a monthly cash flow forecast provides you with the opportunity to show figures, representing revenues and expenses, in the month the business expects to collect and spend the cash. Cash flow can demonstrate the need for cash injections at critical periods when sales are lower in seasonal businesses. (A culled article)

HOW CAN WE ASSIST?

BecaonGate can help you start, grow, manage and sustain your business for optimal performance.

For more information, contact Client Services at 08162970699 or send email to ritababalola@thebeacongate.com if you would like to get the latest information relevant to your business, join our SME Club at www.thebeacongate.com/smeclub

FB Page: Beacongate

Instagram: @thebeacongate

Twitter: @thebeacongate

Watsapp: 08162970699 or 09065900900

According to Wikipedia, a business plan is a formal written document containing business goals, the methods on how these goals can be attained, and the time frame within which these goals need to be achieved. It also describes the nature of the business, background information on the organization, the organization’s financial projections, and the strategies it intends to implement to achieve the stated targets. In its entirety, this document serves as a road map that provides direction to the business so it can plan for its future and avoid obstacles on the road.

However, most entrepreneurs do not invest in writing a business plan and often believe that it is only required for bank financing purpose. This is a mistake as while business plan do not predict the success of any business venture, it helps in reducing business failure as great planning helps in projecting what resource materials would be needed and then working consciously to identify and providing them.

A business plan serves as a bridge between the present and the future as it shows you how you will get there. In preparing it, it will help determine if an ideal is feasible, help find the missing pieces in the quest for starting the business by ensuring that the goals, sales plan, marketing, staffing and financing needs are what can easily be worked upon in order to avoid wasting resources such as effort, time and money. As you map out the plan further, you may discover unforeseen challenges that could be tinkered with and if the ideas are still not reasonable, then it is time to refine the idea or drop it entirely.

A good business plan would also show that all fundamentals of the business has been covered and people can invest in it.

Here are a few tips that can help you write your business plan:

Make it Clear and Concise:Avoid using too many technical words and jargons that others do not understand. Make it simple, straight forward and concise enough to be understood so that the object and goals of your business is clear.

Clear Communication: The vision, goals and purpose must be included. It should also include the resource requirement, marketing and sales plan, finance and funding and competition as well as state the industry you want to operate in. 

Be Realistic: Ideas are two pennies worthif they cannot be converted to profitable business ideas and once you begin to put them down, you will discover some may not be feasible and viable due to stiff competition, high penetrative cost, level of capital involved or even the absence of a viable market.

A good business plan should have all the elements of these tips so that once written, it would be convincing enough to show that the business is feasible.

Why do you need a Business Plan?

• Financing Purpose: You may not have sufficient capital to either start or scale up your business so other people may want to invest in it when they see such promising or viable business idea. These people could be in the form of venture capitalist, angel investors or even friends. Same people may even want to go a step further by making it a partnership venture.

You may also use it to get funds or grants from banks or other multilateral organizations.

• Talent Sourcing: Sometimes when you need to recruit candidates, especially for businesses that are just starting out, you can show potential employees your vision for the business so they can identify with where you are going and also see if their goals aligns with your vision.
• As a Gauge: It can be a tool to identify gaps, challenges or even opportunities that were not part of your projections but which became more glaring as you map out the plans thus you could amend or revise the ideas before concertizing it or expending money on a wasteful venture. 

1. Understanding the “why” of your business – you probably know what you do, and how you do things, but also consider why you do things. Knowing why will provide you with passion and drive to succeed and make sure you direct your time and energy into the right areas.

2. Clear value proposition – what do you offer that your customers value? What customer problems are you helping to solve? Do you know why people buy from you, rather than someone else?

3. Resourcing – Do you have the right staff in the right jobs? This links the following two tips as staff need to understand their role in the business to thrive, and you need to learn to delegate as your business grows.

4. Structure and job descriptions – I have worked with several growing businesses with staff struggling to know their role in the company and understand the company growth plans. Unfortunately, this can lead to a reduction in staff morale, productivity and create a negative impact on the company culture.

5. The art of delegation – Staff are your most valuable asset and understanding when you need to delegate is crucial. Trust can be an issue for business owners here, particularly as most of the business owners I have worked with struggle to delegate and consequently free up time to work on business growth.

6. Understand your finances – pricing, profit margins and knowing what your accountant does for you. For instance, your accountant will be able to help present your accounts differently to show you are a growth business, and therefore look attractive to investors.

7. Change management – You need to lead the change that growth will bring to the business. Make sure you take your team on your business growth journey. I have supported several companies through significant business growth, but have also seen senior managers left to manage long standing employees who do not fully embrace the change business growth brings.

8. Market research – Is there a market for your new product or service? What do you current customers think about your company? I see many new ideas and how companies feel like they need to offer new products, but most of the time they do not know if there is a market for it.

9. Value of your network of businesses – this cannot be under estimated and I have seen first-hand, how beneficial it is for a business owner to not feel isolated. I work very hard when delivering my programmes to remove this isolation and create a support network of other business owners.

10. Innovation – It is important to try not to ‘rock polish’ everything. If you can, give things a go, as markets (and your competitors) will not wait for perfection.’

Good luck growing your companies, and if you wish to find out more about this work, visit www.thebeacongate.com or send an email to ritababalola@thebeacongate.com

Everyone wants to start a business or have another stream of income especially in this period of uncertainty where so many issues struggle to remain relevant in an otherwise recession prone period.

Most homes have faced lots of challenges that have to do with reducing and cutting wastage especially in disregarding the non-essentials as most household allowances has since dropped to accommodate the pocket size of the breadwinners. A greater percentage of the populace have jettisoned the buying of foreign-items and have started patronizing Nigerian brands in a bid to still maintain some semblance of the same standard of living. Am sure most Nigerian household brands of these items; baby foods, diapers, matches, toothpicks, organic foods and drinks, ankara-branded items, packaged processed foods, cornflakes and pasta would have seen a quantum jump in their sales.

Organizations are not left out as in a bid to post higher profits and declare mouth watering dividends, they have cost cutting strategies of pegging recruitment to certain numbers, retrenching even before reaching the retrenchment age, aligning and synchronizing job functions as well as reducing other necessities such as reducing calling card allowances, reducing number of staff going for their annual budget and retreat sessions.

Because of the uncertainties permeating the country, many individuals have decided to start businesses of their own. However, before you do that, it is important to consider whether you are really suited to run a business or be in a paid employment. Starting a business is not about you alone but having the necessary skills, knowledge and the resources to wait it out till you start churning out profits. You also need to invest time into proper planning and coming up with a business plan.

Here are some few questions to ask yourself before launching out as a business owner :

whether on full time or part-time basis:

• What is my passion?
• Can my passion be turned to a business?
• Why am I starting a business?
• What business line do I want to start?
• What skills do I need to start a business?
• What are my business goals and objectives?
• Who is my target customer?
• What products or services will my business cater to?
• Am I prepared to be committed to the business?
• What proportion of my time and money do I want to invest in my business?
• What differentiates my business idea, product or services from others?
• What challenges are systemic to this industry?
• How can I ameliorate these?
• What other possibilities do I see in my business?
• Where will my business be located?
• How much money do I need?
• Will I need to get a loan? Type of loan sources?
• Do I need suppliers and what kind?
• How many employees will I need?
• How soon will it take for my product or service to be available?
• Who are my competitors?
• How will I price my product or service?
• When do I start making profits?
• How much income will my business need to generate to stay afloat?
• How will I run my business?
• How do I intend advertising this?
• How will I set up the legal structure, entity and name
• Do I have a business Coach or mentor for support?

HOW CAN WE ASSIST? 

BecaonGate can help you start, grow, manage and sustain your business for optimal performance.

For more information, contact Client Services at 08162970699 or send email to ritababalola@thebeacongate.com if you would like to get the latest information relevant to your business, join our SME Club at www.thebeacongate.com/smeclub

FB Page: Beacongate

Instagram: @thebeacongate

Twitter: @thebeacongate

Watsapp: 08162970699 or 09065900900

As we have metamorphosis in the life cycle of living things so we have in the life cycle of a business. The metamorphosis shown by humans, animals and other living creatures shows a natural progression of growth that translates from birth to an older version of the specie.

Similarly, a business with all its intricacies transit from one phase to anotherfollowing the  natural progression of a growth pattern. Thus, we would see a business growing from its incubation stage to maturity stage. Different management gurus have posited and all agreed that businesseshas a life, with different stages of growth but the differing opinion is on the stages of growth and framework that characterises them. Aside thepopular ones such as annual sales and profitability but on other indices such as organisational structure, leadership, staff strength, level of owner’s involvement and the internal capabilities.

As the business moves through each stage, it encounters different obstacles that require different approaches and resources to address them. Simply put, as the business develops and expands, so will the business aims, objectives and strategies change. Therefore, understanding the different stages, will help prepare business owners for the obstacles and challenges ahead.

In the early stage, called the Incubation or Existence stage, all a business owner is concerned about is to see the business take off from the ground. The owner is the business, it revolves around him/her, he/she provides direction, goals and maintains momentum as well as performing most of the essential tasks. At this stage, delegation of responsibilities is minimalor non-existent with the company generally typified by absence of formalized structure and planning for some businesses.

Among the contending issues are the following: having enough money (cash flow) to cover the business expenses, the ability to increase the clientele base, would the product or services be accepted in the market, can it generate a repeat business?

How many companies can make it through this stage which usually can be from one –three years? Some companies do not have the market acceptance and the cash to stay afloat during this periodcoupled with the fact that the business owners cannot meet the daily demands the business places upon their energy and resources, they subsequentlyfold up.

2^nd Stage or the Survival Stage will be typified by an increase in the number of employees, structures begin to be formalized, minor decision making may be decentralized to other employees but the business owner may still retain the most authority and power even in his absence. 

The business in this category as the name depicts are still trying to survive and maintain market presence in order to generate sufficient cashflow for operations to sustain the increase in operations and remain afloat. Major contending issues are managing sales, balancing revenue and expenses, establishing market presence and the need to keep on changing and inventing new ways of keeping up with market trends. Margins may be thin and here is where most companies that have scaled through to this stage, get stagnated on thinner marginal returns or go intoextinction as the challenges could be limiting enough to affect the owner’s motivation to continue.

3^rd stage or the Growth Phase: Here, the business has faced and overcame many of the besetting issues that are common to most start-up businesses. The business may be generating regular cash flow to keep it afloat and fund other growth initiatives depending on the owner’s goal. There may be possibilities of expanding the business by considering a backward integration model to have all the business chain of the industry type or venture out completely to other industry. Major contending issues are market competition, staffing issues as a result of increased staff strength, managing the increased revenue etc.  Most owners consider this as a successful venture and continue to manage it within this scope.

4^th stage or Rapid Growth Phase is characterized by growth in revenue and cashflow as a resultofentrenched market presence facilitated by proven sales and marketing model. The business is now flourishing and in order to further entrench itself in the market, it will need to find new income stream.  Companies hire more employees to help handle increased scale of operations. The owner will need to decide on whether to increase its financial capacity to manage the increased growth through financing either via bank funding or debt-equity ratio. Too often than not, the company at this stage has a Board or Manager, the implication of this is that those who started the company may no longer be at the helm of affairs and if present, their level of control will have been whittled down. It is worthy of note that some owners may also not be able to sustain the phenomenon growth and hence decide to either sell off the business or reduce shareholding.

5^th stage or Maturity phase is typified by well-defined structure, dominant market presence and stable profits. The business and the owner are quite distinct and separate in spirit and letter. Decision making is decentralized with more managers having responsibilities backed by authority. The business must take advantage of its size, finance and industry strength. The contending issues are whether to introduce new products or services, expanding into a new market or expanding existing business lines etc.

Not all business will naturally transit from one life cycle to another progressively. Some companies will by-pass some stages and move directly to other stages. Examples of such are the growing technology companies. However, there would be some semblance to the stages highlighted above and all business owners need to be prepared and know what obtains in each of the stages.