Thursday, July 30, 2009

Torturous Training

This week at Axsapt, we threw out our perfectly good SAP Business One Accounting System and replaced it with Sage Accpac ERP and Sage CRM.

We've been using SAP B1 for 4 years successfully and it was time, yet again, to put the A-Team through the torturous process of kicking over to another system.

Over many years we've used a variety of accounting systems including Attache, Arrow, Nexus, Sybiz, Advanced Business Manager, SAP and now Sage. All good systems with their specific strengths and weaknesses that are not obvious until you have used them for a while.

Our journey with Sage started just over 12 months ago, during which time we have been steadily learning this comprehensive Enterprise Resource System. Although we have learned well from the excellent training resources available, we've found that the deep knowledge that we require as Business Consultants, can only be achieved by first hand experience.

This knowledge stands us in good stead with any business wanting an appraisal of their current business systems.

More information: Axsapt

Friday, July 17, 2009

Marketing your business - What works these days?

My involvement with running a "business" goes back to 1978 when I was selling Cycling Helmets whilst studying at the University of New South Wales. I placed a small strip ad in the Student Newspaper "Tharunka" and was thrilled to see over 100 orders stuffed in my post box.

Magazine ads also served me well from 1984 when I launched a new business publishing and distributing the DeSmet C compiler for the PC and Mac. Many of my ideas for marketing during this time came from John Caples book, "Tested Advertising Methods", where I learned of the importance of measuring the results of each ad placed. My advertising budget was quite low and I found that after a number of years the return on investment of the ads was diminishing so I tried direct mail for a while with very little profit.

My first attempt at fax marketing was in 1992 when Microsoft Access 1.0 was released. The faxes were personalised and targeted at C programmers and resulted in over 150 orders. Fax marketing worked well for a few more years but then the profit return started to drop and frustration from unwanted faxes was growing.

I gave email marketing a go for a while, but never experienced the good results of the early magazine ads and personalised faxes. Since 2004 with Axsapt, our focus has changed from selling product to providing business consulting services and we tried seminars, trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing all with very limited success.

We continue to send out infrequent email newsletters primarily to keep our customers informed of important software patches and new releases. The difficulty is that everyone is swamped with "spam" and very few people have the time to read emails these days.

Until about 2006, most of our new business was sourced through leads received from our suppliers and referrals from our existing Customers, Accountants and Business Coaches. In recent years however, we've noticed a substantial drop of leads from suppliers so we experimented with a 3 month campaign with Google Adwords through Reachlocal. Although impressed with the professionalism of ReachLocal and the Adword mechanism of measuring results, we felt it didn't suit a service based business like ours.

Referrals have always impressed us as the most effective source of business primarily because of the low cost and minimal effort to progress the sale due to the "trust" factor. And so, we decided 3 years ago to try Business Network International ("BNI") to improve our referral rate. So far our experience has been quite positive in more ways than just increased sales. We've used the trusted services of fellow BNI members to improve our own business and have referred quite a bit of business to other members along the way.

This morning, I attended the BNI Conference in Townsville and the keynote speaker, Dr Ian Misner, the expert on referral marketing and BNI Founder, reminded us that building a referral network such as the BNI model takes a significant amount of effort. The secret, the "Givers Gain" philosophy, is to focus on helping other BNI members, and in time, you will receive referrals once your credibility grows. I have to agree as it took almost 2 years to receive our first sale, but now I notice we're receiving good quality, substantial leads and the future is looking very promising for our investment in BNI.

Growing any business is a rewarding journey and so far I've learned that you need to adapt to changing circumstances in order to thrive. Marketing is certainly an important aspect of most businesses and especially for service based businesses, I can highly recommend you consider BNI.

I'd be interested to learn about your experiences in growing your business. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with me. Is there another form of marketing that works for you? Click on this link to let me know.