Category: Business Insights

5 Key Points For Preparing a Winning Business Plan

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

Preparing a Business Plan

Your business plan is your ultimate decision-making tool. Without it, you are more likely to struggle to achieve your goals. A clear and concise business plan is your way to show your staff, your investors, and your bank that you know what you are doing. Anyone you approach for money will expect to see your business plan and without it, you won’t be getting any money because everyone knows that investing in a rudderless business is simply too risky. That’s why you must take certain things into consideration to make sure your business plan is effective.

Following are some tips that will help you when preparing a business plan:

1. Be Clear on What You Want to Achieve

Ask yourself what you want to achieve and what your company stands for. Think of everything you would want a potential employee, customer, partner, or investor to know about it. This include the following:

  • Vision Statement: Create a short and aspirational vision statement. It should be realistic. You should take your time to get it right.
  • Unique Selling Proposition: This includes the reasons why you believe that the customers will come to you instead of your competitors.
  • Target Market Identification: Although you would want to expand your customer base as much as possible, it pays to have a clear picture of the target market as it will make it easier for you to communicate with them.
  • Explanation of Products/Services: Make sure the explanation is in line with your Unique Selling Proposition and meets the needs of your target market.
  • Goals: List your goals. They should be measurable, realistic, and consistent with your financial plan.

2. Set Out the Details

The next step is to see how your vision will work. Specify what your business structure is and who will help you bring your vision to life. Following are some others things you should include:

  • Structure and History: Outlines the background of your business and introduce key people like managers, employees, investors, and partners.
  • Analysis of Competitors: Do a complete analysis of the competitive landscape, including information on the characteristics and size of the target market, industry, as well as your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
  • Business Assets: Identify what you have as well as what you need, including plant and equipment, premises, intellectual property, information systems, insurance and licenses.
  • SWOT Analysis: Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your idea along with potential opportunities and threats.
  • Goals and Milestones: Set out your key business goals for the period covered by the plan along with different milestones you want to reach. Make sure your goals are realistic and measurable.
  • Financial Forecasts: List your capital requirements and start-up costs as well as your projected cash flow, loss and profit, break-even analysis, and balance sheet forecasts.
  • Business Strategies: These should include sales, marketing, and customer retention strategies.

We recommend that you use Stats NZ’s Data for Business website in order to find useful business statistics and tools.

3. Keep it Short and Easy to Understand

When writing a business plan, make sure to keep it realistic, short, and easy to understand. It is important to consider that someone reading your business plan in the future might not be familiar with jargon or more technical terms. That’s why we recommend you write the business plan in plain English. It is also recommended that you do your research and provide evidence to support your conclusions (if possible) and include an action plan.

4. Review and Make Necessary Changes

After the above steps, you are finally ready to review your work and finalize the summary. Carefully review the business plan and make sure it presents a compelling and cohesive picture of your business in a professional format. After that, take the most important component of each section and use them to create an engaging executive summary. Your goal here is to create the summary that draws the reader into the rest of your business plan.

5. Put the Plan to Work

Once your business plan is ready, treat it as a guide to running your business. Keep in mind that business plans are dynamic documents which means that you should adjust your business plan as your business develops. If the circumstances and goals change, update the plan. The Stats NZ website has some great tools and information to get your business started.

 

As always, Spinach believe in business, and we are inspired by goals of growth. We want to be part of your success. To get us on board, please call us on 0800 SPINACH (0800 774 622) or email us info@spinach.co.nz

The Process of Gaining Patent Protection in NZ

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

If you are serious about an idea or basic product and want to transform it into an invention, it is very important that you get patent protection. Without patent protection, it is unwise to promote or advertise the idea, as it can be easily stolen. More than that, your idea will not be taken seriously by businesses you approach because without the patent protection, your idea is just that – an idea.

Patenting in New Zealand offers protection within the country. If you want to get patent protection in a foreign country, you will need to apply for a patent in that country or in a region that includes that certain country.

Before we get into the details of what to expect, it is important to note, that this process should be walked through with a Patent Attorney who specialises in this type of work. Our explanation has simplified what to expect, but is in no way being offered in place of solid legal advice!

Procedure for Obtaining a Patent

The process of patenting a new idea or product is not simple, in fact, it can be quite complex. Here is the procedure in a nutshell:

1. Search Existing Patents

The first step is to search in order to see whether your idea or product has already been patented. You may be out of luck if your basic idea or product has already been patented. If it isn’t, then you can proceed to complete your patent application. It may sound easy, but in truth, it’s not. Patent searches are likely to reveal a similar idea or product that has already been patented. If that is the case, then you might need to alter your idea/product to make it less similar.

2. Apply for a Patent

The next step is to apply for a patent. You will need to complete an application and submit it to IPONZ and also pay a $100 fee (provisional). You can either file a new application for a provisional specification or a complete specification. Keep in mind that the application for a patent is not similar to completing an employment application. It is a hectic procedure and must be done correctly so that your idea or product as well as your future rights to it are protected. Any mistakes may result in a quick denial from IPONZ.

3. Pending Application

Once you have submitted your application, it will become a pending application. The procedure after that depends on the route you have chosen for patent filing. In some jurisdictions, a patentability search will be carried out within 6 months of filing the application.

4. Publication

Patent applications are generally published on the IPONZ website approximately 18 months after they are first filed. From that date, anyone can access the contents of your patent application. It is also possible for you to see copies of correspondence with IPONZ as the application is examined.

5. Examination

Once your patent application is published, the next step is to request examination of the application. You can usually do this within 6 months of publication and you can expect to receive the first examination report within the 12 months period of requesting examination. You must also file a response to the examination report, generally within 3-6 months of receiving the examination report. In some cases, multiple examination reports will be issued. If successful, your patent will be granted within 6 months of filing a successful response to your examination report.

6. Acceptance

If there are no objections from the examination, your patent will be accepted and the accepted form of your application will be published in the IPONZ Journal. Once the patent is accepted and your application has been allowed, you will need to pay some form of official fee associated with the issue or grant procedure. Once granted, you will need to pay annual government renewal fees that are usually due each year up to and including the 20th year so that your patent is kept in force.

7. Renewal Fees

Annual renewal fees are payable in most countries, even on pending applications. They are generally paid from the third year onwards. In New Zealand, you are required to pay renewal fees in the 4th, 7th, 10th and 13th years after the date the application was first filed. The term of a patent is 20 years from the date of filing the complete specification.

Your patent is your most valuable asset and it lasts for 20 years. Most people who have gone through the process say that getting patent protection is a bit like buying a house. The procedure can be frustrating and overwhelming, but undeniably worthwhile once completed. To take that next step, contact a reputable and experienced attorney to discuss your idea.

We can recommend people if you need advice on where to go too, so give us a call if this applies to you.

The Importance of Hiring a Great Accountant

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

Many business owners, particularly those who manage small businesses, ignore to see the importance of hiring an accountant. They only realize their importance in the following situations:

  • Renewal of business permits and licenses
  • Filing of audited financial statements and income tax returns, and
  • Government agencies audit

Oftentimes, they hire an accountant when its already too late. Hiring a great accountant has many benefits. Small business owners usually find it costly to maintain a retainer to do the tax preparation and bookkeeping for their business. But what they don’t usually know is that there are many monetary as well as non-monetary advantages of maintaining one. This article reviews the importance of hiring a great accountant in business, no matter how small it is. Following are some of the key benefits of hiring an accountant:

Organized Record of Financial Data

Most business owners want to focus their energy and time operating and growing their business. As such, often times their personal and business financial documents are mixed up. Having unorganized financial documents creates headaches and stress to business owners as they don’t know if they are profiting or losing. This is where the help of an accountant proves to be invaluable. A great accountant can help you maintain an organized record of filing of your business’ day to day financial records. This is generally known as bookkeeping. When the business has an organized and systemized record keeping of transactions, it saves the business owners time worrying about whether they are profiting or losing. Furthermore, they don’t have to worry about how to organize all the receipts they need to file and record.

Financial Analysis

A business accountant analyzes the input and output of the business, including operation costs, revenue, and invested capital and then comes up with executable strategies to make sure that the business remains profitable. He/she also advises proprietors on the business’ feasibility as well as further trends.

Reporting

An accountant prepares financial reports for the business within the required time. They complete accurate financial reports. These reports play an important role in decision making about the business’ various operations. Apart from this, the reports also serve an interactive purpose for internal as well as external audits.

Supervisory and Managerial Role

The role of accountants in every business is extremely important as they utilize their knowledge, skills, and expertise to keep the organization staffed by working on mechanisms of suitable hiring and management of staff. On the monitoring and supervisory aspect, accountants come up with systems capable of monitoring inputs as well as financial reports handling in the business.

Businesses that hire the services of a great accountant generally enjoy the following benefits:

  • Well-kept and organized information.
  • Rapid growth due to enhanced financial credibility, management, and strategies.
  • A lot of free time to invest further.
  • No disputes with employees as payments and terms are duly served.

Save Time to Focus on Business Growth

It can be quite time consuming to keep track of your business financial data, recording, as well as filling it, particularly if you are not used to it. With the help of an accountant, you can save a lot of your time to focus on the growth of your business rather than worrying about keeping an organized accounting record and tax deadlines.

Save Money

The possibility of future penalties is high if you don’t have an accountant. There is also the risk of interest on government reports that are incorrectly filed. With the help of an experienced accountant, you can save cost on these future charges and penalties of correcting your tax returns and accounting books on time.

Peace of Mind

The last but not least benefit of hiring a great accountant is that you will have peace of mind.  When you have a skilled accountant who efficiently does the tax compliance and record keeping, you don’t need to worry about someone coming to your business to do Audit. With the help of an accountant, you can be confident that you have the records to show that you are complying with all of the accounting and government reportorial requirements.

Final Word

Accounting is a very important aspect of any business, no matter whether it is a small business or a large enterprise. As a business owner, your top priority is to keep your accounting in proper order. If you have trouble maintaining the accounts yourself, then it is highly recommended that you hire an account to handle the accounting aspects of your business. Not only will this give you peace of mind, but you will also have more time to perform other tasks to run your business efficiently.

The Benefits of Having a Great Business Mentor on Your Side

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

There are a very few successful people that are truly “self-made”. Mostly every success story is linked to someone that helped the person along the way. Although this is not always the case, most of the time the person that helped was a mentor. Understanding the benefits of having a great business mentor is something you need to think about.

Basically, a business mentor is an individual who is there for you to guide you in the right direction. He/she gives you direction through their experience and listens to your ideas. Mentors have years of experience in the field and they have gone through the problems that most new business owners will go through. They share that experience with you so you don’t have to go through those problems. In this way, a mentor can help save you a lot of time, money, and frustration.

Following are some benefits of having a great business mentor:

Expert Advice

The best thing about having a great business mentor that has experience in your industry is that they can give you a more reliable, specific advice. Because of their years of experience, they know the issues that you are facing, and how to deal with those issues in a quick and efficient way. The important thing to remember is that you are getting a sound advice. The mentor’s job is not about telling you what to do. They can simply offer advice on the basis of what they know, and what they have been through in the past. Every situation is different, so it is up to you to decide how to deal with each situation based on what you know as well as the advice that your mentor gives you.

A Different Perspective

Another benefit of having a business mentor is that they can act as a sounding board for your ideas. Your mentor can offer a different perspective that might help you to adjust or clarify those ideas so that you can present them to others. Apart from this, your mentor can also act as a sounding board as you try to determine what the best reaction is to a certain situation that you are currently facing. You may be in a position to deal with a difficult employee, and your business mentor can hear how you want to handle the situation. Your mentor will be able to play “devil’s advocate” to make sure that you are fully prepared before you meet with that employee.

Connections

Since your business mentor has years of experience in your industry, they are likely to have many connections within the industry as well. As your business grows and develops, your mentor may be able to introduce you to people that you wouldn’t be able to meet otherwise. Those connections could lead to promotions and/or opportunities that may not be available to your competitors. As a business owner, your connections are extremely important to the life of your business. Those connections become the suppliers or customers that will help your business to be profitable.

Emotional Support

You may be alone as a business owner, but your entrepreneurial journey doesn’t have to be isolated. Your business mentor can fill the gaps by offering emotional support. This is one of the most critical roles of a great business mentor. As your grow in your business as well as in your personal life, it is helpful to have someone who can ask you the difficult questions regarding how you are doing as a person. They can question you on whether you are making time for your family, how you are treating others, and most importantly, how you are doing ethically.

Developing Confidence

Restoring enthusiasm and confidence on the part of the business owner is the endgame of business mentoring. By encouraging, teaching, and assisting, a mentor can turn a burnt-out business owner into a fireball of productivity. As a business owner, when you realize that your business is not a ball and chain which requires 60 hours of your time every week but a vehicle that can significantly improve your own life and develop real equity, you will become far more productive.

These are just a few of the key benefits of having a great business mentor. But you should keep in mind that nothing is guaranteed. You still need to work hard in order to make sure that your business is successful. However, with an experienced business mentor by your side, your probability of success will certainly increase tenfold.

6 Changes You Can Make Today To Have A Greater Impact As a Leader

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

A true leader is the one who creates an impact with their leadership on their organization, employees, team, and stakeholders, as a result of their behaviors, attitudes, and actions. Qualities of a great leader include being appreciative of the good abilities of certain employees, patient, attentive listener, and thankful for accomplishments of their team as a whole. There are many ways you can create impact with your leadership and earn the respect of your colleagues and staff.

Following are some tips that will help you create impact with your leadership

1. Be a Role Model

Leaders must lead by example and walk the talk. Your team looks to you to lead them and show and communicate your expectations, particularly during change. You cannot expect your employees to change their habits if you are not willing to do so yourself. That’s why when you make some changes, make sure to follow them with the same action you expect out of your employees or team. If you are a role model and responsibly take the lead, your team will follow you.

2. Be a Coach

Respected and influential leaders put their staff ahead of their own needs by recognizing the employees who always give their best and that go beyond their job descriptions. If you want to create impact with your leadership, then you must find ways to enable your employees to reach their true potential. You will need to coach your employees in order to do this and share your wisdom, knowledge, and experience with them. With proper guidance, you will open the doors for continued success of your valued staff members.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks or Acknowledge Your Mistakes

Influential, strong leaders know that you have to take risks from time to time and even acknowledge when you have made any mistakes. These are the leaders who can challenge ideas and take risks to gain a competitive edge. They know when drastic measures are needed to be taken in order to keep certain operations within an organization moving smoothly and are always willing to act on their decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes the decisions a leader makes aren’t what are best for the team or organization. Respected leaders are the ones who acknowledge their mistakes and openly admit that they have made a bad call. This makes employees or team feel valued.

4. Reinforce a Culture of Accountability

Accountability is the key to creating an impact with leadership. When you, as a leader, hold your team accountable, it helps them understand that they are accountable in all things they do. Your words and influence will fall on deaf ears if there are no accountability measures in place. Your employees need to see the way in which you lead and do business. Cultural elements, and internal systems and processes are in place for a reason.

5. Create a Positive Executive Presence

When you are respected by your employees, only then you can create an impact and leave a long-lasting impression. Executive presence is a powerful tool which you can use to make your employees and team feel appreciated and valued. Influential leaders are the role models for their employees. When you create a positive executive presence, your employees will welcome the constructiveness and will be open to critiquing without worrying about the source that it’s coming from. This is the kind of presence that you can utilize to create impact with your leadership and create a positive influence for the whole organization.

6. Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Respected leaders recognize and reward colleagues and employees they are sharing the success with. Bad leaders hoard positive recognition and focus on themselves. In reality, those are the leaders who wouldn’t succeed without the help of their team and the employees working for them. When valuable efforts are recognized and rewarded, it encourages innovation, hard work, and stimulates new ways of thinking. Respected leaders make it their duty to focus and improve the progress of their colleagues and staff as opposed to themselves.

 

If you want to create impact with your leadership, then you must earn respect of your team and employees. Because without it, you are not going to see any success. Being a great leader is about being passionate about what you and your team do and being a navigational tool for all your employees and colleagues. Stay mindful of the ways to improve the working environment so that a better workforce is created and you stay competitively relevant.

9 Marketing Ideas To Boost Your Business Profile

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

Marketing is extremely important for the growth of a small business. Without any marketing plan, it would be like operating a business with a blindfold. As a small business owner, you must know the different marketing techniques and strategies that will work for your business. The idea is to understand marketing as a way to keep improving the way your business is doing. Smart business owners know that they must always work toward finding new ways to improve their sales, revenue, and profit.

Following are some marketing ideas and tips that will help you gain a competitive edge:

1. Know Your Market

Making sure that you have a solid grasp on your targeted market is the first step in developing a successful small business marketing strategy. Identify your customers. After that, identify the problems, aspirations, and dreams of your targeted customers. Learning about your targeted market will provide you insights regarding how to design your products and services in a way that meet and exceed the expectations of your customers.

2. Know Yourself

After learning about your targeted market, the next step is to know yourself (your business). Ask yourself what your business does and how it is different than your competitors. Also try to find the answer regarding how your business helps solve your customers’ problems. Once you have learned these important aspects of your business, you will be able to define your unique selling proposition – the aspects that make your business stand out from the competition. Make that unique selling proposition your business’ identity.

3. Check Your Competition

It is important that you learn what marketing strategies your competitors are using. You should analyze the marketing campaign of your competitors and try to look for something they are missing. Your aim should be to find a different, unique way to market your services and products so that you don’t go head to head with a competitor that has been in the market for years.

4. Create Social Awareness

It is highly recommended that you create a social media marketing channel so you can develop and generate leads more profitably. Focus more on the trendy social media platforms and start engaging targeted audience. Use your social media marketing channel for publishing out.

5. Communicate Well with Your Targeted Market

Simply being informative on your web page is not enough. You need to be virtually everywhere else to get as many people to have more knowledge about your brand, products, and services. Offer free valuable information related to your services or products so you can give your targeted audience the impression that you are the authority in the service/product that you are selling.

6. Keep Your Ads Short and Concise

As compared to longer ads, short and direct to the point ads are relatively more effective when it comes to attracting customers. They prove to be highly beneficial to small business owners as they don’t have to write a lengthy ad anyway. Furthermore, they are also relatively more cost-effective.

7. Put Business Information on Everything

Whether you are marketing your existing small business or starting a new one, getting your brand out there is everything. It is recommended that you make sure that your brand logo, name, and contact information are on everything you do. Include them on your invoices, website, and any paperwork you send out.

8. Email Marketing – Build Your List

Email marketing is an extremely important part of small business marketing and it is something that will not go away anytime soon. If you are starting from scratch, then building your list may seem like a difficult task, but the effort is worth it as email marketing is still one of the best ways of getting people interested.

9. Advertise Small

Don’t try to mimic advertising campaigns by big businesses as the cost will be simply too much for your small business. Besides, you really don’t need to spend so much on your advertisements because you are a new, relatively small business. So, it is recommended that you find out how to use your small ads properly and convert them to sales.

Final Word

As a small business owner, it is extremely important that you come up with ways to keep your customers coming back to you as well as attract new, targeted customers. Marketing for small business can be attention grabbing and inexpensive. Use the marketing ideas and tips listed above to come up with a personalized marketing plan for your small business. It is also recommended that you play around with different ideas until you find those that work best for you.

Admin Ideas to Improve The Efficiency of Your Small Business

Posted on by jemma@spinach.co.nz

As a small business owner, you don’t have any time to waste. There are a million things on your mind and a million things to do, and simply not enough hours in the day. But you can relieve some of that pressure, increase efficiency, and maybe save some time by implementing some key time management techniques.

Following are some admin ideas and tips that will help you save time and increase your small business management efficiency:

1. Always Have a Daily Plan

While living by a plan may not exactly seem glamorous as a small business owner, it is one of the best ways to be efficient and stay on top of everything. It is recommended that you start out your day listing down your goals and plan accordingly, and then prioritize those goals. You won’t find yourself wasting as much time when you have got things down on a list with a specific plan to follow.

2. Delegate

Admitting that they cannot do everything themselves is probably one of the most difficult things for small business owners. While it may be a bit scary to give up control and rely on others, it is a necessity. Learning what and how to delegate can be a great time-saver and helps your business to be relatively more efficient. And delegating does not only work for tasks, when it comes to putting together strategies and answering some of the important questions you face as a small business owner, you can ask other people to help you out.

3. Prioritize

There are lots of tasks that go into managing a small business, but not all of them require the same amount or level of attention. Every business is difficult and focuses on different areas. For instance, a brick and mortar store may decide to prioritize sales and advertising strategies while an online business should probably expect to prioritize social media use and article writing since the owner has to gain website traffic as well as build credibility. What’s important is that the priorities of a business be detailed out and clear to everyone involved.

The key to successful prioritization is being able to differentiate between tasks that are urgent and non-urgent as well as important and non-important tasks. The tasks that have a tangible impact on your business’ success are important tasks, while urgent tasks are those that have an impending, firm deadline, with consequences if that deadline is missed.

4. Automate

Technology is an amazing thing. Small business owners these days are extremely lucky that they live in an era in which modern technologies and innovations that can help them manage their businesses more easily are popping up on a regular basis. Automation of certain tasks can help drastically reduce the time and effort required. For example, by switching to online scheduling, you can reduce the time it takes you to schedule your staff by up to 80%. Not to mention, you also get rid of your pen-and-paper schedules and spreadsheets. Nowadays, there’s probably a software solution that can help you simplify just about any business process, from running your payroll to posting on social media.

5. Outsource

The idea behind outsourcing is pretty simple. Take a task that you don’t have time to do or don’t want to do and pay someone else to do it. Outsourcing is an excellent way to offload some of your administrative burden and often have the task carried out by a professional more quickly and proficiently as opposed to handling it in-house. While it’s not always quite as straightforward or simple as that, outsourcing is still one of the best ways to reduce your workload and free up valuable time which you can then spend elsewhere. To proceed, first identify what business tasks you want to outsource. Then, start to identify potential agencies, contractors, or service providers to take on the work you would like to outsource.

6. Ease Up on the Meetings

If you schedule a lot of meetings with your staff, then ask yourself how important they really are. The time spent preparing for the meeting, holding it, and then responding to various questions afterwards can add up fast. That’s why it is recommended that you only stick to important meetings.

 

While dealing with administrative burden can be quite challenging, regardless of whether or not it’s a small business, it is by no means an impossible challenge. A few small changes in how you think about and tackle your small business administrative tasks can make a huge difference to your efficiency and productivity, leaving you more energy and time to focus on growing and improving your business.