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For this reason a new guide has been launched as part of the event which is going to help women get started in business. The guide has been put together by the women in business organisation and it is going to be able to help the increasingly large number of women who are starting businesses.

In the last four years the number of women who are running a business has increased by over 15 percent, while the increase in men has only been two percent. However, many people believe that lack of financial knowledge will cause many of these new ventures that are being run by women to fail.

Women use a much narrower range of finance options and start businesses with much lower levels of funding, across every size and sector of business. “When it comes to succeeding in business, whether you’re a man or a woman doesn’t matter a bit. With similar levels of start-up finance, women’s businesses perform just as well as those led by men,” says report author, Erika Watson. “While there is still some discrimination, that’s less of an issue than the gaps in knowledge about what’s available. Prowess 2.0 wants to support more women to succeed by providing the best information available.”

The practical 21 page e-book includes:

• A plain-English overview of all the main types of UK business finance, including loans, grants, equity, bootstrapping, crowdfunding and more.

• The pros and cons of the main types of funding and whether there’s a women’s angle or route. For example, women are much less likely to seek Business Angel funding, but just as likely to succeed when they do.

• Exercises to help women understand and deal with their own financial psychology. Money is a topic which academics agree is more emotionally loaded for women than it is for men.

Erika Watson has an MBE for services to women’s enterprise and was a member of the Government appointed Women’s Enterprise Task Force. She says: “the Task Force report brought together a substantial body of research on how access to finance was a barrier for women in business, but we couldn’t find any practical information resources like this for women.” Prowess 2.0’s Women’s Business Finance Guide fills the gap and will enable more women to make the most of all the financial opportunities open to their business.

The report is free to download from www.prowess.org.uk

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One of the biggest draws of Microsoft Exchange is its security features. It offers advanced antivirus and antispam features to keep your computers safe from infection and your inboxes free of clutter. Every message you send using Microsoft Exchange is encrypted at both the channel and message levels, helping you control who has access to communications inside and outside of your company’s network. Their multi-layer spam filtering feature updates continuously to stay ahead of any sophisticated phishing threats that might be lurking on the horizon. If you purchase Microsoft Forefront Protection for either the online or server version of Exchange, you will have the option to use additional security features.

Every business has to remain mobile. The world in which we live is dynamic and doesn’t stop for the people who decide to stay locked in their offices. Microsoft Exchange comes with a universal inbox that includes communication types such as saved instant message conversations, RSS feeds, calendar requests, rights-protected messages, voicemail, and email to name a few. The person responsible for maintaining these types of data only has to click a button synch it with hundreds of compatible devices. The level of control you have with Microsoft Exchange is unparalleled for a product of its kind.

Larger businesses have many difficulties in optimizing their workforce to carry out current projects and remain in touch with each other. When one resource falls by the wayside, it drags down the efficiency of the company as a whole. Microsoft Exchange gives your company the tools to get everyone together on one page. You can insert is as one part of your overall business strategy and reap the rewards of not having to worry about communication breaking down. Similar software exists on the market today, but none of it offers you the feature set or control that’s present in Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft has made a name for itself with their various business solutions. This software is no exception to the rule. If your business isn’t using Microsoft Exchange right now, it should implement it immediately.

If you need help setting up your system or have questions you can go to a trusted source for IT help such as Dell IT services. The time you spend figuring out how to manage your IT issues and use Microsoft Exchange to its full benefit will greatly affect your business.

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On Monday, first class postal charges in the UK went up to 60 pence from 46 pence and the cost of a second class stamp rose to 50 pence from 36 pence. 30 percent of the SMEs said in the survey that they will find other ways to send their post or even send less post Half of them said that the impact on their business will be “big”.

Almost 7 out of 10 firms did not realize that the increases were going to be that large and were disappointed in the amount of information available in advance. Franked mail is still cheaper than standard rates. The cost of first class is up from 39 pence to 44pence and second class rose 3 pence to 31 pence.

Phil Hutchison, marketing director of Pitney Bowes, urged SMEs not to panic and suggested folding A4 documents thus reducing costs of the large first class mail which is 90 pence and the large second class which is 69 pence. Another possibility, he said was to send postcards or self-addressed envelopes to customers again reducing costs. He also said traditional print campaigns would now be critical for marketing.

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Mr. Diamond’s admission came at Barclays’ AGM after it was revealed by the Financial Services Authority that his bank had the most customer complaints for 2011. The banks have come under pressure for mis-selling payment protection insurance plans and interest rate swaps. Interest rate swaps are nothing more than betting on interest rate movements.

It is possible that many thousands of businesses in the UK could have been wrongly sold financial products that are complex in the extreme. The FSA conducted a six-year inquiry into the mis-selling of PPIs resulting in the possibility of compensation payouts in the region of £6 billion. It is interesting that the UK’s 5 largest lenders have put aside £6 billion for possible payouts.

The FSA have been forced to act because of the number of complaints received about the mis-selling of Interest Rate Swap Agreements. They began their formal review of IRSA cases last month. An IRSA is a contract where one party pays a variable rate of interest and receives a fixed rate in return.

This hedges against large movements of interest rates in any period of time. Many firms saw their value work against them because of the fall of interest rates during the economic downturn. Consequently, they now owe catastrophic amounts to the banks in interest every year.

The FSA have requested details from the leading banks in the UK of these products sold to SMEs. £1.9 billion has already been paid out by sixteen financial institutes in the last year due to mis-selling. Now firms are turning to the courts because they say that they should not have been sold these products and to get out of these contracts with the banks is an extremely costly business as most of them charge astronomic sums to do so.

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They are also now also being accused of mis-marketing products to firms that are concerned about the high costs of borrowing. Most of the available products vary slightly depending on the business and depending on the bank but they are all designed the same with swaps that were sold off back in the period between 2006 and 2008.

The other side of the situation is that when SMEs started to take out the contracts they were protected if the interest rates increased over a set level and there were costs that they would have to pay in exchange if the interest rates fell. As it happened, interest rates actually took a dive when the base rate was cut down to 0.5% which meant that thousands of business that purchased the interest-rate swap deals are now stuck paying three times as much interest due to the penalties.

This has caused many to actually go out of business because the cost of their loans was too high.Now the question that everyone is looking at is if the products were intentionally mis-sold to SMEs. Of course, there is the bankers’ opinion that if SMEs do like their contracts because of the way that they turned out that is just part of business.

On the other hand, many are concerned that the SMEs were not clearly told about the downside and the risk that came with taking the deal therefore leading to the banks getting the upper hand. Some of the complaints come from the fact that the deals almost always make sure that borrowers are locked into their deals for long periods of time and at the same time were talked into insuring their overdraft too heftily even if they were not even in danger of actually using them.

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New book aims to bring out the salesman in all of us

Sales is considered to be an honourable and respected profession in many parts of the World, especially in the US, but there is something about being British that makes us shy about even the thought of it.

We find all sorts of other euphemisms to describe the sales role such as business development executive, or account manager or anything but a sales person.

It is hardly surprising then that we find ourselves challenged in this area at a time when what Britain needs most to put it back on its feet is sales; both home and abroad.

According to Nick Bailey MBA, DipM, FCIM, FinstSMM, the author of “Customers are FICKLE™”, was published on April 23rd, it is a cultural thing. “For some countries in other parts of Europe it’s even worse than it is in the UK” says Nick. “There is a perceived élitism around say engineering or being a doctor, accountant, lawyer, anything but a sales person.

But the top sales people undergo similar education, accreditation and rigorous training to become ‘high flyers’ and whilst all sales people need intelligent colleagues to design, deliver and support the production of high quality products and services, until you actually do sell something nothing else can happen!”

Nick is on a crusade to share the sales skills he has developed over 25 years experience in the IT industry, selling high value complex deals, with a new generation who have few role models in sales to follow. However being effective in sales isn’t, as most people think, about fast talking, it is more about effective listening.

“The very best sales people in the world say very little actually” said Nick. “We’ve got two ears and one mouth and that’s the proportion in which you should use them. You should listen to the answers to your, hopefully, intelligent questions, for 66% of the time minimum. The great sales people in the world are the masters of asking the right questions in the right way and then listening attentively to the answer, thus facilitating a deep and quality understanding of a clients’ requirement”.

So are some people easier to sell to than others? “Obviously, if you’re in front of somebody with the same psychological profile as you and hence you’re quite similar in personality you will create rapport easily, but that’s relatively rare, in fact, only one in nine times is it going to happen. So, understanding how people prefer to receive information about products or services and to tailor that communication, not in a manipulative way, but in a way that is productive and is explanatory, optimises that dialogue and enables people to understand what your proposition is. They are then in a much better frame of mind and have the right level of information to be able to decide whether or not it’s what they want to do.”

One of the innovative and different themes of Nicks’ book is its emphasis on recognizing the different personality ‘types’ sales people may meet and how to tailor communications to them through the use of a personality typing tool called the ‘Enneagram’.

Nick’s book, Customers are F.I.C.K.L.E™, has already attracted the attention of Fiona Bruce MP who is an enthusiastic supporter of his efforts to ‘Get Britain Selling’. The book is perfectly positioned, for instance, to help people who are selling high value complex products and services that are going abroad to help fuel the growth of other economies like the Middle and Far East, the success of which will ultimately grow ours. In addition, the principles it contains are just as relevant to any small business looking to increase its customers and improve their relationships with them.

As well as providing consultancy and coaching, Nick is initiating open ‘Master Classes’ to train interested companies in his FICKLE™ methodology, which stands for Finding, Investigating, Closing, Keeping Leveraging, and Expanding client business. See: (www.apexselling.com)

“As well as sophisticated approaches to sales, other simple techniques could get the economy moving. For example, if we could get sales directors or managers across the country to challenge their sales teams to do something as easy as making “just one more call” a day or “one more visit” a day, at the end of the year the result would be amazing for the UK.

Sales is also about numbers, the more properly qualified prospects that you can put into a sales funnel or pipeline, then providing you are selling what clients need and want, then more business will come out of that funnel at the end of the day. Getting Britain Selling again is not just about doing big things, but the little things well – and doing more of them!”

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fact, one of the major ways that the internet has changed the world of commerce is by offering those with specialised products to reach a wider target audience with very little effort. That said, when building an ecommerce website there are still some vital tasks that cannot be overlooked such as building an effective ecommerce website.

The best way to understand the concept of building a website is to look at it as your virtual storefront. In the same way that you would want to create a physical store that was attractive and professional to encourage customers to stop in, when building an ecommerce website online you need to make sure that it is optimised, attractive, and professional so that consumers will not only stop by, but also feel inclined to make a purchase.

Of course, in the same way that not every new business owner is a construction expert capable of building their own store, not every new business owner is a web master capable of building an attractive ecommerce website from scratch. Therefore, it may be useful to use eCommerce website templates to help craft a website using an existing business model that has already proved successful online.

Templates help guide novice web owners through the process of building a website that will greet customers and make them feel at ease, and therefore are one of the best online business tools that you can take advantage of when attempting to get your business off the ground.

In addition to helping a business website look professional, an ecommerce website builder will also help guide new website owners through the process of optimization allowing them to attract a large amount of traffic online.

Since you cannot hope for large sales without a large volume of visitors, this is not something that should be ignored even for a start-up. After all, the higher the traffic flows, the higher the potential for sales, making proper optimisation a pertinent concern for any ecommerce business.

Published for shopify

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However, Salesorder.com which was founded by Nick Spooner is now offering SMEs a great new package that utilises ‘cloud’ software which can cut down on the amount of time that businesses have to spend on accounting activities, sales, and customer service.

The cloud based solution is available for under £500 and will allow small businesses that have small budgets to see the benefits that come from linking key functions together such as stock management, customer services, sales, accounting, and projects. In addition, it will help SMEs save wasted time since they will no longer have to worry about imputing information into software packages.

Many businesses are already taking advantage of the software and seeing how it has helped increase their productivity in major business areas. CFO from Bracknell, Pete West, stated that his 68 person business has really seen their productivity increase in major areas such as time tracking, order processing, and accounting and they expect to see more benefits as they continue to take advantage of the software.

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The government were previously very critical about the fact that the big banks were not lending to small businesses. The government have repeatedly said how important small businesses are to the recovery of the economy and how troubled they are by the fact that banks are resistant to lending to them.

In a change of tactics the government have now said that they are encouraging people to get involved in peer-to-peer lending. This is where individuals can go online and offer money to be lent to a company. Often these businesses are particularly small and are looking for the start-up capital they need. Often they are other sorts of organisations such as social enterprises.

The banks in the UK are also facing an increasing amount of regulation and various proposals have been put forward in order to ensure that banks offer more to small businesses in the future. However, it is understandable that the banks are currently adverse to giving out loans to small businesses.

They are typically a higher risk choice and in these times of general economic decline, banks are not willing to take the risk that a business will fail, and they will not be able to get all of their investment back.

The banks have defended these actions saying that being risk averse allows them to offer products to their customers at a much more affordable rate. Various business lobby groups have acknowledged the statements by the bank however the government has said that it is very important that banks do continue to lend to small businesses.

The Bank of England has stated that in order to keep costs low for customers, they shouldn’t not invest in small companies, but they should focus on paying their board of directors smaller salaries and not giving them such significant bonus packages.

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