How to Start a Small Scale Business

Starting a small scale business is a lot like falling in love. It grows on you. Sometimes you may not fancy the person that much, but as you get to know and interact with the person more, they grow on you, and before long, your heart starts to skip a beat.
You do not need a clash of cymbals, roll of drums, thunder and lightning flashes to get your business started. You may not even be thinking of starting a business in the first place. It often starts with your hobby or pet project. Something you have loads of fun doing on the side. You cannot wait to get back from work to jump on it. You are at work or school, but your mind keeps straying to it.
All it takes to move it to the next level is seriousness and commitment. Seriousness in improving your skills through practice and exposure, and commitment in finishing what you started. This may lead you to start a business or build your name into a brand. Somewhere along the line, it grows into a business. Maybe you are building a prototype of a machine that will change the way we do things, taking your cooking or sewing to the next level, compiling a volume of poems, writing a book, songs or film script, creating a masterpiece, composing a song, whatever it is that makes your heart race and soar. A business creates a platform for you to give the world what you’ve got.
At the beginning, you are just pottering around and having fun. You have no intention of going public or turning this into a business. You are just doing what you love. Somewhere down the line, as your product or service begins to make impact, it dawns on you, or you keep getting the comment “why don’t you turn this into a business”, the seed is sown in your mind, and the idea begins to grow.


Nnamdi E. Armstrong
stone4sloane@gmail.com
+2348162319833
+2348122735908

Sloane Business Management Consultants: International Opportuniteis

Sloane Business Management Consultants: International Opportuniteis: Taking Advantage of International Opportunities Are you considering selling your products or services internationally? Are you looking f...

International Opportuniteis

Taking Advantage of International Opportunities
Are you considering selling your products or services internationally? Are you looking for non-domestic suppliers or even to start your own manufacturing operations overseas? Or are you a non-American business exploring the possibilities of the world's largest market? Today's business environment is increasingly international and both startups and existing businesses ignore that fact at their peril.
Sloane Business management Consulting (SBMC) a division of Sloane International Investments Ltd (SILL) team of experienced professionals can help you navigate the complexities of doing business internationally. Whatever opportunities you are chasing, or problems you are facing, the chances are we've been there before.
How We Can Help
International Business Planning & Marketing

• Market and business plans for companies that want to enter or expand in international markets
• International market research, including screening to find target markets that best meet the needs of your current product mix, business strategy, and company culture
• Identifying competition and understanding distribution channels and pricing
• Guidance in developing and implementing effective credit and collections policies

International Product Sourcing

• Business plans for off-shoring or outsourcing of services, products and manufacturing
• Determining the best locations for sourcing based on existing supply chains, markets, competitiveness benchmarking, and trade preferences
• Identifying potential partners and advising on decisions to invest directly or contract with local suppliers, and on how to best structure agreements

Entering the U.S. Market

• Market research, marketing plans, and business plans for international firms thinking about entering the U.S. market

International Operations

• Advice on how to structure businesses to optimize worldwide operations
• Assistance structuring meaningful financial reporting systems for multi-national, multi-currency operations
• Assistance identifying and managing currency and other risks associated with international operations
• Help in identifying and dealing with local legal and regulatory issues and in finding appropriate local agents, distributors, and joint venture partners
• Speeches and workshops at your workplace or conference.

Nnamdi E. Armstrong
stone4sloane@gmail.com
+2348162319833
+2348122735908

Sloane Business Management Consultants: How To Write a Business Proposal

Sloane Business Management Consultants: How To Write a Business Proposal: If you want to know how to write a winning business proposal, the best person to ask is your customer. The goal of business proposal writ...

How To Write a Business Proposal

If you want to know how to write a winning business proposal, the best person to ask is your customer. The goal of business proposal writing is to answer your customer's questions and persuade them to select you. Business proposal writing should be more about your customer than it is about you. Following a business proposal template won't help you with writing a proposal that speaks directly to the customer.
The customer.
There is no universal standard for layout or composition of proposals. If you think about it, it makes sense. A “proposal” is intended to persuade someone. What is required to do that is up to the person being persuaded.
If you want your proposal to succeed, you must know your customer. If your customer wants:

• If your customer wants details, give it to them. If they don’t want to do a lot of reading, give them a short proposal.
• If your customer wants references, give it to them. Otherwise, don’t.
• If your customer wants pricing, give it to them. If they’re not ready for pricing, don’t give it to them.
• If your customer wants contractual details, give it to them. If they’re not ready to discuss contractual details, don’t force them.
• If your customer wants to know who will be doing the work, tell them. If they don’t care, don’t tell them.
• If your customer wants things presented chronologically, organize your proposal that way.
• If your customer wants information organized functionally, organize your proposal that way.

If you don’t know the answers, find them out.
If the customer doesn’t know what they want or need, give them criteria to help them figure it out.
Never load the customer up with a bunch of paper just because they might want something. Give them what they want. No more, no less.
A simple proposal formula
Here is a simple approach to help you cover all the bases in your proposal. For each section/requirement that you must address, make sure you answer: who, what, where, how, when, and why. Repeat it until it rolls off your tongue and you have it memorized. Use it to identify and answer all of your customer's questions.
After you have written your proposal, you can use the same formula to review it. In each section of your proposal, simply ask yourself if it answers "who, what, where, how, when, and why?"

• Who: who will do the work, who will manage the work, who does the customer call if there is a problem, who is responsible for what
• What: what needs to be done/delivered, what will be required to do it, what can the customer expect, what it will cost
• Where: where will the work be done, where will it be delivered
• How: how will be work be done, how will it be deployed, how will it be managed, how will you achieve quality assurance and customer satisfaction, how will risks be mitigated, how long will it take, how will the work benefit the customer
• When: when will you start, when will key milestones be scheduled, when will the project be complete, when is payment due
• Why: why have you chosen the approaches and alternatives you have selected, why the customer should select you

This simple little phrase (who, what, where, how, when, and why) can help you ensure that your proposal says everything needed to "answer the mail." For each of the customer’s requirements, go through the list and you will probably have everything covered. Simply doing a better job of answering your customer's questions can give you a competitive edge when everything else between two competitors is equal.
In addition to using it for inspiration when writing, you can also use it like a checklist for reviewing a draft proposal. When you read a draft proposal, consider these questions and pretend to be the customer. Go over the questions and see if the proposal provides all of the answers.
All you have to remember is "who, what, where, how, when, and why."
And you thought proposal writing was supposed to be hard.


Nnamdi E. Armstrong
stone4sloane@gmail.com
+2348162319833
+2348122735908

Sloane Business Management Consultants: Marketing as a business philosophy

Sloane Business Management Consultants: Marketing as a business philosophy: Improved standard of living result in more people and further increases in output accompanied by simple mechanization which culminates in ...

Marketing as a business philosophy

Improved standard of living result in more people and further increases in output accompanied by simple mechanization which culminates in a breakthrough when the potential of the division of labouris enhanced through task specialization. Task specialization leads to the development of teams of workers and to more sophisticated and efficient mechanical devices.  A major feature of our own industrial revolution is that production becomes increasingly concentrated in areas of natural advantage, that larger production units develop and that specialization increases as the potential for economies of scale and efficiency are exploited.

Nnamdi E. Armstrong
stone4sloane@gmail.com
+2348162319833
+2348122735908

Finacial Transformation

Sloane Business Management Consultants (SBMC) a division of Sloane International Investments Ltd (SIIL) provides business advisory and IT management consulting services to banking, investment, insurance, life & pensions and capital markets clients. Our consultants have a highly successful track record in converting strategy into realistic programme of change, and working with organizations to help implement practical solutions.
Our approach is driven by client demands and business imperatives. This is a necessity in an industry that must continually respond to regulatory initiatives while at the same time meeting the challenges of reducing costs, managing risk and enhancing the total customer experience, working in cost effective unison with a wide range of partners and product suppliers.
Sloane Business Management consultants is an independent consulting firm that understands the needs of clients in the financial services sector, shares their business aspirations and recognizes the challenges. Our consultants appreciate that in today’s complex business world, the best solutions are rarely available ‘off the shelf’ but come from experience, intelligent insight and creative thinking.
Sloane Business Management Consultants work in partnership with clients to supplement their management teams to assess situations, consider issues, identify options, plan change programmes and manage their effective introduction. Our services include:

• Programme governance, including programme and project management
• Electronic document and records management
• Business/IT function outsourcing
• Business transformation
• Aligning business and IT strategy

Programme governance, including programme and project management
We provide experienced consultants to formulate and deliver major programmes of change, using established practices to align investment more closely to strategic goals, enhance accountability for change delivery, improve the realization of business benefits and manage risk more effectively. Our expertise in the financial services sector includes:

• Programme managing the development and launch of new retail financial products
• Conducting programme assurance reviews for a major business change & IT investment
• Providing coaching and mentoring to banking staff to improve the effectiveness of their project managers
• Undertaking a ‘project recovery’ exercise and restoring a major project to good health

Electronic document and records management
EDRM covers the management of information (both structured and unstructured) as a corporate resource, ensuring that appropriate policies and procedures are in place. Information management also includes responding to the broad regulatory requirements. We employ a large number of consultants who are EDRM specialists and offer formal training programmes using the highly acclaimed AIIM courseware. Our EDRM activities include:

• Helping create enterprise-wide records management strategies
• Undertaking a Document and Records Management project prompted by Sarbanes-Oxley

Business/IT function outsourcing
Our consultants assess the business function outsourcing opportunity and examine the viability of forming an outsourcing relationship. We assist with implementation, including the structuring of service level agreements and provide help in managing the outsourcing contract. Sloane Business management Consultants also provides ‘health checks’ and reviews of existing arrangements and offers support for the reintroduction in to the main business of a previously outsourced service. Our experience includes:

• Implementing outsourcing arrangements for third party administration
• Reviewing potential outsourcing arrangements for a major financial institution

Business transformation
We achieve cost effective and efficient methods of working by redesigning operational processes both within and external to the organization. At the same time our consultants normally review and determine appropriate technology solutions. This may involve straight-through processing to deliver cost savings by streamlining the flow of information from customers through sales channels to back-office and outsourced processes. Our work includes:

• Performing a business process re-engineering project across all aspects of sales, document production, supplier interfaces, accounting and compliance
• Defining new service level agreements and redesigning business processes between a financial services organization and one of its clients

Aligning business and IT strategy
Our consultants work with senior management to enable information and technology within the organization to work effectively together, delivering tangible business value. We are also skilled in helping improve the effectiveness of both development and production environments using frameworks such as CMMI and ITIL. Examples include:

• Implementing a new quality management regime into a large and sophisticated IT organization
• Improving the performance and effectiveness of a large-scale IT function by introducing significant process improvements.

Nnamdi E. Armstrong
stone4sloane@gmail.com
+2348162319833
+2348122735908