The best business suppliers are worth promoting.

Some online marketing tools are more powerful and last longer than others

Buying in new business knowledge

The sum total of what a company knows controls what that company can do.

This means that; provided the markets do not change, the company can continue forever-after with the same set of knowledge and skills as formerly.

But outside conditions can change. political, economic, legislative or any other external change will require new knowledge to overcome.

The same applies to a company which has determined to do new things. For example sell to new export markets or reduce costs by manufacturing abroad.

Any of these require the company to take on new knowledge, and there are lots of ways to do this.

Large companies are past masters at this process, and as such know ways to reduce risk. However for a small company (SME – small to medium sized enterprises) there is a great deal of risk if mistakes are made.

The most expensive approach is to employ new people. However if they turn out to be the wrong people the costs can be very hight.

Using freelancers or consultants limits the risk, as they work on specific projects with defined ends. But again they are not cheap, and their hourly rates can be frightening for smaller companies, particularly if the turn out to have the wrong knowledge or skills.

Another approach is to train existing staff. This further reduces the risk, and if the new knowledge can be taken on quickly the cost is much lower. However training is commonly expensive for small companies if it goes on for weeks or months.

Risk can be reduced even further by buying reports. This is a technique used by large companies, as they know that sites like http://www.reportbuyer.com , http://www.datamonitor.com or http://www.frostandsullivan.com can supply well researched market or product analyses.

These slices or injections of knowledge are extremely powerful as they supply a knowledge base which even employees and consultants could not match. They are however expensive and many reports can be costed in tens of thousands of pounds or dollars.

Although reports are an attractive way for small companies to take on new knowledge, the purchase prices can be prohibitive.

There is however Gibli which aims to supply research and business advice as low cost micro reports for small companies. The reports are written by entrepreneurs as well as consultants and researchers, and this means that many of the writers are trying to use their knowledge to build a trading relationship through business support with businesses which use their reports.

In these cases the writer may price his or her report in tens rather than thousands of pounds or dollars. The advantage for them is is having contact with buyers so they can offer further help as trainer, freelancer, consultant or even employee.

Marketing, Problems, Advice, Sales, Leads, Publication and Suppliers.

In April last year we launched our unique knowledge trading website. Now that we have been up and running for a few month, I felt it was important to highlight some of the ways in which it will help businesses.

Here are a few of the key things Gibli will help you to do:

1. Marketing- If you publish proof of your knowledge and skill; potential customers will know that you are professional and serious about what you do, and would make a good expert supplier.

2. Problem solving – Getting comprehensive well written answers to your solve that difficult business problem will mean you have not only a step by step guide to solving it, but contact with the expert who wrote it in the first place.

3. Business advice – Whatever you do in the world of businesses, you will know things which can help other businesses. By publishing this advice you help other businesses to solve their growth limiting problems.

4. Knowledge sales – If you are an expert in your field, and have developed an enviable expert knowledge base, but are too busy to do much with it, you can write reports and sell them whilst doing the things which – for you – are more important.

5. Business Leads – When an entrepreneur buys one of your reports or business guides, you get an email with the entrepreneur’s contact details. This means you get both a ‘hot’ pre-qualified business lead and make a profit at the same time.

6. Report publication – Publish your business report, or if you like, chop that business eBook into individual sections or topics and publish those. But whatever you publish, its about demonstrating your specialist expertise and offering real business support.

7. Finding good suppliers – Finding good, reliable and expert business suppliers is difficult and very risky. Gibli allows you to research your suppliers by sampling their expert knowledge. If you can discover their level of expertise, you can find which supplier is knowledgeable and competent, and which is not.

Welcome to http://www.gibli.com/

Using business directories to find new customers and suppliers

This seems to be a gradual progression between directory websites, and websites that allow you to list your business, but also do something useful for you.

Directory sites allow you to have links to your website; some offer this for free whereas others charge.

I take the view that really this is such a basic service that it should really be free. Companies that do charge, do so because are very high in Google’s rankings and advertisers are tying to piggy-back on this success.

So directory websites are less about people finding you in their directory, than getting Google to recognise your existence and show you in searches.

The situation now is very like the situation that business directory books were in the 1880s when Kelly’s was the best known, but there were many others as well.

Kelly’s was generally paid for by subscription, whereas the others were paid for by advertising. Businesses took the most cost-effective solution for their business based on who their customers were and which directory they used.

Now we’re in much the same situation with intense competition between many of these directory websites, and with some having to close to further subscriptions, as can’t make a living out of taking on new companies.

The next question is; if you’ve got a website that allows people to register and create a business listing, what else can you do to that is useful?

The most useful things of course are finding suppliers and more importantly finding customers.

The most obvious approach to finding a new supplier is to say who has recommended them on websites like LinkedIn.

LinkedIn does give you some depth of knowledge about who it is that is recommending a supplier. So you may be able to spot a bunch of friends from the same area who all recommend each other.

You can also see if some of the recommenders are useful, competent, high-level people, which tells you the potential supplier is competent and worth contacting.

The next approach is to find out if your potential supplier does something you can see in concrete form. Is there anything you can find which demonstrates that they are able to do what they say they can do.

For example in the case of a SEO (search engine optimisation) consultant; if he or she says she can get your website to the top of the Google rankings, has she managed to do it in the past? Have a look at some of the projects she has worked on, and see if she has succeeded.

In the case of an architect; have a look at the buildings they have designed and see what you think of them.

However many consultants work on a confidential basis and you cannot see evidence of their work because it’s confidential.

In these cases you need to be able to see slices of their knowledge. Examples of what they know; evidence of their core competence and their ability.

The best way to do this is to find things they’ve written which demonstrate what they know and how they think.

It may be in the form of a blog or a report, and should show their logical approach to problems and how they actually do things.

Whether these are free of have to be paid for, if they seemed reasonable, competent and intelligent, then the potential supplier should do a good job for you, and that’s what Gibli does.

Don’t make your client have to lie to you

If you have a range of products or services to sell, you have to remember that a potential client may not chose to buy your your main or your priority product.

He or she may be interested in either something very low down on your priority list or actually in your knowledge rather than your products.

It may be that you know things about your how your market operates; about how your products are produced or about your customers that your potential customer finds valuable.

The buyer sitting in front of you may be far more interested in your knowledge rather than your products.  And this may help to explain why some potential clients don’t buy, and offer no explanation for this decision.

If some of your meetings with potential clients don’t turn into orders, don’t panic because you can use your knowledge to your  advantage to help develop a longer term relationship wit them.  You can use the concept of knowledge trading to begin this process.

Their need for your knowledge is then above board and explicit. They buy what they need – a report you wrote about your induatry, and you may become initially a consultant and later a preferred supplier if you can keep the relationship honest and above board.

This is a lot better than them stealing your knowledge, and then lying to cover their guilt.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Or so Boeing is reputed to have told airlines after they delivered sparking new planes back in the 1950s.

However in the case of business, this is no longer true due to the size of the national debt, and the amounts of tax the government will need to extract from hard working entrepreneurs and business people.

Firstly free support for new and start up businesses is likely to become harder to find as funding is withdrawn from training and support organisations.

Secondly many more people will be trying to start businesses, many of whom will have faced redundancy after the loss of their public sector jobs.

Thirdly, even if your current business model works, and delivers profit each year, you will need to think about future proofing this.

All of this will mean extra work for business trainers, mentors and coaches. However the numbers will have to work in the entrepreneur’s favour, as those made redundant may have to exist on their redundancy pay outs for some years while they build a business or find their way back into employment.

This means that no-cost or low-cost tools and services will be far more popular than the premium end of the market.

Fortunately new services have come on stream which make organising events much easier than they were a few years ago.

Paypal for example allows us to pay without passing our credit card details over to people or organisations we don’t know too well.

Eventbrite.com helps you invite people to your event in a professional manner, and makes registration smooth and easy for your delegates.

Social networking sites such as Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter are also a bonus for cash-poor entrepreneurs, as they help them to build a potential client network without bearing the cost of travel and meetings.

Another service which is designed to help cash poor businesses is Gibli.com which does something called knowledge trading. This allows experts in any business field to showcase and sell their expert business knowledge, which then serves as a low cost way for businesses with knowledge gaps to learn new tricks.

Although still a young service, Gibli has so far attracted a high calibre mix of experts, ranging from coaches and mentors to sustainability experts and ethicists.

However whichever mix of services are used by an individual entrepreneur, business as usual is likely to be a poor choice.

An ideal way to find good customers or suppliers

Some people think that white paper and report downloads on the Internet should always be free.

However the existence of the market research industry proves that this has never been true.

The market research industry; where reports are written by professional organisations such as Datamonitor and Frost & Sullivan; is used by major multinational companies to inject knowledge and reduce risk. The key difference is cost, as market research reports can cost many thousands of pounds.

So here in effect we have two opposite ends of a spectrum. The free end and the highly expensive market research end. However there is nothing in the middle to cater for the SME (small and medium sized enterprise) companies which need specialist or ‘new’ knowledge.

SMEs can benefit hugely from the multinational’s experience that to move to a new market or launch a new product requires the purchase of specialist knowledge or information.

SMEs are far more likely to ‘wing it’ and make decisions based on gut feeling rather than searching for help.

However we are repeatedly told that we now live in a knowledge economy and that knowledge is Power. We are also told that knowledge can get us new customers, better suppliers and can improve our profitability.

The alternative to buying reports is to either use consultants or take on new employees with the relevant skills.

But consultants are expensive, and there is a risk you might engage the wrong one, and taking on new employees is likely to be even more expensive in the long run.

Additionally multinationals know that buying-in knowledge dramatically reduces risk. If they didn’t use this strategy they would have to build new departments or open new offices.

Both more risky and expensive than buying even the most expensive market research report.

The same applies just as much to SMEs as it does to multinationals.

This is the concept behind our knowledge trading website Gibli, which allows SMEs and entrepreneurs to sell their knowledge in the form of business support reports.

Users can upload and sell podcasts and video as well as more traditional reports. However reports allow information to be better condensed, particularly if it’s done in the form of ‘how-to-guides’ or market analyses.

Once a report has been purchased, the buyer and seller are put in touch with each other. This allows the buyer to ask further questions, and the seller to offer further help.

It’s an ideal way to establish contact with good potential clients or suppliers.