Registration

First Three Years

90% of the companies started by entrepreneurs fail within the first three years. Their net worth plummets to a resounding negative value leaving investors and all those who have invested time, energy, ideas and funds with nothing. What can we do to ensure that we don’t join the ranks of startups adding to the statistical gloom?

Every company that has made it through this incubation period has a specific set of drivers. What are these drivers that set apart these three possible start-up outcomes:

• Failure
• Struggling one-man-band "consultants"
• Thriving, growing & expanding entrepreneurial company

What lessons can we learn from our peers? How can we keep our businesses from raising the 90% failure rate?

Necessity of Advertising

From increasing awareness to creating demand to influencing decision makers, advertising is that “necessary evil” in all businesses, large, small and entrepreneurial.

How do we know that advertising will make a difference to our selling efforts? How do we know that increasing awareness is an effective and important part of our marketing plan? How can we find our most productive market? How do we know that advertising is successful in creating and evoking a sense of need in the minds of our customers?

What are the options available to those who acknowledge the value of advertising, but whose budgets are tied up in other marketing strategies? How is it possible to leverage print, broadcast or digital media to increase sales? What are the tests for deciding if advertising is effective for B2B or B2C businesses?

Networking Break

Direct Mail Evolves into Digital Marketing

Web 2.0 continues to develop. How have email, blogs, forums, social networking sites, wikis evolved in the past year? How can these technologies be used to interactively engage clients so that they buy from us, and buy more? How can we use the web to support customer service on top of sales? What are the most effective strategies for smaller companies without a digital marketing department to leverage the internet?

For those of us who still don’t know the difference between hardware and software, how can SMEEs take advantage of the economies of scale that digital media creates in order to grow our businesses the way that larger companies do? Which areas should SMEEs focus on first, and which will produce the greatest benefit?

Lunch

Cost Effective Public Relations

In order to bring in revenue, companies must first create and build market awareness for the goods and services they provide. Creating a strong positive feeling in the market towards our companies and products results in sales when our customers decide to make the purchase.

Creating buzz is essential. Courting the media is the basic tactic, but there are countless other ways of growing market awareness. Presenting ourselves and our companies as the market gurus and industry leaders is one of the most effective, but this is only the beginning. What strategies are available to smaller companies who seek to achieve this positive bond between businesses and clients?

Fostering this customer consciousness can be a surprisingly inexpensive strategy. But done poorly, it can send a very negative signal to potential clients. What are the key messages we need to get across to clients as they get to know us, and what are the alternatives available to us in delivering these messages in the most cost effective way?

Relationship Management

Whether a company has a small number of large clients or a large number of small clients, building and maintaining strong relationships with them is crucial not just to growth, but survival as well. All staff in the SMEE know the names of the company’s customers. But few staff really know any of these clients in depth.

Client relationships are avidly hoarded by those with the first level of contact. Many justifications are given, but while this trend can ensure “quality control,” it also ensures ineffective, laborious communications that must funnel through one single point. On top of this, it demotivates those who are better suited to deal with clients.

Strong relationship management practices are one way that smaller companies have an advantage over their larger competitors. The size of SMEs, and relative absence of bureaucracy allows for greater flexibility than larger companies can provide.

The ability to have a personal relationship with many staff within a company is exactly why many of our clients have come to us! SMEE business success therefore hinges on strong company-wide relationship management competencies.

For all staff in a company to have a good relationship with clients, a system needs to be in place. There are several ways that this can be achieved ranging from “only the boss can contact the client” to having a dedicated AE department with strict lines of authority. And of course there is the option of using contact management software.

What are the advantages of one strategy over the other? In what scenarios are some systems more effective than others? As a company grows, what are the milestones that must be passed when graduating from one relationship management mechanism to the next?

Networking Break

Selling Skills: the Breakfast of Champions

Few companies are lucky enough to have only a few large clients. Few companies are lucky enough to have a service or product so unique that clients are beating a path to their doors. Few companies are lucky enough to hold a monopoly that others are prevented from competing with. Few companies can create a website alone and call this their sales strategy.

Even companies that might be so lucky find themselves in danger when competitors enter their markets, or the economy takes a turn for the worse. Superior selling skills is the best way to ensure market dominance. What are the most critical success factors for a strong sales effort? How should other marketing activities support this sales effort?

Entrepreneurs don’t usually begin their careers as sales experts, but this expertise is critical for success. Small established companies usually have very lean sales teams. Both of these company types have the same problem, but with slightly different solutions.

How can we ethically up-sell to our clients? What are the successful ways we can cross-sell, increasing our total take? How can smaller companies with limited experience and resources best manage the sales process?

China’s Economy in 2009 and Beyond: A Fundamentals-based Analysis

Professor Wang Yijiang is a PhD graduate from Harvard University. Highly influential, Professor Wang’s expertise includes the economics of transitioning and emerging markets. Professor Wang is widely published and has been invited to present as thought-leader at many seminal events.

Professor Wang will discuss the environment that China now finds itself in, and how this environment impacts SMEEs today. What action is the China government taking, and how can SMEEs position themselves to take advantage of this? What does the future of China’s economy look like for those of us in the SMEE?

This thought provoking analysis will be the highlight of the conference. Professor Wang will take questions about what he predicts the China government will do in 2009, and what will be the economic impact of those policies on the SMEE.