Today's Issue
- Editor's Take: Three Ps in Successfully Managing your Business
- The Voice of SMES
- SME Gadgets: Affordable On-the-Go Fax Messages for Businesses!
- Testimonial Callout
- Events: Expanding Business Through Export (Basics of Exporting) (Tuesday 6 to Friday 9 February), How to Start a Business (Thursday 8 to Friday 9 February), Effective Selling Skills (Friday 9 February ), and 14th Travel Tour Expo (Friday 9 to Sunday 11 February)
Will SMEs benefit from the 12th ASEAN Summit's Free Trade Agreement?
To cast your vote, click here!
SME Gadgets:
Affordable On-the-Go Fax Messages for Businesses!
More and more technologies are created for the benefit of anyone, particularly today's businesses. Communication is highly vital for any organization or company in their day-to-day transactions, which EFax can meet that challenge. It allows one to receive facsimile or fax messages through the Internet. EFax assigns someone or the registered member with a United States fax number in which one can receive fax messages and then forwards them to his or her email address.
To view the messages, download the free EFax messenger on www.efax.com. The site also provides a step-by-step guide in setting up an account and will receive an assigned fax number. An SME earns ease-of-use and more productivity through this latest offering. EFax helps do business globally by giving an accessible US fax number. It also allows one to receive fax messages online without the old thermal paper machines. Another interesting feature is saving the email message in the .efx format for EFax-free customers. For EFax Pro and EFax-free customers, documents can be also be saved and viewed on either pdf or tif formats for more accessibility.
SMEs can begin by using the free EFax solution and then upgrade as their needs increase. They can receive fax messages even with out a fax machine through on line access. On line access also allows users to view fax messages on line while traveling. This is helpful for business people when asking airlines to send through fax e-tickets for planned destinations.
To read more, click here!
Testimonial Callout
For those who want to share their thoughts, just simply send us an email to info@sme.com.ph and place on the Subject header: SME Testimonial. The best testimonial will also be featured in our SME.com.ph Web site.
Editor's Take
I recently attended a seminar titled, Entreprenuer Coach: Marketing Rescue Guru by Marketing Guru, Josiah Go. It was a consultation-program seminar wherein the participants where asked to send their marketing questions weeks before the event - the questions became the basis for the content of the seminar. Noticeably enough, there was just one question running in everybody's mind and that is, "what makes for a successful business?"
Josiah Go's answer was plain and simple, for a business to be successful, it should have the 3Ps: Product, Program and People. Apparently, these three woven together are what could make or break a business, which to me makes a lot of sense.
Your product is your business' reason for being, which basically makes it the foundation of the entire operation. An effective entrepreneur should be able to identify the weak from the more saleable product/s. Banking on a strong product equates to building a strong foundation, which more or less dictates your business' long term productivity. With your product in place, formulating an effective program to promote and market your product should also be given ample attention. Go enumerates the following: Create Awareness, Arrange Placement, Stimulate Trial and Ensure Repeat Purchase.
The very essence of marketing is about understanding customers and creating products and/or services according to their needs. Sharpen your competitive edge by researching, observing and understanding the environment and the market. Don't just rely on flyers or print and TV ads because there are a lot of creative means to market your product without spending too much. A lot of businesses these days are turning to non-traditional marketing to get customers to notice and try out their product and/or service.
The last, and oftentimes least understood element, is people, which consists of not just your clients (external customers) but your employees (internal customers) as well. Because they are the ones who bring in the money, most if not all businesses are so engaged in meeting the needs and expectations of their external customers so much so that the clients within the company - the employees - end up being neglected. Ensuring that employees are contented in their workplace and that they have good quality customer care training helps promote a healthy business environment where employees work for a common mission, vision and goal.
Managing and running a business is never easy but what the 3Ps is telling entrepreneurs is "the formulas may vary but with the three elements - Product, Program, People - in place, the end result will ultimately spell S U C C E S S.
Russelle S. Trinidad
SME BizLink Editor
