START AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Life is in stages when we are born, we start out as babies, then toddlers, then children etc. until we reach adulthood. Now for each of these stages our needs, expectations are different and good parenting is all about understanding these differences and responding appropriately. In almost a similar manner the markets in which we operate as businesses also have its stages and each stage has its own nuances, your success as a business is all about understanding these stages and being able to respond appropriately. I discussed the different stages of a market with Abayomi Olarinmoye, a partner at Verraki (former Accenture Nigeria), we spoke about how to understand the market stages, how to play in them, what to do if you have yourself entering a market at the wrong time and lots more.  Q1: Please introduce yourself to us. I am Abayomi, a partner at Verraki, a technology, advisory and ventures company focused on transforming Africa and changing our conti

While thinking about what to write about today, I decided to focus on why small businesses fail in Nigeria. Financial experts say about 80% of SMEs in Nigeria fail within the first 5 years of their existence, from any perspective this statistic is grime. Probing further I identified the following as the major reasons why: 1.      Not understanding the markets 2.      Lack of Business management skills 3.      Cash flow problems 4.      Corruption and lack of trust 5.      Lack of Infrastructure (Energy, Transportation, etc) 6.      Government policies (Taxes, policy somersaults etc)   My list is by no means exhaustive, I just decided to mention these from all that I was able to gather from my research. You will also notice that I said four reasons in my title and yet here I am listing six. The last two are key but dependent on Government and since my focus is on you as an entrepreneur, I will only be discussing the four that you can influence d

How do you determine what price to charge for your products or service? When customers ask for a discount how do you determine how much discount to give? If you are the type that pays commission on sales, do you pay a commission on the revenue or on the profit? Not many SMEs can answer these questions confidently except for those that have a finance background or those that have received business management training. For most others, they go the way of “guesstimation” In this post, I want to share some tips on how to tackle this very critical but sometimes difficult matter of how to determine your cost price. Establishing your cost price is the starting point in setting your selling price whether for goods or services. We will look at the major components of your cost, how to identify them and how to use this information to determine your selling price. What are the costs? By costs, we are referring to all the money you spend to make and sell yo