The changing Indian Consumer

With changing economic situation of India, its not that only the rich are spending more and more but in fact its the great Indian middle class that's thrown caution to the winds and enjoying themselves like never before and are on a spending juggernaut.

Brand India is riding high. For Indians with disposable income in their pockets, happy times are here. With the sun shining on them, thoughts of a rainy day have been banished. It's a new mindset at play. Living for the day is the new motto. This translates into spending on a new home, a new car, the latest digital camera, appliances for the kitchen, home decor etc.

The change is drastic compared to a generation back where saving for a rainy day was the usual practice. There was a clear line drawn between necessities, which could be counted on the fingertips of one hand, and luxuries. Loans were not forthcoming. Giving or taking one was frowned upon. Never borrow, never lend was the favorite theme.

Banks and credit card companies are vying with each other in offering loans to customers. The credit card business is booming. Indians were sold 45,000 credit cards a day last year and together they spent Rs 120 crore a day through credit cards during the year.

The face of changing India is reflected as Airlines, hotels, FMCG companies, auto giants, retail chains, mobile phone companies are all reworking strategies and slashing prices to reach the low-end consumer in rural areas.

The success-driven Indians don't have to wait for opportunity to knock at their doors. It is all around them and in plenty. With a job scene that is booming a host of avenues are open to even college students. A slew of industries that had almost no presence in the country a few moons back are dishing out jobs in plenty. Call centers, retail chains, mobile phone companies, data processing firms have all contributed to the job explosion.

But that's not the whole story. Even as high-tech gadgets have invaded the Indian consumer market with the liberalization of the economy, finding two square meals a day is a daunting task for some. It is this broad spectrum of people perhaps that makes India keep its head on its shoulders and not get carried away.

It is definitely advantage India with foreign businesses tapping the low-cost, highly educated, English speaking pool of human talent.

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha

What is the Nigerian Scam

A Five Billion US$ (as of 1996, much more now) worldwide Scam which has run since the early 1980's under Successive Governments of Nigeria. It is also referred to as "Advance Fee Fraud", "419 Fraud" (Four-One-Nine) after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, and "The Nigerian Connection" (mostly in Europe). However, it is usually called plain old "419" even by the Nigerians themselves.

The target receives an unsolicited fax, email, or letter often concerning Nigeria or another African nation containing either a money laundering or other illegal proposal OR you may receive a Legal and Legitimate business proposal by normal means.

At some point, the victim is asked to pay up front an Advance Fee of some sort, be it an "Advance Fee", "Transfer Tax", "Performance Bond", or to extend credit, grant COD privileges, send back "change" on an overage cashier's check or money order, whatever. If the victim pays the Fee, there are often many "Complications" which require still more advance payments until the victim either quits, runs out of money, or both. If the victim extends credit on a given transaction etc. he may also pay such fees ("nerfund" etc.), and also stiffed for the Goods or Service with NO Effective Recourse.

What To Do If You Receive A Nigerian Scam

India has been bombarded with literally hundreds of thousands of these e-mails and actual letters. In the early days we had a few victims but through media attention and education programs most people have been advised that this is a scam and we have not had any vicitims in a very long time. We advise you to do the following.

• As far as possible do not open the email or attachments sent.
• Do not reply to the email or letter
• Do not contact any person (s) mentioned in the email.
• Send the email to fbro@nigeriapolice.org
  

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha

Tips To Be Safe from Internet frauds

• Be wary of e-mail messages that ask for personal or financial information such as user names and passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive personal information, especially those that are alarming and upsetting in tone.
• Ensure that your browser is up-to-date and security patches are always promptly applied.
• Avoid opening any file attachments of suspected phishing e-mail messages as it might execute a 'malware' programme that can steal personal information.
• Knowledge is still the best protection from getting scammed. It is important to educate oneself on Internet fraud.
  

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha

What are Phishing scams

With the increase in use of internet and e-commerce, there is a worldwide increase in internet related business frauds.

Phishing scams are part and parcel of this increasing number of cyber crimes.

 

Phishing means sending an e-mail that falsely claims to be from a particular enterprise (like your bank) and asking for sensitive financial information. Phishing is sending out a 'bait' in the form of a spoofed e-mail that closely mimics most bank notifications.

Some phishing mails include a legitimate-looking URL that actually conceals the phishing URL, or the site where the stolen information is stored, while some include an image, which when clicked, directs the affected user to the phishing site.

You should always remember that a legitimate financial institution will never ask for details of your account via an e-mail. You must never e-mail financial information over the Internet as it is not a secure method for transmitting such sensitive information.

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha

RFID Technology in Retail

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology among retailers is increasing. RFID chips emit radio signals: When attached to products, they allow retailers to track inventory with a precision never before possible. More efficient supply chains and more effective inventory management are current benefits of the technology. In the past retailers always seemed to order products from vendors in quantities either too large or too small, and they could never be quite sure when they would run out of a given product. Today, thanks to RFID, retailers are able to pinpoint inventory levels for given products and order products from vendors only when they're really needed. And eventually, retailers plan to use RFID technology to do things such as transmit product information for consumers to view as they walk around a store and change the prices of products already on the shelves instantaneously.

Wal-Mart has already made a big investment in RFID technology and has forced vendors on its supply chain, including big consumer products manufacturers, to use the technology on shipments to the giant retailer. It's just a matter of time before everybody else in retail is using it, too. If you're an IT type, or a supply chain management or logistics professional, it might be a good idea to get up to speed on this technology to improve your career prospects.

 

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan 

 

 

Better Retailing Through Data Collection and Analysis

One big technology trend in retail is the increasing collection and use of customer information to better predict consumer demand patterns, market to consumers more effectively, take a "scientific approach" to product pricing, and optimize supply chain efficiencies. IT departments at retailers are dealing with an increasing variety of technologies designed to help their employers better collect information from customers and better understand what the collected information means in terms of actions those retailers should take to increase profits.

For example, consider product pricing software. This relatively new type of software analyzes retailers' information about their customers to determine how products should best be priced so that they will move off the shelves while making retailers the most possible money.

 

- Contributed by Nitin Narayanan

Luxury Retailing

After struggling in recent years, many mass-market retailers are seeing increased profits these days. While a certain amount of that can be attributed to a healthier job market and increasing wages, they're not taking chances, so they're taking cues from a portion of the retail industry that was strong while mass-market floundered: the luxury retailers. With Target offering designer goods on the cheap, Wal-Mart selling plasma televisions, and Costco pushing a $99,999 diamond ring on their website, these retailers are clearly courting shoppers from higher tax brackets.

Retailers that sell luxury goods, meanwhile, may not have target markets as large as do the Wal-Marts and Kmarts of the world, but they do have target markets that are less price-sensitive. Because they don't face the same downward price pressures as their mass-market peers, high-end retailers these days typically enjoy higher profit margins. Whether the Costcos and Targets will be able to carve out a chunk of this success for themselves remains to be seen.

 

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Overview of Retail business

Retail is one industry we all have a part in—after all, it is the sale of products to individual consumers (as opposed to businesses). Aside from all the consumers, though, more than 15 million people in the United States are employed by retailers—that's 12% of the workforce. With U.S. annual retail revenues close to $4 trillion and over a million retail businesses in operation, there's no question that this is a huge industry. We all know that Wal-Mart is the world's biggest retailer, but add to that all those other big box stores, your favorite record store, the grocery store down the road, those catalogs in your mailbox, all the other jewelry, book, electronics and clothing stores and—well, you get the picture. Retail is big.

Retail goods are traditionally divided into durable goods, such as furniture and large appliances, which are expected to last at least 5 years, and nondurable goods, which include food, clothing, and other categories far too numerous to mention but which eventually form the bulk of the stuff you see on makeshift tables at garage sales.

The retail landscape has seen drastic changes in the last decade or two. In the old days, retail was dominated by small, local mom-and-pop stores (like the tiny neighborhood record store and the corner market), shopping malls, and traditional department stores ( e.g., Mervyn's and Macy's) that acted as those malls' "anchors." There are still plenty of mom-and-pop stores, malls, and department stores around today, but they're dominated in the retail landscape by mass merchandisers ( e.g., Wal-Mart and Target), discount clubs (e.g., Costco and Sam's Club), "category killers" (e.g., Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, and Staples), and specialty and online retailers (e.g., Coach, Amazon.com, and J. Crew).

If you don't think past sales clerk when thinking about the career opportunities offered by the retail industry, you'll miss a lot of the opportunities that are out there—including jobs for people with more of a head for business than for fashion, or electronics, or sporting goods, or whatever else the company you go to work for might do. While it's true that most of the industry's employees are salespeople and clerks, retail also offers opportunities for those interested in determining what goods will be sold, getting these goods to the right place at the right time, and managing the operations, finances, and administration of retail companies. Retail executive-training programs are crammed with energetic twenty-somethings, all hoping to perform those functions as sales and merchandise managers, buyers, and marketers at major retail organizations, such as Ann Taylor, Macy's, J.C. Penney, and the Gap.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Who will win India's retail war

( an interesting article by Gouri Shukla for rediff.com )

First, the similarities. Both started operations in 1997. They were the earliest homegrown retail companies to list on Indian bourses. And both opted for the large format retail outlet route.

Now the differences. At present, Kishore Biyani's Pantaloons is four times the size of the Tata Group-owned Trent (sales turnover 2003-04). It occupies eight times more retail space than Trent's Westside. And for every Westside outlet in the country, there are nearly four owned by Pantaloons.

"Retailing is like riding a bicycle, you can't stop pedalling," Biyani, who is the managing director of Pantaloons Retail, had told The Strategist.

And even as the first-generation businessman pedals at Olympic speeds, the Tatas have stuck to their soft strategy, be it setting up new stores or entering new locations.

The organised retail industry in India is worth Rs 900 crore (Rs 9 billion) and counting. Who will win the race to be No 1? Will Pantaloons' size breast the tape or can Trent's cautious optimism survive the distance?

Margin for error?

Do the numbers indicated in "Bare facts" mean that Pantaloons wins the war even before battlelines are drawn? Not quite. According to industry experts, as players keep adding floorspace, expansion has little meaning if the revenue per square foot added falls with every foot added.

Echoes Irena Vittal, partner at management consultancy McKinsey, "Growth in terms of locations is easy in the Indian market. What will determine success will be profitable growth."

In 2003, with a floor space of 210,000 sq ft, Westside earned a revenue of Rs 50 a sq ft. Currently with a marginal increase in floor space to 220,000 sq ft, it earns Rs 70 a sq ft.

On the other hand, Pantaloons' revenue per sq ft has declined from roughly Rs 76.7 to Rs 59 in 2004, while floor space has increased from 580,000 sq ft to 11 lakh (1.1 million) sq ft.

That's where the margin game comes into play. Westside was the first to recognise the advantage of in-house labels.  What's the advantage? Better margins, for starters. Private labels earn gross margins of 25 to 30 per cent, compared with 5 to 15 per cent for branded apparel.

Besides, the store has better control on the brands and design and can develop unique positioning for in-house brands.

Westside's leveraged its private labels well, appealing to more sophisticated, urban customers, compared to Pantaloons, which was bogged down for several years by its middle-class, budget store image (that's changed now, though).

Realising the importance of in-house labels, even Pantaloons has scaled up the number of in-house labels from 20 to 40-odd private labels currently. In contrast, almost all the brands sold at Westside are in-house, private labels.

Which means the chain has better margins, and therefore better revenues, per label.

The impact on operating profit margins is visible. Trent's OPMs have improved to 15.18 per cent in FY2004 from 13.27 per cent the previous year.

In comparison, Pantaloons' OPMs have remained sticky at 8.41 per cent in FY2004 from 8.17 per cent in FY2003. The implication is clear: higher OPMs mean the chain is managing costs well and is better placed to build reserves, which will help future expansion.

But, says Arvind Singhal, managing director of retail consultancy KSA Technopak, margins may vary because of the nature of business. He adds that it is the stock turnover that should be the benchmark of superiority.

If that's the parameter, Pantaloons leads marginally: it has a stock turnover of five compared to four for Trent.

Gain an extra inch

According to K K Iyer, partner at management consultancy Accenture, being the first mover in new markets has its own advantages. The biggest plus is in grabbing the hot seat as far as property is concerned.

Once a store enters a good catchment area, its competition loses that advantage.

Trent would agree: When Westside first entered Mumbai in 2000, it opened shop in elite south Mumbai. At the time, the suburbs were ruled out because Shoppers' Stop cast a long shadow over the western suburbs.

And even when Westside finally moved northwards into Andheri (where the first Shoppers' Stop outlet is located), in end-2004, it chose Link Road, which is away from Stop's line of vision.

Being a quick mover and expanding fast brings in another advantage – of size. And size brings bargaining muscle and, hence, economies in sourcing.

"You end up picking up better terms with dealers and reach economies of scale much faster," says Singhal. Confirms Biyani, "We can optimise our supply chain expenses and marketing costs by spreading them over an increasing number of retail outlets."

Numbers back up this claim. In 2001, Pantaloons' marketing and promotion costs were 3.34 per cent of sales. As the number of outlets went up from around 20 in 2002 to 44 in 2003, the chain's spends on advertising and promotions were down to 2.84 per cent of total income in 2004.

In comparison, Trent advertising and promotion spends were 11.4 per cent of total income in 2004, compared to 12.3 per cent in 2003, for a relatively smaller scale of operations.

Too much, too soon?

Are Trent and Pantaloons growing too fast? Cautions Iyer, "When you grow rapidly, there is a small risk of over-extension." For instance, it becomes difficult to manage manpower to ensure that quality employees are present in all stores.

And it's not just about good front-end staff: expansion, especially in the multiple format model preferred by Pantaloons, has to be accompanied by adequate depth and width of a core management team.

"Pantaloons, as it rolled out, has visibly beefed up a senior management team. Trent, however, has more or less stuck to a core team," says a competitor.

From a completely top-driven approach, Biyani has delegated the management of categories and formats to professionals.

Also, of the two, it is Trent that is tightening its belt on employee costs. Which is important, considering even mammoth departmental store chains like the £8 billion Marks & Spencer has stabilised its employee costs at 7 per cent of its total revenues.

In FY 2004, Trent spent 6 per cent of its turnover on employee costs (the figure hasn't changed for two years, even though the number of stores has increased from eight to 17). On the other hand, Pantaloons' employee costs as a percentage of total income have gone up from roughly 3 per cent in 2001 to 4.17 per cent in 2004.

That's not too much, especially if you consider that the number of employees has doubled in FY 2004 to 3,500, from 1,700 in 2003. (By April 2005, Pantaloons had close to 6,000 employees, mostly at the front end.)

Multiple formats

Do multiple formats have a clear advantage for Pantaloons? If margins from apparel sales in Pantaloons (the lifestyle store) suffer, the company does have the option of moving stock to the discount store, Big Bazaar.

Moreover, losses in margins in one category can be absorbed by profits in another.

Trent, too, has recognised the advantage of multiple formats. In end 2004, it launched Star India Bazaar, a 50,000 sq ft hypermarket in Ahmedabad.

How does the stock market rate the strategies of the two players? Since 2002, Pantaloons' share price has moved from Rs 30 to Rs 882 (April 25, 2005) currently.

Over the same period, Trent has climbed from Rs 71 to Rs 580.95. "Pantaloons' high reliance on debt to finance its growth remains a cause of concern," says the 2004 Fitch report on the retail industry.

Pantaloons' debt-equity ratio was 1.86 as of 2003-04, compared to 2.17 in 2002-03. Trent's debt-equity ratio has remained fairly stable at 0.001 per cent in the same period.

Consultants refuse to give their verdict on which player will be strongest in the long run. As Biyani himself admits, "There is no ideal retailing strategy to follow."

 

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha
 

Time management for managers

(This contribution comes from an article Personal Time Management for Busy Managers by Gerard M Blair.)

Time passes, quickly. This article looks at the basics of Personal Time Management and describes how the Manager can assume control of this basic resource.

The "Eff" words
The three "Eff" words are [concise OED]:

Effective - having a definite or desired effect
Efficient - productive with minimum waste or effort
Effortless -
seemingly without effort; natural, easy
Personal Time Management is about winning the "Eff" words: making them apply to you and your daily routines.

What is Personal Time Management?
Personal Time Management is about controlling the use of your most valuable (and undervalued) resource. Consider these two questions: what would happen if you spent company money with as few safeguards as you spend company time, when was the last time you scheduled a review of your time allocation?

The absence of Personal Time Management is characterized by last minute rushes to meet dead-lines, meetings which are either double booked or achieve nothing, days which seem somehow to slip unproductively by, crises which loom unexpected from nowhere. This sort of environment leads to inordinate stress and degradation of performance: it must be stopped.

Poor time management is often a symptom of over confidence: techniques which used to work with small projects and workloads are simply reused with large ones. But inefficiencies which were insignificant in the small role are ludicrous in the large. You can not drive a motor bike like a bicycle, nor can you manage a supermarket-chain like a market stall. The demands, the problems and the payoffs for increased efficiency are all larger as your responsibility grows; you must learn to apply proper techniques or be bettered by those who do. Possibly, the reason Time Management is poorly practised is that it so seldom forms a measured part of appraisal and performance review; what many fail to foresee, however, is how intimately it is connected to aspects which do.

Personal Time Management has many facets. Most managers recognize a few, but few recognize them all. There is the simple concept of keeping a well ordered diary and the related idea of planned activity. But beyond these, it is a tool for the systematic ordering of your influence on events, it underpins many other managerial skills such as Effective Delegation and Project Planning.

Personal Time Management is a set of tools which allow you to: eliminate wastage be prepared for meetings refuse excessive workloads monitor project progress allocate resource (time) appropriate to a task's importance ensure that long term projects are not neglected plan each day efficiently plan each week effectively

and to do so simply with a little self-discipline.

Since Personal Time Management is a management process just like any other, it must be planned, monitored and regularly reviewed. In the following sections, we will examine the basic methods and functions of Personal Time Management. Since true understanding depends upons experience, you will be asked to take part by looking at aspects of your own work. If you do not have time to this right now - ask yourself: why not?

Current Practice
What this article is advocating is the adoption of certain practices which will give you greater control over the use and allocation of your primary resource: time. Before we start on the future, it is worth considering the present. This involves the simplistic task of keeping a note of how you spend your time for a suitably long period of time (say a week). I say simplistic since all you have to do is create a simple table, photocopy half-a-dozen copies and carry it around with you filling in a row every time you change activity. After one week, allocate time (start as you mean to go on) to reviewing this log.

Waste Disposal
We are not looking here to create new categories of work to enhance efficiency (that comes later) but simply to eliminate wastage in your current practice. The average IEE Chartered Engineer earns about 27,000 pounds per annum: about 12.50 pounds per hour, say 1 pound every 5 minutes; for how many 5 minute sections of your activity would you have paid a pound? The first step is a critical appraisal of how you spend your time and to question some of your habits. In your time log, identify periods of time which might have been better used.

There are various sources of waste. The most common are social: telephone calls, friends dropping by, conversations around the coffee machine. It would be foolish to eliminate all non-work related activity (we all need a break) but if it's a choice between chatting to Harry in the afternoon and meeting the next pay-related deadline ... Your time log will show you if this is a problem and you might like to do something about it before your boss does.

In your time log, look at each work activity and decide objectively how much time each was worth to you, and compare that with the time you actually spent on it. An afternoon spent polishing an internal memo into a Pulitzer prize winning piece of provocative prose is waste; an hour spent debating the leaving present of a colleague is waste; a minute spent sorting out the paper-clips is waste (unless relaxation). This type of activity will be reduced naturally by managing your own time since you will not allocate time to the trivial. Specifically, if you have a task to do, decide before hand how long it should take and work to that deadline - then move on to the next task.

Another common source of waste stems from delaying work which is unpleasant by finding distractions which are less important or unproductive. Check your log to see if any tasks are being delayed simply because they are dull or difficult.

Time is often wasted in changing between activities. For this reason it is useful to group similar tasks together thus avoiding the start-up delay of each. The time log will show you where these savings can be made. You may want then to initiate a routine which deals with these on a fixed but regular basis.

Doing Subordinate's Work
Having considered what is complete waste, we now turn to what is merely inappropriate. Often it is simpler to do the job yourself. Using the stamp machine to frank your own letters ensures they leave by the next post; writing the missing summary in the latest progress report from your junior is more pleasant than sending it back (and it lets you choose the emphasis). Rubbish!

Large gains can be made by assigning secretarial duties to secretaries: they regularly catch the next post, they type a lot faster than you. Your subordinate should be told about the missing section and told how (and why) to slant it. If you have a task which could be done by a subordinate, use the next occasion to start training him/her to do it instead of doing it yourself - you will need to spend some time monitoring the task thereafter, but far less that in doing it yourself.

Doing the work of Others
A major impact upon your work can be the tendency to help others with their's. Now, in the spirit of an open and harmonious work environment it is obviously desirable that you should be willing to help out - but check your work log and decide how much time you spend on your own work and how much you spend on others'. For instance, if you spend a morning checking the grammar and spelling in the training material related to you last project, then that is waste. Publications should do the proof-reading, that is their job, they are better at it than you; you should deal at the technical level.

The remaining problem is your manager. Consider what periods in your work log were used to perform tasks that your manager either repeated or simply negated by ignoring it or redefining the task, too late. Making your manager efficient is a very difficult task, but where it impinges upon your work and performance you must take the bull by the horns (or whatever) and confront the issue.

Managing your manager may seem a long way from Time Management but no one impacts upon your use of time more than your immediate superior. If a task is ill defined - seek clarification (is that a one page summary or a ten page report?). If seemingly random alterations are asked in your deliverables, ask for the reasons and next time clarify these and similar points at the beginning. If the manager is difficult, try writing a small specification for each task before beginning it and have it agreed. While you can not tactfully hold your manager to this contract if he/she has a change of mind, it will at least cause him/her to consider the issues early on, before you waste your time on false assumptions.

External Appointments
The next stage of Personal Time Management is to start taking control of your time. The first problem is appointments. Start with a simple appointments diary. In this book you will have (or at least should have) a complete list of all your known appointments for the forseeable future. If you have omitted your regular ones (since you remember them anyway) add them now.

Your appointments constitute your interaction with other people; they are the agreed interface between your activities and those of others; they are determined by external obligation. They often fill the diary. Now, be ruthless and eliminate the unnecessary. There may be committees where you can not productively contribute or where a subordinate might be (better) able to participate. There may be long lunches which could be better run as short conference calls. There may be interviews which last three times as long as necessary because they are scheduled for a whole hour. Eliminate the wastage starting today.

The next stage is to add to your diary lists of other, personal activity which will enhance your use of the available time. Consider: what is the most important type of activity to add to your diary? No:- stop reading for a moment and really, consider.

The single most important type of activity is those which will save you time: allocate time to save time, a stitch in time saves days. And most importantly of all, always allocate time to time management: at least five minutes each and every day.

For each appointment left in the diary, consider what actions you might take to ensure that no time is wasted: plan to avoid work by being prepared. Thus, if you are going to a meeting where you will be asked to comment on some report, allocate time to read it so avoiding delays in the meeting and increasing your chances of making the right decision the first time. Consider what actions need to be done before AND what actions must be done to follow-up. Even if the latter is unclear before the event, you must still allocate time to review the outcome and to plan the resulting action. Simply mark in your diary the block of time necessary to do this and, when the time comes, do it.

Scheduling Projects
The most daunting external appointments are deadlines: often, the handover of deliverables. Do you leave the work too late? Is there commonly a final panic towards the end? Are the last few hectic hours often marred by errors? If so, use Personal Time Management.

The basic idea is that your management of personal deadlines should be achieved with exactly the same techniques you would use in a large project:

check the specification - are you sure that you agree on what is to be delivered
break the task down into small sections so that you can estimate the time needed for each, and monitor progress
schedule reviews of your progress ( e.g. after each sub-task) so that you can respond quickly to difficulties
Like most management ideas, this is common sense. Some people, however, refute it because in practise they find that it merely shows the lack of time for a project which must be done anyway. This is simply daft! If simple project planning and time management show that the task can not be done, then it will not be done - but by knowing at the start, you have a chance to do something about it.

An impossible deadline affects not only your success but also that of others. Suppose a product is scheduled for release too soon because you agree to deliver too early. Marketing and Sales will prepare customers to expect the product showing why they really need it - but it will not arrive. The customers will be dissatisfied or even lost, the competition will have advanced warning, and all because you agreed to do the impossible.

You can avoid this type of problem. By practising time management, you will always have a clear understanding of how you spend your time and what time is unallocated. If a new task is thrust upon you, you can estimate whether it is practical. The project planning tells you how much time is needed and the time management tells you how much time is available.

There are four ways to deal with impossible deadlines:

Get the deadline extended
Scream for more resources
Get the Deliverable redefined to something practical
State the position clearly so that your boss (and his/her boss) have fair warning
If this simple approach seems unrealistic, consider the alternative. If you have an imposed, but unobtainable, deadline and you accept it; then the outcome is your assured failure. Of course, there is a fifth option: move to a company with realistic schedules.

One defence tactic is to present your superior with a current list of your obligations indicating what impact the new task will have on these, and ask him/her to assign the priorities: "I can't do them all, which should I slip?". Another tactic is to keep a data base of your time estimates and the actual time taken by each task. This will quickly develop into a source of valuable data and increase the accuracy of your planning predictions.

There is no reason why you should respond only to externally imposed deadlines. The slightly shoddy product which you hand-over after the last minute rush (and normally have returned for correction the following week) could easily have been polished if only an extra day had been available - so move your personal deadline forward and allow yourself the luxury of leisured review before the product is shipped.

Taking this a step further, the same sort of review might be applied to the product at each stage of its development so that errors and rework time are reduced. Thus by allocating time to quality review, you save time in rework; and this is all part of project planning supported and monitored by your time management.

Finally, for each activity you should estimate how much time it is worth and allocate only that amount. This critical appraisal may even suggest a different approach or method so that the time matches the task's importance. Beware of perfection, it takes too long - allocate time for "fitness for purpose", then stop.

Monitoring Staff
Your Personal Time Management also effects other people, particularly your subordinates. Planning projects means not only allocating your time but also the distribution of tasks; and this should be done in the same planned, monitored and reviewed manner as your own scheduling.

Any delegated task should be specified with an (agreed) end date. As a Manager, you are responsible for ensuring that the tasks allocated to your subordinates are completed successfully. Thus you should ensure that each task is concluded with a deliverable (for instance, a memo to confirm completion) - you make an entry in your diary to check that this has arrived. Thus, if you agree the task for Tuesday, Wednesday should have an entry in your diary to check the deliverable. This simple device allows you to monitor progress and to initiate action as necessary.

Long term Objectives
There are many long term objectives which the good Manager must achieve, particularly with regard to the development, support and motivation of his/her work-team. Long term objectives have the problem of being important but not urgent; they do not have deadlines, they are distant and remote. For this reason, it is all too easy to ignore them in favour of the urgent and immediate. Clearly a balance must be struck.

The beauty of Time Management is that the balance can be decided objectively (without influence from immediate deadlines) and self-imposed through the use of the diary. Simply, a manager might decide that one hour a week should be devoted to personnel issues and would then allocate a regular block of time to that activity. Of course if the factory is on fire, or World War III is declared, the manager may have to re-allocate this time in a particular week - but barring such crises, this time should then become sacrosanct and always applied to the same, designated purpose.

Similarly, time may be allocated to staff development and training. So if one afternoon a month is deemed to be a suitable allocation, then simply designate the second Thursday (say) of each month and delegate the choice of speakers. The actual time spent in managing this sort of long term objective is small, but without that deliberate planning it will not be achieved.

Once you have implemented Personal Time Management, it is worth using some of that control to augment your own career. Some quiet weekend, you should sketch out your own long term objectives and plan a route to them. As you would any long term objective, allocate time to the necessary sub-tasks and monitor your progress. If you do not plan where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there.

Concluding Remarks.
Personal Time Management is a systematic application of common sense strategies. It requires little effort, yet it promotes efficient work practices by highlighting wastage and it leads to effective use of time by focusing it on your chosen activities. Personal Time Management does not solve your problems; it reveals them, and provides a structure to implement and monitor solutions. It enables you to take control of your own time - how you use it is then up to you.

The above contribution is from Personal Time Management for Busy Managers by Gerard M Blair. Gerard M Blair is a Senior Lecturer in VLSI Design at the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Edinburgh. His book Starting to Manage: the essential skills is
published by Chartwell-Bratt (UK) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA).

- Contributed by Vaibhav Agarwal
 

Online travel firms hit the ground

Clicks are not going far enough without the bricks. Online travel companies are taking the competition to the High Street. Faced with a low Internet usage and a slack penetration of credit cards, the main payment avenue for online bookings, leading online travelling companies such as Cleartrip.com, Travelguru.com, Makemytrip.com and Yatra.com are looking at setting up retail shops.

The concept had caught in places like Bangalore, and is now spreading across the nation. In Delhi, customers can walk into Makemytrip's office to make a booking, after grilling sales executives.

Yatra, an online travel portal in which Silicon Valley venture capitalist Pramod Haque is an investor, is planning to set up a shop in Gurgaon to sell holiday packages.

"I was planning a holiday in Venice and while I did all the research on the place online, but I was not comfortable in making payments online," says Sudipta Basu, a 32-year-old executive working in a Mumbai-based business process outsourcing (BPO) unit. Finally, she decided to go to travel agent SOTC, even though the price was slightly high.

To make travel less cumbersome for people like Sudipta, online travel agents are adopting an online-offline strategy. Cleartrip has recently joined hands with Big Bazaar tycoon Kishore Biyani's Future Money to provide finance on extended monthly instalments to people who want to buy its travel products.

This facility will be made available at four Big Bazaar outlets in Mumbai. "People do not have to think twice before going for a holiday. Our plan is to make travel products affordable to the masses," says Sandeep Murthy, Cleartrip's CEO. Cleartrip will soon extend this tie-up to other Big Bazaar outlets in the city and other metros. This facility can be used to pay for all Cleartrip's offerings like air tickets, hotel bookings and tour packages.

- Contributed by Vaibhav Agarwal

Avoiding credit card misuse

While there are various ways of using a credit card, there are also several things that one should avoid at the same time.

Knowledge of what should not be done is essential for the purpose of avoiding heavy charges that are likely to be levied on the credit card. One area that needs attention is that of cash withdrawal on the card.

Most people fail to understand the cost involved in withdrawing cash on a credit card. People are used to the concept of a card where the person can withdraw an amount on the card from an ATM.

But this is usually on a debit card or an ATM card. In the case of a debit card or an ATM card, you are using your own money. But when you do this on a credit card, then a completely different scenario comes into play.

Cash on a credit card should be withdrawn only in an emergency. That is also the reason why there are two major types of expenses that will be incurred on this transaction. Whenever you withdraw cash from an ATM, there is a transaction fee that will be levied. This fee is calculated at a certain rate, usually at 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent of the amount withdrawn. If the rate is 2.5 per cent and the amount withdrawn is Rs 20,000, then an immediate charge of Rs 500 will come into play.

One thing that has to be understood is that there will be a minimum charge that will be applicable. This could be something like Rs 250-300 and hence a small withdrawal will result in a larger hit as far as the percentage calculation is considered. Even those who know about this fail to realise that there is another expense that is already on the way.

This is the expense related to the finance charge, which is normally payable when the payment is delayed and is also known as the interest charge. Credit cards now have the feature or the condition wherein the charge will be applicable from the date of making the withdrawal and applicable till the time of full payment.

Under a normal expenditure on a credit card there is a credit period available during which there is no interest charged if the payment is made by the stipulated time. But that is not possible for a cash withdrawal.

This means that the bill starts ticking the moment the cash is withdrawn and more important is the time period till which the interest will continue. One has to read the wordings for this carefully because if it says interest till the time of full payment, then even if there is a part payment then the charges will continue until the entire amount withdrawn as cash will be paid back to the credit card company.

- Contributed by Ankita Sinha

Technology impact in Retail

The other important aspect of retailing relates to technology. It is widely felt that the key differentiator between the successful and not so successful retailers is primarily in the area of technology. Simultaneously, it will be technology that will help the organised retailer score over the unorganised players, giving both cost and service advantages.

Retailing is a `technology-intensive' industry. It is quoted that everyday at least 500 gigabytes of data are transmitted via satellite from the 1,200 point-of-sales counters of JC Penney to its corporate headquarters. Successful retailers today work closely with their vendors to predict consumer demand, shorten lead times, reduce inventory holding and thereby, save cost. Wal-Mart pioneered the concept of building a competitive advantage through distribution and information systems in the retailing industry. They introduced two innovative logistics techniques - cross-docking and electronic data interchange.

Today, online systems link point-of-sales terminals to the main office where detailed analyses on sales by item, classification, stores or vendor are carried out online. Besides vendors, the focus of the retailing sector is to develop the link with the consumer. `Data Warehousing' is an established concept in the advanced nations. With the help of `database retailing', information on existing and potential customers is tracked. Besides knowing what was purchased and by whom, information on softer issues such as demographics and psychographics is captured.

Retailing, as discussed before, is at a nascent stage in our country. Most organised players have managed to put the front ends in place, but these are relatively easy to copy. The relatively complicated information systems and underlying technologies are in the process of being established. Most grocery retailers such as FoodWorld have started tracking consumer purchases through CRM. The lifestyle retailers through their `affinity clubs' and `reward clubs' are establishing their processes. The traditional retailers will always continue to exist but organised retailers are working towards revamping their business to obtain strategic advantages at various levels - market, cost, knowledge and customer.

With differentiating strategies - value for money, shopping experience, variety, quality, discounts and advanced systems and technology in the back-end, change in the equilibrium with manufacturers and a thorough understanding of the consumer behaviour, the ground is all set for the organised retailers. The bottomline could look brighter, after all!

It would be important to note, however, that the retailing industry in India is still a `protected industry'. It is one of the few sectors which still has restrictions on FDI. Given the current trend in liberalisation, it will not be long before the retailing sector is also thrown open to international competition. This will see a further segregation of the international retailing brands and the domestic retailers, thereby injecting much greater dynamism into the market. That will be when the real action will begin. In the second article on retailing, we uncover a model for retailers to handle the emerging scenario.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Retail management skills

It is a fact that the retailing industry is in its starting phase in our country. The benefits of organised retailing will only be felt once an equitable scale is achieved. This to a large extent depends on the store size, the walkthroughs, bills per customer per year, average bill size and the revenue earned per sq. ft. But besides resources and bottomline, a variety of other aspects need to be in place for tasting success. The need for qualified and trained manpower is of utmost importance. The need for specialised skills is increasingly felt in the areas of:

Strategic management - strategising, targeting and positioning, marketing and site selection, among others
Merchandise management - Vendor selection, inventory management, pricing and so on
Store management - Layout, display, customer relationship, inventory management, etc.
Administrative Management - Human resources, finance, marketing and so on

With the need for specialised skill set, retailing has become a specialised area of knowledge and training. The RPG School of Retailing and the introduction of specialised retailing courses at various business schools, including the IIMs, stand testimony to this.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Emerging trends in Retail sector

The single most important evolution that took place along with the retailing revolution was the rise and fall of the dotcom companies. A sudden concept of `non-store' shopping emerged, which threatened to take away the potential of the store. More importantly, the very nature of the customer segment being addressed was almost the same. The computer-savvy individual was also a sub-segment of the `store' frequenting traffic.

Internationally, the concept of Net shopping is yet to be proven. And the poor financial performance of most of the companies offering virtual shopping has resulted in store-based retailing regaining the upper hand. Other forms of non-store shopping including various formats such as catalogue/mail order shopping, direct selling, and so on are growing rapidly. However, the size of the direct market industry is too limited to deter the retailers. For all the convenience that it offers, electronic retailing does not suit products where `look and see' attributes are of importance, as in apparel, or where the value is very high, such as jewellery, or where the performance has to be tested, as of consumer durables. The most critical issue in electronic retailing, especially in a country such as ours, relates to payments and the various security issues involved.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Consumer- the prime mover for Retail business

A variety of factors seem to influence the growth in the retailing industry. `Consumer Pull', however, seems to be the most important driving factor behind the sustenance of the industry.

In this context, A. F. Ferguson & Co. had carried out a brief survey among consumers across income segments to understand their spending pattern. An analysis of the `monthly purchase basket of the consumers surveyed indicated that the average monthly household spend on food and grocery related items varied across income segments. For instance, in the case of upper income households, the average spend was around Rs 4,200 per month. As against this, the average spend in the case of a middle income household was around Rs. 2,850 and lower income households Rs. 1,250 per month. (This is computed from a sample of 100 customers having an average family size of four.)

Based on the distribution of the more than 15 lakh households in Chennai across income segments and the average spend, a conservative estimate of the grocery retailing potential at Chennai will be around Rs. 300 crores.

Besides increasing purchasing power, a variety of other factors also seem to fuel the retailing boom. With increase in double-income households and working women, there is an increasing pressure on time with very little time being available for leisure. In this scenario, consumers are seeking the convenience of one-stop shopping, whereby they could have better utility of time. They are also seeking speed and efficiency in processing, as a result. Being more aware, consumers are on the look-out for more information, better quality and hygiene as well as increased customer service. These changes in consumer behaviour also augur well for the retailing industry.

However, in India there are no uniform trends with respect to consumer buying behaviour. There are visible differences in the shopping pattern of consumers across income segments as shown in the table.

Organised retailing has definitely made headway in the upper class. However, even in this segment, items such as milk, fruits, vegetables and a significant portion of `through-the-month' purchases seem to be done at traditional outlets. The middle income class prefer shopping for processed food and personal care in supermarkets and fall back on traditional outlets for bulk shopping. Organised retail outlets seem to be associated with branded items/special purchases. Organised retailing does not seem to have made an impact on the lower class, except for `curiosity' shopping.

The biggest question before organised retailers therefore, is whether this really means a huge untapped potential for the organised retailers and whether the conversion in mindset going to be easy.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Spread of organised retailing

Organised retailing is spreading and making its presence felt in different parts of the country. The trend in grocery retailing, however, has been slightly different with a growth concentration in the South.

However, the Mecca of retailing is undoubtedly Chennai. What was considered a `traditional', conservative' and `cost-conscious' market, proved to be the home ground for most of the successful retail names - FoodWorld, Music World, Health and Glow, Vitan, Subhiksha and Viveks -to name a few.

The choice of Chennai as the `retail capital' has surprised many, but a variety of factors acted in its favour. Chennai, in spite of being a rapidly growing metropolis offers reasonable real estate prices, one of the most critical elements for the industry. Chennai has been witnessing a high industrial growth and increasing presence of the MNCs, both in the IT sector as well as outside it. The industrial boom has led to the emergence of new residential areas with aggregation of professionals as well as a rapid increase in the number of `double-income' households and growth of the nouveau riche/upper middle class with increased purchasing power. This has been combined with the increasing need for touch and feel shopping (especially for the large migrant population). All the factors have acted favourably in nurturing the industry.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Emerging sectors in Retail

Retailing, one of the largest sectors in the global economy, is going through a transition phase not only in India but the world over. For a long time, the corner grocery store was the only choice available to the consumer, especially in the urban areas. This is slowly giving way to international formats of retailing. The traditional food and grocery segment has seen the emergence of supermarkets/grocery chains (Food World, Nilgiris, Apna Bazaar), convenience stores (ConveniO, HP Speedmart) and fast-food chains (McDonalds, Dominos).

It is the non-food segment, however that foray has been made into a variety of new sectors. These include lifestyle/fashion segments (Shoppers' Stop, Globus, LifeStyle, Westside), apparel/accessories (Pantaloon, Levis, Reebok), books/music/gifts (Archies, MusicWorld, Crosswords, Landmark), appliances and consumer durables (Viveks, Jainsons, Vasant & Co.), drugs and pharmacy (Health and Glow, Apollo).

The emergence of new sectors has been accompanied by changes in existing formats as well as the beginning of new formats:

Hypermarts:
Large supermarkets, typically 3,500-5,000 sq. ft.
Mini supermarkets, typically 1,000-2,000 sq. ft.
Convenience stores, typically 750-1,000sq. ft.
Discount/shopping list grocer
The traditional grocers, by introducing self-service formats as well as value-added services such as credit and home delivery, have tried to redefine themselves. However, the boom in retailing has been confined primarily to the urban markets in the country. Even there, large chunks are yet to feel the impact of organised retailing. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the modern retailer is yet to feel the saturation' effect in the urban market and has, therefore, probably not looked at the other markets as seriously. Second, the modern retailing trend, despite its cost-effectiveness, has come to be identified with lifestyles.

In order to appeal to all classes of the society, retail stores would have to identify with different lifestyles. In a sense, this trend is already visible with the emergence of stores with an essentially `value for money' image. The attractiveness of the other stores actually appeals to the existing affluent class as well as those who aspire for to be part of this class. Hence, one can assume that the retailing revolution is emerging along the lines of the economic evolution of society.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

The Retail Growth

Retailing - no marks for guessing this is the most active and attractive sector of the last decade. While the retailing industry itself has been present through history in our country, it is only the recent past that has witnessed so much dynamism. It's the latest bandwagon that has witnessed hordes of players leaping onto it. While international retail store chains have caught the fancy of many travelers abroad, the action was missing from the Indian business scene, at least till recently.

The emergence of retailing in India has more to do with the increasing purchasing power of buyers, specially post- liberalisation, increase in product variety, and the increasing economies of scale, with the aid of modern supply and distribution management solutions.

A definition of retailing is essential in order to be in a position to assess the impact of retailing and its future potential. The current retailing revolution has been provided an impetus from multiple sources. These `revolutionaries' include many conventional stores upgrading themselves to modern retailing, companies in competitive environments entering the market directly to ensure exclusive visibility for their products and professional chain stores coming up to meet the need of the manufacturers who do not fall into either of the above categories. Attractiveness, accessibility and affordability seem to be the key offerings of the retailing chain.

- Contributed by Nithin Narayanan

Avoid being defrauded

Tips for buyers to avoid being defrauded

1. Whenever possible, meet your business partner in person and visit their company's facilities. Although the internet offers you a wealth of information on your potential partner that enables you to make an initial assessment, there is no substitute for face-to-face contact.

2. If the price your supplier offered is much lower than the usual market price, (especially it is digital products or computer related products) do not send your payment without an investigation. You can search for the company’s name on our forum to see if any other members are talking about this company. You can also post a new question and ask for help from experienced members. There are always lots of enthusiastic members who will give you a hand.

3. Check your business partner's background. Background checks from independent third-party sources include a search for legal registration and credit reports. In many countries, the existence of a company and its legal status is a matter of public record. If your trading partner is not a Gold Supplier or TrustPass member, check the company’s registration details in their country to ensure that the company exists and has a valid registration. If you cannot get access to your partner's registration information, ask your partner to provide you with a Certificate of Good Standing issued by the company registry office in their country/state/province. You can also find out more about your partner by ordering a credit history report from a local credit agency. Credit history reports contain information about your partner's business history and their relationships with banks and other trading partners. Try to contact a credit agency, which can provide credit history reports.

4. You’re highly recommended to use a secure escrow service to hold your payment safely until you confirm receipt of the products you ordered. Don’t send your payment byWestern Union or through an unknown escrow website.

5. Negotiate with your partner about transaction details, such as solutions for damaged products, inferior products, delayed delivery etc. If you didn’t sign a written agreement, you should keep email records as evidence in cases where trade disputes occur.

6. Protect yourself against poor quality by ordering a pre-shipment inspection of the products. You can demand the inspection as a condition to payment.

7. Protect yourself when ordering or providing samples. As a buyer, order a sample before committing to a purchase order to be sure that the product meets your expectations.

8. It is recommended that you contact our service team to make a complaint when you are scammed. Describe the detailed information of the case and keep related documents as proof.

Characteristics of Fraudsters:

1. Low product price
2. Accepts small orders or accepts individual purchases
3. After buyers send a partial payment, they ask buyers to place a larger order or increase their deposit.
4. Asks buyers to send payment to a private bank account instead of a company account.
5. Asks for further payment to clear products detained by the Customs Office.
6. Asks buyers to register an account with a government authority, and then to send a registration fee to a bank account in order to buy the products.

Best ways to find new buyers

One of the best way to get more buyers is from search engine like yahoo, google ,dogpile, clicksor and msn live.
It is called pay per click advertising, mean you pay per click, usually a couple cents per click. It is a great form of advertising, because it is so simple and you have a great control over your ad campaign and you also receive better feed back on your performance.
The beauty of PPC advertising is the speed at which you can reach your target market and the high quality of sales leads that can be generated.
The ad campaign can start as low as $5 For example, if you are an exporter of 470 mls refined corn oil, your ad should be something like this.
We export refined corn oil in 470mls bottles ,our prices are very competitive please visit our website for more information.
The search engine will ask you to enter keywords, so that potential buyers can find your website easily.
Examples of keywords for your your ads will be, refined corn oil, low price corn oil, high quality corn oil, ect, ect .
To increase your chance to get more buyers it important that you do market research.

Finding reliable suppliers in China

Due diligence. This basically means that as it is your money that is going to be lost if you make a bad deal, you need to be responsible for any decisions that you make.
I think that the biggest mistake most new traders make is that they get online, hook up with a few suppliers, find some that can communicate in English and offer what seem to be pretty good prices, and then throw all of their money at the supplier. I doubt that these people would purchase this way back home and it surprises me that they are willing to do it here.
Nothing beats an actual visit to the suppliers factory to tie up all of the information that they have given you before you actually place an order. Flying all the way to China and back again can of course be expensive which is why 'China Helpers' can be a good idea. For a small fee they can act as your agent not an agent of the factory.

Internet marketing

Do you have an Internet marketing strategy for your online business? You should. Internet marketing and Internet advertising, when done properly, can drive traffic to your website and practically double your sales overnight. In fact, advertising your site may be the only way for you to compete with larger, more established competitors.
While there are many different forms of Internet marketing strategy that you can employ, one of the easiest and most reliable forms is results tracking. When you track the results of your Internet advertising campaigns, you can quickly learn what works and what doesn't work. For obvious reasons, this method is much better than a random hit and miss advertising method, which can turn out to be quite costly, not to mention ineffective.
Of course, this form of Internet marketing strategy isn't anything new. Direct marketers have been using results tracking for years, and it can easily be adapted for the Internet. The key is to come up with a way to measure the results of Internet advertising accurately. If you're tracking is not accurate, there is little to no point in doing it.
To make sure their tracking results are accurate, many direct marketers use a trick known as split testing. Split testing uses a specific key or tracking device to associate a sale with the advertisement that produced the sale.
For example, in a print ad, the key or tracking device that may be used could be a specific phone number or extension. When a customer utilizes the number or extension, the marketer knows exactly which ad drove the customer to seek out the advertised product or service. If the same ad produced repeated sales, the marketer knows that the advertising is effective and worth doing again. On the other hand, if the ad didn't even produce enough sales to pay for the advertising, then the marketer knows not to try that again.
The same split testing method used by direct marketers can easily be adapted and incorporated into your Internet marketing strategy, allowing you to determine exactly how effective or ineffective your Internet advertising is.
To track the success and failure of Internet advertising, most Internet marketers typically use some sort of tracking software to associate the key with sales. A simple way to do this is to develop two web pages that feature two different ads. You can then track the sales results of each ad to see which worked best, and if necessary, adjust your Internet marketing strategy accordingly.
For example, let's say that on one of the pages, you received a total of 2,000 page views and 20 sales. This means that you have a success rate of one percent. Not bad. This is the average for both direct mail advertising and Internet advertising. Now that you have this information, you have statistics you can rely on. You can test other pages to see if they perform better or worse. You can also adapt the original pages to see if your changes have any effect on the sales outcome. For example, try adjusting headlines, graphics, text, and anything else you can think of. Then, compare the results of these changes to the original results.
After you have tested different variations of your Internet advertising, you can quickly determine exactly what works and what doesn't. Your Internet market strategy and any future advertising that you do can then be adjusted accordingly. If you succeed, you may be able to double your sales without throwing away good money over and over again on advertising that doesn't

Sources for Finding Leads

The three most important factors in selling are leads,leads,leads. You required a constant supply of new buyers to call on. The best way to find new buyers is to look for them in new places. Here are 40 places you will find them. We bet you can think of 40 more.
1. Current customers
2. Former customers
3. Customers of current and former customers
4. Next-door neighbors
5. Customers’ next-door neighbors
6. Local chamber of commerce
7. Local office of economic development
8. Your family
9. High school or college reunion attendees
10.People you meet on vacation at the beach, in the mountains, or at the amusement park
11.People in chat rooms and other locations on he Internet (e.g: Alibaba.com)
12.Your attorney
13.Your banker
14.Your accountant
15.Your physician
16.Your clothier
17.Colleagues at seminars, conferences, and conventions
18.Current and former colleagues
19.Patrons in bookstores, particularly in front of the business shelf
20.The person sitting next to you on an airplane, especially in first class
21.Acquaintances in airports, restaurants, hotel bars, ski lodges, golf courses, malls, museums, doctors offices, and anywhere else
22.Buyer that turn you down in the past
23.The names you’re afraid to call because you believe they won’t listen to you
24.Contacts at social, professional, or fraternal clubs
25.Responses to radio or TV ads
26.Responses to printed ads
27.Responses to telemarketing
28.Mailing lists developed at trade show
29.Mailing lists from qualified list brokers
30.Trade association lists
31.Hoover’s (in book form, on CD-ROM, or at Internet site)
32.Moody’s Industrial Directories
33.Standard & Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives
34.Dun’s Direct Access (Dun and Bradstreet) accessed through your computer
35.National Trade and professional Associations (Columbia Books)
36.Middle Market Directory (Dun and Bradstreet)
37.Encyclopedia of Associations (Gale)
38.The International Corporate 1000 (Graham and Trotman)
39.TrackAmerica:Information on USD10 Millions businesses and 90 Millions consumers accessed through your computer
40.Business Lists on Disc (American Business Information): over 9 million businesses on CD-ROM

Useful website for international trade

Some useful website for international trade:

1 AaronAble Enterprise Service
Supplier and buyer linking service.
http://www.enterprise.com.tw
2 MBL Sales
Trading Board for international offers to buy, sell, and business opportunities.
http://www.mblsales.com
3 vCanvas
A B2B Marketplace for the Middle East, offers personalized B2B web services such as Trade Opportunity, Company Listings, Products Showcase, NAICS Coding, HS Coding, and Dynamic Web Page for each customer.
http://www.vcanvas.com/
4 World Trade Search
The Trading Zone where businesses may post products and services to be purchased or sold.
http://world-trade-search.com/iic/tzone.shtml
5 Tpage
With over 1.2 million companies and trade leads search engine Tpage is one of the most comprehensive source to find and post trade leads.
http://offer.tpage.com/
6 FOB-China.com
China specific chemical and telecommunications product portal with information on investment projects, trade fairs, holidays, news.
http://www.fob-china.com
7 Euro Trade Leads
Euro Trade Leads is designed for companies to place short-term sales offers, stock liquidations, calls for tender, offers to buy and catch new business opportunities worldwide.
http://www.eurotradeleads.com/
8 Import - Export Bulletin Board
This bulletin board is a public service for use by all traders and entrepreneurs looking for exchanging trade information and seeking business leads.
http://trade.swissinfo.net/
9 Trade-India.com
Offers a categorized listing of available offers, with product descriptions and contact details.
http://www.trade-india.com/bbsnew/bbsindex.html
10 TradeAgent.com
Offers financial news, links section and a discussion board.
http://www.tradeagent.com/
11 International Traders Bulletin Board
International Trade Bulletin Board for import, export, manufacture and trade service business opportunities.
http://www.tradezone.com/ITBoard/itboard.html
12 WisBen
You can search, sell or buy any commodities in the world.
http://www.wisben.com
13 ECeurope
An electronic business-to-business (B2B) Trading Hub, that offers a global trading environment connecting companies based in Eastern, Central & Western Europe with international buyers & sellers around the World.
http://www.eceurope.com/
14 Import and Export Trade Leads
A free website for importers and exporters. Features include free matchmaking of buyer and seller, the ability to view or post free ads that will be seen by an international audience.
http://216.71.75.152/index.html
15 Wood-me
Buyer and seller postings about wood, timber, lumber, wood processing machinery, tools, finishing materials and services.
http://www.wood-me.com/forum/
16 TradeOps
Where importers and volume buyers source products and find suppliers worldwide.
http://www.trade-opportunities.com
17 AsianNet Trade InfoCenter
A source of information which provides actual and potential traders with data about business and market opportunities. All listings in trade bulletins are free.
http://tradeinfo.asiannet.com/
18 World Biz Club
The definitive trade leads site offers 43,000 product and service categories and pre-qualified international trade (import export) leads from member professionals.
http://www.wbc.com/wbc/main.asp
19 International Trade Corner
Products and services offered for import in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Holland
http://www.abc-d.com/itc.html
20 TradeWeb
Assists companies with their international trade activities and provides practical assistance to all levels of exporters.
http://www.tradex-consulting.com/tradeweb/tradeweb.htm
21 Taiwan Yellow Pages
Bulletin Board system for traders all over the world to post and inquire trading messages.
http://www.iebb.com.tw/
22 World Trade Point Federation / ETOS
Provides traders around the world with a single point of contact for their trade, investment and business opportunities.
http://www.wtpfed.org/eto_s.html
23 Eastern European Trade Board
The Window to Eastern Europe Import Export Trade
http://www.masterpage.com.pl/dbase/business/default.asp?action=v&id=7
24 BizBB
Professional quality trading bulletin boards. Creating your own Merchandise Bulletin Board is free and easy.
http://bizbb.com/
25 SOTA1-OPT
The wholesale Trading Ground is specially designed for the participants of the communications and telecommunications market.
http://opt.sota1.ru
26 Russia-Connect
Provides access to Russian commercial opportunities, finds contacts and suitable business partners and will broaden the business base for those already trading with Russia.
http://russiaconnect.ru/navigate.asp
27 TubeNet
Message board for tube and pipe industries - Tube mills,cut-off, bending, end forming, branching, welding and tube suppliers around the world
http://virtual5.nebula.fi/~tubenet/market.html
28 ChinaEdeal
China electronic industry's self-service marketplace and online B2B trade platform.
http://www.chinaedeal.com/userlogin/company/gqxx_index.asp
29 Fiberglass Message Board
For global buyers and sellers
http://bbs.huanet.com/buy/
30 BusyTrade
Trade leads center, import export market place, buy sell bullentin board, trade opportunities, import/export information
http://www.busytrade.com/
31 Business Meeting Point
Information. for merchandises from all over the world and trade fair in Europe.
http://www.bmp.ne.jp/e/
32 WebBusiness
The first database in Hungary which enables you to make your advertisements available to those companies which are interested in the same, or similar business fields.
http://www.wbdb.net/eng/
33 Extrem
Import export bulletin board from East Europe, Bucharest, Romania
http://www.extrem.ro/msg.htm
34 Worldbid
Facilitates international trade by providing qualified import/export trade leads.
http://www.worldbid.com/
35 EC Plaza
Designed to offer Internet based services, where trading firms around the world can engage in business without any barriers in terms of nation, region, or language while promoting global trade community.
http://www.ecplaza.net/ecmarket/
36 Holland@TradeNet
An International business platform for supply and demand, cooperation, knowledge transfer and most up-to-date foreign trade enquiries.
http://www.hollandtradenet.nl/
37 Italbiz
Italian B2B Marketplace and Trade Directory. Search our worldwide B2B directory of Italian-related companies and post your trade opportunities.
http://www.italbiz.com
38 YU Trade Leads
YU Trade - Genuine Trade Offers, Demands and Business Opportunities from FR Yugoslavia.
http://www.yutrade.net/leads/default.asp
39 AfaceriOnline
Trade oriented site with extensive leads and business opportunities
http://www.afacerionline.com/
40 TradeArea
Acts as the venue for users to locate people to trade with and to negotiate the exchange of goods and services.
http://www.tradearea.com/tradelead/offer_list.asp
41 VenExport
Venezuela based site with Trade Leads and Offers.
http://www.venexport.com/index2-in.html
42 Netcurier
Romanian Oriented import/export trade leads - buy, sell opportunities, auctions and barters .
http://www.netcurier.com/
43 NuDeal
Trade leads, reviews, deals, postings, and guides.
http://www.nudeal.com/tradeleads/postings/
44 Planet Business
A platform to find worldwide business partners among importers, exporters, traders and distributors.
http://www.planetbiz.com/trade/index.html
45 TradeMatch
Assists companies to benefit from international trade opportunities through new markets, partners and customers overseas.
http://www.tradematch.co.uk/
46 Business Opportunities Bulletin Board
Established by the Embassy of the Republic of Angola in Washington, D.C. in response to the many requests for information on business contacts in Angola's economic sectors. Here individuals worldwide can post relevant trade and investment opportunities to others with similar interests in the business community.
http://www.angola.org/business/opportunity/index.cfm
47 Businesseurope
We're bringing buyers and sellers together throughout Europe and streamlining their search for products and services, suppliers and partners.
http://www.businesseurope.com/cmn/index.jsp
48 Chinapages
On-line global business opportunities.
http://www.chinapages.com/
49 IndiaMart
Import & Export Discussion Board with unlimited business opportunities for all? effectively & efficiently!
http://www.indiamart.com/tradebbs/
50 COUNTYWeb
Trade, message and bulletin boards are to encourage international trade, Global business and commerce as well as intra - UK trade business and commerce.
http://www.countyweb.co.uk/countyweb/bbs/
51 EXIMTURK
A time and cost saving instrument for world traders with its powerful tools such as Autosubmit System, Alert Service, URL Submit, web page design and Online Catalog services
http://www.eximturk.com/viewoffers.php
52 Free Trade Front
Asia, America, Europe and Africa products for export and import in easy format.
http://www.freetradefront.com/
53 INDOBIZ
A free bulletin board for posting messages, and announcements.
http://www.indobiz.com/
54 India Trade Board
Business Trade Board for Buy, Sell and Miscellaneous B2B Messages
http://www.indiatradeboard.com/
55 BORZA
Business Opportunities Exchange System by Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia
http://www.gzs.si/eng/borza/borza.htm
56 WTCA On-Line
One-stop trade information hub for posting and reviewing trade opportunities, accessing valuable databases and communicating easily with newly found business prospects
http://iserve.wtca.org/
57 WorldbidBeauty
First b2b marketplace for the beauty industry. Buy, sell, and find trade leads.
http://www.worldbidbeauty.com
58 MBendi
Designed to assist business-people to identify and research business opportunities in the country and industry sectors of their choice.
http://www.mbendi.co.za/a_sndmsg/trade_menu.asp?C=1
59 Global Trade Web
Post trade lead, view and search import/export trade leads, find products, importers or exporters, promote your business world-wide.
http://www.globaltradeweb.com
60 Asia's Marketplace
Seller's and Buyer's postings, Business Opportunities.
http://www.asiatrade.com/Mkt.html
61 MasterPage
Eastern European Trade Board
http://www.masterpage.com.pl/products/searchmnew.asp
62 Petrosilicon
Facilitates buying and selling of crude oil and petroleum products and services
http://www.petrosilicon.com/tradezone/check.cgi
63 Made in Belgium
Business Opportunities - Inquiries - Import - Export
http://www.madeinbelgium.be/9_bssopp_inquiries_import.htm
64 ChinaTradeZone
Businesses can post and edit their trade offers (offer to sell, offer to buy and biz opportunities), and search or receive by email the trade leads alert.
http://chinatradezone.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi
65 CH Non-Food Import-Export
Trading Site with all commodities updated twice every week. Webboard and mailing-list access.
http://www.ch-non-food.com/bbs/
A Free Bulletin Board for all international business people.
http://www.ypage.com/wbd/
67 Seckin Net
Helps foreign companies that want to do business in Turkey.
http://www.seckin.net/cgi-bin/business/bbs/board.cgi?forum=buy_sell
68 Business & Economics
Angola's Business Opportunities Bulletin Board.
http://www.angola.org/business/opportunity/
69 ThaiTradePoint Business Board
Established by Northern E-commerce Resource Center, the pilot project of National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), Science Technology and Environment Ministry of Thailand.
http://www.thaitradepoint.com/aspboard/index.asp
70 Allproducts
Trade leads posted by companies and individuals from all over the world
http://www.allproducts.com/lead/TradeLeads.html
71 Bond
Czech Republic Business and Trade Opportunities - direct contact to Central Europe.
http://www.bond.cz/testa.htm
72 IDS
German Business Message Board - Service of the Schwarzwald-Baar-Heuberg Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
http://www.schwarzwald-baar-heuberg.ihk.de/ids/IDSAKT.HTM
73 Business Netvigator
A free real-time bulletin service for offers and demands.
http://business.netvigator.com/eng/gto/
74 1Point Commerce
Global ECommerce Network with the power to Negotiate Trade Deals Online.
http://www.1pointcommerce.com/default.htm
75 DdeX
Offer Venezuelan exporters and overseas importers the opportunity to find a trading partner suited to their needs
http://www.ddex.com/index-e.html
76 Handicraft Exchange
Provides a software platform to help your local business expand locally and internationally.
http://www.handicraftexchange.com/home/
77 WalesWorldWide
Our aim is to help companies in Wales (United Kingdom) and worldwide to access trade leads, whether they are looking to import, to export or for a joint venture.
http://194.102.15.10/ibc/view.asp
78 Expoeuro
European trade leads for products and services originating in the European Single Market.
http://www.expoeuro.com/Eurotradeleads.htm
79 Global-Trades-Ltd
Search Trade Leads posted by Manufacturers, Importers, Exporters, and Service Providers.
http://64.45.3.180/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi?website=&language=&session_key=39b8014f645210ac
80 Taiwan Commerce
Trade Opportunities Bulletin Board, representing manufacturers of products and services.
http://eto.commerce.com.tw/
81 Trade Oasis
Trade Leads and Marketplace for international business.
http://www.toasis.com
82 iTradeboard
Get worldwide inquiries on your email. Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Paper, Textiles, Diamonds, Iron and Steel, and Consumer items.
http://www.itradeboard.com
83 WebIndia
Offer free trade leads, business enquires, India's exporters/importers directory, business offers, postings, India's bulletin board & other services.
http://b2b.webindia.com/
84 WebIndia
Business to Business Bulletin Board.
http://www.webindia.com/frames/importersfrm.htm
85 SystemEU
Your entry gate to European trading and business on line.
http://www.systemeu.com/readoffers.htm
86 Netglobaltrade
We offer free trade lead posting, Easy to use trade site, post leads with photo.
http://www.netglobaltrade.com
87 Africa Trade
Bulletin Board that allows netizens from all over the globe to converse on trade-related topics.
http://www.tips.co.za/africatrade/tr.asp#archive
88 International Business Forum
Provides information about business opportunities in the international marketplace. It is intended for companies wishing to export or expand into foreign markets as well as for those interested to acquire products and services from other countries.
http://www.ibf.com/aboutbo.htm
89 China Producers Net
Trading Board for Chinese Producers.
http://www.chinaproducer.net/
90 TP Consulting
The international trade board for announcements, search businesses or partners, export/import offers.
http://www.tp.com.ua/cgi/gbook.cgi?lang=eng&nw=ok
91 Marketz
Trade lead exchange board for world wide import and export business. Industry focus on US, Canada, Australia, Asia, China and Japan SMI/SME manufacturers.
http://www.marketz.com/trade/search_ads.shtml
92 Euronline
The Reference Trade leads center in Europe.
http://www.euronline-search.com/tradeoffers-en.html
93 WTN Trade Center
The first trade and business board in Europe.
http://www.wtn-de.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro
94 Trade Zone
Offers international trade business opportunities as well as import and export trade leads.
http://www.tradezone.com/cgi-bin/leads/leads.cgi
95 INUSA
Import News USA - your gateway to the U.S. market offer you Trade Leads

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is one of the fastest method of advertising ever to hit the public internet. In its basic form, search engine marketing is having a website designed to be attractive to search engines, enabling the site to receive high rankings on the search pages. Those who extensively search the internet for products or information are well aware that most users rarely go beyond the first two or three pages and a iste not listed there is often considered to be lost in oblivion.
There are numerous companies offering to enhance websites for better placement on search engines, and those advertisements guaranteeing to get your site listed on the first page on any of the major search engines should probably be deleted without spending the time it takes to read through them. There are many factors involved with a search engine determining a pages placement and those factors are known only but a handful of people who operate the engine, and the details are not only kept secret, they change often.
When search engines began selling keywords and placing paid advertisers for space on the first couple pages of results, complaints quickly followed of the ones with money were being given preferential treatment and once the Federal Trade Commission got involved, those who accept payment for the first page ads, have to disclose that fact to visitors.
Search engine marketing can be a breakthrough for even the lesser known websites, provided they understand for what the search engines are looking. For example, in the early days of website, meta tags in the header of a website were one of the key items engines looked at when searches were conducted. People quickly learned to manipulate the system by supply keywords in their tags that had no relativity to their sites. This pushed them higher on the engine results page, but lower on the customer satisfaction scale.
Quality content and quality incoming links are two of the major factors that help a search engine determine the quality and reputation of any given website. New algorithms, changed frequently, helps level the playing field between big business and the little guy, by having search criteria the same for all sites. Each site meeting the criteria has the opportunity to experience a high page ranking, without paying for advertising or inclusion on specific search pages.
Search engine marketing can be a boon to smaller companies and if they build their own website, they can hire a company to help optimize it for the search engines, or by visiting the search engines, can obtain the information they look at and how to set up your site on your own, to make it more attractive.
Companies that offer a guarantee should be claiming they can promise your site will be more attractive, increasing its chances of moving up on the list. Unless they own the engine and have control over the requirements to be listed, they cannot fulfill any such promise.

Trade show participation tips

The key to great exhibiting is marketing. But marketing is a very inexact science that leaves room for a multitude of errors to occur. The following are 10 of the most common marketing mistakes that exhibitors often make. Learn to avoid them and you will increase your chances for a successful tradeshow.
1. Have A Proper Exhibit Marketing Plan
Having both a strategic exhibit marketing and tactical plan of action is a critical starting point. In order to make tradeshows a powerful dimension your company’s overall marketing operation, there must be total alignment between the strategic marketing and your exhibit marketing plan. Tradeshows should not be a stand-alone venture. Know and understand exactly what you wish to achieve - increasing market share with existing users; introducing new products/services into existing markets or into new markets; or introducing new products/services into new markets. This is the nucleus on which to build.
2. Have A Well-Defined Promotional Plan
A significant part of your marketing includes promotion – pre-show, at-show and post-show. Most exhibitors fail to have a plan that encompasses all three areas. Budget is naturally going to play a major role in deciding what and how much promotional activity is possible. Developing a meaningful theme or message that ties into your strategic marketing plan will then help to guide promotional decisions. Know whom you want to target and then consider having different promotional programs aimed at the different groups you are interested in attracting. Include direct mail, broadcast faxes, advertising, PR, sponsorship, and the Internet as possible ways to reach your target audience.
3. Use Direct Mail Effectively
Direct mail is still one of the most popular promotional vehicles exhibitors use. From postcards to multi-piece mailings, attendees are deluged with invitations to visit booths. Many of the mailings come from show management’s lists and as a result, everyone gets everything. To target the people you want visit your booth, use your own list of customers and prospects--it’s the best one available. Design a piece that is totally benefit-oriented and makes an impact. Mail three pieces at regular intervals prior to the show, starting about four weeks out, to help ensure your invitation is seen. Wherever possible, use first-class mail. There’s nothing worse than a mailing that arrives after the show is over.
4. Give Visitors An Incentive To Visit Your Booth
Whatever promotional vehicles you use, make sure that you give visitors a reason to come and visit you. With a hall overflowing with fascinating products/services, combined with time constraints, people need an incentive to come and visit your booth. First and foremost their primary interest is in “what’s new!” They are eager to learn about the latest technologies, new applications, or anything that will help save them time and/or money. Even if you don’t have a new product/service to introduce, think about a new angle to promote your offerings.
5. Have Giveaways That Work
Tied into giving visitors an incentive to visit your booth is the opportunity to offer a premium item that will entice them. Your giveaway items should be designed to increase your memorability, communicate, motivate, promote or increase recognition of your company. Developing a dynamite giveaway takes thought and creativity. Consider what your target audience wants, what will help them do their job better, what they can’t get elsewhere, what is product/service related and educational. Think about having different gifts for different types of visitors. Use your website to make an offer for visitors to collect important information, such as an executive report, when they visit your booth. Giveaways should be used as a reward or token of appreciation for visitors participating in a demonstration, presentation or contest, or as a thank-you for qualifying information about specific needs etc.
6. Use Press Relations Effectively
Public relations is one of the most cost-effective and successful methods for generating large volumes of direct inquiries and sales. Before the show ask show management for a comprehensive media list, and find out which publications are planning a special show edition. Send out newsworthy press releases focusing on what’s new about your product/service, or highlighting a new application or market venture. Compile press kits for the press office that include information about industry trends, statistics, new technology or production information. Also include good product photos and key company contacts. Have staff members at the booth who are specifically assigned to interact with the media
7. Differentiate Your Products/Services
Too many exhibitors are happy to use the “me too” marketing approach. Examine their marketing plans and there’s an underlying sameness about them. With shows that attract hundreds of exhibitors, there are very few that seem to “stand out from the crowd.” Since memorability is an integral part of a visitors’ show experience, you should be looking at what makes you different and why a prospect should buy from you. This is of particular concern with generic products in your industry. Every aspect of your exhibit marketing plan, including your promotions, your booth and your people should be aimed at making an impact and creating curiosity.
8. Use The Booth As An Effective Marketing Tool
On the show floor your exhibit makes a strong statement about who your company is, what you do and how you do it. The purpose of your exhibit is to attract visitors so that you can achieve your marketing objectives. In addition to it being an open, welcoming and friendly space, there needs to be a focal point and a strong key message that communicates a significant benefit to your prospect. Opt for large graphics rather than reams of copy. Pictures paint a thousand words while very few exhibitors will take the time to read. Your presentations or demonstrations are a critical part of your exhibit marketing. Create an experience that allows visitors use as many of their senses as possible. This will help to enhance memorability.
9. Realize That Your People Are Your Marketing Team
Your people are your ambassadors. They represent everything your company stands for, so choose them well. Brief them beforehand and make sure that they know: why you are exhibiting; what you are exhibiting and what you expect from them. Exhibit staff training is essential for a unified and professional image. Make sure that they sell instead of tell; don’t try to do too much; understand visitor needs; don’t spend too much time; and know how to close the interaction with a commitment to follow-up.
Avoid overcrowding the booth with company representatives. Have strict rules regarding employees visiting the show and insist staffers not scheduled for booth duty stay away until their assigned time. Assign specific tasks for company executives working the show.
10. Follow-Up Promptly
The key to your tradeshow success is wrapped up in the lead-management process. The best time to plan for follow-up is before the show. Show leads often take second place to other management activities that occur after being out of the office for several days. The longer leads are left unattended, the colder and more mediocre they become. It is to your advantage to develop an organized, systematic approach to follow-up. Establish a lead handling system, set time lines for follow-up, use a computerized database for tracking, make sales representatives accountable for leads given to them, and then measure your results.

E-mail marketing

One of the best method to get more customers is e-mail marketing. You need to write a good advertising newsletter and then send it out to potential clients.

E-mail is a good way to keep in touch with your clients and let them know of any new products.
Out of all the marketing methods, e-mail marketing is the best. To market with email you need a list of potential buyers for your products or service.