Your business is 80% marketing and sales; and 20% support services”, Mustapha B Mugisa, 2015 After consulting for several startups, the #1 challenge of most small businesses is not the lack of capital. It is the lack of customers. If your business lacks customers, it will suffer from cash flow problem which is critical for survival. At the start, don’t be driven by profits. That should come as a natural expansion of business success. It does not matter how much loan (capital) you have, if you don’t have customers, your capital will still not be enough. So, focus on revenue…

For businesses to succeed, it is has to undertake aggressive marketing. Other functions are support. If you do not market, you won’t have income. You will incur costs but unable to meet them. For any firm whether in manufacturing industry, consulting services, audit or fast moving consumer goods, the core function to do is aggressive marketing as much as possible. If you don’t market, few, if any, will get to know about your services. As they say “it does not matter how beautiful a lady is, if she is in darkness, no one will notice her.” To be appreciated, she…

Guerrilla marketing is a term coined from the law of the jungle, which states that “for small trees to survive, they must climb onto big ones in order to access sunlight”, which they need to survive. As a salesperson in Uganda’s competitive environment, you are the small plant. Uganda’s business environment is the jungle. How do you survive? In order for you to cope up with the tight stiff competition, you need income, and only marketing and sales will bring revenue. You must come up with strategies that are cheap but effective. Since you are just starting out as a…

There are some things we take for guaranteed. We do not take time to understand them. After five days of interaction with insurers, I got to realize that the best financial strategy is to identify best insurance products and buy them. One of such products is education insurance. I do not know how you take your life, but risks are part of life. Every day you move from home to work, a series of risks could happen and impact your life for ever. Whether you travel in your own car or use public transport, there are many risks on the…

Regardless of your business, marketing is of the most important activities you have to do. However, traditional classes like MBA and other trainings have focused on teaching marketers from a perspective of spending a lot of money to generate sales. Unfortunately, businesses do not have a lot of money. It is a constraint. Entrepreneurs have very good ideas but their biggest challenge is shortage of capital and cash flows. You need to find ways of overcoming capital challenges. This is why the concept of Guerrilla marketing comes in.  How  do you increase revenue with a minimal budget? Guerrilla marketing is…

For best governance practices, each business or organization must have a Board of Directors. Others may call it a Board of Governors or Trustees. The bottom line of the Board of Directors is; it is the top decision making body in the business. The main two main mandates being: risk management and on going concern. The people who appointed them to the Board have expectations they want them to deliver on. The owner of the business will appoint the Board because of these two things: risk management and going concern. How does a Board member manage these expectations? But before…