Business and Marketing

Chris Stokes or Christopher B. Stokes is a man who is master of all trades. Born in Los Angeles, this versatile artist-cum-entrepreneur has been a rage all over Hollywood. He has done a variety of things in his music career. He is an entrepreneur, director, songwriter and producer. He gave a kick start to his career by producing a music video for his sister, Juanita Stokes who was just fourteen at that time. Following that, he became the CEO of The Ultimate Group, which discovered some superb artists such as Omarion, Marques and some super selling groups including B2K and Immature. He is not only the CEO of the company; he is a songwriter as well. He works with his artists constantly to produce some great music, lyrics and videos. His contribution is there in every aspect of the video. He is truly a passionate man, with music running in his veins.  He has written some of the best-selling tracks of 90’s and 2000’s including songs for Destiny’s Child, Immature, B2X, Marques etc. He has directed almost 150 music videos and been super successful in all of them. All his music videos have created a buzz in the music industry.

After being successful as a music video director, producer and song writer, he then moved on to direct films. In 2003, the movie You Got served created a rage in Hollywood. Chris Stokes had written the screenplay and had also directed the movie. The movie received a remarkable response from the audience by opening at #1 and continuing to retain its position in the following two weeks. It was a movie based on dance, superbly written, amazingly directed and remarkably executed. It had some awesome dancers and dance moves which were completely adored by youngsters. The success of this movie made other directors in Hollywood to start producing dance based movies. After its success, chris directed a horror movie Somebody Help Me which starred Omarion and Marques Houston. It was also one superb horror movie which was released on DVD in November 2007.

The story of Chris Stoke’s achievements doesn’t end here, because he’s also the creative director of a high-end apparel line. His love for luxurious clothes led to the launch of an awesome and popular clothing line which is a rage among all. Termed as the “brand for the million dollar man”, it has a range of high end luxurious clothing for men and women.

Eric Schiffer is a widely known man in the world of Hollywood. Along with making his presence felt in Hollywood industry as an actor, producer and director, he has also been a great writer. He has written a world popular book named Emotionally Charged Learning. The book explains various business management principles that are not found anywhere. He had also written some other books in addition to his first book.

Besides, being able to establish a learning company in advancement of educational realm of multimedia application, he is also celebrated as a great leader, visionary and an expert in the field of organizational development. The lengthy list of achievements by him is also praised publicly by various organizations like Intel and IBM. Eric Schiffer is also considered to be one of the ten big names in United States of America. Schiffer had spent most of his time working with larger than life time research projects.

The book titled as Emotionally Charged Learning deals with the newest, useful and fascinating management ideas. The learning style and the emotional intelligence shown in writing his book, makes it a must have thing for those wanting greater expertise and success in the arena of business management techniques. In this book, writer Schiffer has explained everything about entertainment, emotions and the forces of learning put together to create a very interesting and astonishing phenomenon.

The other book by Eric Schiffer named as One Thousand and One Ways to Reward the Employees of the organization. It adds some more management principles that are essential for both, an employee and an employer. Eric Schiffer has perfectly portrayed the techniques of how to deal with some of the new possibilities that are one way or another familiar to you. It is also equipped with all scientifically researched and essential new visions for management learners. This book consists of different and emotionally driven process of learning, which is not depended on any personal style of learning.

Fish stick is one of the other books by the well-known writer Eric Schiffer. This particular book is best for all the people who really want to achieve something in life by acquiring adequate knowledge and learning related to commencing a successful organization.  This book is also said to have many remarkable ways of boosting one’s morale, which could improve his or her performance and hence, show desired results.

While the targets set out the desired end results, the strategy outlines specific marketing actions you recommend to achieve these results. For this reason the strategy should be surrounded by all arms of marketing: product lines and quality, price, advertising, promotion, distribution, customer service, packaging, marketing and sales activities. It is the creative use of these weapons which usually determines the effectiveness of their programs. Additionally any reliable marketing plan will evaluate alternative strategies and propose a program for achieving secondary objectives if the initial plan seems to be deviating from the target.

In this sense, the strategy is the active part of their plan. The needs, desires and attitudes of the client should be the central focus for decision and action. The question What is the best way to identify, serve, attract and satisfy the desires of the client? becomes the fundamental driving force of action programs.

Strategies describe specific activities within a work system based on allocation of responsibilities, deadlines, priorities and resources, thereby responding to the questions: Who does it?, When?, In what sequence?, ¿ market using what tools?

Hence, the achievement of its objectives is the purpose of each program of action, thereby finding that the strategies should be linked to specific goals if you want to have a viable plan. Understand that goals without action programs do not lead anywhere.

Programs without specific targets ending in uncoordinated activities, too dispersed, with expenditures of time, effort and money.

For this reason, begin the description of each action program by first setting its link with the objectives. Then detail the strategy to be employed.

But … What is a program of action?, An action program is essentially a document that describes and shows what must be done, by whom, and how to coordinate decisions and actions to implement the plans and strategy marketing, and the latter are the specific ideas within that set, covering basics such as the market approach and market mix.

The market approach identifies who are targeted in the strategy: Buyer demographics (age, income,
etc..), location (where you are), among others.

Meanwhile the marketing mix considers the interaction of various market weapons available to you in various
distribution and implementation levels, which are concentrated mainly in four strategic elements: price, place, product and promotion. These are known as the 4p’s market.

Here for each element, there are suggestions where to focus your planning strategy. The list, of course, could be
virtually endless, but it is considered that these strategies are certainly the most widely applied and tested.

The advice is that as you study these strategic possibilities, let your imagination and creativity to marketing is felt. Certainly find that not only is increasing its list of considerations of strategies, but heading towards those more likely to lead you to the results you are looking for. It is extremely important to research all the four elements of the marketing mix as they make the

Before undertaking a market research is key to have identified market opportunities, this considering that once the investigation, the company must measure and estimate the market size, growth and profit.

This estimate is very important for the module of the financial plan of the business plan, which will aim to project the sales. Similarly, this research is raw material for the operational plan or technical study about the production capacity should be.

In that sense, it is valid to say that the marketing plan is key and fundamental to other areas of the company. Since a company can be successful if there is an adequate market for your product and / or service. To accomplish this, a company must have all possible information to determine market size and clearly define the strategies used to capture part of it.

Therefore, it is valid to say that a company entering the market without knowing it is like entering a dark tunnel, where it is not clear where it goes out.

Hence lies the importance of information for entrepreneurs, since at this point there is great variety and types of information from numerous sources to determine market potential, the important thing is to decide from the beginning, which is the information that must be valuable and what is not.

At this level of reading is itself unify the concept of market and its various components:

The market is the set of current and potential buyers of a product and / or service. Its size is directly related to the number of buyers exists for a particular offer.

However, the market potential is given by the set of consumers who have the profile and the intention to purchase a specific product and / or service. As an extension to this concept, we have the available market, which includes customers who have the intention and ability to buy.

This intention can be influenced both by the communications issued by the company to the environment and the ability of purchasing power of customers.

For its part, the target market is that part of the available market that the company has decided to capture.

The company must choose between the numerous market opportunities more attractive. Therefore be carefully evaluated to choose your target market.

The company must measure and predict the size, growth and the potential utility of several marketing opportunities. When selecting the target market, you need to prepare projections of demand and the company is when it comes to forecasts, estimates, projections, goals, etc..

Course, to ensure that information is the best and not be scattered by the volume data, it is necessary first to make a market segmentation, which means dividing the market into more or less homogeneous groups of customers, according to the characteristics meet in each group. To be more specific is that division is the market in different groups of customers with different needs, characteristics or behaviors that might require products or marketing tools to each group or segment.

The variables used in a segmentation process must meet certain technical conditions, such as:

Measurability means that the segment can be chosen measurable or quantifiable.
Accessibility, selected market segments can be addressed effectively and achieve.
Substantiality, is associated with a concept of materiality, ie, how large (number) or interesting is the segment used.
Drive, is related to the possibility of creation or design of appropriate plans / effective for the chosen segment.

It should be noted that at the time of market segmentation is necessary to identify those variables or important features that allow splitting the market segments. Stones can be as simple or complicated as you want, it all depends on the degree of intelligence is applied in the analysis.

Finally, all these calculations have applicability when he finally has to develop the sales budget, which is more than the conservative estimate of expected sales volume and is used primarily to make purchasing decisions, production and cash flows. Note that sales budgets are generally slightly lower than forecast sales of the company.

StephonHeyer is a successful 28-year-old football player backed with an impressive academic achievement. Having graduated with criminology and criminal justice in the year 2007, Stephon proves that any aspiring sports person can effectively balance a good education and sports performance. Nevertheless, Stephon’s participation in competitive football began while he was still very young.

Commending him for his excellence in football:

There are many things people know and appreciate about Steve Heyer. Nevertheless, the majority of NFL fans commend him for his excellence in football. Stephon is currently playing for the Oakland Raiders after receiving a contract of $1.6 million. Prior to joining the Oakland Raiders, Stephon played as an undrafted free agent of the Washington Redskins from 2007 to 2010.

StephonHeyer proved to be an outstanding football player while he was in Brookwood High school. At Brookwood, he started out in the position of left tackle. Steve Heyer was a good player that saw the high school team achieves a 5-5 record. His success progressed to his college years. Several scouting Universities including Ohio state, Michigan and Arkansas sought to admit him in their collegiate teams. However, Stephon chose to attend the University of Maryland to study Criminal justice and to play with Terrapins.

Stephon played close to 50 games with the Terrapins. Out of this total number, he played the position of left tackle in 37 games. In his first years in college, Stephon played in many games. As a freshman, he was successful enough to accumulate several penalties. His performance was exceedingly rewarding in spite of his amateur experience. Meanwhile, in his second year, he was awarded the season’s second best lineman.  In 737 plays, he registered 24 big blocks. Needless to say, he did not skip any assignments in the scheduled 70 plays.

Market research business plan is convenient to use management tools that allow analysis of the business idea in front of the external and internal environment of the company.

In that sense, one of the most widely used management tools in developing the market research is the Five Forces model of Michael Porter, proposed in the year 1980 in his book Competitive Strategy: Techniques for the Analysis of Industries and Competition. to Porter there are five forces that determine the consequences of long-term profitability of a market or some segment of it. What we want is that the company evaluate their objectives and resources against these five forces governing competition in the sector to which it belongs.

Thus, the five forces Porter identifies are:

Threat of new entrants
Rivalry between competitors
Bargaining power of suppliers
Bargaining power of consumers
Threat of substitute products income

Thus, if you want to design strategies in your business plan to harness the opportunities and face threats, you must use this management tool to achieve better environmental analysis of the company or industry to which you want belong.

Threat of new entrants. Indicates the potential entry of firms selling the same product that you intend to sell. The foregoing relates to your company trying to enter an industry, it could be entry barriers such as lack of experience, customer loyalty, substantial capital requirements, lack of distribution channels, lack of access to inputs, market saturation , among others. The important thing here is to establish if you have high quality products to existing or lower prices, because if so, you could easily enter the sector.

When you understand the mechanics of the threat of new entry allows you to set entry barriers to prevent entry to other competitors, such as the search for economies of scale or to obtain technology and expertise; also allows you to design strategies that address those of such competitors.

Rivalry among competitors. Are companies that compete directly in the same industry, offering the same product type.

For a company will be more difficult to compete in a market or a particular segment where the contestants are very well positioned, are very numerous and fixed costs are high, it will be constantly faced with price wars, aggressive advertising campaigns, promotions and entry new products.

The analysis of the rivalry between competitors will allow you to compare your strategies or competitive advantages with those of other rivals and thus know, for example, whether to improve or redesign their strategies.

Bargaining power of suppliers. This means, the bargaining power with suppliers that have, because if there are fewer sector providers, the greater its bargaining power, and that by failing to offer much input, these can easily increase their prices.

Also, the bargaining power of suppliers can also depend on the volume of purchase, the amount of raw materials, the cost of raw materials change, among others.

This analysis allows you to design strategies to achieve better deals with suppliers or, in any case, strategies that allow you to purchase or have more control over them.

Bargaining power of consumers. It is the ability to negotiate with consumers who have or buyers of your product / service, so for example, while there are fewer buyers, the greater its bargaining power, since the absence of such demand product, they can claim for lower prices.

However, the bargaining power of buyers can also depend on the volume of purchase, product shortages, product specialization, among others.

This analysis will allow your business plan in designing strategies to attract more customers or obtain greater fidelity or loyalty of them, may for example have strategies aimed at increasing advertising or offering more and more services or warranties.

Income threat of substitute products. It refers to the potential entry of firms that sell substitute or alternative to the industry.

A market or segment is unattractive if there are actual or potential substitutes. Of course the situation is complicated if the substitutes are more technologically advanced or may enter lower prices by reducing profit margins of the company and industry.

In any case, the entry of substitute products puts a cap on the price you can charge before consumers choose a substitute product.

An analysis of the threat of substitute products entry allows you to design strategies to prevent penetration of companies selling their products or, in any case, strategies that allow you to compete with them.

Get to know each of these forces, and a detailed analysis of the behavior of future business, compared to each of them is of vital importance when making the market research business plan.

This practice will further strengthen the final content of your business plan, and will support much more effectively what you pursue, whether to try to get potential partners for the project, or any sources of funding to begin project.

In the current conditions of competition, it is important that your company has a real focus on the market and to the client, instead of having a focus on sales and product.

Of course, if it is true, have a market focus is no easy task, you must understand that the focus jump of moving from sales / market focus product / customer requires a change in the definitions of work, your current marketing department of responsibilities, the incentives granted and in labor relations with its employees.

The issue is to understand that although the directors of the marketing department can carry out effectively its objectives only through a marketing plan, with actions to be carried out to achieve the goals; your company must have an organizational structure capable of carrying out that plan. Now if your company is small, maybe a single person can develop all the marketing tasks: research, sales, advertising, services, etc. But if your company is larger than that will have a team who work in different areas.

It is for this reason that marketing departments should be headed by a director who develops basically three primary activities. 1) coordinate all marketing staff work. For example, the principal shall ensure that the person who works next advertising sales director, so that the seller is prepared to serve customers from advertising developed by the communications department. 2) collaborate with other managers from other areas, as the company requires an employment which produce synergy. 3) is the selection, training, management and evaluation of each of the people working in this area.

For this reason, the role of marketing managers is to manage demand, that is, trying to influence the level, timing and composition of demand to meet business objectives.

With all this, given below are three ways you should act the marketing department of a company in different situations. This can reach out to be useful when faced with the same situations in your company or business.

There is a market where most consumers disapprove of the product and are even willing to pay to avoid it. Does this sound familiar? Examples are vaccines and odontologías.

In that sense, the task of marketing is to analyze the causes of rejection of the product and analyze whether a specific program of product redesign, lower prices, promotion, you can change beliefs and attitudes toward the product market .

If you have a target market who has no interest or is indifferent to the product. A practical example is the farmer and organic agriculture.

The task is to find ways to connect the benefits of the product to market needs.

Many companies find that their demand varies by times, causing problems of excess or lack of supplies. The most common example is transportation services where vehicles may be missing at peak hours.

The marketing task is to alter this situation somehow, either through flexible pricing, promotion or other incentives.

As you can see these are some issues which may be faced with the director of marketing their team, the latter must be coordinated and bold, so you can get out of the common solutions, to provide a timely response which customers / users with alternatives that allow them to assimilate immediately processes such as innovation, whether it is a small organization or higher.

I invite you now to think what the alternatives might submitted to it at your current company or business project, and investigate what could be done to fix it.

If you want to go further, I invite you to share with me that an alternative, we diagnose and evaluate its feasibility.

In my experience as a project consultant Seine, I have known many people with good business ideas but not enough initiative to carry out or worse yet, living with one another “virus” that make possible for various reasons they can pass postponing, and postponing lengthening that leap to be given to the business idea become a business.

As a result, slightly-and returning to the old popular saying: “He who hits first hits twice …” – from the inevitable end, the arrival one day any of the same idea in mind of another person who ends up taking immediate action and leads to execution.

This is the case of an employee of a bank in my country (Colombia), who came up with a very good idea and for a long time was devoted to ripen and perfect, while you put into it all his hopes for the future. I remember this friend of mine said … “This is my business plan,” “I’ll be a great businessman,” “I will soon become independent thanks to my project …”.

The truth is that this “soon” did not come, and was constantly saying, “Now is not the time”, “the day that has a little more time …”, “in save some more money …” ” will you pass this time of stress and have a little more peace of mind … “.

This is how my friend had been infected by one of the “virus” of time, and there were so many excuses that paralyzed the idea that man, who was still hanging out and his idea seemed increasingly great, however never given the opportunity to take action to bring it to reality. I just needed to bide his time to implement it. He even explained his project to some business colleagues and friends. Some of them volunteered to be part of this project when he decided to start it. In fact, had the great fortune to have capital of one of his family to start the business, but however, my friend was waiting for “the best time …”

And this came not in fact did not, and so ultimately any given day, suddenly, by surprise, he found that a small Brazilian company was releasing it “your product” that with which he had been dreaming of for recent years. An entrepreneur any more capable of action that he had gone ahead and was gaining market share, positioning, and much, much money.

My friend was disappointed, bored with his head down, thinking that the success of that company should have been his …

Ever happened to you as my friend?

If your answer is yes, I invite you not to procrastinate any longer each of the actions you must take to become a great entrepreneur success.

If you really want to be an entrepreneur, you must understand that this is a process, and like any process in life, this does not come in overnight, and never will if you continue to defend it tooth and nail your old excuses your old beliefs.

The invitation is rather to take action immediately, programes very well each of the activities required to bring your business idea to market and if necessary seek the best people you can collaborate on issues that are for you completely unknown such as: do market research for your business idea, develop your business plan, or know all the requirements necessary for your business is a reality, and achieve the highest standards of competitiveness and sustainability.

Do not keep your ideas on the shelves of your brain, do not make excuses, get rid of them and given once and for all, the leap from employee to entrepreneur.

The intention of having a business, is more common than you might believe. To some extent, we are all entrepreneurs and business ideas come to mind. It is clear that rather than having that “great idea”, the important thing is knowing how to transform it into a company for exploiting the full potential that this may have, to make it profitable and sustainable over time.

While the ideas are generated from the creativity we all have, however, not all ideas are aimed at creating a company, and initially there may be a factor in the entrepreneurial idea inspired , anything, in fact, inspired by memories or situation that leads to think that this idea is a potential business.

Researchers in the field impresario entrepreneurship and have tried to discover where ideas originate to start businesses. One of the most recent studies concluded that there are common factors in the generation of ideas, which are:

The prior work experience.
Interests or tastes.
An accident.
A discovery.
Applied an idea into something completely different.
A conscious search for ideas.

These and other factors may be elements that help in generating a business idea, however it is suggested to keep your eyes wide open, permanently connected with the environment, the surrounding environment, and that ideas can come from any part and at any time.

Experience shows that a good idea is not necessarily a good business opportunity. It has been argued that when people are obsessed with an idea, forget the difficulties to develop it.

An idea must serve some purpose, ie to be functional, must be well done, in terms of quality, should last the time required to accomplish the mission for which it was created, this is durability.

For this reason, only the business idea is to give at the time that the entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team focuses its creative and investigative skills to detect latent opportunities in new markets.

This should be presented as an attractive option for an investor. Through a document, which is a business plan to serve as a tool for decision making, and must answer three basic questions:

1. What is the customer benefit?, Or in other words, what problem will be solved? A successful entry into the market will depend on the level of customer satisfaction and the novelty of the product. Customers buy a product because they require to satisfy a need or solve a problem is the same in the case of a mass consumer item like a sumptuous or exclusive object acquisition. Therefore, the first feature you must have a business idea is to identify clearly what will need to meet and how it’s gonna get.

2. What is the market? Who are the people who need to use the product or service? A business idea only becomes real economic value, if there are people who want to buy the product or service. Thus, the second characteristic of a successful business idea, is to be able to demonstrate the existence of a market for the product or service, and to identify the group or groups of target customers through a serious investigation of markets.

3. How to earn money? They hope to generate revenue with a new business idea, comes in most cases, marketing of products or services offered. However, there is the possibility that in some cases, require the adoption of improved and innovative “mechanisms for generating revenue,” such as the product is delivered free to the customer and are the advertisers who pay for it ( products or services sponsored by private companies). Therefore, the third feature for a successful business idea is that it very clear how to generate income and how much.

Conscious evaluation of these characteristics of your business idea will enable him to know if the time to evaluate it, you are facing a real opportunity, because otherwise it is better to discard as soon as the business idea, think of other ideas and use the maximum amount of information enabling it to make better decisions on behalf of your business idea, your prospective client, and of course you as an entrepreneur.

Perhaps you also happened to it ever occur to business idea in particular, and suddenly some time later, that idea or business opportunity that you initially thought goes to market a product or service as completely successful.

And is that the process of creating company got its start in the business idea , however, more good you can become your business idea, do not give to know, but take action in the activities necessary to put implement the idea. In that sense, there is a powerful tool with which you can be certain that the idea actually has business potential. That tool is the business plan .

The good news is that in a few simple steps you can tell if your business idea has the potential you really expect. These steps are vital in any project and determine the feasibility of the business and are the market study, technical study and financial study.

Essentially what we want is to know if you have clear answers to questions such as:

Who would I sell? / Who is my customer?
Is it possible to manufacture the product? / Do I have the ability to provide service?
How much will all this cost me? / How much will I earn?

To do the first thing to do is take a piece of paper and pencil and begin to describe your business idea as best I can. While it may appear that this step is absurd and even obvious, but really in our educational scheme, we are never taught our ideas down on paper. The result of this exercise will be essential to have much greater clarity in the process, since it has to define what is the starting point of the project. Also, if your idea is not well described is very unlikely to come to be understood by others, which will be difficult to convert into a business.

The following will determine who is to be your customer. To do this, you can try to answer the following questions: Who I’ll offer my product or service? Where are these customers? Do I have access to them? Are they too dispersed these customers? Is there enough market? Will the customer willing to pay for the product or service? If so, what is the price range that is currently handling similar products?

The answers to these questions will be important for later development of market analysis of your business plan. The advice to start the process is daring to do market research to deepen much more to know what you really want your prospective client.

Then, to respond to the technical study is to determine whether you will be able to produce the product or offer the service. To do this it is best to ask yourself: How is the manufacturing process? What should I hire staff? What skills, attitudes, knowledge and experience must have staff? Is there access to such personnel locally or have to train it? What material do I need? How many suppliers are there? Is there enough of this raw material to have a permanent supply? What equipment do I need? Will sell locally? What is the price of this machine? Do I have ability to invest in equipment?

The answers to these questions will be establishing your future requirements of business, including technology to get, as human talent to hire. All this will be useful when the study encares technician your business plan.

Now with all this, you’re ready for the financial feasibility of your business idea. In that sense it’s best to start by determining how much it costs to manufacture the product or provide the service and if you get a benefit. In a very general level sets, what are your costs of marketing, sales and production (ie, the will cost you to sell and manufacture the product). Establishes an approximate projected income. It also determines whether the difference between your income and your expenses will generate a positive return.

The responses to the financial feasibility will be important when the process involved afrontes make financial study of your business plan. Since further the investigative process of the other studies of the business plan will help determine whether your business idea you must represent some sort of financial performance or not. If that performance is still positive with further research, if negative is rejected immediately, with the satisfaction of knowing you have not lost time or money.

Finally, do not worry if your business idea does not pass this small feasibility study into its components market, technical and financial, since the aim is essentially infeasible discard ideas at an early stage.