Successful Businessman

There’s no point denying it: economic times are currently hard and recessions cause businesses of all sizes and types to struggle. However, it has also been said that a recession is a good time to look for and exploit opportunities, so if you run a business, this could be worth bearing in mind. CRM is something that can help you with this, as it provides a good means of enhancing customer relationships and giving your business the best possible chance of riding out the economic storm.

There are two main parts to CRM solutions during a recession: maintaining and developing your relationship with existing customers, and developing relationships with new customers. CRM software can help you with both of these activities.

In terms of your existing customers, one of the things a CRM system can do is to act as a database of your contacts, ensuring that all of your customer details are kept secure in one location. CRM software solutions also provide communications support, such as templates that you can use for newsletters and other marketing to keep your customers engaged. Y Read full article…

The hospitality industry is calling for a loosening of short-term 457 visa rules, amid complaints fewer foreign student arrivals and a slowdown in skilled migration are deepening the sector’s skills shortage.

Restaurant and Catering Australia chief executive officer John Hart says current requirements for bringing in skilled workers are too onerous and time-consuming for small businesses.

The requirements include having 20% of staff undertaking training before a business is allowed to bring in a foreign worker, and being able to demonstrate financial viability.

Hart says the tests are “fundamentally irrelevant” for small businesses.

Hart says there are also difficulties hiring qualified chefs and cooks. “The E

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When it comes to using Facebook for recruitment, you can post jobs on your company’s Facebook page. Pages are free to set-up and easy to access and update.

Many little touches can be added to make them unique and user friendly. Having a dedicated feed or setting up a “vacancies” tab on the applications bar would be the best idea, that way returning visitors will know exactly where to look and you can fill the space with useful recruitment information if there aren’t enough vacancies to fill it.

However, with all these people out there, you need to be able to grab their attention and give them something in return for spending time on your little part of Facebook.

Here are my tips for creating the best environment in which to use Facebook for recruitment:

1. Decent Pages – create good, eye-catching and engaging pages which are easy to use and have links to your company site and any other relevant sites. Webrecruit

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A TEAM of entrepreneurial students from York went to Wembley to compete in the final of a national business competition run by Coca-Cola

The students from Huntington School got through to the finals of the Coca-Cola Enterprises CCE Real Business Challenge, where they hoped to win tickets to the London Olympic Games this summer

More than 500 schools from across the UK entered the competition, designed to inspire the business leaders and entrepreneurs of the future, with regional heats taking place throughout November Ten regional winners travelled to Wembley Stadium, where they met Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of the most successful disabled athletes in the UK

Liam Wharin, a teacher at Huntington School, said the competition started last summer, when the school held an internal competition to decide the best team to submit

The winning team then designed a new drink for Coca Cola

They chose an Italian-themed grape drink, for which they had to work out how to source the ingredients sustainably and ethically

After reaching the regional finals, the students designed a recycling campaign that would encourage people to recycle more and litter less, inspired by the Olympic Games

They designed a bin with different holes cut into the Olympics logo, and for each piece of rubbish recycled, the bin, powered by a solar panel, would spit out a ticket, giving the recycler a chance at winning a ticket to the Olympic games

At the Wembley final, students were given the opportunity to develop business ideas with expert mentoring and skills workshops, before pitching their campaign to a panel of judges, including Baroness Grey-Thompson, Sir Keith Mills, deputy chair of London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and CCE managing director Simon Baldry

Although a team from Cramlington Learning Village in Northumberland won the competition, the Huntington School team has a billboard of its campaign on show near Selby

Simon Baldry said: “The level of innovation we have seen throughout the competition this year has been truly inspirational, and a demonstration of the entrepreneurial spirit of the country’s younger generation”

 That was one of the key messages from the Forum of Private Business in a submission to the All-party Parliamentary Small Business Group’s entrepreneurship inquiry, which opened last month.

The inquiry was set up to consider the role of entrepreneurs in driving economic growth, examine the barriers small firms face, and identify ways in which the UK can increase the number of motivated self-starters capable of running a profitable business.

The not-for-profit Forum also made a number of other suggestions to the inquiry on matters such as tax breaks for lenders, NI holidays, access to finance, prompt payment and the new enterprise allowance scheme.

The Forum began its submission by outlining the importance of the education system and how it should be better used to foster growth in numbers of young entrepreneurs.

Jane Bennett, the Forum’s Head of Campaigns, said: “Schools are vitally important because they are essentially where young minds are honed and appetites for working life whetted.

“They have a vital role to play in encouraging entrepreneurial spirit we recognise that and so do our members which is why we are calling for a greater focus by government on making sure schools are given the tools for the job. Th

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HOUSTON (AP) — Texas financier R. Allen Stanford lied to investors and stole their hard-earned savings so he could live the lavish lifestyle of a billionaire, a prosecutor said Tuesday at his fraud trial.

Prosecutor Gregg Costa told jurors in Houston federal court that Stanford used investors’ money to buy homes and yachts and fund cricket matches.

“He treated depositors’ savings like it was his own personal piggy bank,” Costa said.

The prosecution says Stanford’s business empire was built on smoke and mirrors and he bilked investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years as part of a massive Ponzi scheme centered on sales of certificates of deposit from an Antiguan bank he owned.

Stanford, who denies the claims and says his businesses were legitimate, is charged with 14 counts, including wire and mail fraud. H

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