FREE TIPS & LINKS

Tips for Individuals
Save money in an ISA and earn 100 times more. You should invest up to £7000 in a tax free ISA every year. Saving £3000 pa for 20 years at 15% compound growth would yield about £350k and £7000 would yield £825k.
Stop putting pension money into AVCs (Additional Voluntary Contributions). AVCs now provide a bad rate of return because Labour introduced a stealth dividend tax. If you save £15k in your AVC, you’ll receive about 5%-8% pa or £60-£100 per month - not much better than if you’d left your money in a building society. When you die, the pension company keeps your AVC fund. (Figures are approximate).

Tips for small companies & sole proprietors Click here to see our Quantum Leap Growth programme.
Think bigger. Plan to expand rapidly. We see a marked difference between small and big companies. Small companies rarely have a written long term strategy or business plan. The owner-entrepreneur usually over-controls and cannot delegate. Consequently growth is stifled. Find a business partner. Plan to expand products and sales rapidly. Borrow money.

Tips for medium size companies

Pay for better quality advice and hire better quality people. You have grown successful by doing things well but cheaply. However your company is now straining from your success and you always seem to be firefighting problems. If you want to make it into the big league, you’ve got to change your current advisers and weaker staff. When you get better quality advice and people, you’ll be surprised how much sales and profit will improve.“You get what you pay for.” Can you change?

Tips for large companies

Use empowerment to solve thorny problems and tackle “paralysis by analysis.” We see:

·	Signing authority levels are far too high. It shows over control.

·	Too many head office staff and ineffective processes because some meetings involve 1-2 dozen people.

·	Your huge £M spend on IT services is not improving the company fast enough.

·	Underperforming business units are not being cut due to historic pride and entrenched positions.

·	Front line staff can’t make special one-off deals to retain small customers.

For Everyone. How are you responding to .....?
More red tape?

·	Age Discrimination Act

·	IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)

·	Computerised end of year payroll returns

New products and services for an aging UK population?

·	40% of people are now over 50 years old. A large market with conservative taste.

·	Upmarket brands - 70% of high net worth people are over 55 years.

·	Demand for home care, nursing, financial & maintenance products as the retirement age moves to 70 years.

A gradual slide towards an European super-state?

·	450M people. A bigger market than the USA. Your European strategy and opportunity for an EU grant.

·	Exporting and forming joint ventures. Bidding for European work. Your language ability and training.

·	Surviving more competition from EU companies. Dual pricing - Euros and Pound Sterling.

Information technology?

·	Get more value from IT. Reduce IT backlogs. Increase project success rate.

·	Rewrite your old legacy systems before it’s too late. Give customers access to your information systems.

·	Get free voice communications on the internet. Replace Microsoft with Linux free software. Use 3g and broadband.

·	Get anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-popup and voice dictation software for everyone.

Community issues?

·	Get PR from your environmental, charity and community projects.

·	Protect your assets, websites, customers and staff from hackers, extortionists, terrorists and activists.

·	Protect jobs and sales by transferring work back to UK after outsourcing overseas.

LINKS (Alpha Team is not responsible for the content of the following websites)

www.bbc.co.uk The business site is large with useful management and company information.

www.famous-quotations.com Make presentations memorable with quotes by author, country, category, proverb.
www.clickmt.com Business magazine. Always topical.
www.JVbase.com A business forum for people interested in joint venture partners.