When presenting to an audience, how to you gauge the success of your speech? Can you look out over your audience and judge from their faces, or the amount of closed eyes and tilted heads? Or maybe from the level of applause, but then I have clapped hardest for people just as a relief that they were actually finished. Here are six simple questions that you can ask attendees to answer that will give you a clear defined appraisal of your presentation:

Can they repeat the main points?

Could they visualise the product/topic you spoke about?

Will they remember you and your topic by tomorrow?

Could they relate what you spoke about to their own lives?

Did they respect you and your topic?

Did they want to talk to you afterwards?

Using these as indicators, your presentation should be topical, easy to remember, focused, use live examples that your audience can relate to and end with a clear call to action.

Today I met with Rene van Huyssteen, the creator of an exciting board game Yunomi (pronounced You Know Me). Rene came up with the idea of a new game almost 5 years ago and has been able to develop, manufacture and sell his game across South Africa.

This is no surprise when you consider that Rene sought out the assistance and guidance of Calie Esterhuyse, the creator of the now world famous 30 Seconds. Calie also hails from the Western Cape and has sold over 150 000 copies of his game since its launch.

So the question; can board games still be developed and sold in today’s market of mobile and tablet apps and online games? The answer is a resounding YES. There are still people, families and groups who prefer to enjoy each other’s company around a good game that does not require batteries or wifi.

We are currently working with Wayde Holland who is in the process of developing a new game concept that should hit our shelves by Christmas next year. (no pressure Wayde)

I can assume you have played 30 Seconds, give Yunomi a try, you will not be disappointed and keep a look out for yet another successful board game to emerge out of the Western Cape soon.

Customers demand Faster, Better, Cheaper from retailers all the time. This triangle of demand drives businesses into the quadrant of red water competitiveness and the price wars start. Margins are cut, service is compromised and quality fails. Major retailers are good at this because they will never supper themselves, they just pass the pressure ball back to their suppliers and squeeze them into reducing costs without allowing them any room to move at the same time pushing prices up for the consumer. It is always the small guys who suffer and end up circling the drain.

So what is the answer? Escape the commodity trap and get out of this rat race to hell and bankruptcy. Blue Water Marketing, the art of creating a clean slate of client-centric service based on the experiential market. When you make a customer feel so good through how you offer them your service or product, price fades into the foggy distance.

What would be the top two most craved commodities in the world today? Some would say oil and food. Others would say safety and health. But actually what people crave most is Convenience and Experience above all else. Offer these to your customer first and your business will move swiftly out of the red water into the clear blue water of business growth.

For more details on these strategies join us for our webinars here

Back in the early days of running my own businesses, I just believed that if you came across an obstacle, all you needed to do was to work harder and a bit faster to overcome it, then move on to the next one. Well that worked for some of them but soon it became apparent that not all obstacles could be handled in the same way and not all obstacles could be overcome, some needed to be avoided.

So I set out to list all the various ways small emerging businesses fail and then began working on ways to avoid these. This formed the foundation to two tools that we use in the Entrepreneur Incubator now to assess and forewarn our clients to what could be lurking just around the corner. To learn more about these tools join us on one of our webinars or download the eBook with full details.

Our first tool, the Business Idea Filter, is a well used tool that is designed to assess in a non-emotional way any new business idea. A really easy to use and revealing tool. We have used this to decide not only on new business ideas but also on asset purchases such a vehicles, machinery as well as business partners and once even to assess a potential girlfriend for one of our clients.

The second tool is the Business Feasibility Assessment. This tool is based on the Porters 5 Forces Model, and allows any business owner to assess their current business, no matter what stage they are at, to see how feasible it is at that moment. This tool has proven to be a life and money saver as potential hot spots have been revealed that we have been able to either avoid or plan for well in advance.

These two tools will be discussed online during our regular webinars. During this one hour session we will go through the tool, discuss how it works, then send you the full eBook with the full tool for you to use over and over again in your business. Check out our scheduled Weninars here or just download them from our Toolbox here to read through at your own time.

Being a proactive business owner goes a long way to managing a profitable, more productive business.