JADE - European Confederation of Junior Enterprises \ Avenue du Frioul 51, Evere - 1140, Belgium \ mail@jadenet.org
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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT IN A JUNIOR ENTERPRISE __ A best practices book from JADE
JADE - European Confederation of Junior Enterprises \ Avenue du Frioul 51, Evere - 1140, Belgium \ mail@jadenet.org
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT IN A JUNIOR ENTERPRISE __ A best practices book from JADE
JADE – European Confederation of Junior Enterprises Book written in a General Assembly Commission with the contribution of:
Ana Frazão \ JADE Portugal, Commission Leader Carolin Hecht \ BSDU Michelle Hormesch \ BDSU Jean Philippe Dubois \ JADE Belgium Simon Favre \ JADE Switzerland Maria Cetra \ WBC Giorgio Sleiter \ JADE Treasurer and Head of Training, Commission Facilitator March 2018
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Table of Content Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………….p.5 1. Business Strategy …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...p.6 1.1. Business Strategy, what is it? ………………………………………..…………………..…………………………….p.7 1.2. Long-term strategy ………………………………………………………….……….….……...………………………….p.8 1.3. S.M.A.R.T Goals ……………………………………………………….………….……………………………………….…p.12 1.4. Balanced Scorecard …………………………………………………………………………………………………….…p.13
2. Performance Interpretation ……………………………………………………...….……………………….……………….p.15 2.1. Key Performance Indicator (KPI) ……………………………………………………….……………….…….…….p.16 2.1.1. Definition ..………………….…………………………………………………..…………….………………....p.16 2.1.2. Benefits of KPIs ..………………………………………….……………………………………………….…..p.17 2.1.3. Limit of KPIs …………………………………………………………………………………………………..…p.18 2.1.4. Types of KPI ...…………………………………………………………………………………………………..p.18 2.1.5. Set effective KPIs …………………………………………………………………………..…………….......p.18 2.1.6. Monitor KPIs …..………………………………………………………………………………………………..p.19
3. Client Acquisition Methods ……………………………………………………………………………………………………p.21 3.1. Different ways to approach clients …………..………………………………………………………………..….p.22 3.1.1. Cold calls .……...…………..……………………………………………………………………………..……..p.22 3.1.2. Cold emails .……………………………………………………………………………………………………..p.25 3.1.3. Door-to-door ..…………………………………………………………………………………………………p.26 3.1.4. Fairs and Networking Events ..…………………………………………………….…………………..p.27 3.1.5. Alumni Network, Curators and University …..……………………………..…………………,,p.28 3.1.6. The First Official Meeting …..…………………………………………………………………………...p.28 3.2. The proposal ..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………p.29 3.2.1. Content and Structure ……………….………………………….………………..………………………p.29 3.2.2. Pricing ……………………………………………………….…………………………………………………….p.30 3.3. Client Retention ………………………………………………….………..………………………………………………..p.32 3.3.1. CRM Tools …..…………………………………………………………………………………………………..p.32 3.3.2. Follow-up Calls/E-mails ……………………………………………………………………………….….p.33
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4. Partnerships …….………………………………………………………………..…………………………………….…………….p.34 4.1. Different Partnership Sources ….………………………………………………………………………….…………p.35 4.1.1. Junior Enterprise and National Confederations ….….…………………….………………..p.35 4.1.2. Personal Network ....…………………………………………………………………………………………p.35 4.1.3. Junior Enterprise Database ……………………………………………….…………………………….p.35
5. Marketing ……….…………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………...p.36 5.1. Building a Website …….…………………………………..…………………………………………..………..…….…..p.37 5.1.1. Design ………….…………………………..…………………………………………………….…………….….p.37 5.1.2. Structure ….…….……………………………………………………………………….…..…….………….….p.37 5.1.3. Implementation ………………….………………………………………….………..…….…….……….…p.38 5.1.4. Search Optimisation Engine ……………………………..…………………..….….…………………p.38 5.1.5. Analytics ……….………………………………………………..…..………………….…...…………………..p.39 5.2. Communication Channels and Strategies …………….……………………………………………………….p.40 5.2.1. Engage your leads on your website …..…..……………………………………………….……...p.40 5.2.2. Communication Channels ………….…………………………………………………….……………..p.40 5.3. Marketing Tools Creation & Advices ..…………………………………………………..…………..…………..p.40 5.3.1. Content Creation …………………………………………………………….………………………………p.40 5.3.2. Content Ideas ……………………………………………………………..…………………………………...p.41
Conclusion ………………………………………………………...……………………………………………………………………….p.42
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Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The purpose of this book is to provide all Junior Enterprises (JEs) and Junior Entrepreneurs (JEurs) in the European network a common set of best practices on Business Development (BD). The following chapters will present European best practices with a specific focus on the topics requested by you in the surveys collected recently. The document was created by a group of students from several National Confederations and Junior Enterprises around Europe who gathered information within their national or local network. We hope that the information provided will help you with useful information for future business development processes.
Yours Sincerely, JADE – European Confederation of Junior Enterprises -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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chapter 1
BUSINESS STRATEGY
As a Junior Entrepreneur (JEur) and as part of a Junior Enterprise (JE), it is very important to have a solid understanding of what Business Strategy is and is pivotal to dedicate the first chapter of this book to it. As you’ll (re)discover it, Strategy is something very important to take care of if you want to efficiently develop your business.
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1.1. Business Strategy, what is it? Business Strategy (BS) is often defined simply as a “firm's high-level plan� for reaching specific business objectives. As a matter of fact, strategies succeed when they lead to business growth, strong competitive position, and strong financial performance. Contrarily, when the high-level strategy fails, however, the firm must either change strategy or prepare to go out of business. In other words, Business Strategy is a firm's working plan for achieving its vision, prioritizing objectives, competing successfully, and optimizing financial performance. When working in a Junior Enterprises, BS can be simplified by summarising the overall meaning of it by answering to these three main questions: 1. Where do we stand now? (goals, KPIs, etc.) 2. Where do we want to stand / What are our future goals? (goals, KPIs, etc.) 3. How can we get there? What are the actions that we must take to succeed?
As you can imagine, the better structured the BS is, the clearer and easier it is for the Junior Entrepreneurs to work on it and achieve outstanding results. Additionally, it is strongly suggested as a best practice to approach Business Strategy as a framework within which you can find sub-strategies for different business units. Those sub-strategies include specific goals, specific processes and specific action plans. It is also very important, to think and design processes to create a synergy between the different departments and ultimately increase performance. Finally, after analysing results and practices from the network, we identified that a clear Business Strategy with defined processes is fundamental for Junior Enterprises because of their staff turnover rate. A clear process and strategy will allow new JEurs to be welcomed in a clear and structured workplace enabling a quick adaptation and a better performance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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1.2. Long-term strategy, guidelines to follow Based on what we have seen from the biggest Junior Enterprises in the network, a good Business Strategy is designed to reach defined objectives over a three-year period. A longterm business strategy helps Junior Entrepreneurs to better understand their actions as well as being more efficient. The explanation is simple: the more you understand what you do and why you do it, the more conscious, willing and effective you become. Below you can find a 5-step framework designed to help and facilitate designing a BS:
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Step 1: Build on the Vision. The first thing to do is think thoroughly about what your Junior Enterprise’s vision. Why do you exist? What are your convictions? Your missions and values? What is your value proposition about? What industry can you and would you like to compete on? And very important, who are the people you want work with/for? Key concept: The Value Proposition The value proposition simply describes the goods and services the firm sells, in terms of the value they offer to the customer. Briefly, it explains why customers should buy your services instead of those proposed by competitors. Practical exercise: Formulate your Junior Enterprise value proposition in one or two sentences. That way it would be very clear for your customers and easier to communicate through key marketing campaigns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 2: Focus on Top Level Objectives. Strategy formulation continues through this step by naming and defining tangible top-level business objectives and thinking/explaining how to measure results or progresses reached towards meeting these top-level objectives.
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Private firms generally have the same objective: increasing turnover. Regarding Junior Enterprises, we noticed that if increasing the structure’s value is important this should not be the main objective. Increasing turnover rapidly means lower sustainability and therefore, we often consider most important objective to be the following: ensuring the Junior Enterprise sustainability. What does that mean? It means that what is important is to, of course, have good financial ratios by completing missions for clients BUT also guaranteeing that next teams of Junior Entrepreneurs are ready to pursue actions started by previous boards. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 3: Plan your target based on your market As this part of the book is more business development oriented, we are going to focus on the first top-objective: financial sustainability. To reach this, it is very important for Junior Enterprises to have missions for clients and elaborate a strategy giving the opportunity to meet and convince potential clients to trust them and sign contracts. There are two kinds of strategies that Junior Enterprise can adopt to reach this goal: Differentiation: The Junior Enterprise creates new products and services bringing new points of view, unique features or capabilities. Cost leadership: The company minimizes its own costs of “production” and selling costs. That solution makes Junior Enterprise more attractive because of the lower selling prices, however, a significantly lower price than the industry average could be harm the reputation of the organisation as well as the perceived quality of the final project. But before doing so, a fundamental step is to define the market scope. Who is your market? Is it SMEs? Micro-companies? Is it only one business sector or more than one? Answering to these questions, allows the Junior Enterprise to select the best strategy to adopt. Refer to Porter’s Matrix below for further understanding:
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Considering this model, they are three steps that companies must follow to choose the strategy that would suit the best with their desires and objectives. > Step 1: Analyse the company situation following the SVRO: area of Strength (what the JE is good in), Vulnerabilities (weaknesses/problems faced by the JE), Resources (infrastructure, workforce expertise, delivery capabilities, capital, processes, etc.) and Opportunities (new niche in the market?) > Step 2: Understand and analyse the competitor’s environment identifying their strengths and weaknesses. The main goal is to identify what your JE can stand out from other companies. Why are good companies succeeding? Why are companies in this sector in decline? A good starting point could be to try to understand why some competitor win/lose market share. > Step 3: To be able to implement correctly insights from the step 2, the JE must understand well the dynamics between their competitors and the market/customers, focusing on identifying elements that are perceived as “good added value” by clients. What do these clients look for when they contact companies? What are they willing to pay for it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 4: Reality Check: Does the Model Stand? Now the strategy’s blueprints are defined; based on the analysis made before, it is important for the JE to “test” its model through quantitative approaches. That’s why to have a correct idea of what could happen, under an objective-oriented perspective, a company should build a Quantitative Model including first, target product/services revenues and second, target costs of goods/services sold, selling expenses and administrative and general expenses. Forecasting revenues should be estimated on analysis including market size and current results from competitors, market growth rate and attractiveness due to differentiation or new added value from the JE.
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Regarding expenses for the model, the strategy builders should forecast them from knowledge of costs related to the service/production, actual cost structure and the one under the proposed new strategy. To be complete and realistic, the strategy builders should complete this "Does the Model stand" test by making a "scenario analysis" keeping in minds realistic issues that could appear like bad market penetration or un-efficient marketing strategies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 5: Build the Strategic Framework. The final step of building the company long-term Strategy is the Strategic Framework design which will present the competitive strategy through 3 main sub-strategies (BD/Marketing, Operational and Financial ones)
It is important to stress that once the strategy is finalised, it will have to be re-examined when new competitors enter the market, when technologies change or when customer demand change in a significant way, as it could mean that the actual strategy isn’t efficient anymore. This introduces the next topic of this book: understanding the importance of actions plans. Although, it is very important to have the macrolevel defined for next years, it is also fundamental to be flexible the daily, weekly and monthly goals, as well as having a clear idea of what is achievable on a yearly basis.
__ You can find extra sources of information of the development of a business strategy here: https://www.business-case-analysis.com/business-strategy.html
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1.3. Tackling the action plan through S.M.A.R.T. objectives As previously mentioned, it is very important to have a clear idea about the objectives and goals/milestones defined by the JE strategy you can realistically achieve. And more importantly, for board members, it is important to be able to answer to question 3 in the previous section: How can we get there? For example: If one of the JEs main priorities is to increase turnover, it is necessary for the JE have a clear understanding of which marketing strategies were tried in the past, their results and define a new or improved marketing strategy along with an action plan to be communicated with the rest of the team. One of the best practices that we observed among the network, is the use of S.M.A.R.T. objectives: > SPECIFIC \ simple, sensible, significant “S” for Specific: For this first concept, JEs should use the five W questions: “What?”, “Why”, “Who is involved?”, “Where is it located?”, “Which resources/limits are involved?”. > MEASURABLE \ meaningful, motivating “M” for Measurable: This implies quantitative measures which will help a JE keeping its members motivated by being able to show results through clear and relevant KPIs (eg: 1 annual partner). > ACHIEVABLE \ agreed, attainable “A” for Achievable: Realistic goals will usually answer questions such as “How can we do that?” or “How realistic is it?”. To answer those questions, the JE must consider their resources, members’ skills and other factors. > RELEVANT \ reasonable, realistic and resources, results-based “R” for Relevant: As JEurs are students, “working” periods aren’t as long as for big companies and it is therefore important to be efficient, minimizing useless actions. For these reasons, it is very important to know if an objective is relevant, and to do so, you can use the following questions: “Does this seem worthwhile?”, “Is this the right time for this?”, “Does this match our other efforts/needs?”, “Are we the right people to work on this?”.
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> TIME BOUND \ time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive “T� for Time Bound: every goal needs a target date, a deadline when we measure results according to defined KPIs. It will help JEurs to be focused on specific topic in certain time frames as deadlines are going to be defining what must be finished by when. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4. Balanced Scorecard complete process The balanced scorecard is a well-known strategic management model which can be used for strategic planning and goal definition in junior enterprises after slight adaptations to the model. In general, this performance metric is used to identify and improve various internal functions of a business and their resulting external outcomes. The balanced scorecard is used to attain objectives, measurements, initiatives and goals that result from four primary functions of a business - learning and growth or innovation, internal business processes, customers, and finance. There are 4 main dimensions to take into consideration: Financial, Internal, Innovation and Customer. Data collection is crucial to providing quantitative results, as the information gathered is interpreted by managers as well as executives and used to make better decisions for the organization. Factors hindering company performance can easily be identified and strategic changes outlined and tracked by future scorecards. This model can be applied to Junior Enterprises as well, however, some adaptation to the structure of the four pillars must be made since Junior Enterprises are usually not perceived as fully functional companies but rather as an association of students profiting from synergies and other benefits being created by working together in a team.
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Consequently, it is practice in some Junior Enterprises to adapt the four pillars to a system matching the internal processes by assigning two to four long-term field of action per department and setting semester or yearly objectives accordingly. In a second step, KPIs need to be defined which will be explained later in this book. These KPIs are then tracked over a longer period of time and through differing management period to increase the consistency of the strategy as well as the comparability of results. For example, the HR department generally focuses on recruiting new members, educating these new members as well as train existing members and motivating all member to participate in the JE’s work. On the other hand, the Marketing and Sales department should rather focus on corporate marketing to attract new customers and cooperation as well as university marketing to attract new members as well as ensure the efficient acquisition of new interesting and challenging projects to both motivate the member to engage in projects and to increase the attractiveness of the JE towards potential customers and partners. By defining these objectives for the long run, the JE can ensure to engage in a more consistent strategic management process and to maintain a set of goals over several periods of managers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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chapter 2
PERFORMANCE INTERPRETATION
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2.1. KPI 2.1.1. Definition A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. The term “measurable value” is important here. KPIs are driven by specific data, so that they provide a clear measure of your progress. Instead of just saying, “Our customers love us,” you’ll be able to say something like: “88% of customers say they would buy from us again, up from 85% last year, and 82% would recommend us to others, up from 80% last year.” That’s much more powerful than an anecdotal judgment, and it can help you by highlighting issues and allowing you to deal with them quickly. If that customer satisfaction percentage starts heading in the wrong direction, for example, you could run extra surveys to find out exactly why people are less happy with your service. It could be that you have a particular member who does something wrong and needs better training, or something else. Your KPIs are like an early warning system. When you don’t hit your targets, you can think of it as a red warning light flashing in your office. You can use KPIs in different areas of your business: you could use financial KPIs, operational KPIs, sales KPIs, and so on. What does “key” mean? That depends on your business. A measurement that’s important for one business may not be relevant to another. And what’s important to your own business may change over time, as you grow and start to come across different problems and opportunities. “key” is a subjective judgment, and it’s driven by what you want to focus on in your own business at any particular time.
2.1.2. Benefits KPIs not only help you and your members stay focused on the right things, but also give you the ability to manage your members more effectively.
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If you have a sales manager in your JE, for example, you can agree on some realistic sales KPIs, and then measure that person’s performance against the KPIs. It’s a more objective measure, and it’s easier to keep the person on track. Instead of saying, “I’d like to see you making more sales,” you can say, “The KPI we agreed on was to bring in 10 new customers a month, but we’ve only brought in 7 this month.” That can lead to a much more productive discussion. Without the KPI in place, your sales manager might get defensive about your vague desire for “more sales” and claim that your expectations were unrealistic. With the KPI, that part is taken out of the equation. The sales manager has already agreed to the target of 10 per month, and the discussion can focus on why that target has not been met. Maybe they need more support from other areas of the JE, or maybe there’s a competitive disadvantage that’s putting off potential customers. People love to know exactly what’s expected of them, and to feel that they are making a real impact. As you bring on more sales members, you can even use “cascading KPIs”. For example, if you have several salespeople, you could split that overall KPI of 10 new customers per month, so that each person is responsible for 3 new sales. Their individual KPI clearly fits into an overall KPI.
2.1.3. Limits KPIs are an important management tool, but like all tools, they also have their limitations. Having a strong focus on a particular target is great, but it can also lead to neglecting other important things that aren’t captured in the data. If you’ve set your KPIs correctly, they should reflect the most important parts of your business, but still, data viewed in isolation can always be misleading. It’s important to keep the overall business context in mind. Let’s return to that sales KPI example. In that case, you’re incentivizing your sales team to bring in new customers, but you’re not focusing on how valuable each customer is.
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Your sales team would do better by bringing in five low-value customers than by attracting a single large company that will spend huge amounts over a long period of time, even though the latter would be more valuable for your business. You could, of course, change the KPI to focus on the lifetime value of each customer as a measure, but then there could still be problems. If your sales team focuses purely on hitting the KPI, they might end up delaying new customer once they’ve hit the monthly number, so that the new business contributes to the following month’s numbers instead. So, it’s important to remember, that doing the right thing for your business is the main criterion for every decision. The KPIs are a means to that end, not the end in themselves. Designing your KPIs correctly will take you a long way, but still be sure to retain some flexibility, and don’t let the numbers become an unhealthy obsession.
2.1.4. Type of KPI > Financial KPIs \ This could be revenue, turnover or something more specific. > Operational KPIs \ These ones are about the efficiency of your business operations. How quickly do you send an offer to clients? > Growth KPIs \ All businesses need to attract new customers. A certain amount of growth is healthy, it helps give you more money to invest in your business and provide the best possible service. You could track new customer, lead generation, overall revenue growth, or a range of other metrics. > Customer KPIs \ As well as bringing in new customers, you need to keep the existing ones happy. This group of KPIs tracks the happiness of your existing customers, usually based on regular surveys, although you could measure it in other ways, such as the number of repeat project requests. You could use a simple KPI like overall customer satisfaction.
2.1.5. Set effective KPI Firstly, don’t start by asking yourself what data you have available. Start by identifying the most important things for your business, and then worry about how to collect the data later.
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So, begin by referring to your set strategic objectives. Begin with this list and develop KPIs to reflect each of the areas of most importance. KPIs should be sharply focused and measurable (SMART goals, see above) KPIs are not exactly like SMART goals. One difference is that whereas SMART goals usually have a target date, KPIs are usually ongoing. But the framework is still helpful to ensure that you set good, specific, measurable KPIs. Some businesses also like to include some extra levels, such as a “traffic light” system. In that case, achieving the target of 20 new customers per month might be green, indicating that you’re doing well. Between 12 and 20 might be orange, indicating that you failed to hit the target, but you got close. Less than 12 might be red, indicating that you’ve got a serious problem to address.
2.1.6. Monitor KPIs Of course, setting KPIs is a pointless activity unless you actively monitor them on a regular basis and act as soon as you see a problem. Some software such as JuniorConnect provide a dashboard especially made for JE and their KPI. It collects all your data in one place and allows you to track it in real time. If you’re not meeting targets, it can be tempting to focus on bringing the number higher, but the most important thing is to identify the underlying cause of the problem. This may take time, but if you focus on it consistently for month after month, you should see an improvement. Over time, you’ll probably need to refine your KPIs. You can do this as part of your regular changes to your business plan. If your strategic objectives change, your KPIs should change too. And, although you may be tempted to change the ones you keep failing to hit, the ones that may actually need to be changed are those that you consistently achieve. If a KPI is “green” for month after month, it may indicate that this area of your business is doing fine and you don’t need to focus on it anymore. Or perhaps you can consider increasing the target.
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The bottom line is that you need to track your KPIs regularly, take action when you’re not meeting targets, and refine your KPIs to ensure that they reflect progress against your company’s most important objectives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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chapter 3
CLIENT ACQUISITION METHODS
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3.1. Diverse ways to approach clients There are different possibilities of how you as the member of a Junior Enterprise can address new clients to acquire new promising projects. In the following chapter the most promising of these alternatives will be presented. Which solutions work best for you depends on your Junior Enterprise, your member and potentially the country and culture you live and operate in. Choosing the right methods is up to you after reading through the following proposition.
3.1.1. Cold calls The first and probably most effective method to acquire new clients is to engage in cold calling as one can easily acquire numerous new customers while using a method that bears very little to no risk to the organization. To motivate members to engage in cold calling and to schedule these call sessions in advance, it is good practice to set fixed and regular cold calling periods during the year in advance. When scheduling these periods holiday seasons and the management cycle of your JE should be kept in mind. Other than that, cold calling often just needs to be done and the member should be motivated to support the JE in acquiring new projects. However, to successfully convince new customers of the potential value being created by Junior consultants some rules for cold calling must be kept in mind. The process of cold calling can be separated into 4 subclasses – the preparation of a call, the execution, the documentation and post processing and the follow-up. First the caller– a member of your Junior Enterprise – needs to prepare for the calls by researching companies around your city via publicly accessible company databases, internal sources within your JE, Google, LinkedIn or similar sources. It can be helpful to predefine some metrics to keep in mind such as a minimum company size in terms of turnover and employees to estimate whether the respective company might have the funds to finance a consulting projects. These metrics, however, depends on your region and the specification of your JE and consequently no value can be provided here but must be set internally within your JE. A substantial value for orientation is, for example, the average of your former clients.
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While researching the caller should document some of the basic information about the company such as the company name, it’s size in terms of turnover and employees, the field the company is operating in, the main value proposition, a telephone number and if possible the name of a potential contact person. Depending on the topic you would like to address this contact person could be a leading employee in HR, Controlling or simply the overall management (CEO and/or owner of the company). You should know the final goal of the call is to get in touch with someone who has the power to decide about your offer and can grant the respective funds needed. In general, the research effort per company should not exceed 3-5min since cold calls often have a small success rate of less than 10% and therefore an extended research effort is not efficient and might have a demotivating result. The overall aim of the call is to present your JE and get your counterpart to agree on a first personal meeting to discuss the details of a potential project. Further information about this part will be provided in part 3.1.8. When finally executing the call it often helps to think about a general introduction to the call in advance including how you would like to present yourself and the JE and what you would like to talk about with your counterpart. In general, you should start with a personal introduction mention your name and the organization your calling from – your Junior Enterprise. It often helps to refer to the JE as a university initiative rather than mentioning the consulting services in the first sentence since consulting might trigger a negative image in your counterpart’s imagination. In addition, you should note down the most important key selling points or Unique Selling Point (USP) of your JE, so the areas you are specialized in, topics which you have already covered in other projects, etc. Another crucial point to remember is to note down your counterpart’s name to refer to him in an e-mail or a follow-up call at a later stage as this serves as a signal of professionalism. If you did not understand the name immediately do not hesitate to ask once again or to request the name to be spelt out for you, if it is especially complicated. Afterwards, you should make sure that an individual and personal conversation develops. You can only prepare to a certain extent for this conversation since the negotiation depends as much on your counterpart as on you. Try not to provide a monologue about your organization but rather focus on mixing questions and answers in a natural way of speaking. It might help
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to prepare for a few standard situations through such as the services your JE is offering, the execution process of a project starting with the first meeting and ending with the final project presentation, etc. Central of any cold call is to agree on a first meeting either directly in the call or via e-mail afterwards which can then be used to further convince the potential client of your service. How to prepare such a meeting will be explained at later stage in this book. After finishing your calls for the respective session make sure to document all the necessary information gathered in a structured way. A very useful tool to document such information is a CRM system which will be introduced in a later chapter. In addition, you should act on whatever has been agreed with the potential client during the call. This can simply be a refusal of any services, a response which does not call for any action but can occur quite regularly during cold calling so do not lose your motivation just because your success rate does not exceed 10%, this is completely normal. Nevertheless, the call and basic information about the counterpart should be documented to avoid calling the same companies numerous times. Secondly, the counterpart might ask for further information to be provided by e-mail which includes sending a brochure, flyer or presentation to him after the call and give the client the opportunity to read all information whenever it suits him and maybe provide the chance to discuss such service with the management deciding on the funds needed. If the potential client is interested in a first meeting, make sure to either propose several dates via e-mail or ask for a proposition from the client or if you have already set a date make sure to confirm the information after the call to avoid any confusion. At this stage confirming the correct company address is advisable as well. Once all information is confirmed make sure to note down the appointment in your calendar and invite any stakeholders such as the JE-internal lead for sales to the meeting. In some cases, the situation might occur that a client cannot be reached during the intended time slot for the cold call session because he/she is out of office or simply too busy to answer any calls. In this case you should make sure to keep up the contact and try calling at another time again which could possibly be agreed with the client. Often in these second calls the client has already expressed some interest and would like to receive more information about the JE. Consequently, these calls are often the most efficient ones so do not underestimate the chances of a second call and don’t miss out on this opportunity.
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3.1.2. Cold emails While emails may be archaic in nature, modern tools and strategies for email marketing have emerged. This rings especially true in an era where our inboxes are quite literally in our pockets. Indeed, getting a response is harder than ever, which is why so many experts assert that nowadays, cold pitches are worthless. But reaching out to people cold does still work, if you do it right. A cold email is never used to sell, but to arouse desire. The difference between a desired and unwanted email depends solely on the quality. A long email can be valuable if you have a real story to tell. Long content is less likely to be read but more likely to be converted. Optimizing and testing an acquisition email does not take much time, improve your techniques. You need to have these three fights in mind: 1. Will the email be opened? 2. Will it be read? 3. Will it be clicked?
Tips and tricks: > Generally speaking, the shorter your emails, the better: your users are likely pressed for time and don’t want to scroll through an endless wall of text (especially via mobile). > Avoid clichÊs and platitudes: getting the point rather than relying on vague language or wordy phrasing will also cut down on the length of your emails. >
Include some sort of call to action: make it crystal clear what you want your recipients to do
and spell it out for them (whether that means clicking a link, replying or simply touching base on your site). Think about the cold emails that you receive. Are you more likely to respond to someone who’s all over the place or succinct? Would you rather read three sentences or three paragraphs? With these answers in mind, you can craft messages relevant to your audience that you feel they would realistically respond to themselves.
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The tools to perform cold emailing: > MailChimp: Initially a newsletter tool, you can upload your contact database, design emails and personalize your emails. Free until 2’000 contacts. > MailShake: This is a specific tool made for cold emailing. In addition to the features mentioned before with MailChimp, you can build scenario and automate all your pipeline. Your contact will for example receive 3 emails until he makes an action (the goal is often a click on your link or a response).
It is vital that you follow up your initial email with subsequent messages to ensure you are getting your prospect’s attention. This is why using services like Mailshake, which was designed for cold emailing, is so beneficial for this type of activity. Through this platform, users can send cold emails and schedule follow up communications at custom intervals to help verify that the first message doesn’t go unnoticed. Additionally, this tool provides its users with campaign calendars for monitoring when emails will be sent so that you always know where you are in the chain. This type of software will help to make sure you are maximizing the number of replies you receive from your outreach efforts. Furthermore, MailShake provides a blog where you can see great articles about how to write your cold emails from subject to signature.
3.1.3. Door-to-Door Another option to get in touch with new clients is to in a way force a first meeting at the spot but simply showing up at their doorstep. To do so you as a Junior Enterprise should schedule a suitable day to pay visit to an economically prosperous area in your city or a so call company park, an area with numerous companies in a specific location. Then you just enter the buildings without any announcement and try to make an appointment with a suitable contact person. Ideally, you should research potential contact points in advance and know who you’d preferably like to talk to. In a second step you should take any preparational actions needed for all first meetings. Furthermore, make sure to take enough flyers and business cards with you to leave them in all post boxes within the area. The idea to just show up at the company’s doorstep might appear strange to you, however in some cases it is effective since people cannot come up with excuses as easily in person compared to on the phone.
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In addition, this option might be suitable for members of your JE who are not as strong of a communicator on the phone and prefer to talk to people in person. So maybe just give it a try a few times within the upcoming management cycle and see how this option works out for your organization and in your culture and environment.
3.1.4. Fairs and Network events Another well-known option to generate new clients which have been well practiced in Junior Enterprises all over Europe is to participate in fairs and networking events. In this case, it is often not even necessary to arrange a stand at the fair which might end up being quite expensive but to just be present and talk to companies and other people visiting the fair. Fairs can also be a good starting point if you are trying to focus on a specific industry such as finance, logistics or retail by visiting the respective fair. A similar option is to attend networking events and speeches in a business context in your area to get in touch with new businesses and representatives. These events are often made to get in touch with new clients and enlarge your business network which can not only be prosperous for your JE but also for yourself. Often such events start with a short keynote speech as inspiration and focus on talking and getting to know each other at a later stage. To ensure the participation of members of your JE at such events, you should ensure to communicate these events within the team and maybe rewarding member for a visit to increase the motivation to go to network events. Often personal contact is key to a prosperous supplier-client relationship which is why these events provide a similarly effective source of contacts and projects as the cold calling technique. Again, your JE needs to figure out the optimal mix for your organization, culture and members to establish a successful acquisition or sales process.
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3.1.5. Contacts via the Alumni network or curators and the university The next option to increase customer acquisition is to the network that already exists within your organization which consists of both Alumni and partner in terms of companies and professors at your university. Often Alumni of Junior Enterprises succeed in their career and end up in a beneficial position in the enterprise of their choice. Whilst they are already convinced of the concept that helped them develop and establish their own career they might be eager to recommend Junior Consultant to their current company. The only thing you must do is to keep in touch with your Alumni and take care of your network by organizing regular events and potential ask for referrals. Another touch point within your network is the university and its professors. Often university employees are well connected within the industry and might be able to set up contacts and meeting in your favour once they are convinced of the concept and the qualitative work provided. So, do not only see these contact as sources of information within projects but also as potential sources for new ones. Finally, you might want to get in touch with your industrial partners. These partners might not only want to get in touch with you to recruit new talents but also to initiate projects with you like any other company. The benefit of negotiating with a partner is that they are aware of the systems and benefits of Junior Enterprises and might be more willing to agree to the first meeting than companies who have never heard about such associations.
3.1.6. The First Official Meeting Congratulations – you have been able to get in touch with a potential client and convinced him of the benefits and value that can be delivered to his/her company by your Junior Enterprise. Therefore, he/she has agreed to a first official meeting at his/hers office to receive further information about your organization and to negotiate a potential project contents. To successfully conduct the first meeting, you need to prepare. Keep in mind, you have already worked a lot to arrive at this place, so make sure you do everything in your power to make the meeting successful.
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In a first step, you should intensify your research about the company and the respective contact and try to imagine potential challenges currently arising in his/her field of expertise and responsibility. Secondly, you should prepare a short presentation on your Junior Enterprise to help you guide through the meeting and ensure understanding and acceptance of all information by using coherent visualizations. In addition to a general introduction to yourself and the Junior Enterprise such a presentation should include exemplary projects which have already been executed with relation to the potential issues identified in step one. And here is the good news: experience shows that by offering compelling examples it is easy to guide clients into the direction you would like him to. This might help acquire projects which lie within the expertise and interest of your members and increase the motivation to apply for such projects. Apart from these two steps, a proficient client meeting is something one needs to practice. So, do not worry if you are nervous in your first meeting which is completely normal, you will get used to it. Best Practices have shown that it is advisable to have one experienced member present within these meeting to answer more complex questions on the JE and another member which can also be quite new to ensure the teaching and support idea of the JE network. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2. The Proposal Once again you have made it – you convinced the client of your services in a first meeting and defined the contents and outline of a new project. He has now requested you to provide with a compelling offer.
3.2.1. Contents and structure of the proposal In general, you as a Junior Enterprise should use a common template for your offers to ensure common standards and a similar look and feel for all proposals which should preferably be presented in a PowerPoint presentation.
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The respective presentation can be subdivided into 7 chapters. You should start off with a short and compelling introduction of your Junior Enterprise and your structure and value proposition. This section is to be kept brief since most of the information has already been communicated in a first meeting. In the second chapter, the goal of the project should be precisely defined before explaining the methodology how to arrive at the described goal in a separate chapter. After having covered the contents of your project you need to set your services into a monetary context by assigning a price to the services offered. Learn more about pricing in the next subchapter. In addition, you need to provide your client with rough timing estimate for your projects broken down into Modules and work packages. This schedule might also help you in estimating the effort needed and calculating the person days needed to fulfil the project and ultimately defining the overall price. Finally, your offer should finish up with the presentation of the project team (if this is already possible at the current stage) and any legal notices needed in the respective project context. Once you have written your offer we advise to have someone else read it and check whether it is easily understandable. It is preferable for this role to be covered by an Alumni or experienced member of the JE to profit from former learnings.
3.2.2. Pricing – How to develop a pricing strategy Structuring your proposal comprehensively is necessary to help the client understand your ideas and methodologies and agree on a price for your service. In general, Junior Enterprises work on a time and material basis which mean that you provide as much work as possible in the agreed time slot and try to finish your project on time, however the timeline is only an estimation. I rule of thumb says that if you exceed the negotiated range by more than 20% you should engage in renegotiations with your client. But how to arrive at the said price. Depending on the project’s context you can charge different rates for a man day. Similarly, the consultant maturity and skills might influence the rate charged for his efforts. Unfortunately, rates of the Junior Enterprises largely vary across Europe which leads to the fact that we are not able to provide you with a number or range at this stage, but we would like to provide you with some help on how to set your price range.
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You should try to establish a fixed price range which you are not differing from to avoid deteriorating prices to numerous discounts granted. In a first step you should research common prices for consulting services within your country. Comparing rates of bigger consulting groups with small and mid-sized companies as well freelancing rates might help you get a feeling for how much you can charge. In a second step set a price that seems realistic to you and compare it to other Junior Enterprises in your country to make sure that you operate in a competitive price range. Then you need to establish the criteria on which price ranges should depends which can include certain topics to be more expensive such as programming services and other projects relating to informatics as well as differing price ranges depending on a member maturity within the JE, his/her previous experience, etc. These systems must be fixed to ensure a fair pricing process. If you feel that this is currently not an option for your JE go for a fixed price across all project and members in a first stage and establish a level system in a later stage. As a last step the commission to be paid to the JE and the project controlling instance by any project team. Both rates should ensure that the respective parties are rewarded for their effort and that the JE receives enough funds to invest in future development. Finally, the only way to find out if a price despite all research will be accepted by the market, a testing phase needs to be initiated and you should observe clients’ reaction whenever you communicate prices. Be prepared for negotiations and think of a logic argumentation to defend the price you choose, and you will most probably be successful. The only exception you can make to the chosen price range is when offering Pro Bono projects. These projects should only be offered if there is a social context involved to create positive publicity for your JE and to motivate member to apply for the project. If this is not the case try to avoid Pro Bono Projects as renewed reduction might quickly lead to a price deterioration, the one effect you are trying to avoid by setting a price strategy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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3.3. Loyalty & Follow-up Process To stay in touch with your existing clients and to potential acquire additional projects via the so called warm acquisition two major factors must be taken care of to be successful. On the one hand you should make sure to document any client interaction of any member with a client in a CRM tool to ensure that no information is lost when a member leaves the organization. Secondly, you should enable regular touch points with your client base without overwhelming or annoying them with too much information.
3.3.1. CRM Tools As already mentioned several times in the course of this chapter, in organizations with a high volatility such as Junior Enterprises it is essential to document all client interaction in a shared system to ensure on the one hand there is no multiple interaction with one client by several members which are not aligned and on the other hand to ensure that no information is lost due to a member leaving the organization. The best tool for the Junior Enterprises activities is JuniorConnect. It gathers all the features that a JE need and is easy to use. There are other several open source tool available online such as the ones provided by dietrich24 (12 licenses) or Sugar24. These are examples of two German open source CRM tools, but free tools can be found with very little research effort in most languages. These tools offer all basic functionalities to document and track client information. If you’d like you could also go for a more sophisticated option including sales reports and interactive dashboards, these tools are often however rather pricy as companies such as Salesforce or Microsoft focus on companies with a larger sales budget. Finally, your JE could decide on programming their own CRM including all the features and needed and adapted to the organization’s needs and structure. This is however quite some effort and requires profound programming and informatics skills to be realized. Make sure to outweigh the benefits and drawbacks of a personalized CRM tool for your organization and decide which option suits you best at the current stage.
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3.3.2. Follow-up calls and e-mails In addition to just document and tracking client information actual contact and touchpoints with the client and contact person are essential to establish a successful sales process. Often once a company has been convinced of the services a Junior Enterprise offers they rehire Junior Consultants for further projects. To be considered for these projects as an organization it is however essential to pop-up in your client’s mind from time to time. You can ensure such a reminder but regularly contacting your existing clients as documented in the CRM tool. To ensure a regular but not too frequent contact clients should on the one hand be assigned to one or several members acting as account managers as well as regular follow-up session linked to events during the year such be set. The account manager should for example get in touch with his clients every 6-12 months and find out whether there are any new projects in the pipeline or issues surfacing which could be supported by your JE. For this action a simple call session is sufficient to contact the respective clients and engage in a short and personal conversation. In case interest arouses another “first” meeting should be agreed on to discuss further details. Another method is to set regular touch points during the year to contact all clients. These dates could include events such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve or Easter, the JE or companies’ foundation date or the client’s birthday as a reason to get in touch. At these events contact your client via e-mail or post by sending out postcards or little presents to remind them of your JE. In addition, you could include further information about any changes that might have occurred within the last period or new offers added to your range of services. Be sure to provide personal but not too detailed information about any changes to arouse some interest but to not bore the clients with overwhelming and unnecessary information and they will get back to you in a situation of need. On the other hand, if they don’t come to you, do not hesitate to contact them via telephone again asking whether they received the information and if there are any questions. Keep in mind: Any contact with your client is a good contact even if it does not lead to a new project immediately. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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chapter 4
PARTNERSHIPS
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4.1. Different partnerships sources First thing first, before building long term relationships, a JE should be aware of existing partners opportunities they could reach.
4.1.1. Junior Enterprise and National Confederation The first opportunities source, often underestimated, for a JE to find new partners and contracts is the Junior Enterprises network. It can be something very easy to understand but it is something often forgotten, other Junior Enterprises within your own confederation can be an important source of commercial opportunities. How? A Junior Enterprise has its own fields of expertise and has got specific strengths that can be useful for finding new clients. In a same manner, other confederations from the JADE network can also represent same kind of opportunity but in international terms. Countries have got different manner to approach and solve problems, different educational approaches and mixing point of views, ideas and working processes can bring important value for customers and projects Junior Enterprises work on.
4.1.2. Personal network The second source of commercial opportunities a Junior Enterprise that should consider is its internal people’s professional network. Parents, extended family members, all these people can work for companies that can have projects or missions that Junior Enterprises can handle and work on. Better, some of them can be entrepreneurs and so can be very interested in what Junior Enterprises offer.
4.1.3. Junior Enterprise personal database Another piece of advice would be to investigate all databases the JE owns. Previous clients can have new ideas to develop, new projects to propose or can maybe be the link to a new opportunity. It can also be interesting to think about opportunities that some professors or other student associations can represent too.
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chapter 5
MARKETING
Marketing strategy has the fundamental goal of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing includes short-term, and long-term strategy.
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5.1. Building a stunning website 5.1.1. Design When it comes to websites, the first impression you make on your potential clients is everything. It needs to be a positive experience otherwise you are losing potential. This happens every day to almost every business. A good website is the most common type. A good website has what every website should have: professional appearance, sensible navigation, good content, etc. It is not difficult to create a good website, so most fall into this category. The problem is, good does not equal effective. An effective website is a kind with the most benefits. The primary difference between a good website and an effective one, besides profit, is that it anticipates the needs of the customer/visitor and meets those needs. Most websites try to “sell� rather than address the needs of the visitor. Effective websites require more planning and effort to create, but the rewards are worth it. You must think about generating emotion in the visitor. For that, it is necessary to personalize as much as possible your design template to produce something unique. Professional design becomes a commodity, personalize them to share your values and to avoid being generic.
5.1.2. Structure The navigation structure needs to be simple without excessive buttons. The basic structure for a JE: > Home: Show your values and a summary of other parts. > Services: Describe each service you offer to your clients with great examples. > Campus: Describe your position on the campus. > News: Make articles regularly to show your daily activities. > About us: Describe your story, your structure and your team. > Contact: All ways to contact you.
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5.1.3. Implementation For the implementation, there are different ways to proceed. It will depend of your internal resources in term of programming skills. Ways to implement: > With CMS (no programming): Wordpress, Joomla > Without CMS (with programming): At least HTML CSS. Working with a CMS is easier and faster, but your website will load slower and it will be harder to build a unique effective website. CMS does not provide as much as flexibility than code.
5.1.4. SEO SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
1. Define keywords about your business: could be “junior enterprise”, “student”, “consultancy” … 2. Take care of your page title. It should contain your keyword and be interesting enough that people will want to click on it. 3. Write few sentences in the header and include again your keywords. 4. Another way Google can determine what your blog post is about is the URL. In other words, we're talking about what comes after the ".com" in your URL (or .net, .org, or whatever you use). example.com/your-page-described 5. Insert internal links: If you aren't talking about your best content, why should anyone else care? For this reason, it's important that your best SEO content is linked to internally by other pages on your website. 6. Get external links: External links are links from websites other than your own. Google relies heavily on external links to determine how good a post is. As soon as other people begin bragging about you, others take notice.
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While producing incredible content may get you some links, the truth is, you are going to have to do some "link building." This means reaching out to other website owners in the space to ask for links. Ask to your past successful client project to put your link on their website!
5.1.5. Analytics Web analytics is necessary to determine whether you're hitting your objectives or not. Additionally, web analytics can be used for future development of your web strategy, so you can ensure a continuous improvement of the user experience on your website. Different tools are used to perform data analysis: > Hotjar: Give you information about how your visitor interacts with your website. Which button is never used because never seen? It provides heatmaps and even some record about visitors using your website. > Google Analytics: provide all the data about your visitors, including where they come from.
Web analytics is more than just installing a script on a website and setting up a monthly report to show the number of visitors on your site. Web analytics requires analysis. The numbers that your analytics tool delivers must be interpreted before they have any real value for making informed decisions. Through usage of analytical data provides a much greater understanding of the users on a website. This understanding of users is crucial to developing an online strategy for any website. Whether your goal is to tailor the website to the user's needs or to get users to change their behaviour, what's important is to know how the users use the website right now. This allows you to optimize your online strategy and define future goals. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.2. Communication channels and strategies 5.2.1. Engage your leads on your website Live chat is a platform that allows you to chat directly with your website visitors. It can increase conversions by at least 20 percent. Live chat provides your website visitors with instant access to support members. When your visitors can easily contact you with any questions or problems that they may have, they will be more confident in your company as a source of valuable knowledge and support. Only 9% of websites use live chat to provide real time support to their customers. You will have an advantage over your competition in terms of friendly, instant support access. You will also have more opportunities to engage your website visitors proactively. Chat requests from agents can be sent either manually or automatically based on predefined rules. This type of proactive chat initiation can help visitors find the information they require faster and potentially convert more browsers into buyers.
5.2.2. Communication channels: In order to have good results that follow your communication goals, you need to clearly define your communication strategy and segment your content. Junior Enterprises are active in the marketplace with two sides: clients and campus students. For the client side, the channels may be LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog, Radio. For the student side, the channels may be Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.3. Marketing Tools creation & advices 5.3.1 Content creation When you have created your communication strategy, you must imperatively define your design boundaries. Create a colour panel that you will follow for each content creation. This rigour will easily make your content more professional.
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For images, take care of the right. A great website is https://unsplash.com/ from where you cannot have problems.
5.3.2 Content ideas You can find a lot of different content ideas depending on your Junior Enterprise activities. These are some examples seen from JE: > Successful project > About a consultant > Describing your event > About a trend in an industry that help you promote your service > About the network JADE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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CONCLUSION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To sum up, we hope this book has provided you with insightful information to help you and your JE grow significantly but sustainably. We have put long hours of work to gather the best practices and merge them into one book, and we deeply thank all the guys that have contributed in the creation of it. Although this book offers a fair overlook into Business Development in Junior Enterprises, we strongly recommend you read further literature and to not take this book as your only point of reference.
Best of luck for your future developments, JADE – European Confederation of Junior Enterprises -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
__ If you have any question regarding the book, please contact training@jadenet.org
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