Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

Developed is the status given to countries with high gross domestic product GPD per capita which refers to nations with high development according to some criteria.

A developed country has other means of measurement industrialization has a part contributing the economy boosting the financial status and capability of individual countries. The other measure associated with developed nation will be the human development index which combines the economic, nation, life expectancy and other measures factored in.

Being a developed country has got its pros and cons. Pros is more beneficial towards the nation, politicians, businesses and government, and  cons is more towards the poor, majority of employees who cannot benefit in any way regardless of the country being under developed, developing or developed nation.

Poor is not a good thing, and it certainly isn’t good to be poor in a developing if not developed nation. In such a developed country, there will be intense competition for business and profits. The most inflated assets becomes overpriced will be a home.

Home is the shelter which everybody needs and thus either you are rich or poor, you cannot avoid not buying it. The only difference is that the rich can afford with the inflated pricing but not the poor.

The more competition the country has, the higher the inflation is. Just look at Hong Kong, Russia, ask them how small is their home is, sixty to seventy meters are the size which average income earners can afford to buy.

Singapore is heading towards a near developed national but we are still holding onto the developing nation status. Just look at the way the homes are built in the past versus currently and the trend of the homes versus the price.

There is not doubt, homes are highly inflated, while they remains the same price, the square meters are dropping by at least thirty percent and more. Just couple of years back, the norm of purchasing a home, the standard size should be at least a thousand square meters, but over the past two to three years, kitchens, living room, rooms, and even washroom get downsized, but the price still remains the same giving a false impression that there is not any inflation.

All these are just decoys, sales gimmicks which all businesses employ to trick those gullible people.

There was a news article which I read some time back which made me laughed. That article was about a block of apartments of six to seven hundred square meters of size being sold at a much higher price tag for the same amount with a home for at least a thousand square meters of size in the same area. The irony is those small homes get snap up much faster than homes which a bigger size despite it being more expensive!!

An example will be in the past comparison of an old three room apartment built in the 1980s versus the ones which has the same size of a current four room apartment built in the after the millennium. Just look at the newly built versus the older generation apartments, compare the windows, put your thumb against the windows from your vehicle or when you happen to pass by in public transport.

Older apartment’s windows can cover around the size of our thumb while the newer generation of apartments, their windows are smaller than our thumb, to me, newly built apartments are like pigeon holes for birds to live, not us, but funny thing is, we have no choice but to move in since there isn’t any other choice left, neither was I in control of wanting to move or not.

When I read that article, I was wondering if adults are smart or are the developers smarter but since I’m already as of a adult age, I know I am definitely not going to be among those intelligent adults buying a expensive apartment with lesser space just because of the sales hyped up buzz of thanks to the media which created a sales frenzy.

If you understand what I mean, spread news of this blog post to your beloved family and friends, help them save money and prevent those developers from ripping our money off our wallets just because they don’t know that they are suffering a loss on each purchase of flat yet they are smiling and thank you the property agents who are in fact making their clients poorer.

I don’t know how smart we ourselves are, but if you want to help yourself, your friends and family save money, than tell them about the trend of property size are descending while price is ascending thus price inflation on all apartments.

Spread the word to save money. Don’t rush into buying homes if they are just building smaller homes and jetting up the prices. Practice delay-gratification, it will help you save hell lots of money. Trust me on this.

There was once when a blocks of flats in a are of Singapore that was not popular in the launch couple of years back, with only less than ten occupants which made that area looked like a ghost town, which made developers to relook at their layout, design before new apartments were built soon after with numerous other strategies to push for the sales of the unsold apartments which was featured in the newspapers.

The moral of the story and lesson learnt, do not rush into buying homes, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it that will force developers to rethink and relook at their product (apartments) which they are selling.

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Marketing is a form of selling without selling. It is the advance selling strategy which businesses and super salesmen/women use in business.

It involves not only the product, but included as well in the sales pitch is the benefits, value, efficiency, productivity and how much unnecessary expenses a product can help the business or a client save in the process with just a single purchase of a product. From a single marketing sales pitch, it not only is selling the product, also together is the brand, value of the actual worth, building brand royalty, relationship and opening another option to allow customers to get updates of the latest products launch if there is a system put in place.

Marketing is a deep advanced selling strategy which only a minority of the sales people uses. People who use marketing instead of selling are people who do their own businesses, and thus employees most often will not be bothered to sell the brand with the exception if they are working for a premier brand.

It involves branding, positioning, customer service, relationship building, value creation, royalty relationship building and most importantly, looking at the clients interest at heart. All these are needed to be shared during a short sales pitch.

Marketing tactics can be learned but it is not a simple task to begin with. It starts with education with the right intention. All these can be learn from work but without proper guidance, and spotting the mistake during the sales pitching/presentation, it makes a whole lot difference between selling and marketing.

Are you marketing or are your selling yourself?

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Small is what majority of the people don’t like, but in monetary size, it is welcomed by bankers, businessmen, designers and fashion professionals whereas average people like to have big bigger items and ownership thus they spend more.

The trail to wealth and successful starts from being small to big, from a small business and expand it into bigger business. Rich people start big, and grower bigger without learning the technician issues with starting from small thus they lack the foundation to go from small to big, and contribute to their failure to come back successful after once declared a bankrupt.

Look around the people who you know who invested capital into businesses. Those who jump into the boss category start by throwing in lots of hard earn savings from friends, family relatives and parents. They never once know the pains and labour of managing everything themselves, thus in the event should they want to cut cost, they don’t know how to do it themselves and thus with lots of weakness themselves, the business collapse and never picked up again.

Lost of trust and savings from their closed loved ones is part of the reason. Failure to cut cost is another reason, not knowing the basics and how the business really works from the insider trade secrets is the fatal flaw and the mistake which small business investors failed in.

In the world of property, starting small is essential, but recognize the fact of Singapore versus other countries, It is common for us and in Asia those developing countries to have big homes at a affordable price, needless to say, China has the largest yet extremely affordable price to those homes.

As Singapore economy progress, so does the homes, there are inflation which are obvious to people as home buyers but from gullible home buyers, they feel that it’s value for money, but due to demand and supply, buyers are ignorant of the facts thus they never fail to push the sales of property up and speculation etc.

Singapore property is going from average size to smaller size homes yet commanding a higher price tag, reason, lack of land, more demand for their own home, high demand not desired, low supply of desired homes thus there are huge demands for homes near their relatives etc and rules implemented to assist people to encourage family bonding etc.

Look at Singapore’s property market, the square feet of the home, previously average was 100+ square meters, now it is slowly reducing to slightly less than 100 square meters. Look into future, it will be super cramped and commanding a high price tag like Hong Kong a pigeon home all squeezed inside..else look at Russia first world economy status, their homes average square meters was only sixty square meters, extremely packed yet cost so much more.

Successful and wealthy businessmen always believe in “Less Is More” and this is true and will withstood the test of time, thus quality is always more important than quantity. Look at the different types of food business, markets, coffee shops and food courts are all offering affordable food that’s no longer cheap like few years back and they get more portion. They run the business longer than average, wants more customers with larger portions and serving for coffee shop business owners, to earn more, they earn by quantity thus they can’t offer quality.

Food and Beverage industry will know, increasing the business profits by setting a time limit of two hours for whole course of Chinese New Year set lunch or dinner package, some restaurants who wants to squeeze more profits than lower the limit to a hour so every hour, new batch of customers come in, their profits are up making huge profits during the Chinese New Year season.

If you look at high class restaurant, they however are super successful yet able to retain their high class standards and price without having the rush hour kind of environment because of the way they do business. The customers are king, no time limit, only appointment basis, once it’s fully booked, they will not make excuses to force customers to leave restaurant unless they are happy to leave. Never mind if the food portion is small, but the value of the food it commands is of high end standards and grade thus accountable and justified for the pricing thanks to benchmarking.

Paying more for class, service standards, ambiance and the luxury of time is what amounts to the difference between high-class restaurants versus average restaurants.

Look at different business model and how they operate and you will realize how wealth is really generated.

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In my final 3 part blog post special on Sales Explained – (Behavior) I will talk about the difference sales behavior among both genders and how you can capitalize on this useful information to help you generate more sales revenue.

Sales behavior is something not a lot of people working in the sales line take into consideration. Often they (employees & even small scale businesses only focus on their range of products and the services which they can provide to the customers who walk into their retail stores.

What many of us can literally learn without paying a single cent is as simply as making key observation about the way different shopping centers arranges their floor-plan to. Plus how each individual retail store arranges their products out-lay within the small retail shop itself.

All these factors are taken into consideration but not many business owners know about it. I’ll talk about the layout of shopping centers on separate blog post another time.
The layouts of the shopping centers are tied closely with the sales behavior or the customers thus today I will talk about the behaviors of the genders. Male and female make purchases based on different objectives and today we’ll look at exactly this differences in shopping among the male and females.

Firstly I’ll talk about females since the level 1 of every shopping centers are targeted towards ladies if you have made that key observation.

Females make purchases based on their preferences and will most often buy when they find something cute or beautiful etc. Example when they see some cute teddy-bears, ladies in their teens or those in their relationship will get the cute teddy-bears purchased by their partners to please the ladies.

Ladies are generally after beauty as there’s this saying in Chinese 女人爱美不要命which means ladies value their beauty over their lives thus you see beauty slimming centers only increasing and not decreasing in Singapore. When you go somewhere towards this direction you can also get a slice of the market share if done properly.

When ladies are down in mood, some of the ladies will gorge themselves with lots of food and mass shopping to doll themselves up. No-offence intended to any ladies. I’ve just speaking based on my observations.

The other times whereby ladies will generally go shopping are of course when it comes to festive seasons and other company or school events such as gala dinner and dance if not prom-night in schools or when they get a pay rise. If not when they go for job-interviews, ladies who look more appealing compared to those who doesn’t put on a make-up will clinch the job despite having little skills as compared to guys who needs to focus on their experiences.

Now for the males, they are generally into Information technology products like hand phones, laptops, PSP, play-stations and even comics.

Clothes do play a part but not as much as IT gadgets which I’ve mention because they can mix and match clothes over and over again and are not really subjected to talk about their clothing in a conversation unlike ladies who wear sexy and pleasant looking clothes for a lot of benefits such as getting free gifts from friends, faster job interviews and more job acceptance over a normal lady who doesn’t bother to groom herself.

The reason for the above phenomenon is none the less to show-off and impress upon their peers. By getting most up to date and be among the first few people to get it, they can have friends (smart people) who will stay with them hoping to know more about the products and get reviews as evaluation before deciding to make the purchase.

The other reason why they go for such IT gadgets are primarily because they can only afford the lower cost gadgets over the big toys like branded cars such as Ferrari, Porsche, yachts or even a private jet.
Males don’t usually like shopping because when they do go shopping, they will take into consideration about the durability of the clothes like how clothes can mix and match with existing clothes which he has back at home.

When males go shopping, they think about long term, and will usually think if they will use it at home, if it’s a need or a want. That’s the reason why you see shopping centers will never ever have retail stores that focus on purely male products & services on the level one of the building. Even if there is, it’s not a purely man retail outlet but rather a combination like example Beleno and Giordano whereby the retail stores are selling products focusing on both genders. Not to mention ladies’ specific products are placed nearer to the shutters of the retail outlets whereby it is highly accessible.

What males generally think in common is that as long as they look neat, clean and tidy for mature guys, girls will fall for them especially if the guys are financially sound thus they don’t pay much attention to their choice of clothes except for those into fashion line whereby design means how they portray themselves be which might also represent their own art work.

However if there’s anyone of you reading this post and are wondering what’s the best source of sales revenue for guys, it will go into clubbing, pubs, cigarettes and liquor.

In a nut-shell:
Ladies generally makes a good source to contribute to your business sales revenue. Focus on how to please and beautify them and you’ll earn generally much more. Most importantly – they buy on impulse!!

Males go for long-term products as well as products which will aid them to get more friends to hang around them in-order to have topics to talk about and to have something in common to fit into the group to feel accepted.

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This is my part 2 of 3 part special on Sales Explained

Sales are done in three platforms.

The first platform is tradition sales whereby sales transactions are carried out in retail stores and also from direct manufactures.

From retail stores to shopping centers and even direct manufacturers and suppliers are also doing sales. However currently most of the sales are still being done over the counters of shopping centers and in retail stores whereby Singapore citizens live in thus shopping centers and retail stores still hold onto the bulk of the sales revenue.

The second platform is industrial media. Examples of industrial media are newspapers, television and film.

Generally this platform is used primarily for advertisements than sales itself because it a sales transaction cannot be done over newspapers, television nor in a film. What can be done via these channels are only to create an awareness among the customers who are reading or viewing these industrial media.

Charges of such sales services are primarily expensive because the prices are divided into different time-slots thus prices will vary accordingly; from non-peak to peak hours both in the morning and evening timing.

The third platform is in the social media. Social media are the new age trend of sales whereby it’s no longer purely sales like in the older days. These days due to modernization, competition are much stiffer and highly competitive thus social medial sales are more into marketing rather than plainly sales.

The reason why social media sales are highly competitive is because these very platforms of sales are done in the internet. Previously this was popular during one of the crisis which is the dot.com crisis, but subsequently died down in Singapore.

Lately it’s catching up again, with lots of social media sites like online blogging such as BlogSpot and Wordpress. Interactive social media sites which encourage sales as well are Friendster, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace as well as other popular interactive sites whereby people interact and get to know one another online without meeting in real-life.

But not many people really know about how to properly do it online yet as such modules and trainings are still not being taught in institutions as well so such new areas should be taught by the specialist in this field and not by anybody who claim they know the area of topic. When learning about such topics, individuals should ask for certification first as well as their previous projects and clients.

In a Nut-Shell

1st Platform – Traditional Marketing – Retail outlets; Shopping Centers; Manufacturers & Suppliers doing 1-1 sales targeting individuals

2nd Platform- Industrial Media – Television, Radio, Film & Newspaper – also targeting individuals but this is more of a strategy used for branding and advertisement purpose in mind.

3rd Platform – Social Media – Internet as the platform using social media sites to interact with the customers/clients creating the awareness and some branding campaign.

In my next post, you will read about my part 3 post about Sales Behavior Explained.

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This is my part 1 of 3 part special on Sales Explained .

Sales are the process of a mutual agreement of a transaction between both the seller and the buyer.

It is the process of selling a product or service from the seller to the buyer when the buyer request or pick up an item from the retail store bring over to the sales counter.

Sales have to do with demand and supply and broken into two smaller categories namely product sales followed by service sales.

For every product there is available in the market, it is the supplies from the manufacturers based on the local country’s demand for a certain product or service.

Sales often are more involved with product sales over service sales.

Product sales are generally higher than service sales.

Example of product sales is from rice, bowls, pens, computers, play-station 3, play-station-portable etc.

Example of service sales are like manicure, pedicure, hair related services, picking up of students to schools from home and back to school etc.

The most profitable kind of  service sales are running pubs and clubs etc whereby there’s a combination of both product sales of beverages like hard liquor such as whisky, brandy etc and service sales such as allowing clients a dancing and interaction hall among clients with a disc jockey also known as DJ in clubs etc.

In a nut-shell:

Sales is divided into two categories namely product based and service based sales.

In the next two posts, I’ll be talking about the following:

1) Sales can be done on three platforms and they are traditional sales, industrial media and social media.

2) Sales Buying Behavior are also different between both genders whereby males make a purchase based on practicality whereas females make a purchase based on the beauty aspect of the product or if it is cute.

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