Nestle To Pay All Contractors a Living Wage

Following on from last week’s impassioned RTA Business argument on the living wage, this week, Nestle have agreed to do so!

 RTA Business: The Business Sales Broker You Can Trust

When you decide it’s the right time to sell your business, and if you want to make sure you make as much money as humanly possible, you need to come to RTA Business. We have the expertise, the contacts and the knowledge, to make sure we can attract the best potential buyer to your business.

We’ve often found that a buyer who is looking to purchase your business to expand, factors the quality of your staff into their decision. That’s why we’ve previously argued that if you’re looking to eventually sell your business, you need to pay all your staff a living wage- it’s the most effective way to attract the best talent!

It Seems Nestle Have Been Reading Our Blog

And it seems as if one major company has been reading the RTA Business blog (ok, so they probably made their decision before we wrote the article, but a business sales broker can dream), as world’s largest food producer Nestle has announced that it will become the first major manufacturer to pay all its staff a living wage.

When it comes to this issue, Nestle is already ahead; they currently pay their 8,000 employees a living wage. However, the firm has now agreed to extend the policy to their 800 contractors. It will be fully implemented by the end of 2017.

Nestle Cares and Prospective Employees Will Like That

Fiona Kendrick, Nestle UK & Ireland chief executive, spoke out on the announcement. The BBC reported that Kendrick said: "As a major UK employer, we know that this is the right thing to do. Not only does it benefit our employees but also the communities they live and work in." 

Imagine how attractive Nestle will seem as an employment prospect in light of this. They clearly care about their employees and you’d be surprised how attractive a caring boss is as a potential boss. You can be sure that Nestle, in light of this announcement, will have its pick of the best contractors by the end of 2017. 

The moral of the story? There’s a reason a company as gigantic as Nestle have embraced the living wage, and that’s because it makes them more competitive than ever in the employment market. If you want to attract the best talent to make your business look more attractive than ever to an eventual potential buyer, take your cue from Nestle and implement the living wage. 

RTA Business Asks Whether You Should Pay Your Staff a Living Wage

RTA Business asks whether you should be paying your staff a living wage if you want to attract the best talent and sell your business for a tidy profit.

RTA Business: We Secure the Best Deal for the Sale of Your Company

When you want to reap the benefits of all your hard work by selling your business, and walk away with a tidy profit, RTA Business Consultants is here to help. We use our teams experience and skill to ensure you walk away with the best possible deal for the sale of your business.

Our experience has taught us that attracting a potential buyer is nowhere near as easy as just showing them that you’re making money. You need to show them that when they take on your company, they have everything they need to make a sustained profit.

Skilled Workers Want More Money

A company is nothing without its staff. If you don’t attract the right workers with the right skills, you’ll never advance beyond your initial business model, and never make enough profit to make your business truly lucrative. Furthermore, if you’ve got sub-par staff, a buyer will notice, and it will undoubtedly turn them off.

So how do you attract the best talent? To answer this question you need to ask yourself what kind of jobs attract quality staff. The answer; jobs that pay. If someone is skilled and they know it, they’re not going to go for the first position they find, they’re going to wait until they can get the most money for their services. That’s just human nature.

What is a Living Wage?

Naturally, this is why staff in managerial positions receive the big bucks. But at RTA Business, we would argue that you need to take this philosophy and apply it to every single worker, by paying them a living wage.

A living wage, according to the Living Wage Commission, can be defined as: "an hourly rate of income calculated according to a basic cost of living in the UK and defined as the minimum amount of money needed to enjoy a basic, but socially acceptable standard of living."

RTA Business Concludes: You Should Pay Low Level Workers a Living Wage

Basically, it’s paying someone enough to give them a decent quality of life, and we would argue that you should pay low level workers a living wage to make yourself competitive. There are so many low level positions out there, that workers are spoiled the choice. Providing a living wage will make you stand out, giving you the edge you need to attract the talent that’ll take your business to the next level. 

RTA Business’ Top Five Tips For Boosting Creativity

The best, most lucrative businesses are built on creativity, and without it, you’re never going to attract a buyer and make a tidy profit. This is why RTA Business, this week, has decided to list its top five tips for boosting creativity!

The Importance of Creativity

A business isn’t built on knuts and bolts alone. You need a product and that product has to be capable of generating a significant amount of revenue over the long term. That’s why you need to be creative. You need to have the capability to dream up a product so useful that it’s capable of attracting a sustained customer base. No easy task.

It’s doubly important if you’re looking to build up your company, only to sell it off for profit one day. A buyer won’t be interested in a firm that merely stays above water. They want to buy a business that will make them a lot of money; the more profit avenues you can dream up, the more attractive your business will be when you decide it’s time to sell.

The Creative Top Five from RTA Business

However it’s easier said than done to get creative – that’s why writers so often have writers block, it’s all about inspiration, which isn’t something you can automatically tap. However, you can help stimulate your mind along the way with these top five tips:

1      Observe the World around You: How are you ever going to dream up a new product that will sell well if you don’t know the world you’re selling it to? Observe your customer base and let them inspire you.

2      Seek out a Little Help: Other people have fresh life experiences to bring to the table that you don’t. Use that different perspective to spark your own imagination. They may know something that you don’t that makes your impractical idea work.

3       Embrace New Experiences: Get out of your comfort zone. Travel to new places, listen to music you never have before etc. If you open your mind, you never know what you may encounter that will give you that ‘profit margin changing’ idea.

4    Get Imaginative: You need to think outside the box, and to do so, you need to ask ‘what if.’ Take a scenario and ask what the wildest possible outcome could be. You’d be surprised what practical ideas often come from the wildest of situations. Take the internet as an example!

5       Be Brave: This is the best possible tip we could give you, don’t be afraid to take risks. Do you think people like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs got to where they are by playing it safe?

Can You Predict a Financial Crash?

A key component in selling your business is deciding when the right time to do so is. This means you need to know when the economic climate is right to sell. Saying this, is it possible to predict a financial crash?

The 2008 financial crash was devastating; markets plunged, companies went bust, loans were called in. It’s a nightmare that we’re only now just recovering from, and most people didn’t really see it coming. It was pretty bad for business acquisition.

This was simply because nobody wanted to buy a business after the crash; everybody knew a recession was coming and that it would do them more harm than good to buy a business at that point. This is why it’s useful to be able to predict a financial crash; if you don’t then you might leave it too late to sell.

So is it possible to predict a financial crash? Not really; there are too many variables and too many opinions out there that could lead you to make a fatal misstep. However there are several steps that you can take to make yourself aware of trends that could lead to a financial crash.

To begin with, you have to keep track of markets. Obviously, the world’s economy depends on the markets. When we talk about a crash we talk about the markets crashing, so when they do, if you don’t know about it you’re going to be caught off guard, which could disadvantage you in a number of ways.

It’s also essential that you keep track of current affairs. What’s happening in the world effects market prices. For example, the current Ukraine crisis is affecting Russian stocks. Therefore if you have business dealings with Russian companies, it could affect your profit margins. It’s useful to know what the ramifications of current affairs may be ahead of time so that you can act to limit the damage.

It’s also useful to keep market bubble and bursts- when a product saturates the market and ends up losing value - in mind. Take the tech boom early last decade as an example. So many people were buying into tech that it flooded the market, no one needed it anymore and it lost value almost overnight. If you trade in a product that is part of a bubble market trend, keep track of when that bubble might burst.

At RTA Business we realise that predicting financial crashes is an inexact science at best, a nightmare at worst. However it is possible to at least recognise common trends that may lead to a market crash; it’s all about keeping yourself informed; a key principle in any business model.

What Should You Look For in an Employee?

A business is nothing without the employees on its payroll; it sinks or swims due to the people who engage in running said business. This is why it’s essential to have the best possible team running your business. So what should you be looking for in your potential employees?

When you interview for a new position it can feel as though you’re lost in a sea of applications. You’ve sifted through the CV’s and weeded out everybody who’s made a spelling mistake or obviously lied about their experience, and you’re left with a talented crop of interviewees.

With more people than ever trained to degree level or equivalent, you have a whole host of potential employees to pick from. You don’t know where to start, but you know you have to get it right if this employee is going to be an asset to your business.

This is why you should be looking for personality traits. You know what experience the applicant has, however you can only assess whether their personality will be a good fit for your company face-to-face. So what personality traits should you be looking for?

The first is obviously intelligence; however this intelligence should be tempered with common sense. You need an intelligent employee to handle the work, but with the common sense to recognise when they should take things on their own initiative.

Measure this by talking about current affairs and seeing what insights they provide. This not only allows you to measure their intelligence but their understanding of the way in which the world we live works; therefore you get a fair measure of their common sense too.

Another key trait is ambition. Ambition may eventually prompt that employee to leave your company, but it will drive them to do the best job they can whilst with you. Measure this by asking them about their future ambitions. It’s also a great measure of honesty, as this is a notoriously difficult interview question and those with less integrity are more likely to deceive.

Kindness is another personality trait that you need in an employee.  It may seem an odd one in business, but it works in relation to office dynamics. This person is going to be in your office all day, every day, and if they’re the confrontational sort, it will have an effect on office harmony; which will in turn drive down office productivity.

The interview process is one of the toughest parts of owning your own business; however it’s also essential to growing your own business and attracting buyer. At RTA Business we really do know that any company is the sum of its parts, or in this case, employees.

UK Economic Growth Forecast on the Rise

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has sharply raised its forecast for the rate of UK growth this week. What does this mean for the industry of business acquisition?

The IMF released its current forecast of UK growth this week and it significantly outmatched previous expectations. It has now stated that it expects the UK economy to grow by 2.4% in 2014. The previous figure suggested was 1.9%, meaning a rise in expectation of 0.5%.

This wasn’t the only figure on the forecast of UK growth the IMF released. They also released an expected figure of 2.2% for 2015, which if these figures prove correct would only be a drop of 0.2%.

Notably the organisation put global economic growth for 2014 at 3.7%, slightly higher than it has previously predicted. It also released its figures for the world’s largest economy, the US, 2.8%, which is a 0.2% improvement from the figure it quoted back in October.

The report also provided figures for two key economic areas; the Eurozone and China. The Eurozone together is predicted to grow by 1%, a significant figure considering the trouble the continent has faced over its finances in the past few years. It measured China’s economic growth at 7.5% a figure that’s expected for the world’s largest growing economy.

These figures are telling. The whole world is set to grow this year, however the rate of British economic growth is particularly strong. An article for the BBC on the subject reports a statement made by the Treasury on the news.

It said that "[The IMF] report provides further evidence that the government's long term economic plan is working." However the spokesperson also noted that the job is “not yet done” and that “the government will go on taking the difficult decisions necessary to deliver a sustainable recovery for all."

This rising confidence in the expectations of the UK market has come from several factors. Unemployment is decreasing, the manufacturing and retail industries are enjoying strong growth and inflation has fallen into line with the government’s 2% goal.

At RTA Business we see this as a sign that buyers will be much more hospitable to the idea of buying a business. After all, more economic growth means more opportunity. When you’re looking to capitalise on that opportunity, you look to see how buying a business would help you do so.

Global Economy Hits Turning Point

The World Bank has announced this week that the global economy is at a “turning point” in the face of stronger global growth forecasted for 2014. What does this mean for the industry of business acquisition?

RTA Business has learned that this week the World Bank, the overarching global banking regulator, released a report on the state of the global economy. Specifically it highlighted forecasts stating that richer countries are “turning a corner” in the wake of the damage caused by the financial crisis.

This is expected to have a knock on effect on developing economies, as strengthening western finances should facilitate stronger investment.

However the World Bank warned that growth prospects in such economies “remained vulnerable“ to the expected ramifications of the withdrawal of the economic stimulus package by the US Federal Reserve.

The stimulus package was a programme set in place by the US Federal Reserve to shore up the country’s economy in wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It involved bond-buying and aided in the development of emerging economies such as India and Brazil.

However, stronger US job growth saw months of speculation on when the scheme would be tapered back; this had ramifications on markets across the world. Now the Reserve has started scaling back its monthly bond-buying scheme, which was formerly set at $85bn (£52bn) a month. This has caused fears that it could see global interest rates rise, which could alter the flow of money in and out of emerging markets.

In an article for the BBC World Bank group president Jim Yong Kim commented on the affects this could have. He commented that "growth appears to be strengthening in both high-income and developing countries, but downside risks continue to threaten the global economic recovery."

He elaborated on this, saying that "the performance of advanced economies is gaining momentum, and this should support stronger growth in developing countries in the months ahead. Still, to accelerate poverty reduction, developing nations will need to adopt structural reforms that promote job creation, strengthen financial systems, and shore up social safety nets."

So what does this mean for the industry of business acquisition? A strengthening economy naturally means that more people will be willing to sell their businesses as prices rise. This will lead to a stronger, more robust market. These suggestions, if governments decide to set them into place, could also foster a more beneficial environment for business acquisition.

What has been clear for a while is that the world is moving out of the Great Recession and into sustained recovery. However in order to sustain this recovery we need to be cautious.

Tips for a Successful Sales Strategy

Here at RTA Business Consultants, we understand how important it is for companies aiming to sell goods and services to have a strong sales strategy in place. As the UK’s most successful privately owned business agency, we thought we’d bring you a few top tips to make the most of your sales plan.

·         First of all, planning is key. Start by mapping your client journey. If you can tap into the process of buying your product, you will be able to iron out any needless creases. Focus on both pre and post-sale processes, paying careful attention to how a customer might feel at each point.

·         Write down all the ways in which you can reduce cost and increase satisfaction. While you shouldn’t sacrifice your profit margin, a lower price usually means a happier customer. You don’t want to give them a reason to look at what your competitors have to offer.

·         When your sales process is in place, it’s time to think about marketing. What’s your unique selling point? How can you attract your target customers? It’s best to invest as much time as possible into your marketing plan as it is this that will (hopefully!) attract your ideal customers.

·         Be careful in assigning resources and be sure to monitor these processes on an ongoing basis. This may involve regular sales meetings or team briefing sessions to ensure everyone is up to date with the project and its progression.

·         Involve your whole team and have them complete regular records so you can stay ahead of any changes in activity.

Successful business practice doesn’t come over night, but with careful planning and monitoring, and a confident, committed team, sales growth will come!

For more information about RTA Business Consultants, visit our website or follow us on Twitter. 

Economic Growth Higher than Expected

The team at RTA Business Consultants were pleased to see that economic growth in the UK is increasing at a higher rate than previously expected. Great news all round for businesses, buyers and sellers!

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures that indicate a 0.8% increase in gross domestic product from July to September. This is a significant increase on the figures from the previous quarter. Estimated annual growth has increased from 1.5% to 1.9%, which suggests the long term economic plan for the country is working.

However, further reading of the ONS data reveals that the trade deficit has increased sharply from £6.2bn to £20.7bn in the third. November also saw a significant increase in public sector borrowing from £15.6bn to £16.5bn since last year. These figures call into question whether or not the government’s current recovery strategy is entirely sustainable.

On the other hand, unemployment has fallen to 7.6%, which is the lowest it’s been since 2009. This means there are now 30 million people in work. Similarly, the housing market has begun to revive, which in turn improved the country’s earnings on stamp duty.

Retail spending has increased by 2% since last year thanks to an increase in shoe, clothing and textile purchases. Interest rates are likely to stay at their 0.5% record low however, since inflation is currently holding steady at 2.1%, just 0.1% higher that the Bank of England’s 2% target.

While this is quite a mixed bag of figures, RTA Business Consultants are pleased to see a modicum of positive growth. For more posts like this, follow us on Twitter, and for a full range of our services, visit our website.