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Owners Of Small Businesses Undergo Business Training

By GNA
Business & Finance Owners Of Small Businesses Undergo Business Training
NOV 4, 2017 LISTEN

A day's workshop on micro business has been held in Accra with a charge on small business owners to aim at growing from their status to join the small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and contribute immensely to the country's economy.

The workshop was organised by Financial Inclusion Forum Africa in collaboration with the Foundation for Financial Inclusion (FFI), the Centre for Financial Inclusion and Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited as part of the Global Financial Inclusion Week 2017.

It was on the theme: 'New Products, New Partnership and New Potential'.

The participants made of micro and small enterprise owners, were taken through topics such as good financial management: the secrets to growth from micro to SMEs, sources of finance for the micro business, strategic marketing and improving on customer experience.

Mr Joshua Mensah, the Executive Director of FFI, urged participants to add value to themselves and their businesses to attract more customers saying, more start-ups collapse due to lack of value addition.

He said information added to knowledge was known as education hence urging participants to continually seek knowledge on the nature of their various businesses and to make sure that they had enough information on the market to apply.

Mr Mensah said there was the need to understand business development process to ensure that the entrepreneurs were clear on the stage they had reached in development and to envisage the direction in which they were moving.

He said for any business venture to thrive, there was need for innovation and creativity as well as the quantification of the product or service available.

He urged the micro and small business owners to be clear on their business concepts, values, mission and vision of their businesses.

He indicated the need to be competent with the business saying, 'You must be very good at what you do and there should be something peculiar about your business. For you to be great, you need to be passionate with your potential for profitability'.

On his part, Mr Confidence Agblobi, the Director of Marketing at the GH Media School, told participants to appreciate their customers because they were the reasons why they were and would continue to be in business.

He urged the micro and small enterprise owners to change the way and manner they handled their customers and to ensure that the customers were satisfied to guarantee a possible comeback.

Mr Israel Sowah, an Investment Consultant, told participants never to go for a loan to start a business but could go for a loan only when they needed to expand their businesses to the next higher level.

He urged them to exhaust all available sources of income for their businesses before considering the loan facility option.

Mr Sowah said: 'The requirement for financing is very essential to doing business and you need to register your business as well as have business plan to access a loan facility.'

He indicated that collateral for a loan facility was not only building or any immovable property but it also included fixed deposits with banks, Letters of Understanding, Letters of Credit and Insurance companies guaranteeing on behalf of the borrower.

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