For a business owner, there are only a few things more worrying than seeing your business stagnate, especially when you know there are a hundred competitors circling around ready to snap up your clients. That was the position Samuel Kenneth Idan Jnr found his I.T. solutions start-up in. Browsing the internet one day, he visited the British Council Website and found the advertisement for applications into the Jobs for Youth Migration and Employment programme. He was selected and started the initial stage 5 day training. Even though he could potentially lose new clients by locking up to attend the training, he asked an associate to manage the business in his absence. In his own words, “I knew after the knowledge and enlightenment about entrepreneurship training I would be equipped. In respect to that, I liaised with a close associate to manage my business in absence.”
“My business direction has been more volatile and lacked some financial discipline and record keeping but after the training I can agree to the fact that I am heading to a good place. I was able to track down my account balance properly and moreover build a new tendency to promote my business through social media presence and web portal.”
Samuel also added that he has been able to get the edge over his competitors due to techniques like quotation best practices and pitching all of which he learnt during the entrepreneurship training. He reports that due to this he has seen a 70 per cent increase in client volume and these new clients result from word of mouth referrals from the older clients happy with the unique services he provided. In his own words, Samuel says, “ he has out grown my clientele base”. In order to meet the increasing demand, he now has five workers helping him and is looking to employ five more come the end of the year.
Samuel is currently rebranding his business so he can position himself for partnerships with international I.T corporations like Microsoft and Apple.