UK Unemployment falls - RTA Business Reports

With the news that UK unemployment has fallen to 2.16 million, RTA Business asks this week, what the current trend in employment statistics means for the savvy business owner, looking to sell their company in the current economic climate.

At RTA Business We Know Why Unemployment Numbers Matter

Here at RTA Business, we know that when you decide it’s time to part with your business, you want to receive a return on every last bit of hard work that you’ve put into your company. In order to do that, we have learned in our tenure as a business sales facilitator that if you want to receive the highest return possible, you need a favourable economic environment.

That’s why unemployment figures are key. When the unemployment rates fall, it generally means that companies are hiring; expanding to make more money. Expanding companies often look to diversify their business model, and lift their bottom lines, by buying other companies. Essentally, the lower unemployment numbers are, the more likely you are to sell your company.

An Employment Trend

The last several years have not been encouraging when it comes to unemployment numbers. The recession that hit the country due to the global economic crisis, forced companies to lay employees of in droves. At the height of the downturn, unemployment numbers were staggering.

However most financial experts agree that the UK economy is now in full-fledged recovery, partly because unemployment numbers have gradually been decreasing over the last few years. This month, the trend continues, as the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the number of people out of work fell to 2.16 million, dragging the national unemployment rate down to 6.6%. In contrast, the number of people working saw a record rise of 345,000 to hit 30.5 million; most of these people, according to the ONS, are in full time employment.

More People in Full Time Employment than Ever

David Tinsley at BNP Paribas commented on the nature of the trend to the BBC, highlighting the fact that: "The rise in employment this month is concentrated in full-time employees, not self-employment, which in the past has been used to 'talk down' the strength of the rise."

The fact that less people are unemployed since the recession, and that these people are working full time jobs, really does indicate that employers are hiring more than ever at the moment. They’re looking to expand, and we’d suggest that if you’re thinking about selling your business right now, you jump right on that!

RTA Business, Complaints Effect Businesses in These Five Ways

As part of the RTA Business complaints series this week, we want to go a little deeper into why complaints are so bad for your company.

Complaints Are Really Bad for Business

When you eventually decide that it’s time to cash up, sell your company and move on, or that you want to expand your operations by buying a new business, come to us. RTA Business are business acquisitions specialists, who ensure that you walk away with the right deal for you.

We’ve talked a lot about complaints over the past few weeks – how to avoid them, how to deal with them, why people do it etc. and we’ve told you that they’re really bad for business, especially if a potential buyer finds out about them. This week we want to go a little deeper into that.

RTA Business and the Top Five Effects of Customer Complaints

The reality is that when a customer complains about your business, it has number of ramifications that have the ability to put off a potential buyer when you decide it’s time to sell your business, including:

1)  It Damages Your Reputation: The obvious effect is that it damages your reputation because a complaint suggests you can’t deliver what you’ve promised.

2) It Costs to Deal With: Whether it’s in man hours talking the complainant down, or giving them a replacement product etc. a customer complaint will cost you money, money which you could be using to make your business more attractive to potential buyers.

3) It Encourages More People to Complain: If a dissatisfied customer discovers they aren’t the only one, they’re more likely to be willing to complain; power in numbers and all that, further damaging your reputation.

4) It Has the Potential Generates Press: If a complaint is effective enough, it could generate bad press, which makes your company look far worse to a potential buyer than a single complaint ever could. Case in point: the payday loan industry.

5) It Could Prompt a Boycott: Worse comes to worse, it could spark a campaign against you, which would combine all the previous four effects of a single complaint. Translation; you can forget making any money off the sale of your business.

Just remember, there are a number of ways that a complaint can affect your business and drive away a potential buyer so do everything you can to avoid a customer complaint!

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?

Reach for the Sky: RTA Business on the Art of Innovation

The amazing news that Google is attempting to build an honest to goodness self-driving car, only highlights the need for creativity and ambition in business, and this week, the RTA Business blog will explore just why you need to reach for the sky if you hope to make a substantial profit on the sale of your business.

It’s not as easy as showing a potential buyer your profit margins and waiting for them to sign on the dotted line. Buyers want to know that they can use your business to build on profit margins in the long term. If you’ve developed a lucrative, innovative product that fills a gap in the market, they’ll be biting your hand off to gain access to a veritable gold mine. This is why you need to reach for the sky.

Google: A Case Study in Ambition

Google is the perfect case study to highlight the benefits of ambition. They’ve practically constructed their entre brand through sheer ambition. Time and time again, Google have attempted the improbable, or at last the inadvisable (such as introducing Gmail in a saturated market) and they have seen success that has spurred them on to new heights.

They’ve become so popular because they find gaps in the market where they can make the most money - they find the practical opening then ambitiously shoot for the stars to fill it. The numbers back it up. Since it was first created in 1998, Google, according to Forbes, has become worth a staggering $382.47 billion.

RTA Business Asks: Will the Self Driving Car Work?

So is the self-driving car a step too far. It’s certainly an ambitious project; a car that will have a start/stop button, but no controls, steering wheel, pedals etc. If it’s possible, and that’s a big if, we at RTA Business believe that it could be Google’s next highly successful project.

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin explained why to the BBC, stating that it aims to "improve people's lives by transforming mobility". The amount of people this could benefit is sky high – disabled people, older people, people who can’t drive, blind people etc. There’s so much potential.

This is why you need to reach for the sky if you ever hope to sell your business. Find that gap in the market and truly fill it, and you have a gold mine on your hands, a gold mine buyers will flock to acquire for a tidy sum!

OECD Revises UK Growth Forecast

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has revised its forecast for UK economic growth this year, upping the figure to account for a strengthening financial situation. At RTA Business, we recognise that this puts you in a stronger position when you decide it’s time to sell your business.

Various reports have suggested that business leader confidence is stronger than ever this year, due to national economic recovery and expectations that growth will return to pre-recession levels by this summer. This latest report is set to further persuade business leaders that now is the time to buy your business.

The OECD Forecast

This week the OECD released its latest forecast for UK growth, in what was an upward revision of previous estimates. In November, the Paris-based organisation claimed that in 2014 the UK economy would grow by 2.4%. Now they’re suggesting that the country’s economy will expand by 3.2%. This contrasts with an OECD average national estimate of 2.2%.

There are several factors that led to this revision of OECD growth estimates and each individually and collectively suggests an economy in full-fledged recovery. This month the services sector, which has dominated in recent quarters, rose for the 16^th straight month, sterling rose to a five and a half year peak against the dollar, and economic growth rates have continued to impress.

It’s important to note here that UK growth has outstripped forecasts for not only the US and China but every country in the G7.  Furthermore, global growth is expected to measure 3.4%.

RTA Business Comments

These figures suggest one thing - that it could be the right time to sell your business, and here’s why. First, the fact that the UK economy is set to expand this year, means that buyers should have more capital and when they have more capital coming in, they tend to want to spend that to create more – what  better way to do so than to buy your business?

Secondly, these figures should boost buyer confidence in the strength of the UK economy, meaning they’ll be surer that they’ll be able to profit from your business after they’ve bought it. Finally, these figures suggest that UK companies are in a stronger position than their foreign rivals, which further boosts business leader confidence.

At RTA Business we realise that these numbers indicate one thing- you are in a particularly strong position to sell right now.