Business and Money Tips

From South China Morning Post Jan 2018 Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest internet company by market value, is on a collision course with Apple and Alphabet with its aggressive push into mini mobile applications, which allow users to bypass traditional app stores and run programs directly within its WeChat application. Tencent has re-engineered the WeChat messaging app in a way that applications smaller than 10 megabytes can run instantly on WeChat’s interface. It is now offering 580,000 mini programs after just one year of development, compared to the 500,000 mobile apps that Apple’s App Store published from 2008 to 2012, according to Hu Renjie, WeChat’s mini program director. “The mini program is a brand new product model which can seamlessly link the offline and the online together,” said Hu, adding that the mini program scheme has attracted 1 million developers. As well as bypassing the need for app stores, mini programs offer speed of access to users because they can be lo...

It has become very common nowadays to read flyers and hear people saying, "Now you can enter the vast 1.4 billion Chinese market using WeChat".  In fact many trainers, myself included in the past, have told the whole world that if you too want to enter the market of China and Chinese, you have to use WeChat.  It seems very logical to use the bait of huge Chinese market to attract people to use WeChat.  Is this true?  In my earlier article (you can read it at here ), I wrote that if the only reason for you to use WeChat is to enter the market of China and Chinese, you better don't use Wechat.   This is because your monetary and selfish reason will soon be detected by the Chinese and they will detest you, not like you. It is like the Chinese saying that they want to enter the US market and so they start using Facebook and Whatsapp. But we know that the Americans don't want people to use these tools to try to sell to them, Americans want the Chinese to use th...

If your business derives 80% of its sales from WeChat, you are called a Wechatpreneur (微商), also called Technopreneur or Mumpreneur (if you are a stay-at-home-mum).  There are 8 ways that you can be a Wechatpreneur at ZERO COST:  Moments (朋友圈) . If you have more than 2,000 friends on WeChat, your Moments posts (if they are interesting and not just plain advertisements) will start generating comments and likes.  You post 3 to 5 Moments a day and people contact you via comments, or in the links or other contacts that you provide in the Moments posts Groupchats (群聊).   You form groupchats by gathering people who have shown interest in what you do. Your groupchats are very active with mini leaders and fans who support your Groupchat posts. Every day you are adding new people to the groupchats.  You are also forming new groupchats every day, some of which are sub-groups. By far Groupchats is the most common and effective to sell on WeChat FOC.  Message ...

You are a manager, executive, technician or professional. You have achieved certain success in life, yet deep at night, you wake up and wonder if this is what your life is about. You also realize that with the advent of mobile phones, relationships between you and your spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends and relatives are getting more and more distant. You guys just don't seem to talk as much as in the past! We all know that every problem we faced in our life is all because subconsciously, we are still living in a slumber state. Hence, true awakening is the only answer to unlocking the key to the problems. ·       Only when you are truly awake, can your consciousness be enlightened, ·       Only when you are truly awake, can your energy stay fresh, ·       Only when you are truly awake, can you have surpassed power ·       Only when you are truly awake, can you...

We know that in WeChat, you can simply add strangers as your friends using 'People Nearby' feature, search for contacts and add from Groupchats.  But what determines people's acceptance of you is your profile.   Your Profile must have the following features for people to accept you readily:  1. Use Your Real Name, not Psesodonym  2. A proper or Professional photo that is not far from your real self 3. 'Whats up' to state what you are currently most occupied with.  If you put in things like 'Like to add new friends', it shows that you are more a seller than a real contact.  This will put people off.   4. Use both Chinese and English names, because 90% of WeChat users are Chinese but they also like English names 5. Do not expose your phone number in your profile, for it shows that you are too hard-up for business and people will fear to accept you as their friend For instance, my profile (search for me under the ID 'AndyThe...

Other than the common 10 misunderstandings about WeChat, there following three prevalent thinking that must be corrected: 1. People in China Cannot Follow My WeChat Account I have over 211 friends who live in China and they follow my Moments posting every day.  I even taught one of them English via WeChat. Definitely, people in China can follow my WeChat account.  But if I were to create my overseas Official Account, people in China cannot follow and read my overseas Official Account.  But if these people from China opened their WeChat accounts using their e-mails and QQ accounts and not their mobile number, they can follow all overseas official accounts.   Note that official accounts are mini-sites on WeChat, they are not the same as the usual personal WeChat account that most people use every day 2. WeChat Wallet Cannot Be Opened Outside China Anyone in this world can open WeChat Wallet easily. They just need one of the following: bank card fr...

WeChat is a very powerful tool.  It has 28 unique useful functions that Whatsapp and Facebook don't have.  Why are people not using WeChat as much as Whatsapp? Lack of friends on WeChat? We use Whatsapp and Facebook more often as most of our friends are on FB & Whatsapp but not on Wechat. Do you know that in Singapore, 3 out of 4 mobile phone users are using WeChat? That's 4 million people using WeChat. Are your friends using WeChat?   If they are, are YOU their WeChat friends?  *People from China only use WeChat* So if you want to connect with them, you have no choice but to use WeChat. Don't know Chinese? WeChat can now translate 21 languages including moments posts and news! And voice translation too! WeChat Moments work like Facebook newsfeeds, you can post anything you like, including 9 photos and videos within 10 seconds.   Now you too can learn WeChat and become a pro! Come and j...

Sales trainers like to teach people the concept of overcoming objections. To me, objections are a waste of time. This is because closing is an inside job. The salesperson deep down must believe in closing the sale and not focus on overcoming objections.  When salespeople start overcoming objections, they are placing themselves in conflict with their customers when they should be establishing collaborative relationships instead. Often overcoming objections set the stage for polite disagreements and respectful differences of opinion, forcing salespeople to defend their solutions. At worst, it turns the sales process into a battle in which the salesperson goes into a battle an attack mode to 'win' the sale. In fact, words like 'persist', 'convince', 'persuade' all imply such aggressive behaviour. We all know that you could win an argument and lose the sale. It doesn't have to be this way. Salespeople can choose another approach: prevent...

We all know WeChat is such a powerful tool as it has 28 unique useful functions that Whatsapp and Facebook do not have.  Why are people not using WeChat as much as Whatsapp? There are 3 hurdles when it comes to using WeChat: 1. Lack of friends Yes, the reason we use Whatsapp and Facebook so much is that we have many friends on them but we have few friends on WeChat.   We know that in Singapore, 3 out of 4 mobile phone users are using WeChat. This means that there are not few but at least 4 million people using WeChat in Singapore . The question is are your friends using WeChat?  If they are, are you guys WeChat friends?  One way to check if your friends are using WeChat is to simply find them on your phone's contact list. Simply go to 'Contacts' page on WeChat, press the '+' on top, select 'Add Contacts', then select 'Mobile Contact' and press 'Upload Contacts'.  Your WeChat account will simply tell you which of your friends on yo...

In our previous article , we talked about the one and only reason to use WeChat is to go back to our Chinese roots.  In that article (you can read it at here ), I mentioned that being an ethnic Chinese, it is important to know and live the Chinese culture.  The other day my friend Divandran, who's has roots in India, asked me how can he as an Indian go back to his Indian roots with WeChat, a predominantly Chinese tool.  I told him, "Yes, of course, you have Chinese roots in your blood".  He was shocked!  We all know that the word 'Chinese' is not a racial or political term. In fact, if you look at China's history you will realize that throughout its 5,000 years of unbroken civilisation, there are many non-Chinese that invaded and ruled China. Some even established large dynasties lasting several hundred years, like the Jurchen's Jin Dynasty (109 years), Mongolian's Yuan Dynasty (97 years) and Manchurian's Qing Dynasty (268 years). If you lo...

You got a problem in sales. Your product is not first in its class, nor is it second. Maybe your product is outmoded. Or it hasn’t been positioned correctly.  Maybe it is competing in a very crowded market. It doesn’t matter the reason.  The fact is people are not going to buy your product, no matter how you sell. Welcome to Selling Sand to the Arabs, the situation faced by people from selling ice to the Eskimos to selling hot weather to Singaporeans. If you are now selling a product that few have, like iPhone, or you are selling something at the lowest price, like Xiaomi, do not read further. This course is for people who want to sell when people don’t want to buy. SELING SAND TO THE ARABS Date: 23 Feb 2018 Friday 9 am to 12.30 pm Fee: $149 each (usual fee: $298)         $99 each for 2 and above         $59 each for 5 and above (80% off) Venue: 89 Short St 09-03A, Gol...

Yesterday I met a Sales Director from a Fortune 500 company. He commented that many of the so-called sales training in Singapore and Asia are actually motivational and goal setting training disguised as sales training. They often get people on the high during the course but leave them unsure of what to do after the training.  Most of the sales training do not have adequate sales strategies and techniques. They often teach things that even 10-year old kids know: ask questions, overcome objections and close the sale.  We teach people more than that. We often cover situations that people consider impossible - how to Sell the Impossible. Many people consider the following 10 situations to be selling the impossible: 1.      Prospect has just bought from your closest competitor 2.      Your product pricing is way too high to be considered 3.      Your salespeople have little knowledge to c...

As most of us know, the main reason for using WeChat is to get connected with people from China.  Recently one of my friends asked me, "I don't go to China, and I am already very busy serving the Singapore market and have no time serving the Chinese (non-Singaporean Chinese) living here. Can I don't use WeChat?" Well, you don't have to use WeChat if you are not interested in serving the market that uses WeChat, which is mainly the non-Singaporean Chinese living in Singapore and the region.  Many of us would think of WeChat as a business tool, and the incentive for using WeChat is to capture a wider market so that we can earn more money and probably get rich. Is it so?  If your reason for using WeChat is mainly to make money and nothing else, I suggest you don't use WeChat.  For sooner or later, your selfish motives will be known to people and people will start to abandon you for being so money-minded. To me, the one and the only reason to use WeChat is...