Young businessmen’s committee suggestions

Some of you know that I am now involved in a committee at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry which is concerned with young businesspersons in this country. We have had our first meeting and have elected its chairman and his vice and we are about to have our second meeting on May 7th. In between the first and second meeting, we have been asked to provide suggestions on what the committee should be involved in and our views as to what constitute its goals.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these issues since the first meeting, and have come to a decision that what we can realistically only provide is support and training. We can’t do financing as we are not a bank, but can certainly help the businessperson in more tangible things.

Here’s an email I just sent to the group for their consideration; I am sure they too will have other ideas that we can all benefit from:

Gentlemen and lady,

First thank you for the constructive inaugural meeting we have had to establish the particulars and plot the future course of the Young Businessmen Committee. I would like to first congratulate both Sager Shaheen for his official election to the post of Chairman of the committee as well as Mo’anes Al-Mardi for being elected as vice-chairman.

I believe that the main objective of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry as a whole is to act as a support organisation for Bahraini businesses and businessmen in achieving better economic and social returns on their investments. Although this is its basic premise, quite a number of factors come into it in order to create a whole. One of these must be the provision of timely and good advice to the chamber’s members. One of the methods adopted to reach this goal is the establishment of various vertical as well as some broad-based committees to take up these concerns.

Our committee is concerned with improving the young businesspersons lot, and in order to do so we must understand what the young businesspersons actually require of us. If I may, I would like to submit the following suggestions for the committee’s consideration:

1. Establish a mechanism for committee members to interact with each other apart from the cyclical monthly meetings. The best way to do so I believe would be the simple establishment of a website (even behind a firewall and accessed only by those authorised) to disperse information and to act as a searchable repository. Systems are available (for free) to create that and I would be happy to volunteer to establish such a site, as well as a mailing list which would ensure that all members are reached, and that would archive all emails sent to/through it. This also is available for free through systems like Google. How that works is that any member can send an email to a single address and the system would ensure that it forwards that email to all members of the group.

2. As the main essence of the Chamber as well as the committee is to support young businessmen, we should meet with our target customer and see what they actually require. A simple design of a questionnaire would probably be appropriate. Once the questionnaires are received they should be processed and action plans enacted to address the points raised.

3. Again, in the support role, we should mount short and sharp courses to assist the young businessperson to better manage her business and increase her revenue and profit. I think the following courses/workshops might be considered:

– a – how to interpret financial statements
– b – how to keep your books (accounts)
– c – why auditing your accounts are important
– d – interviewing techniques
– e – customer service
– f – finding financing
– g – writing business plans
– h – budgeting
– i – commission structures for sales people / managing people
– j – how to create a pipeline
– k – how to generate leads
– l – competing for government business

and I’m sure quite a number of other subjects which are quite germane to the young businessperson.

Funding these workshops should be simple as they probably be best done by established consultancy and accounting firms; I am fairly sure that these firms would do these courses free of charge, after all, they will have a captured market and this opportunity would be a perfect lead generation for their own businesses!

4. Beyond training and workshops, I think most young businesspersons suffer from the absence of financing; it would be a good idea to explore ways in which the Chamber can act as a medium to enable this young businessman to get the required investment, the most appropriate way probably would be by assessing a business plan and helping the businessperson in distilling and embellishing it in a way that could professionally be presented to a financial institution, thus helping them in their research. The last thing I believe we should do is mirror what the Bahrain Development Bank is doing or any other financial institution for that matter, we are not a bank.

To end this, let me recap what the suggestions put forth here are, they are: support, training and research offered in a professional manner to the young businessperson in order for these businesses to grow and contribute positively to our economy.

See you on the 7th.

Best regards
Mahmood Al-Yousif