Source Marketing Direct managing director Hector Montalvo was a keynote speaker at a national entrepreneurship event held in South Africa from the 9th – 11th May.
Hector Montalvo was chosen to speak at the conference due to his management of outsourced sales and marketing firm Source Marketing Direct, which has maintained consistent and sustainable growth over the last 2 years. The firm is based in central London and has regional offices in Hampshire, Merseyside, Norfolk, Greater Manchester, and Scotland. Due to explosive growth last year, the firm expects to open 5 more offices within the next quarter.
The entrepreneurship conference was held in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State province in South Africa. Business owners and entrepreneurs from around Free State and Gauteng attended the 3-day event. The first day included sessions on Turning Potential into Reality, Driving the Organisation, and Developing Multiple Organisations. Saturday’s seminars consisted of the topics Cycle of Development, Time Management and Personal Development. Thinking Big was the theme of Sunday’s seminar, followed by a question and answer session with all the guest speakers. Source Marketing Direct managing director Hector Montalvo feels that the event was a success: “The speakers received a good reception from the audience, and there were some well thought-out questions at the end which demonstrated that people had really taken the information on board. I feel that events such as these have more of a lasting impact than videoconferencing. We could have easily done our presentations this way, but since Source Marketing Direct is renowned for face to face personal presentations, it would have detracted from everything that our business stands for.”
South Africa is the second-largest economy in Africa, accounting for almost a quarter of the continent’s gross domestic product. Source Marketing Direct managing director Hector Montalvo believes that conferences such as this are important to help drive the country’s economy forward, especially as reports indicate that entrepreneurship still has some way to go in South Africa. African newspaper Mail & Guardian reports that the country has consistently had one of the world’s lowest attendance rates for Global Entrepreneurship Week – just 2,309 people attended the South African GEW in 2012 out of a population of over 51 million. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports that only 14% of South Africans intend to start a business in the next 3 years, compared with 43% of Chileans, 36% of Brazilians and 20% of Chinese. “The weekend event was well-attended, which is encouraging given the reports about South Africa’s entrepreneurship scene. These events are so important in helping to develop peoples’ mindsets to become more self-sufficient and entrepreneurially minded,” says Hector Montalvo, managing director of Source Marketing Direct.
Source Marketing Direct is an outsourced B2B and events marketing company working with clients in the field of finance, energy, non-profit and telecommunications.
http://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-11-29-00-south-africas-poor-performance-in-entrepreneurship-events