OREANDA-NEWS  Representatives of small and microbusiness can receive expert advice from experienced entrepreneurs in the "Ask an Entrepreneur" project from the Savings Bank. Current businessmen who know from their own experience how to build a business, overcome crises and scale will act as mentors. Clients will be able to choose the depth of immersion themselves: get a quick answer to a specific question in one hour-long online meeting or complete a full-fledged mini-program of five meetings.
The first format is a point—to-point and free consultation, where a mentor helps to see the business from the outside, identify a key goal and outline a trajectory. If the tasks require a comprehensive approach, the entrepreneur can continue working in a different format — according to the program "Five meetings that will change your business", designed for two to three months of systematic study.

Mentors are not random people, but trusted experts. These are clients of the Savings Bank with an operating business, annual revenue of 20 million rubles and more than 10 years of experience. Each of them has completed special mentoring training at the Savings Bank, which has accumulated five years of experience and best practices of the company. It is important that Beac has certified all the experts and confirmed their business results. Mentors were selected from 38 regions of the country. This will help to take into account the local specifics of the market.
For clients, participation in the project opens up opportunities to accelerate growth, increase profits and reach a new level. This format helps to minimize risks, find a way out of crisis situations and gain applied experience rather than a dry theory. Mentors also receive tangible benefits: they structure their own experience, improve their thinking, expand the business environment and find new ideas for development.

"It is important for us to support entrepreneurial initiatives and help scale successful businesses, so we have launched and are developing a format in which existing entrepreneurs can share their experiences with newcomers. We have created lectures where successful entrepreneurs share real-life cases, life hacks, and ways to solve problems in different fields. This is not a textbook lecture, but a live workshop. We have not just launched a one—time program, but are building a permanent support system for small businesses," said Sergey Melamed, Director of Sberbank's Small and Microbusiness division.