Special Occasions

OK, let's market and sell your business. Where do you start? With what you have!

In my 20's and 30's, I spent a lot of time as a stand up. Following the path that everyone takes, there comes a time when you have to stop stealing material from other comics and write your own. Frightening at first, but you soon get attuned to what is required for this. Look at what is around you, and twist it to show a different point of view. Add certain standard tricks and gimmicks to allow your audience to draw mental pictures of what you are presenting to them, and deliver it in such a way as to get a reaction - hopefully a funny, and appreciative one.

While this may sound more like a Sales approach than a marketing one, look again at the first part of the statement: Look at what is around you.

You have opened this business to fill a need with a solution in a marketplace.
What is the need - promote it.
Who are you talking to - promote in a way that they will understand.
What is your solution - Promote it.

Now, look one level deeper:
Where are you based? - Promote it.
What kind of demographic are you marketing to - write in a way that they will understand.
How do they get their information - Advertise and promote there.

OK - let's move on:
What time of year are you about to enter? - Create a 'hook' to interest people, and warn them that they need your product or service then.
What is happening to their lives? Are we all going through the same thing? Promote it - let the know that you are exactly the same as they are, and you can help them, or at least inform them.
Who are your business neighbors? What are they doing, and can you do it better.
What is your competition doing, and how can you do it better..faster..cheaper...with more benefit.

How will you say it?
Over the last while since you began thinking of this particular business and it's model, you have been inundating yourself and others with information. Now is the time to pass that on to your customers in a way that they will understand. Look back over your business reports and plans, your e-mails, your brochures - anything that gives information. This is your raw material.

I will address Customer service in a future post, but here is something to use as a platform that I have found useful: A customer is one that buys your product ONLY from you. It is a repeating business transaction that they are happy to do. A real customer is a customer for life. This is what you are trying to achieve, so start from the beginning.

Before long, you will now how to approach those 40+ year old stay at home moms with not much income. You will do it clearly, and in a way that is attractive to them. You will do it in a way that reminds them it is Spring, we are in a global recession, your store is close to where they live, and you are a local specialist - much better than the chain guys that they are shopping at at the moment. You will show them the proof of what you are selling, and how your industry sits at present. You will also offer them a discount for the first 1, 5, or 10 they buy in order to get them coming back to you repeatedly.

See how easy that was? It's a series of special occasions, that only you and they know of. It is the start not only to a lifelong relationship, it is the start of your business empire.

The ONLY 3 things you care about are....

Now that you have realized that you probably are a member of the 10% of the population that can be a small or medium-sized business owner, it is time to act. Yes – it’s that simple. The work you have completed to now will have given you a great deal of information about yourself and - if you are still reading blogs and other items like this - you still have the desire to learn more. In itself, that means that you have an entrepreneurial streak – something that a great many managers and other business types do not. So let’s go. No-one is keeping anything from you. There is a whole world of businesses whose sole function it is, is to help other businesses. Believe me, you are going to meet a whole bunch of them I the next few months and beyond. In fact, you would be forgiven in thinking that the other 90% NOT running their own business are visiting you to service yours!
You best friend is going to be your Bank Manager, no matter what anyone else says. He is the one that you are going to go to (if you haven’t already) to borrow money, or give yourself a second mortgage in order to support the start of this venture, and he is the one that will control re-payment, further expansion via loans, and a thousand other things that you haven’t thought of yet. Trust this person, and perhaps avail yourself of a lot of the financial products he has to assist your business – See? Even your bank is a supplier, and will want more of your custom!
You are going to have to come up with a business plan first in order to impress this guy. He hears more than a few pitches every day about budding businesses, and he has heard most of the pitches already. This doesn’t mean that you should treat a meeting with the bank like a job interview, but looking the part goes further than you may think. Every business has to satisfy 3 different components. These are Need, Marketplace, and Solution. If you have your eye on a business right now, you have probably answered these three questions already, but perhaps in a different form.
You may have seen something and thought: “What a great idea – why didn’t I think of this?”, or “Why didn’t someone think of this before?” This means that you have noticed a good or service that people want, and have identified a need. Next up is where? Who is going to buy it, or use it, and where are they? While it is tempting to see a market for fun and sporty Australian Boomerang covers, if you are the US Midwest, servicing the people that are going to buy them may stretch your budget somewhat.
Who is going to use it or buy it, and how can you get them to your store as fast and often as possible.
Next, do these two add up to a solution? I refer back to Starbucks as one of my favorite business stories.
That company obviously believed that there was a need for an Italian-style coffee establishment, and they also saw the potential for having one every sixty feet in some cities. While your bank manager will want some ideas on how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to be, the most important thing is to make him or her see that this has potential. That you have the solution that answers the need, and fits into a certain marketplace.
Of course, not mentioned here is Passion. Every single entrepreneur has it: A love for what they are doing, because it fills a need. There are less depressed individuals running their own enterprises than there are in salaried positions, because these people have a say everyday in how their business is run, and have a direct feel of the consequences of all decisions made – this is probably why you are looking for one. In the end, therefore, your money lender will need to see that passion in order to understand the need, marketplace, solution equation. This cannot be faked, so don’t even try it. If you don’t love it, don’t do it. If you have found the answer to your business prayers, and you can fill this equation, move on. You are soon going to impress someone enough to fund you, and then you are at the start line, so now is the time. Due diligence over a business plan and all of the plans you are going to make about expenses and probable revenue are just over the horizon, so the closer you get opening, the more like a Kid at Christmas you are going to feel.
Well, right now, it’s December 20th, so let the excitement begin – it’s good practice for telling everyone else about this great adventure you are on.

How to find the World's best business.

For those of you following this blog, you have now faced some 'home truths'.

Do you have what it takes to become successful, and do you have the right product to fill a need?
Are you able to look long-term for your businesses' success, and can you afford to keep going through bad times in order to see the light at the end of the recession tunnel?
Can you promote, advertise, be responsible for, and sell your product in order to create the customers' need to buy?

If you are still with us, it's time for a field trip. Nothing too exotic, I'm afraid, just down to the local mall, but it will give you a break from the computer. Hopefully, there's a Starbucks, or something similar, there, so that you can look and listen; people watch and learn.

Most times we hit this place with one thought in mind: How can I get what I have come for, and then get out as fast as possible. Try relaxing into the mindset of looking and learning, listening and seeing. Once you take the regular pressures you have out of the equation, you can start seeing under the superficial look of the place, and see how this organic system works under the surface. How all of the different components work together. What you are doing is a first step in marketing, because you have the idea of what people are shopping for, and now you are going to discover how merchants fill that requirement.

Who is selling cheap, and why? Where are all of the crowds heading? If people are just window shopping, what are their destinations and why? What are the most popular stores and what to they have that others don't? If they are promoting a particular good or service over others, why are they doing it, and how? How much would it cost for you to do the same? Who is new to the mall, and what are they doing to announce their arrival? Before you got here today, what local advertising was being done to promote what stores, and how much did it cost?

Even if you are planing an online business, this is a good exercise, because online shoppers act exactly the same as offline ones. They roam the Internet in herds, and enter stores (websites) for particular reasons. Your costs may be lower than renting a mall store, but as we discussed before there are plenty of unseen costs to do with advertising and marketing your business that need to be planned before penny is spent.

In both worlds, you have competition. How long have they been around, and how far ahead are they of you? What has it cost them to get this far, and work out a sales and marketing cycle to take you through this first cycle. This could be either a time schedule based on where you think you will be in 2, 4 or 6 months, or even to get through a particular time of year like Easter or Christmas. It's also time to take notes on how you will measure your progress, and what back up details you will require to show legal or investment partners that require proof of who you are, where you have been, and where you are going.

Once this is done, it's time to finish the Late, and get back to the computer to find out more about your business model, and how others have done it. Online there are many websites, forums, and blogs like this offering free advice. Most of them have a product or service to sell you, and you can spend some of your seed money getting advice form others, but bear this in mind:

Only about 10 - 15% of the populace will ever do this. Everyone else wants to, and thinks that they can, but they fall by the wayside for many reasons. You will soon see the information services full of people that think that all of their questions can be answered free of charge by someone else. This is a lazy approach, and you won't learn anything from would be entrepreneurs waiting for answers. You will have done more in your field trip than most people ever do, so learn yourself, find the right information, and carry on. As part of your back up documentation, there should be a time line of what you need to tart: Time and money, of course, but a set of benchmarks to reach is crucial, especially in your early days.

Finally, remember the faces of the people that run these businesses. Are they THAT much different from you? Do they possess something that you don't? Of course not. they do it because they believe. Do you?

Good! Let's get started.