Category: Business Planning

Need more business? These tips are designed to help you get more.

The tips follow a logical sequence. However, life can have its own flow. So, you may find yourself going back and forth as you apply them – that’s normal. As always, best of luck!

1. Create a compelling message. Offer a product or service that is different than your competitors – where it counts to customers.

2. Check continuously that your advantages matter to customers. Use market research as well as customer and prospect visits. Be sure to ask good questions.

3. Motivate your staff to work together and to consistently deliver on the compelling promise.

4. Understand who your ideal customer is – that is, your target market. Know what they want, how they buy, and where they look for suppliers of your product or service.

5. Promote your service via your compelling message. Meet your prospects where they are.

6. Use social media as appropriate for your market, together with the free promotional tools on the web, including all the Google info.

7. Monitor the effectiveness of your promotion – whether the activities are generating leads and sales.

8. Ensure the necessary resources are dedicated to selling – and that they have excellent relationship-building, value selling, closing and customer care skills.

9. Build a sales pipeline, with leads in each of your four or five selling stages. Track where leads are lost or slow down. Use this information to improve the efficiency of your selling process.

10. Offer excellent customer service to maintain customers and generate word of mouth referrals – always the best!

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Bev Sykes

Leading your company had better not be like herding cats.

How do you get everyone moving in the same direction, like a finely tuned machine?

1 – Ensure your folks know the direction. Sounds simple, but often this isn’t the case. We give our employees the mushroom treatment..

2. Ensure the message on the company direction is relevant to your folks. You don’t want them daydreaming through this discussion. Make it real. Give examples. Give examples that involve your folks, the functions. Make it a discussion. Get everyone involved.

3. Set individual goals based on each person’s key role in delivering value. Make those goals the primary ones. Have the informal discussions to get your folks to buy into their role. You want passionate people when it comes to delivering customer value.

4. Create and refine systems that support delivering the value. Do Six Sigma FEMA analyses to understand the critical risk points, and address them. Foolproof the system.

5. Listen to customer feedback, and ensure team members are aware of it. The value to the customers may be shifting, and the company needs to change to address it. Market research, customer visits help to gain customer insight here.

6. Have fun with your team. Take some time to socialize, play bingo, bowl or just enjoy a BBQ. The team works hard, and friendships go a long way on a stressful day.

As always, let me know what works for you, or where you need some advice.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Digital Money World

Getting that sales growth is all about keeping your eye on the ball. Just like Novak Djokovic did to win Wimbledon on Sunday.

So, the goal is growth. Your company has its strategy in place, and it’s a good one. There is value to customers, beyond competitors’.

Once that is defined, it is a matter of promoting the company to the target market, and ensuring the company delivers on the value to customers. No simple tasks.

And, it is critical to keep your eye on the ball, that is, on the market. Are market needs changing? Is the competition catching up? Then it is imperative to stay abreast of market trends, though it is better to set them. Of course, staying ahead of the competition is the only way to maintain differentiation.

Just look at Pepsi and Coca Cola. How much differentiation is there really?

Promoting effectively involves knowing where your customers are, and so, where to reach them. If this information is not immediately available, market research can help. Spending time with the market helps most here.

Ensuring the company delivers on the value is the complex internal task. How are you going to be sure those in the company know where the added value lies? And, how are you going to be sure everyone knows not only their role, but how important it is in achieving that value?

Think on it a little, and let me know. I’ll write more on this in the next blog.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Carine06

With the internet, skype and social media, the world is small. It used to be expensive to call friends in Denmark from North America, but now it is free to e-mail or skype. This makes a virtual, global team possible.

I suspect that many of the FML readers are solopreneurs, start ups and small businesses. During this business stage, there isn’t always enough work to hire one person for a function, such as marketing.

In the past, businesses hired the needed talent. Small businesses had a tough time attracting excellent talent. Now, in the age of technology, we can work with ready-made talent who is located at their own office. They may even be half-way around the world.

There are many search engine optimization firms, marketing consultants, PR firms, market research firms and so on. How do you know who to work with?

As always, trust is paramount. So, a referral from someone you know helps, and face-to-face meeting can often be needed initially. Evaluate the expert’s credentials. Then, start with small jobs, and see how they go before working on more critical tasks or making the arrangement more permanent.

Outsourcing goes beyond marketing. There are plenty of contract manufacturing firms, and research/development firms with concentrations of technical industries.

We all know that UPS has focused on being the supply chain partner to businesses. As I look around, the stationery store becomes an important supplier to office businesses, as do the DIY stores for contractors.

So, until the work becomes a full-time job or attracts the talent needed, build a virtual ace team!

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Steve Cadman

Have you ever stopped to consider a prospect’s view of your firm? Their first contact is usually with Sales. So it is of critical importance who is selling your product.

Start ups and those who have been in business awhile have different issues.

In a start up, I’ve heard a few owners/bottle washers say there was no one else to sell. Just the first employee/owner.

We can all sell; we are all born with selling skills, right? Well, as one industry insider reminded me, keep in mind there is a range of selling skills – from nothing to everything.

If you are selling, then how effective are you? Monitor your sales pipeline, which is the four or five stages of leads as they progress from an unqualified lead to a sale. Analyze the pipeline for accomplishments and areas to improve.

If you haven’t sold before, I’d suggest taking a credible course or at the very least reading a book on selling. One of my favorites is Strategic Selling by Robert Miller, et al.

In a longer running company, you will likely have sales managers or representatives. Be sure to assess their impact on the customers. Do customers like the sales rep? Is there respect and rapport? One way to judge this is to go on sales calls, mingle with customers. Always stay close to your customers.

Take a look at the selling skills of your rep. Is s/he able to close sales? Here s/he needs to read the buying signals and ask for the sale. This takes courage, which not all nice folks have. One way to monitor this is taking a look at the number of new sales the rep closes.

In all companies, the selling skills of the people selling the product are critical to success.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Valerie Everett

Every business has competitors for its customers, who, after all, get to choose. Most business plans only focus on existing competitors. While that’s necessary, it’s not sufficient. You also need to look at the underlying structure of your industry, and assess the extended rivalry that exists within that structure. One way to do that is to apply the work of Michael Porter, which looks at the five competitive forces that (should) shape strategy.

Continue reading “Porter’s Five Competitive Forces (Part I)”

You only need one lead to make a sale, says common wisdom. However, your chances of selling increase with more leads.

So, how do you generate more leads?

1. Offer compelling products and services for your customers.

2. Be compelling. Approach prospects with a view to helping, rather than making a sale. Show your enthusiasm, smarts and ingenuity.

3. Be in the information your prospects review before buying. Know how your customer buys through market research.

4. Spend time building relationships with your target market. Understand where your target market is, gathers information – and be there to help them out. Speaking, writing, helping with associations are some ideas.

5. Market on the internet. Have a website. Get on Facebook, Twitter — if your customers will be there.

6. Give customers a chance to try out the product or service. A free trial. View it on video. Whatever works for the product or service.

7. Monitor where your leads come from, and keep doing what works!

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Billy Bob Bain

The jungle gym is a great blend of structure and chaos. Perfect for kids.

In an organization, we need that same perfect blend — the one appropriate to the company’s size. After all, we are kids at heart, right?

A start up has few systems. Expenses need to be tracked. A business plan is needed for financing. The organizational structure can flow – we are getting things going. Once the revenue stream is there, we need to know who’s on first – to ensure commitments are met.

As the organization grows, it is practical to add structure. However, keeping the chaos, the motivation, the energy and purpose is key. Adding structure while maintaining energy is a challenge. It takes adding the structure with finesse only as needed.

When the organization is choking on its own bureaucracy it’s one sign there is too much structure. Have the systems of a $300B organization been added to a much small company? If so, it will only slow the company down.

Yes, ensure employees are treated fairly across the organization, ensure laws are met, the work is safe and so on — but maintain the employee ingenuity, the ideas that serve customers and open new products and market. Keep the ability to move fast!

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Arlington County

So your company is working hard, doing everything right, and it just isn’t growing fast enough.

Well, there is the economy. The recession has slowed customer demand in most segments a lot. Still, excel in a recession and life should be even better when the economy picks up.

So, the company has a competitive advantage and it is one that matters to your customers. You have solid, objective evidence that this is true, right?

If so, the issues lie in implementation. Have you investigated buying behavior to ensure your promotional plan will meet prospects when and where they are looking for you? If not, know where to find your prospects and what they are looking for. Your promotional plan needs to take this into account.

With all the footwork done and the strategies and plans set, the key becomes implementation. How to get the message out effectively. How to brand consistently, and build value through the brand. That in itself can be a competitive advantage – with strong equity. Think of Coca Cola.

All prospect and customer touch points become critical. From the first contact as a new lead through to shipping and invoicing. What is your prospect’s or customer’s experience? Try to live it yourself, to understand how the experience REALLY is. Don’t base your decisions on internal company myths. These often hold the company in higher regard than customers do.

Quick surveys can help here. To understand what customers appreciate, would like more of, and how the company stacks up against the competition. Then solve the key issues effectively – turn them into company advantages.

It takes work, dedication, and a solid understanding of your market – prospects and customers alike. Feel free to write, tell me how it’s going, and where you are seeing the challenges and wins.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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Tove Rasmussen, of Partners Creating Wealth, offers business expertise worldwide to help organizations grow, and disadvantaged regions thrive.

Photo credit: Hectorir

Not everyone who starts a small business is an entrepreneur, nor should they be. Figuring out whether you’re an innovator, an entrepreneur or a manager can save you headaches down the road. Continue reading “Are you an Innovator, an Entrepreneur, or a Manager?”