Too Lean to Startup

Starting a business is becoming a career path, almost a necessity in today's economic environment where corporate strategy is following a lean is mean strategy and effectively shutting out a lot of career opportunities for a vast number of college graduates.  What is available is a lot of contract or freelance opportunities where young professionals can hone their skills while meeting others who can provide networks that will lead to opportunities down the road.

If and when you do come up with an idea for an enterprise that somebody will actually pay money to patronize, you will need a team of skilled people to get it up and running.  There is no such thing as an entrepreneur who wears many hats in this day and age.  There are just not enough hours in the day for one or a few dedicated individuals to handle all the details that must be done to build a successful enterprise.  An old adage is still true; "Jack of all trades, Master of none".

What we have seen over the years is that the most ignored skill, at least the most discounted skill, is marketing.  Most people confuse marketing with advertising or sales but, when you are launching a new business marketing is all about research and analysis.  It's about identifying potential customers, whether or not they care about your offering, how much they are willing to pay, etc.  Too often we see in the marketing section of business plans estimates of sales that have no relationship to reality.  Often they are based on a percentage of a population or some other broad demographic characteristic.  No strategy is included most often that section of the business plan is all about tactics.

Finding a marketing partner for you startup team is essential and will reduce your cost to  market immensely.

Marketing Your Books, Magazines, Services or Products.

Marketing Your Books, Magazines, Services or Products.:

Many of the sole practitioners I have worked with over the years have benefited from a strategy of establishing themselves as thought leaders.  Today's social networking capabilities make that strategy even more important.  This is a great How To article on that subject.

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Ok, so you have a website that has a strong call to action...

In this techno savvy digital age when someone lands on your page, likes what they see and wants to engage what happens?  Click on Contact and get the proverbial request info box?  Now they will go somewhere they can talk.  Who answers your phone?  Is it the most well trained professional sales person on your staff or a minimum wage functionary who happens to be on phone duty?  The customer or prospect is taking the time to call; she's focused, interested, paying attention and willing to trust the person who comes on the line.  What does she get? "I'm sorry the person who handles that is at lunch, can I take your name and number and have him call you back?  "NO!"  Before you launch that webpage engage a contact management firm.

How to Build the Best Inbound Marketing Strategy for your Business

How to Build the Best Inbound Marketing Strategy for your Business:

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One of my mantra's for small business success is to take advantage of the latest technology.  Inbound marketing campaigns are an integral tactic in following that mantra.

The Basic Challenge of Small Businesses

According to the SBA, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. Why? What goes wrong?  Our experience does not indicate that the specific reason for failure is economic conditions, government regulation or lack of outside financing. 

What we have learned in our work with small businesses for over 40 years is that often  small businesses fail because the owners do not have the management skills, functional skills or business acumen to keep the business going.

Just about every list of reasons small businesses fail includes things like; poor planning, poor marketing, poor accounting, risk averse owner, operational mediocrity, operational inefficiencies, dysfunctional management  lack of a succession plan, etc.  What it all boils down to is inability to handle the day to day operations of a business while simultaneously keeping one's eye on changing business conditions and planning for the future. 

 Critical functions need to be covered so that a business can grow with a positive cash flow in a way that enables the owners to have time to monitor results and plan for tomorrow.  These key functions are sales generation, sales fulfillment, customer relationship management and daily accounting of business activity.  When it is not possible to hire support staff and provide them with the tools necessary to cover every critical function consider business process outsourcing.

The primary funding of a small business needs to come from the profit it generates so, it is critical to have a sales and marketing team in place and for them to be supported by a process that responds to the activity generated.  All businesses MUST have a professional process for responding to this ales and marketing activity.  In this day of instant communication, a prospect is not going to chase your down to get information they need to make a decision.  Answering machines, relays to cell phones, robo responses are all barriers to building trust with a potential customer and closing sales.  Customers want information delivered by a person in a professional manner and you want a record of that contact which will tell you what customers need, when they need it and how much they are willing to pay.  

If any of this seems to apply to your situation, consider outsourcing your sales and marketing support function.  There are many fancy names for it; Lead Management, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Coordination, etc.  Just make sure someone well trained answers your phone, e-mail and text messages promptly (24/7/365) and professionally, satisfies the caller, records the data created by the communication and takes action which will lead to a sale.

Product Commercialization from nmaclure

Keys to Small Business Success

Small Business success has always depended on the smb owner understanding and focusing on the customer.  Where failure enters is when the smb owner forgets who the customer is, what the customer needs, wants and desires and how they prefer to interact with the businesses they deal with.

Customer Relationship Management, loyalty programs, digital marketing, social media, all these "new" technologies and tactics have made the smb owners job easier, not harder.  The issue is will the smb owner recognize the importance of customer insights and invest in the technology that is available.  After all it comes at a much smaller cost than failure.

Restaurant-Hospitality.com has a good article on how restaurants have gained business and reduced costs by using loyalty programs versus daily deals.  The same strategy should be used in any business where service has value.