Be Different or be dead

September 7, 2015

How a small business can easily create a winning business plan

Source: Pexels

How a small business can easily create a winning business plan.

If you own or operate a small business, how much time do you spend developing your business strategy? If you’re like most small business owners, not much.
Every small business leader is busy working IN their business; they don’t necessarily spend enough time working ON their business.

I often hear “I don’t have time to plan, I’m too busy running my business”, or “Everything is so unpredictable these days I don’t see the point.” They are consumed by day-to-day priorities and crises and have little time and energy left to develop a strategy for their business.

In addition, developing a strategic plan is often viewed as an expensive, complicated and time consuming activity that is an interruption to the “normal” flow of business.

The truth is that every business needs a strategy; otherwise progress can’t be measured and success never achieved.

Building your strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated time consuming exercise; I have developed an approach that results in having your strategy in not more than three days, and you can begin executing it on the fourth.

To not have a plan is to aimlessly bump and grind along, accepting whatever performance you can deliver.

My strategic game plan — SGP — makes it easy for you to plot your future. It can be created in less than 2 days with your small business leadership team in an informal and fun setting.

It’s called a ‘game plan’ because the focus is to build a just about right direction that can be executed rather than waste time trying to create the perfect plan which looks good on paper but no more.

My process is based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers define the strategy.

#1. Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?

Do you want $1 million in revenue within 24 months or do you want to be more aggressive and go for $5 million?

Most planning processes end with financial results. They calculate the growth results of executing the strategic direction chosen.

My process starts with your growth intentions, and builds the strategy from HOW BIG you want to be. The reason is simple: more aggressive growth goals require a more aggressive — and risky — strategy, and more moderate growth goals need a more incremental — and less risky — strategy.

The traditional planning approach forgets that there is an extremely tight relationship between revenue growth and strategic intent; my strategic game plan doesn’t and that’s what makes my approach DiFFERENT than others.

#2. Customers — WHO do you want to SERVE?

You have a goal to grow revenue 25% annually over the next 36 months. The next question is where are you going to get it? Where are you going to invest your scarce resources of time and money?

You have a choice here; customers are not all created equal and you need to focus on those who have the potential of satisfying your growth goals and that leverage the core competencies of your business.

It boils down to selecting a group of customers who collectively have the potential to generate the revenue you have decided to go after.

To get the right answer to this question requires an intimate understanding of the various customers you serve. You can’t choose the customer group to generate the revenue you covet if you don’t understand the propensity of your various customer segments to buy from you — discover their secrets and success will follow.

#3. Competitors — HOW will you compete and WIN?

It would be nice if you were the only provider of products and services to the customer group you’ve chosen, but that’s not likely to be the case. There is likely to be healthy aggressive competitors targeting the same customers you want to target, so the challenge you face is to determine how you will differentiate your organization from all others you will be competing with.

Why should people choose your organization when they have other choices available? What makes your team special in view of the alternatives available?

If you can’t give your chosen customers relevant, compelling and unique reasons why they should buy from you and not your competitors then unfortunately you have no other option but to compete by offering lower prices than everyone else, which is rarely a viable long term strategy for a small business with limited economies of scale and scope.

HOW to WIN is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain a sustainable competitive advantage over others who compete with you for the customers you’ve chosen to serve — the WHO.

My method is to create the ONLY statement that defines precisely what you and only you provide the customers you are targeting.

SGP soundbite — The final step in my process is to integrate the answers to all three questions as the high level summary of the strategic intent you’ve chosen.

“We will (HOW BIG) by focusing our scarce resources on (WHO to SERVE). We will compete by (HOW to WIN).”

Here’s an example:

“We will grow sales revenue by 25% over the next 36 months by serving the needs of four seasons vacationers in Washington State. We will compete and win by being the only organization creating personalized experience packages that incorporate the many activities that Whistler has to offer.”

The traditional business planning process has its limitations for small business. It generally requires more time than the small business leader has to devote to the task, and it costs more than most small businesses are prepared to pay.

3 questions; 3 answers that will define an effective strategy for your small business because it recognizes the special challenges that small businesses face.

Give it a try.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 9.7.15 at 05:05 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

August 17, 2015

Why retaining existing customers is better than getting new ones

Source: Pexels

Why retaining existing customers is better than getting new ones.

Coming in

Most marketing organizations spend too much time on figuring out how to acquire new customers, but devoting a disproportionate amount of resource to this task is short sighted.

New customer acquisition tactics are pretty basic and don’t require a great deal of marketing acumen. Prices are reduced to try and hook ‘newbies’ or give-aways like free iPads it TV’s are used as carrots in the enticement process.

I’m amused over these approaches because they assume that if you capture a new customer this way, they won’t leave you for the same reason. The reality is, that if you acquire a new customer by offering them 3 months of free service, they will be with you for a short period of time until they can get a better offer elsewhere.

Wake up marketers. If you enticed them to come, they will leave you in a heartbeat for the same. People that shop around and move for a better offer show no loyalty to any organization.

Coming back

Rather than trying to get newbies to ‘come in’, organizations should be dedicating most of their resources to get their existing loyal customers to ‘come back’.

The tactic should be to do anything to keep them coming back. The mindset that works is the unwavering belief that you have to earn today’s customer’s business everyday.

It’s easier to launch a new customer acquisition program than invest the time and energy of every moment of everyday to continue to earn the business of those who trusted you to and made the leap to you in the past.

But keeping the coming back is far more productive in the long term than trying to get new ones to come in.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.17.15 at 05:41 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

August 10, 2015

Why a divergent stands out from the crowd and is awesome

Source: Unsplash

Why a divergent stands out from the crowd and is great.

What are you: a faction member or a divergent?

Factions are groups of sameness.

Crowds controlled by a set of rules; expected to think and behave in a calculated way.

A member of a faction is commanded to conform to a predetermined set of societal rules.

They are crafted from a common blueprint; stamped with the same tattoo.

A Divergent, on the other hand, is an independent thinker that can’t be controlled.

They create their own box to play in.

They are feared by faction leaders because their actions can’t be predicted and they have a disregard for any value set and rule system they can’t identify with.

We need more Divergent’s.

We need people who challenge; who question; who like to be CoNTRARIAN; who are disgusted with the status quo; who are ok with putting it all on the line.

I wonder what a faction of Divergent’s would look like?

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.10.15 at 04:35 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

July 20, 2015

Why ‘servant’ marketing is way better than flogging products

Source: Unsplash

Why ‘servant’ marketing is way better than flogging products.

Flogging is about ME; servant marketing is about YOU.

My regular reader will know that I rant about the need to banish the flogging mentality in business; to move away from pushing stuff at people.

Flogging is ‘It’s all about me’, supply-oriented marketing where the focus is on what is supplied rather than on what people demand.

Flogging is ‘presumptive marketing’ where businesses decide what will satisfy us and will make us happy.

Because they have a supply mentality they presume to know what is best for us.

Furthermore, flogging presumes that products they create for the ’average’ customer will fit the needs of everyone.

The flogger has a limited life span.

People have more choice today than ever before. Their wants and desires are complex. They lead busy and varied lives. And they are looking to organizations to be responsive to their particular wants and desires.

They are empowered. If they can’t get their special needs satisfied by their current company they will leave them in a heartbeat for another.

Successful marketing tomorrow will be built from ‘It’s all about you’.

Marketing that serves rather than flogs. Marketing that seeks to discover what individuals want rather than presuming that what is produced for the masses will work for them.

With an abundance of choice it’s pretty obvious that people will go where they are heard and where they will get special personalized attention; where they are served.

To get on the serving marketing track, ask these three questions:

▪️Who am I paying attention to? — This is not about a mass market, it’s about an individual. You can’t effectively serve markets (too many people with diverse wants). You can only produce for markets. Serving requires that you look at each person separately. One size never fits all.

▪️What are the unique characteristics of this person? — How are they different? What makes them special? What are their secrets? Be prepared to invest the time to discover what makes them tick.

This is not a quick process. Earning trust and the right to know her at a more intimate level is not a wham-bam-thank-you-mam process.

▪️What personalized ‘thing’ can I create or do to for them to reflect their distinctiveness? — What is the specific thing I can do for them to make them happy? The key here is not to think about whether or not your thing applies to anyone else. It doesn’t have to. It shouldn’t.

Remember: serving and flogging part ways here. Flogging always tries to find a solution that applies to as many people as possible.

Serving, on the other hand, tries to deliver a unique solution for each and every person.

Serving increases the relevance factor.

It’s DiFFERENT.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 7.20.15 at 05:42 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink