Posted on April 21, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Odds are that you or one of your key staff excels at sales; Few businesses survive long, no matter how great their product, pricing, or service, without at least one strong rainmaker on the roster. If you could clone your Rainmaker several times — effectively doubling, tripling, or quadrupling your Rainmaking expertise — you’d probably be able to grow significantly. The problem, however, is this can be costly and sometimes it’s just impractical. Due to the specialization/experience required, training, the inevitable ramp-up phase, and the fact that many new hires don’t work out, sales is very difficult for most small businesses to expand and profitably grow to a meaningful scale.
Enter advertising, the tool that many businesses turn to increase revenue at a meaningful and profitable level. Advertising, when done right, is simply Mass-Selling. When it does the exact same things that a good Rainmaker does, advertising can actually ‘sell’ to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of prospective customers at once.
Many businesses that advertise (or used to) might argue that this is idealistic at best and wrong-headed at worst. They’ve tried advertising and it doesn’t deliver (at least to the scale that they’d expected). Having seen hundreds of small businesses experience significant growth through advertising, I’d argue that many of these unimpressed businesses simply don’t advertise the right way. If they’d thought of their advertising as mass-salesmanship, and actually applied the principles of strong one-on-one selling, they could have experienced much different results… (more…)
Posted on April 21, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Most small and mid-sized local businesses have had to make all kinds of tough decisions since the Recession began. According to American Express, only 20% of these firms have been able operate profitably without major cut-backs in staff and operating capital.
Marketing is an obvious target for most budget cutting. The only problem with chopping the marketing budget is its damaging impact on sales. According to numerous studies over the last 80 years, firms that eliminate their marketing decline rapidly during tough times. Those that even cut back modestly lose significant market share to the few firms that don’t cut. They also tend to miss significant gains in the first 2-3 years of recovery.
So how do you make a tough budget decision that preserves your near-term viability without causing an even greater long-term problem? Simple: cut your marketing budget to the bone, but spend your remaining dollars to dominate an audience – no matter how small that audience may have to be. It’s a principle that smart advertisers have been using for decades, through good times and bad, but one that proves essential for every firm when funds run tight. (more…)
Posted on April 20, 2010 by SBarbalho
Small businesses that don’t have storefronts or hard-wired point-of-sale systems often have a tough time handling today’s most common methods of payment – debit, credit, and gift cards. If you’re reducing your customer pool to people who can pay with cash or check, or those with good enough credit to merit an invoice, you’re likely missing a ton of business in today’s economy.
This might change very soon with the new generation of low-cost, easy-to-use, card-swiping systems designed to work with smart phones.
For businesses that are largely mobile, such as home service & construction businesses, this technology can open new revenue streams. You’d be surprised how much home improvement spending is blocked today by the inability to easily transact on credit cards. These businesses are often also plagued by bad debt – checks that don’t clear and final invoices that are not paid or not paid on time. It may also open doors for part-time businesses or those wanting to commercialize their hobby interests. Say you have a side business like wood carving, photography, or making ironic t-shirts. You’d like to rent a booth at the local arts fest and sell your wares. With technology like square you can easily set your booth up with real-time credit card processing. You’ll not only save a lot of time and aggravation associated with cash boxes – the convenience will translate into more customers and higher potential price points. (more…)
Posted on April 18, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Ever heard the expression “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”?
How about “People buy from people that they like”?
These two ideas represent polar opposites of marketing strategies used today by many small and mid-sized businesses.
The IBM quote reflects the idea that a ‘big business image’ will make prospects more comfortable buying from you. This thinking leads to lots of letterhead, a shiny facade, and a highly ‘professionalized’ image. It also leads many companies to try to look like they think people think they should look. Sometimes this strategy works. But often, it creates an impersonal, sterile, and generic brand identity. Just the opposite of what makes people take notice of and appreciate a business.
On the other extreme is a simple formula for success: “be liked!” In today’s business environment, where authenticity and uniqueness tends to be rewarded (when all other things are equal) give this strategy a little extra thought. That’s where Wabi-sabi comes in. (more…)
Posted on April 18, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Big companies use PR firms to keep the press up to speed on their latest product announcements, event sponsorships, management changes, and other important information. All of these announcements inundate the press (i.e. spam) and have actually created a backlash – many journalists now look to blogs in their area of interest for the really interesting stuff. This is even happening in local press, where reporters eye local blogging content to spot trends and subjects of interest.
What does this have to do with your business? Blog writers are always searching for fresh meat (trust me) and are often very open to direct communication, comment, and suggestion. If a local blogger is writing about something that you’re an expert in, or a product/service area that you serve, it’s likely the blogger would welcome your input (much more so than a traditional journalist). Also, it’s not at all unusual and, under the right conditions, not unethical, for bloggers to accept offers of free products/services to evaluate and comment on. If the blogger does pick up your idea or input, you can often get a nice little bump in traffic for the effort. If the local paper cites or follows up on that blog, or if the organizations that compile the “best of” lists in your town pays attention to bloggers (most do now), you could get a significant recognition and months of free publicity.
Bloggers often do a pretty good job of optimizing their sites for Google too. This means that their work (and potentially your press) might be picked up by a broader audience than just their core followers. (more…)
Posted on April 16, 2010 by The Growthwire Team
Do you think that your staff needs to care more about the quality of their work? Do you need people to show up on time and respond to customers in a more timely, positive manner? Do you need your sales team to pay more attention to their most important accounts, or do more prospecting? Do you need to stop paying too much attention to things that don’t directly grow your business?
These improvements represent needs for CHANGE.
Change can be a scary thing. We all know (from first hand experience) that most of our hard-wired behaviors, habits, and beliefs work in direct opposition to change, no matter how profitable, healthy, or enriching that change might be. But most of us aren’t quite sure why. We try carrots and sticks to effect change, but most of the time, these changes don’t stick. Sometimes we look at employees and think ‘they can never change, I have to replace them.’ Other times we just take bad situations as a given and work ourselves to death running around the obvious problem… Our lives would be so much simpler if we could actually master change when it’s needed most.
The latest book from Chip and Dan Heath (the co-authors of best-seller Made To Stick) may just provide the answer. Switch demystifies change and presents a very simple framework for understanding and solving a wide-range of changes. Unlike most business books, Switch is relevant and compelling from cover to cover and is extremely readable. Their cases, examples, and frameworks will stimulate so many thoughts about your own change needs that your biggest problem may simply be finishing it! It’s easily one of the best business books written in years. Give it a shot. It’s available in most bookstores and on Amazon/Kindle. The Heath Brothers also have a website that discusses some of their content (though to be honest, it doesn’t do the book justice).
Posted on March 4, 2010 by SBarbalho
What will you do to win more than your fair share of the Spring ’10 spending season: The 2
nd busiest shopping season of the year? When it comes to gifts for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Graduation events, there’s no right choice. The firms that market the best win the largest share. Even though there may be conventional “fail-safe” gifts for each occasion, it’s within the power of almost
any business to win an impressive share of this season’s gift spending.
According to the National Retail Federation, there will be about $87 of spring gift spending per 18+ consumers in your market (if there are 200,000 adults in your trade area, this is about $17 million).
How do you win? Tap into an emotion that drives your purchase. (more…)
Posted on February 26, 2010 by The Growthwire Team
Here’s the second in a series of simple tips to improve the quality of your advertising. This month, we focus on the power of emotion and the appropriate use of facts and logic. As much as you’d like to communicate all of the things that make your business special, your best message is one that makes your strongest differentiator undeniably clear. If you can express this difference in emotional terms – specifically as a benefit that has emotion at its core, you’ve got it made. Remember, for every charming gecko, memorable slogan, or unforgettable jingle, thousands of businesses advertise very effectively by being authentic, direct, and adhering to a couple of simple ideas. You don’t have to be a creative genius to use advertising effectively! (more…)
Posted on February 26, 2010 by Bill Hansen
In tough economic times, consumers go where they still get the best value. You either have to increase the value side of the equation or reduce the cost equation. Reducing cost can have significant long-term effects on your business, since prices are typically difficult to raise until demand increases to the extent that consumers are willing to pay more to get what they want, when they want it (don’t expect this to happen soon!). Value, on the other hand, can help you out in several ways: it can increase loyalty more than pricing ever could and it can differentiate your business in a lasting, meaningful way.
So what can you do to increase the value side? And do this without spending a ton of dough giving away stuff for free? Take a 720° look at your business.
What does 720° mean? Good question, and you’ll profit by understanding it before your competitors do. The number 720 is 360 times two. As you may know, “360°” is business jargon/consultant speak for taking a comprehensive, “full view” of something. We use the “times two” reference because when owners look at their businesses from two different 360° viewpoints, interesting opportunities to add value emerge. (more…)
Posted on February 15, 2010 by Bill Hansen
Anyone who’s had an opening or two recently has probably seen hundreds of resumes. More than a few from folks who have enough experience to run the place. And we certainly can’t complain about salary needs: recruits are demanding much less than they were several years ago.
So what’s the problem?
There’s a funny thing about our 10%+ unemployment economy: it hasn’t gotten that much easier to find great employees.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you know that hiring now is tricky for two reasons. First, most of the overqualified applicants aren’t going to stick around when the job market turns this year or next. And second, the true cost of labor includes 1) the training that goes into replacing them and 2) the lost productivity that comes from having unfilled positions and/or a less-than-perfect fit. When you consider these costs, our current ability to pick through the low-hanging fruit isn’t as compelling as it seems. (more…)
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