Nobody likes feeling like a fish out of water!

There is a saying “do what you have always done and you will get what you have always got” and how very true this saying is.  2011 has been a year of challenges for most business owners in and around Christchurch, having to cope with over a year of earthquakes (9500 shakes at the time of writing this have been recorded in Canterbury since the first big one on September 4th 2010!) which followed a couple of bad years in the economy in general.  One thing this has taught us, is the need to get out of our comfort zones so that we can do what needs to be done to grow our business.

What do I mean by this?  As a business owner it is important to continue to learn and up skill yourself to help you adapt to changes in your industry, in your environment, in your customers buying behaviors and technological developments to name but a few areas.  Often it is hard to find the time, once you have found the inclination to do the learning but once you have done this you will be benefiting yourself and your business, right?

Not necessarily, it is one thing to go on a workshop, attend a seminar or two or even hire the services of a business coach but if you do not have “balls” to carry what you have learnt through to implementation then what changes ……… nothing, the only thing you have done is added cost to the business with no benefit.

To implement knew ways of doing things into your business WILL take you out of your comfort zone, it is not unusual to think “what if this doesn’t work?”, “what if I can’t get the staff to buy into this?”, “what if this ends up costing me more than I originally thought?”.  I would ask you “what will you lose by not doing it?”

How Can You Make This Process Easier?

• If you are going to attend a workshop or seminar, be sure to research the subject a bit before you decide to go, try and understand how easy it will be for you to implement the subject matter into your business.
• Will you need to employ the services of an expert on the subject to help you implement it into the business, find out how much that will cost, can you afford this too.
• If you are worried about getting your staff to accept any change, why not get their input as to what they think may work for the business, getting them to think about the challenges of the business in advance may well make it easier for them to accept change when it comes, rather than springing it on them.
• If you are worried you wont implement the new skills into the business, find someone that will make you accountable for your actions (or lack there of), this could be one of your trusted staff members, a partner or a business mentor.

What ever you do, don’t try to implement new ways of doing things without some form of support, challenging your own way of doing things and often your beliefs is extremely challenging and will always throw you outside what you find comfortable, someone nearby to support you when this happens is the best thing you can do for yourself and your business.

Marketing is all about going to your targeted market, finding out what that market needs then provide a product or service that fulfills that need.  It is not the other way around, provide a service or product to the target market and convince them they need it!!

Recently we have been working with a number of businesses in earthquake affected Christchurch to create and implement robust marketing plans to help those businesses attract new clients.  Part of that process asks the business owners to find out more about their target market; what issues were they having that led them to the business in the first place, why did they ultimately choose that business, why do they keep coming back?  These are just a few of the questions we ask.

We then gather all this information and create really strong marketing messages in the words of the customers.  The purpose of this is to then attract other like minded potential customers with similar problems by making it easy for them to relate to the message they are reading.

This process works most effectively if you use the words of the customers.

One business recently had done all the research and developed their new marketing messages for a number of their services which was timely as they were about to upgrade and relaunch their web site.  On reviewing that new website prior to launch we noticed, although it looked more up to date, the content had not been changed to reflect the research they had just completed.

The problem was the owner of the business had filled their web content full of industry terminology, much of which you would find nowhere in the research.  To help the business owner understand how important it was to talk in the customers language rather than their industry language we analysed the search engine results for the customers words and the industry words for the same service and found some astonishing results.

With the service that generated the most income for the business the customers wording generated 6 times the search traffic of the industry wording and in another analysis report 8 out of the top 10 search phrases were in the customers language as opposed to the industry language.

So what is the message here, you have to resonate with your target market(s), connect with them to continue to attract more customers and command a bigger share of that market segment.  The only way you can do that is to talk in their language not yours and the only way you can do that is to talk to your target market.

Warning

It’s all very well having your website optimised for search engines but if you have done this using your industry jargon (which you will have if you have not talked to your customers!!)  rather than your customers words, you WILL be missing out on lots of traffic to your site and the potential to convert that traffic to paying business.

It has been a few years since I worked in a retail environment, but this last week found me working closely with the owners of a business in the catering industry, where these rules very clearly applied.  This particular business had 3 core products that they made the most of their revenue from, of these 3 products, one was very unique and gave the business a very real opportunity to grow well beyond their traditional competition.  The problem was this unique product was not selling.

They had done their market research, there was very definitely a need, so what was the reason why these unique products were not selling?  The answer was staring them in the face or should I say more accurately wasn’t!!  When a customer walked into their premises the other two products could be seen very clearly, there was no mistaking what they had and the price that they were selling them at.  The unique product on the other hand, was very difficult to find, there was no pricing and because if it’s unique nature nobody even asked about them.

Taking both the staff and the owners through their premises soon highlighted to them what was needed, where it was needed and in what quantities to ensure their customers could not miss the opportunity to purchase this unique product.  All they needed to do, was to display all three variations of the product, have sufficient quantities of each and have them displayed in THE most prominent area on the premises.  The very next morning they sold 3 unique products within the first half an hour, more than they had sold in the previous couple of months and sales continue to grow.

The lesson here is very simple, whether you are a retailer or own a cafe, you must keep your displays full of product, ensure anything that you want to sell quickly or in good quantities is displayed in a prominent location and is easily accessed by your customers.  This is especially true for this time of year where less than vigilant staff will not be so diligent in stocking up displays of products, but let that slip at your pearl.

Remember you always need the wood to sell a tree!

It has come to light this month how ever that one of my biggest clients or biggest source of referrals is not happy with something I am doing, the issue is easily changed but what really concerned me was that I never actually asked this company for any feedback … ever.  The reason for this was that this company regularly referred business to me, as a result of that I would get feedback from the people they referred which ultimately were the end user of my products.

Should I have been getting the feedback of this company?  Yes, because I was sending priced solutions through to this company for them to apply for funding on behalf of their clients.  Never did I think to ask whether or not my service to them was adequate, did my quoted solution help or hinder them in getting funding for their clients.  Because I did not ask, I very nearly lost a job for no other reason than I needed to add a little more detail in my process descriptions!!

How many of you could put yourself in these shoes?  How many of you don’t even ask the users of your product or service for feedback?  If you don’t know what your clients are thinking how can you possibly expect to continue to do business with them in the medium to long term?

Learn from my mistake, if you are not already getting feedback from your clients, start now!!

How many of you have not just been tempted but actually took action, to find out it wasn’t the cure you were looking for?

Due to the far reaching affects of the earthquakes in the South Island of New Zealand, there have been a lot of companies that have gone down this road, just to find that they got it wrong and in some cases have made the position of their business much worse – why does this happen and what should we be doing when times are harder for our business?

Stay Focussed

Never forget what has made your business successful, stay focussed on that product or service(s), especially if that is what your business has a reputation for providing to it’s market.  Start thinking about how you can continue to educate your market, maybe even look at alternative ways of accessing your market, is there a way you can get in before your competition can?   It is too easy to think “…maybe I should add another type of product” or “… maybe I should extend that service to include ……”   If you find yourself thinking this may I take this opportunity to ask you, how long was it before your current products or services was recognised and valued by your target market?  I’ll take a punt and say that it took months or years rather than days or weeks and if this is the case, what makes you think your latest idea will take off any quicker?

Plan Your Way Back To Success

If your business is slowing down, rather than panic, take a more structured approach to the problem, create a plan that will help the business get through this rough patch, think about the following:

• Why are the sales dropping, go back to the market and find out from your clients, both old and new, and find out what pressures they are facing that is causing them to spend less with you.
• Having identified the problems your clients are having, can you tailor your products or services to help them overcome some of these pressures?
• Look for alternative ways of getting your business’s message and its product or service to your target market, let me give you an example.  A cafe that specialised in “food to go” products (a bit like packed lunches) decided to capture more of the market by giving their clients the option to order their packed lunches at the same time they would order their breakfast whilst staying at a motel (typically the previous evening) effectively cutting out any competition for lunch the next day.
• Get some third party, objective advice about how best to go forward, often there is an obvious solution to help your business, you may not be able to see it because you are too close to the business.  An experienced business coach or mentor can be invaluable in a process like this.

Do Your Research

I’m not advocating not to diversify, if you are, you need to research the market thoroughly.  If the feedback from your customer research (above) suggests you could provide an alternative product or solution, will they purchase it, if they will, how much will they be prepared to pay for it and if other businesses already cater to this market, why would they use you over others?

If the feedback is all positive, then you have just identified something your business could successfully diversify to.  If the feedback is not positive then go back to the plan and stick to what you know.

As is traditional with most business to business sales processes, the majority of the clients would receive an invoice for their goods, payable on the 20th of the following month (or whatever your terms of trade are) and because an invoice has to be sent out, the staff naturally get all the details from the customer.  What happens though, when the customer pays cash on pick up of the goods, does your company pay the same attention to collecting the clients details?

In the case of the business at the start of this article, they weren’t capturing any information other than a contact name (often only their first name) and a contact number (often a mobile), the amount of clients paying cash for their goods was in excess of 20%

So what you might be thinking, they have the money what’s the problem?  The problem is that 20% of this company’s data base are cash payers, that means that when they spend money the business cash flow is improved so wouldn’t it make sense to continue to talk to these companies and encourage them to keep spending?

The only way you can do this is to send your sales reps out to visit the company’s (if you know where they are located) or ensure they are on your business’s email list but the only way you can do this is to capture basic information such as:

• Full contact name of the decision maker.
• Email address of the decision maker.
• Physical address of the clients business premises.
• Office and mobile phone numbers of the decision maker.
• Social media contact details (why not connect with them over FaceBook or Twitter)

What is a KPI?

Wikipedia states that “KPIs are commonly used by an organization to evaluate its success or the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals, but often, success is simply the repeated achievement of some level of operational goal.”

The key word in the above statement is evaluate, if you do not evaluate your staff’s performance then how on earth do you know if they are doing a great job or a terrible one …… that’s right, your don’t!  One of the biggest threats to any business is it’s staff performance, the only way you can keep them focused on what they should be doing is to keep them accountable.

When disaster like this strikes, all I can say is that it really does test your commitment to your business to the absolute limit.  Although business had picked up a little, we were going further into our overdrafts, something had to give and it wasn’t until the last day in June before the work stated streaming in, if it had been as little as one month later, we may well have gone under, but we didn’t, in the space of one month we had turned around our financial situation and now we are working towards building our reserves up to a level that will give us a 3 – 6 months cushion in case we have another disaster  of some description.

There have been some real big lessons learnt,  having gone through what we have, these I want to share with you now:

Stay Focused

The businesses biggest threat is the owner not being focused on moving forward, in times of disaster, it is amazing how many business owners quit because they have been offered another job “just until business picks up”, as tempting as this may sound in the short term, they are removing their focus from their business, thus delaying that time when their “business picks up”.  Do this at your pearl, a divided focus WILL give you diluted results and diluted results may be the difference between your business surviving or becoming another statistic of the disaster!

Tidy Up Your Own Camp

Immediately after a major disaster is when the business will be at it’s quietest (unless it provides essential services to the community’s recovery), by all means take some time off to recharge after the stress of a disaster but when you are ready, get back to your business and prioritise all these jobs you have been meaning to do and get them done.  That could be anything from tidying up a particular process, carrying out essential repairs and maintenance or maybe even upgrading your website.  What ever needs done in your business, do it now.

Ensure You Have A Financial Reserves

This will be easier said than done but one thing we have learnt from successive earthquakes is the absolute need for a financial buffer, money for that “rainy day”.  If you can put aside or have access to between 3 & 6 months worth of operating costs, you will be giving you, your staff and the business the best chance of surviving a major disaster.  How you do that, will depend on your profit levels and cash flow, you may try and save it all and have it as cash reserves, you may save up some and have overdraft facilities in place to make up the rest or you may well have a friendly business banker that will come to the party for you if you need it, however you organise this be sure to have it as part of your business plan.

Keep in Touch

Stay in communication with your suppliers, your clients, and the businesses that operate around you.  You will not be the only business owner suffering after a disaster has struck.  Information is king in times like these and staying in touch with everyone that is part of your business, let your suppliers know what is going on, you may need extra stock, you may need less, keep in touch with them.  Contact your customers, personally if you can, or through media outlets like your website, social media and even the local press, let them know you are okay and still trading, ask them for their support during these trying times.

From a personal point of view the earthquakes have brought our local community a lot closer, we have made new friends in our street over the last 6 months, they have been played an important part in our own support network and the sad reality is, we would never have met them had the earthquakes not occurred.  The repeated shaking has eventually damaged parts of our home, with part of our garage wall collapsing, our hot water cylinder cracking and leaking, flooding part of our house and several large cracks through our garage floor, driveway and paths around our property.  We do thank our lucky stars, we have gotten off lightly, there are many others who have lost their homes and have just found out they cannot rebuild where they are and have to relocate completely and over and above all that, we have had the worst snow storm in over half a century, leaving many cold and damp and some with no power.

I think most of us in Canterbury will be relieved when 2011 finally moves on, it has been a tough year so far but, to finish on a brighter note, the earthquakes have subsided significantly with only a couple of 4 magnitudes felt in the last month or so, hopefully this is the beginning of the end for major earthquakes in Canterbury!!

I will post one more blog in this series on or around the anniversary of the earthquake, many thanks for your support, these blogs really have helped me stay focused on what I needed to do, to continue our business – Thanks

With this attitude being firmly entrenched in our minds over the most recent years, we have been suckered into bigger and flasher websites, anything to out do the competition, then all of a sudden search engine optimisation (SEO) experts have invaded our business lives, telling us how they can get us to page one of all the main search engines, but what good is all that, if your potential clients don’t understand how your business can benefit them?

Every single one of my customer’s websites over the last couple of years, with the exception of one, did not have what I call a “resonating factor” that explained why I might need their services.  Yes their was plenty of information (on most sites) about what type of products or services they provide, but there was nothing about how they may relate to me ……. they had no “call to action”.

What Is A Call To Action?

A call to action is a statement or a series of statements that are the typical issues customers face that their product or service can provide a solution for.  There are a couple of rules about call to actions tat you should think about:

1. The call to action must be written from the customer’s perspective –  an effective call to action will replicate exactly what the potential customer is thinking about regarding their specific problem e.g. “this is the third time I have replaced this light bulb in a month, whats going on?”
2. The call to actions are brief statements, not stories - Keep them short, if your product covers a number of issues, list them separately or cycle through them to ensure you are connecting with enough potential clients.
3. They must be relevant - whether you are using call to actions on a website, brochure, advertising or business cards, they must be followed by a relevant product or service that could provide a solution.
4. They must stand out - call to actions are there to resonate with all potential customers, you have limited time (maybe as little as 5 seconds) to catch their interest so make sure it is in bold and any of the following statements talking about potential solutions are in normal font.

What a Call To Action is not!!

• It is not a statement about you telling your customer about their problems e.g. “Do you find your tenants don’t pay their rent?”  Believe it or not, it is far less effective than repeating back to them what they are thinking, even if the two statements talk about the same problem.
• It is not a promotion “buy one, get one free” these statements may promote a saving but that will not be the underlying reason why someone needs to buy that product.
• It is not something you guess, true call to actions, come from targeted customer feedback, and is ALWAYS in your customers words!!

I challenge you know to look at all your marketing media, do you have effective call to actions across them all, if you haven’t, how much business do you think you are missing because potential customers just can’t make that connection between their issues and your products or services.

If you want to find out how we can help you in this area, check out our Marketing Coaching Package for more information.

Norman, the inspiration for this site!

Since August 2009 when a Norman McKenzie, director of web design company Meta Solutions suggested to me that I create a “blogging” website for my business I have published a continual stream of blogs, most designed to give business owners the heads up on things to think about within their business, others were funnier blogs about my observations coming from the eyes of a customer and more recently my blogs were the only thing that kept me focused on my business through the most devastating natural disaster to hit our city in over a century.

When this site was first created, I doubted the wisdom of Norman, I didn’t “really” think I had it in me to continue writing, but he identified something within me that I hadn’t identified myself …. the level of passion I have for what I do!  The excitement I still get from putting out information, I believe will help others in business help make their life just that little bit easier, is always there and increases when my readers interact by leaving comments or sending me emails.

The blogging journey started off by launching a couple of blogs per week for the first couple of months, talking about marketing and how businesses can really refine their message to their target market by understanding the 5 principles of marketing, the feed back in the early days was limited and when I look back at the content, it was not as good as some of the later articles but it did put our website at the top of the main search engines for most marketing inquiries – they did their job.

One of the single most popular blogs I wrote was titled When The Journey Is Better Than The Destination, it was a more humorous blog about a weekend trip across the alps in New Zealand and what we faced at the end of it, during the trip we learned that New Zealand has it’s very own Rambo …….

From a business point of view the most well received blogs that had my inbox running on over time were Where Is Your Time Going? which talks about the modern day time vampires of business, the internet! Sales Rep or Account Manager? which highlighted to many that there was indeed a difference between the two and depending on the sales objectives of the business would very much influence the decision as to which would be right for the job.  Coping With Adversity was written after the biggest earthquake, a magnitude 7.1 hit Canterbury on September 4th 2010 and was intended to help local business owners keep focused on their business to ensure it was ready to trade as soon as the local economy started to pick itself up again.  This article had comments and emails from all over the world, from business owners who had experienced disasters like floods and tornado’s.

The most important blogs I have written since the creation of this site was the Christchurch Earthquake series – A Business Mentor’s Story, this series began after the earthquake of the 22nd February 2010 a 6.3 magnitude quake that brought our central city to it’s knees and left nearly 200 people dead.  From that day, we had no work for 6 weeks as business owners fought for their own survival and then the survival of their businesses.  To drag me out of my own dark place, I decided to write about what we (my family and I) were going through with a commitment to my readers that I would talk about what I, as a business mentor and coach, will be doing to rebuild my business, in a hope that I can inspire other business owners along the way to do the same.  This series went worldwide, with emails and comments coming from all over the world, all with words of support or sharing of their own similar experiences, this series kept me accountable and very definitely saved our business.

In my mind, the advice I received from Norman that day, in July 2009 was the best advice I think I received for my business, blogging is indeed a very powerful tool, ideal way of keeping your clients and followers up to speed with principals and experiences that can enhance their own business, of course it is also a great tool for ensuring the search engines know your site exists and ultimately blogging lets potential clients get an understanding of how you think and gives them a good indication of the level of experience you have within the industry, giving you the best chance of converting any inquiries for your services into paying work.

Where will the next two years take us, who knows, but two things are for sure, the earthquakes and their aftershocks will decrease and the economy will grow and we will definitely be around to experience both!!