Tag Archives: strategy

From Idea to Commercialization in 4 Days

When not consulting with small businesses who have revenues, I often volunteer time with a start-up nonprofit named EntreDot. The entrepreneurs with whom I have the pleasure of interacting through this connection are amazing. Within the innovation centers that the organization operates, there are many second career entrepreneurs. However, a different demographic intrigues even more: high school students. This past week, I had the opportunity to advise students at Wake Forest Rolesville High School in how to launch a business. What a blast!

While adults often underestimate what a young entrepreneur can do, this group has been a very pleasant surprise. The students were allocated into teams to prepare a business pitch in five days. Coming into the week, they had not previously been working together. One of the student teams did not even begin their business until Tuesday and only then as a result of teachers requesting they form a separate team because their original team had grown to too many participants. Faced with a four day deadline, this group of young entrepreneurs launched Bands For Boston. Bands For Boston is a social cause enterprise that is selling wristbands to support the Boston community in the aftermath of this week’s tragic bombings at the Boston Marathon. 

Bands For Boston

The student team used the debit card of one of their own to order the first 250 bands on Tuesday. By Wednesday, they had enough pre-orders that they went ahead and ordered an additional 250 bands. Through networking, social media, and some joint promotions, the team looks to sell over 1,000 bands in their first 10 days in business at a price of $5 each. Initially, they plan to contribute 60% of the proceeds to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts. They are hoping that, as volume grows, they will be able to raise the percentage contributed to 80%.

A process was followed by these young entrepreneurs that is significant for new small business founders of any age.

  • Ideation – The team first thought about doing lanyards for key chains, but thought that they couldn’t get enough traction. Once they decided to do the wrist bands, their thoughts gelled and they were able to unite around an idea that evoked passion. Quick math showed the team that, if they would put forth the effort, there was enough demand for what the proposed to create sales substantive enough to reward their efforts.
  • Conceptualization – The next effort the team went through was to identify target buyers. The first concentric circle they considered were student peers, followed by neighbors and Twitter followers. At each level, they were able to verify demand. They they put together a business model to order from an online source and deliver the bands to those who purchased on a pre-sale basis.
  • Creation – The proof of concept for the idea came into focus as the first set of bands arrived, were distributed after school, and new customers were identified as those who saw others wearing the bands. They had established some name recognition and were on their way to a business.
  • Evaluation – At the three day mark, they began dealing with inventory, marketing, and finance issues relative to reorders, expanding their reach to other geographic markets, and planning how to scale the business.
  • Preparation – The team was now confronted with the challenge of how to launch on a broader basis and put into place the team responsibilities that would facilitate growth. They are pursuing relationships with sports teams in the Boston area to have promotions at games whereby the bands could be given away to early attendees and sold to subsequent ones.

Commercialization is now the challenge of the team. They are trying to figure out how long these bands will be popular and what they may do for an encore. In the meantime, they have tapped a latent demand while helping a community and earning some income. Kudos!

Overcoming Price Objections in Small Business

Many the small business entrepreneur complains about not being able to charge enough to make good profits. Yet, in the business world around us, we all see businesses who seem to be doing very well and who charge the proverbial “arm and a leg” for what they do. Why is it that some niches seem more capable of avoiding price sensitivity than others? For instance, goods that carry with them a great customer experience command a luxury price. Mark Stiving took note of how the healthcare industry is a conundrum when it comes to pricing. In an article for All Business, he made the following observations:

“It’s something we all need. It’s an industry where there is huge pressure from major insurance companies, the media, governmental agencies, and even consumer groups to cut costs and prices. However, even with these factors prices have never been driven down to commodity levels or even to parity.”

Pricing

This is in sharp contrast with the experience of many small business owners. I hear all the time about being beat up on price, having to price services in competitive bid situations near the bottom, and many other such war stories. As you can imagine, I often am advising clients to compete on value versus price. Just how does one go about this?

Stiving continues in his piece, noting the following consumer behavior in healthcare:

“How is this possible? Like almost everything in pricing, human psychology is at the root. For example, when was the last time you used price to decide where you were going to have a medical procedure done? When was the last time you even knew the price of the service before going in?

Most people don’t pay attention to prices because their insurance company pays. Yet virtually everyone has co-pays, and therefore knows the general cost and has an incentive to ‘price shop’. Think about it. Even a 10% co-pay on $1,000 is $100. Isn’t it worth $100 to find the best deal for a procedure? So most people have financial incentives to shop for price, but don’t.”
Let’s focus on several key words and phrases from the quote.
  1. Human psychology. If you are sharp enough to have built a target market strategy, you have surely thought through who you want to serve. What is often overlooked, however, is how and why people buy. As is pointed out, consumers have habits. Observe the habits and then customize your approach to what you see.
  2. Insurance company pays. This fact is significant because it illustrates that many buying decisions are facilitated by removing the consumer from having to make a painful (excuse the pun) choice. Think of software as a service as another type of business wherein the monthly $9.99 or whatever you allow to be charged to your card on file is “out of sight, out of mind.” How can you make purchasing easier and less “thinky” for your customers so that the decision is almost automatic? Do you have something that could be billed on a recurring basis at a lower price point?
  3. But don’t. In describing how healthcare consumers do not look around for alternatives, Stiving makes a keen observation. Even when alternatives exist, they are often not sought out. Those who study consumer behavior far more than me would point out that the trouble associated with switching to something new holds many buyers back from changing to what may even be a better value. How can you use this behavioral paradigm to your advantage? Can you make it easier for others to but from you instead of the competition? How can you make it harder for existing customers to stop buying from you?

Finding a way to address these three issues in your own business will pay off. As you are able to make inroads, you will find that your pricing becomes justified and that you won’t have to fight as hard to maintain price integrity.

 

When and Why to Withdraw Money From a Start-up

Working with entrepreneurs all day every day produces a certain fixation with what is most important to their survival. Unfourtunately, what is best for the business may not (in the short run) be what is best for its founders. Constantly, with existing operating businesses, there is the challenge of how much to compensate the owners and be fair about it. With start-ups, the goal is to get to the place that one can get paid at all. 

Recently, I ran across the story of Vinyl Me, Please. This new business is seeking to capitalize on the revived appreciation of vinyl records. While the number of records sold nationally has increased each of the past five years andby over 17% in 2012, the co-founders are trying to realize the benefit of the trend in their own business and wallets. They still are not earning a living from their efforts, though the prospects of doing so are better than at any prior point.

Vinyl recordsJeff Cornwall at Belmont University writes that, “The niche that Vinyl Me, Please fills is to bring new and interesting music to a new generation of vinyl record enthusiasts.  Each month the subscribers to Vinyl Me, Please are sent a brand new, hand-wrapped vinyl album from a relatively undiscovered artist. In addition to the monthly vinyl record, subscribers are assigned a personal music consultant who gets to know their musical tastes and preferences.  Every month the consultant creates a personalized playlist specific to each subscriber. Vinyl Me, Please brings together in one service what today’s young music enthusiasts want.  Their customers love the sound of vinyl, they like to interact on social media with friends about new music to try, and they like the surprise factor they get from services like Pandora.”

As a daily user of Pandora (and demographic that grew up with LPs), I can truly appreciate this business concept. Interesting to every new venture is how to make the most of market trends to create customer experiences that are profitably delivered and fun to pursue. Cornwall observes of the Vinyl Me Please business model that, “although they have identified what their market wants, their model has proven to be a challenge to scale to a large enough size to pay the founders a consistent salary.  They need to grow to at least 700 subscribers to reach this important milestone.”

He goes on to provide an account of his interaction with one of the co-founders, Matt Fiedler, and what he feels needs to occur next in their business development:

“The biggest challenge we face is keeping the personal touch,” says Fiedler.  “We think this is what makes the experience unique to a lot of people and is something we’re going to have to fight through in order to achieve true scalability.  We need to find a way to maintain a personal touch but be able to bring a massive number of customers into the system without it straining the resources of the company.”

They have recognized that it will not be possible to continue to hand wrap the albums as the business grows.  They also are looking at ways to make the personal consulting more efficient.

“We have plans to set up an internal database that allows us to categorize and sort music to create a more efficient process around creating playlists,” explains Fiedler.  “We are also looking at rolling out a playlist-only offering that will help us capture more users and, at the same time, start paying our consultants without dipping into the revenue that comes in from standard, full-membership subscribers.”

This commentary demonstrates the need for business launches to be very iterative, flexible, and responsive. Finding some group who will purchase your product or services is not enough; sustainability comes with staying attuned to original and ensuing target market needs.

 

Picking a Small Business Niche That Will Grow in 2013

Some business owners just started their enterprises since the 21st century “great recession.” Others have been in business considerably longer. Whether new or “seasoned,” most want to know what trends their businesses face. Knowing growth rates of a market sector can be very helpful–if for no other reason than benchmarking one’s own performance against the average of one’s peers. A company that compiles a lot of research data on small businesses in my own back yard of Raleigh, North Carolina is Sageworks. In an interview with Catherine Clifford of Entrepreneur.com, Libby Bierman of Sageworks said that a recent study by her company showed the average growth rate of small businesses across all industries was 8% in 2012.

While growth is a very good sign, there are winners and losers in every statistical average. Certain sectors, however, performed poorer than others. According to the research, the slowest growth industries for U.S. small businesses in 2012 were:

  1. Skilled nursing care facilities: -3.29 percent
  2. Printing and related support activities: 1.86 percent
  3. Automotive repair and maintenance: 2.81 percent
  4. Offices of physicians: 3.00 percent
  5. Highway, street, and bridge construction: 4.24 percent
  6. Insurance agencies, brokerages, and other insurance-related activities: 4.32 percent
  7. Lessors of real estate: 5.07 percent
  8. Other miscellaneous manufacturing including jewelry and silverware, sporting and athletic goods, dolls, toys, and games, office supplies other than paper, and signs: 5.55 percent
  9. Offices of health practitioners other than physicians and dentists, including chiropractors, optometrists, mental health practitioners, speech and occupational therapists: 5.98 percent
  10. Other amusement and recreation services including bowling centers, golf courses, and recreational centers: 6.03 percent

As I reviewed the list above earlier today, it occurs that personal services, low technology manufacturing and discretionary spending-based businesses have been it hard. Why would this be the case? In terms of  the personal services businesses, many of them are healthcare related. The Affordable Care Act may have a lot to do with this poorer performing sector, as many have shunned making decisions to invest capital in an arena that is in extreme flux. Many before me have written about the loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas competitors. In the United States, we have become less competitive in manufacturing that is not highly customized or based on a technology. Whether infrastructure projects or amusement, spending is down on items that don’t seem necessary. Take note if you have a business in any of the above sectors. While you may be able to outperform your sector, you may consider how your sector as a whole is not growing as quickly as others. How should you respond? This question should drive your strategic planning.

Professional officeHowever, the list of fastest growing sectors (below) identified by this research highlights some additional trends and opportunities. Many who have the flexibility to diversify or move their efforts to one of these sectors should seriously consider doing so.

Fastest-Growth Industries for U.S. Small Businesses in 2012

  1. Residential building construction: 14.77 percent

  2. Building custom software and servers for businesses: 14.29 percent

  3. Machinery, equipment, and supplies merchant wholesalers: 13.75 percent

  4. Management, scientific, and technical consulting services: 12.31 percent

  5. Architectural, engineering, and related services: 11.40 percent

  6. Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors: 11.37 percent

  7. Building finishing contractors who make additions, alterations, maintenance and repairs: 11.32 percent

  8. General freight trucking: 10.41 percent

  9. Services to buildings and dwellings, including pest exterminators, janitorial services, and landscaping: 10.11 percent

  10. Other specialty trade contractors, including site preparation activities and other specialized trades: 10.04 percent

Most of these businesses, as Bierman mentions in her interview, require very little capital to get going. They do not require the purchase of expensive assets and can be successful based on the strength of human capital. As a result, business services firms are performing strongly and should continue to do well.

 

 

 

 

You Can’t Handle A Business Plan!

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower (Thirty-fourth President of the USA)

 

Eisenhower was a military leader of renown prior to becoming president.  His comment on the value of planning illustrates a key point that many who disdain planning would do well to heed: a plan is not the goal, but rather the exercise of thinking strategically through one’s options given a defined situation and set of resources at one’s disposal.

Serving entrepreneurs and existing business owners, I have seen the outcome of both lack of planning and belief that planning unto itself is a cure-all for potential challenges that may come the way of the enterprise. Tim Berry, author of Three Weeks to Startup, writes that, “If you’re serious about starting your business – even if you don’t have anything down in writing — you’ve already started to plan.” Yet, starting to plan is not the same as writing a business plan.

There are several planning steps that I would recommend prior to writing a business plan:

  1. Refine your idea. Think through how your business model would affect potential customers. Have a preliminary strategy in mind for each segment of your target audience.
  2. Conceptualize a winning strategy. Think through what is already available in terms of direct and indirect competition. Adjust your approach to the market based on what can win consistently.
  3. Create value before your first sale. Test your hypothetical product features and benefits, along with pricing model and go-to-market system. Secure feedback and revise your offering accordingly.

Once you have thought through these three main ideas, you are then ready to evaluate how best to launch a business. Evaluation is the point at which your first business plan should be written. Berry recommends “Your plan is for you first. Don’t make it for anybody else. Do it because it helps you divide and manage big goals into practical steps. Instead of looking at it as a document, think of your business plan as a place on your computer where you collect ideas, useful stories, lists and numbers. It’s a place where you keep track of the market, your milestones, goals and projections.”

Business planI could not agree more wholeheartedly! A plan is not a monument; it is a living, flexible document that needs to be modified on a recurring basis as long as you are in business. Early on, Berry recommends the following key components of planning:

  • Milestones: What’s supposed to happen, when, and who’s responsible.
  • Basic numbers: Simple spreadsheet projections for sales, costs and expenses.
  • Strategy: Strategy is about deciding how to focus a business offering on a key target market. It can start with just bullet points. I’ve seen it done well with pictures. It’s mostly a reminder for you and your team.
  • Cash flow: Because profits don’t guarantee enough cash to pay your bills, you need to manage cash from the beginning. Month by month, account for what you spend and what you deposit — not profit as it appears on the books, but money as it shows in the bank.
  • Review schedule: Set aside time for a plan verses actual review once a month to compare what you planned would happen in your business to what really happened. Be brief and practical.

Regardless of your market niche, whether you have attended a “hack-a-thon,” or who is on your start-up team, take the time to consider each of these components thoughtfully. Incorporating them into a plan that you are committed to revisiting and continuously improving will enhance your chances of launching a successful new business!