Monthly Archives: May 2012

Avoid 5 Positioning Mistakes

When a company is trying to get off the ground, it is critical to send the right message to the right audience in the right way at the right time. However, entrepreneurs with fantastic products or services often ruin their chances at making the sale, securing the revenues, and building credibility by being inexact in how they position their offering.

Admittedly, it is challenging to create and refine a value proposition when there are so many other demands on your time.  Frequently, entrepreneurs work on concept, design, and other technical details without giving earnest heed to the value of top-notch marketing. Is this because marketing is seen as a discretionary expense? Is it because the typical entrepreneur has bought into the “build it and they will come” idea? For whatever reason, the decisions regarding market penetration strategy are poorly executed and offerings positioned poorly more often than not. If you’ve never applied the premise that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” to business, do so now! Your company’s success depends upon it!

Start by determining within your team what success will look like and how it will be measured. Take time to ferret out what, exactly, you are offering, how it solves a unique problem, and how your approach to the market is both unique and appealing. Once you have ironed out some of these influential factors, take the time to think about your intended target and the nuances of explaining your offering in such a way that you “rise above the noise” of distraction and become intriguing to them.

Don’t make any of the 5 mistakes below when launching your business. Not surprisingly, targeted investors, employees, and customers often evaluate you before they commit.  You can enhance the chance that you will earn the commitment you deserve if you follow the advice of David Scholtze of Ariadne Capital. Writing in Entrepreneur Country a couple of months ago, he described “The 5 typical problems I keep seeing in misaligned propositions”:

1) Thinking big and forgetting the baby steps that get you there

The real market opportunity is won one sale at a time are you constantly refining your sale or slapping it out there? Go-to-market is about aligning your achievable market to your vision, are you building credibility?

2) Spread too broad and lack focus

Fix-all solutions are hard to buy or too good to be true, is your proposition tight? Tight propositions mean new services can develop in parallel, are you giving too much away in solving too much?

3) Forget that your audience don’t know your product

Even high tech can be simplified beyond technology into enablement, can your mother understand the proposition? Don’t assume your market knows the problem like you do, are you selling from a common starting point?

4) Defining the proposition as a nice to have not a solution

Too much emphasis is put on the extra benefits, are you selling lots of benefits or a solution to a specific problem? People feel the need to over validate with external information, are you forgetting the original “spark” that led to the solution and how you solve the problem?

5) Don’t align the message to the solution

Proposition pitches try to be catch all and complex people buy simple, are you selling a solution or a service? People are looking to solve a problem, does your product proposition enable champions and evangelists?

Once you understand, plan for and execute along these principles, you can create a strong market position.  This means you can challenge your sales team, empower your marketers and “wow” your investors. Only good things can happen from there…

 

Content That Speaks C-Suite Language

 

Roanne Neuwirth of the Farland Group (http://www.farlandgroup.com/) writes in a post this week for The Content Marketing Institute that McKinsey & Co has mastered the language of the c-suite. McKinsey Quarterly newsletters are read by corporate executives because the subject matter is engaging, relevant, and contains key topics related to global business excellence. Here’s what distinguishes their approach to content that has proven to be so effective:

Data-driven credibility. Whether a survey of hundreds of technology executives or interviews with 15 chief strategy officers, McKinsey starts with peer  insights and gets compelling facts on which to build their content.

Actionable, relevant, timely information. McKinsey focuses on leading-edge management topics that are  top of mind for executives and shares cases, examples and stories of how other executives have taken action on the opportunities and challenges presented. It’s easy to see how to take these ideas into other environments.

Succinct insights. McKinsey extracts the key points, the most relevant highlights and the most provocative  ideas in the layout and design making the key takeaways easily identifiable and consumable.

Channeling their audience. McKinsey moved its  model to a stronger focus on online formats (audio, video, print) and shifted the print publication to quarterly round-ups. It has integrated a strong social and email strategy to ensure that the content gets to executives in formats that matter.

Even though top executives can be challenging to approach, it is well worth the effort. They control the purse strings.  For marketers in the B2B setting, knowing how to attract and engage the attention and commitment of this critical target audience can make a business very successful.

 

Know that top executives think Return On Investment continuously—whether the investment is their time or the purchasing power they wield. As a rule, the psychographic mindset of the C-suite is to trust a small handful of advisors as subject matter experts. Inherently, most sales approaches are mistrusted and it is very hard to gain enough gravitas to be heard among all the voices clamoring for the right to earn the respect and trust sought.

 

Farland recommends the following guidelines for their clients to penetrate the C-suite “blockade”:

  1. Hard facts drive credibility… and credibility is key. Content based on data makes an impression on executives; peer-based insights and stories add to the credibility of the data collected
  2. Provide actionable and timely information on issues that matter, in formats that allow ready extrapolation. There has to be a “so what” that comes out of the data and it needs to be up-to-the minute, on topics relevant to the executive’s business, role, and current challenges.
  3. Summarize, summarize, summarize. Deliver your ideas with targeted summaries, succinct points, where the bottom line ideas and actions are easy to extract and consume.
  4. Channel matters. With executives in particular, the content has to be easy for them to access, wherever they are — on their iPad during a flight, in a printed paper to peruse after dinner, or in a short video while waiting for a meeting to start.
  5. Push beyond the common wisdom and top-of-mind trends. Executive content needs to present a provocative vision for future possibilities.
  6. Evolve from technical to strategic. Executives are not interested in reading about technologies and products—those are only a means to an end…Position solutions in terms of the bottom line and what can help grow the business.


Like Being in a Rut?

As a business owner, every day brings new challenges and issues that demand our attention. When 100% of our time is given to doing the business (marketing, selling, making, fixing, shipping, accounting, etc.), we’re stuck.  We’re in a rut that (often) leads to failure. Perhaps not failure in the sense of going out of business or having to take a day job, but a missed opportunity to see the business become what it could/should be.

It’s a common trap we can all fall into.  We have something the market wants.  Demand increases and the technical activity associated with getting and filling orders completely fills our schedules.  Forty hours per week becomes fifty and then sixty.  We start taking work home (it’s a sign when what we once enjoyed becomes work).  Everything becomes more mechanical.  We lose balance often at the same time our business is losing steam.

When we’re in the rut, the solution appears to be counter-intuitive and impossible to execute, but we must allocate a portion of our time to work on the business if we want our business to survive.  It’s not optional – it’s essential. You may have heard the admonition to not work in your business at the expense of working on it–the question, though, becomes “how?”

We need to continually infuse creativity into our business–if we want to stay out of the rut.  That won’t happen if we don’t:  1) purposefully allocate time for it and 2) utilize an agenda that maximizes the creative input in the time allocated. The best solution to infuse the most creativity in the shortest amount of time is setting aside 5 days per year with your executive leadership team and 90 minutes or less per week (5% to 6% of your total work hours), using specific agendas to extract creative input to prioritize, solve your issues, maintain focus and advance your company.

Applied faithfully, this regimen will move you and your company to a top performing level. Rather than rehashing worn out frustrations, being stymied in your rate of growth, or feeling like you have to come up with all the answers by yourself, you will find freedom, organization, and synergy flowing from your efforts. Dare to try it!

A special thanks to Don Tinney, who posted many of the concepts above in a blog entry this week at http://www.eosworldwide.com

Fear Need Not Keep You From Success

 

As an entrepreneur, you must be able to stare fear in the face and be an overcomer. But how? Jaime Tardy (on http://www.under30ceo.com) interviews millionaires to find out how they successfully dealt with their own fears. Excerpts from her takeaways appear below:

You Don’t Have to Be Fearless

You don’t need to be fearless! You just need to overcome it just enough to take action in spite of it. Millionaire Frank McKinney, who calls himself a real estate daredevil and creates $30 million dollar dream homes, said this about fear:

‘Realize there is a force at work subconsciously in your mind that is tempting you to say no. That’s the primary difference between my career and most others, especially in real estate, that I don’t let the fear that is there stop me.’

Recognize the Fear

Before you can get past that fear, the first thing you need to do is recognize it. It’s very easy to ignore fear. If you have tried to recognize it yourself and can’t seem to make your head go there, ask a friend for help. Ask them to pay attention and see if they can figure out what fear you have, in general conversation or when they are asking you questions about it specifically. Getting to the root of that fear–and realizing it is there–is the first step!

Putting Your Fear in Perspective

One millionaire’s mentor shared a story to put fear in perspective about a woman who had her children kidnapped, and the kidnappers were going to kill her children. Now that is true fear. Most of the time in business we fear things that might come true. Or we have fear because we need to step out of our comfort zone and risk something. The next time you are feeling fear, replace it with feeling grateful that you don’t have a life or death situation. Your business risk is not life threatening for you or those you love. Bankruptcy is not life threatening. I’ve interviewed millionaires that lost it all and came back to succeed.

Action Item: Put Fear in Perspective

The next time you feel that fear, put it in perspective in your mind. Imagine how small your issue truly is in the world. It seems big to you right now, but it’s not as big as you think.

Lean on Your Mentors

Another great tip I’ve heard from many millionaires is to find a mentor. Mentors have been where you are and faced the fear you are facing. It’s easier to get past it with their support, and expertise. Armando Montelongo, host of Flip this House on A&E, said:

‘I had the question, Can I really do this? Can this really happen? Is this pie in the sky? But I looked to my mentors for advice and started doing exactly what they told me. It helped me to almost immediately overcome the fear.’

Action Item: Lean on Your Mentors

If you already have a mentor, be honest with them about your fear. They have probably heard it before. It might feel a little vulnerable at first, but that is a good thing.   If you don’t have a mentor yet, find one! You don’t have to pay for one either.

Taking Action with the Fear

It’s not the fear that is the problem; it’s the inactivity that is. So focus on just taking whatever action you need to take in spite of the fear. The inaction will end up costing you a lot more in the long run than the “safety” you received from not doing it. 

Action Item: Commit in Advance

One technique to use to get past your fear is to make it feel farther away. Look at your calendar and pick a date that seems like a far away date. It might be a month for you or even three months. It’s far enough away that it doesn’t seem that scary. But once you commit to it and tell others you will feel obligated to do it. You don’t want to look like a fool if you don’t do it! So you do it anyway, even with the fear. 

Action Item: Logically Counteract It

Another action item you can try is to logically counteract the fear. Imagine you are listening to a great friend of yours talk about their fear. What would you say to them?

Fear is natural in entrepreneurship. Learning how to face it and use it to your advantage is key to your success. Hope these tips help!

Entrepreneur, Not CEO

Everybody (entrepreneur) calling himself or herself a CEO—listen up, this is for you: stop it. Calling yourself the CEO will label you as either an egoist or someone with confidence compensation issues. That will make people less willing to work with you or help you. Taking the top title in a company also suggests a limited vision of what your company can become. Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”

So stop pretending to have attained a title you didn’t earn and start doing what you need to do to get to where you want to be. Here’s how:

Attract Awesome People

Jobs had Wozniak and later, Markkula. Clark had Andreessen. McNeally had Bechtolsheim, Joy and Khosla. A remarkable CEO should be like the moon, illuminated by the reflected light of all the stars he or she has brought into orbit. Awesome people act as accelerants to whatever you’re doing. They push ideas forward, execute with aplomb and challenge you to new heights.

If you can hire, hire. If you can’t hire, bring them into your orbit as advisors, friends and fellow travelers. Get them to invest their creativity and energy. To get the true benefits of awesome people, focus on diversity. You want to have as many different perspectives on a problem as you possibly can, so bring on the best people from as wide array of backgrounds and from different generations. They’ll learn from each other and the confluence of their experiences will be the basis of company creativity for years to come.

Most importantly, attracting awesome people to your company precludes retreat. You carry too valuable a cargo of energy and confidence invested by others to turn back.

Build an Experience, Not a Product

Eric Ries has put the concept of the minimally viable product (MVP) front and center in the minds of Silicon Valley startups. But this focus is somewhat misguided. Products give you utility and then may be discarded. Products are the one-night stands of business. Experiences give you memories and good experiences will bring you back for more, it engenders a long-term relationship. The best CEOs know this instinctively and do all that they can to create and cultivate an attractive experience for their customers.

Once you’ve got a good experience, cement it with the bond of buying..That price tag is valuable to you too. It focuses the mind tremendously and forces you to deliver a unique and memorable experience of real value. When you offer a product for free, you aren’t forced to justify your existence to customers or show a useful benefit..

Learn Finance

If you wanted to be a rock star, you’d have to learn to read music and if you wanted to be an award-winning novelist, you’d have to learn basic grammar. It should not come as a surprise that if you want to be the CEO of a business you should learn finance. Yet we regularly see founders blowing off finance or outsourcing major financial decisions to hired guns..

For startups, there’s one important financial metric that matters more than any other: months left to live given your current burn rate. Real CEOs know this number and manage it religiously.

Define a Big Goal and Take Small Steps

Plenty of wannabe Silicon Valley CEOs have read Jim Collins and will tell you about their BHAG (That’s their Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). They’ll tell you that they want to revolutionize the datacenter, or change the face of mobile payments, or create a new paradigm for social sharing, or something equally nebulous. That’s great. But it’s the ability to both set that goal and show how you’re going to achieve it that marks a real CEO.

Successful CEOs balance aspirations with operations. They focus on things that can be done today to secure customers and growth over time—not on the title they put on their business cards.

The quoted text above is from a post by Alexander Haislip that appeared on TechCrunch recently. Thanks to blogger Beverly J. Conquest for posting an excerpt on her blog, Accounting & Small Business|Beverly Shares.