Tag Archives: performance

4 SmallBiz Keys to Success From Fieri

If you are a successful small business owner, chances are high that you didn’t get to that place without some setbacks. Rare is the one who never experiences setbacks–in business or life. However, in the sentiment of “turning lemons into lemonade,” it is important that we never allow the setbacks to keep us under. Guy Fieri of Food Network fame certainly has attained some notoriety. We love to watch his show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and have visited several of the restaurants featured on the show.

Guy has a certain flair about him–he of the big hair, fancy sports car, and distinctive gotee. Years ago, he and a friend, Steve Gruber, launched their successful food careers with Johnny Garlic’s, two California-style restaurants. The original location in Santa Rosa caught fire one night in 2001. Undeterred, the pair launched another restaurant in 2003, Tex Wasabi’s, which also developed a loyal following. A year later, Russell Ramsay’s Chop House replaced the first Johnny Garlic and the due felt they had come full circle. However, Russell Ramsay’s was slow to get off the ground. Tinkering with the menu and trying to woo former customers back were unsuccessful in helping turn things around.

Gwen Moran, writing for Entrepreneur, shares Guy’s journey:

…one day, Fieri was sitting at a traffic light, when a guy in the car next to him called over and asked, “Hey, why didn’t you reopen Johnny Garlic’s?” Fieri replied, “I did. It’s the Chop House.” His former customer said he couldn’t afford to eat at the Chop House, and he missed the original restaurant.

That was Fieri’s light-bulb moment. Customers wanted the familiar place they had grown to love. The Chop House gave off a too-rich-for-our-blood vibe—not a good fit for the eatery’s largely blue-collar following. Within a year, the Chop House closed and reopened Johnny Garlic’s, business was up 25 percent within the first month.

Moran says that Fieri learned four lessons from his experience:

1. Listen to feedback from your customers. If Fieri hadn’t paid attention to the guy who spoke to him at the red light, he might have continued trying to get customers to accept something they just didn’t want.

2. Understand your customers’ perception of your business. The Chop House menu wasn’t significantly more expensive than Johnny Garlic’s, but people thought it was. That’s what mattered — and what kept them away.

3. Check your ego at the door. Fieri could easily have let his track record as a successful restaurateur go to his head instead of admitting that the Chop House wasn’t the best fit. Really listen when you get feedback from customers and employees, he says. They’re telling you how you can be better.

4. Don’t give up on your dream. Find a way to make your dream work, even if you have to keep experimenting with new ideas and approaches until something sticks. “Surround yourself with good people who are dedicated and have good ideas, and can help you see what you’re missing. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water [when times get tough],” he says.

These are four watchwords for any business owner. After we’ve been in business a while, it is so easy to forget what/who helped bring you to that point. Without competitive advantage, a business is not successful. Without customers, there can be no competitive advantage. Inattention to input and thoughts about your business leads to a lack of customers. A willingness to adapt to what the market needs is key to business success. Finally, as Fieri suggests, perseverance is the “glue” that holds it all together.

 

Real Estate Agents Must Understand Content Management

Today was a good day. In addition to meeting with some smart minds about artisan entrepreneurship, I had the opportunity to plan a pitch event for would-be entrepreneurs and meet with an existing business owner who desires to invigorate his enterprise. His business is real estate–specifically residential sales. What he’s hoping to accomplish is to build a powerhouse brand that competes statistically with the leading agents in our community while targeting an under-served niche market. He asked me about my philosophy on how to accomplish his goal(s).

We began with a conversation about the role of social media in marketing services organizations. Fairly quickly, I felt the need to draw a diagram to make a key series of points. The figure below is what I drew for him–allow me to explain it to you so that you can be on the same page as we ended up:

 

Everyone knows that Social Media is on the rise and important to reach niche audiences in engaging conversations. What I was able to point out to this entrepreneur is that social media is a subset of Content Management Marketing. Knowing what messages you want to get across is a precursor to sharing the right information through online channels. To begin making posts, tweets, updates, etc without in-depth knowledge of target prospects and their needs is like wearing a blindfold in an archery contest.

Whether it is your strategy as an agent to build your business through referrals from prior clients, key centers of influence, or new campaigns, it is unwise to get spread too thin and not have deep relationships. Given the huge number of users on many social networks, the agent must devise a strategy that isolates niches and pursues them with targeted strategies.

The diagram shows that thought leadership is obtained by creating great content that is shared through social media. In response, the various media provide a built-in feedback loop that should drive future thought leadership strategies. For instance, some agents provide insights in multiple categories for their target audience(s). Whether it is local community, national real estate trends, the agent’s own interests, or local real estate content, the point is to demonstrate that you know what you are talking about.

Lead generation is the holy grail for many agencies that advise real estate firms. They think that, if they can generate enough new prospects for the agents to pursue. they have earned their keep. However, as the agent with whom I was meeting explained, leads that are not qualified and filtered can waste a lot of time. Smart lead generation comes from site visitor capture initiatives that are driven by a content management system that relies on social media to create online experiences for web fans.

 

Having worked in marketing roles for multiple services firms, I have met many peers who are entirely comfortable being creative, attending wine and cheese events, and spending the money of the business owner(s). What many of them lack are measurement systems (metrics) that validate the marketing ROI.  Furthermore, when metrics are available (web analytics come with every website), the marketers often don’t use the information to change the messaging and means of communication. Smart agents know better and use metrics to verify that what they are doing is working.

Competitive advantage is what is so hard to achieve, yet worth the pursuit. It is that unique place where the audience you target perceives that you can solve their needs “better” than any other provider. “Better” means that the home buyer/seller connects with the agent on a personal and professional basis and feels that the fee they pay to be represented is a value that exceeds what else is available to them.

What is your Content Management Strategy? Do you have one?

Helping Companies Innovate On Purpose

 

Organizations large and small have teams that are responsible for executing business objectives. In some cases, the objective is to overcome a challenge; other times to re-engineer a process; still others are tasked with the commercialization of new ideas.  Regardless the initiative, the net result is that change will need to occur in order for a new, preferred outcome to be realized. Instead of the top executive in a group owning the need to introduce change, it is usually better to get a team involved for buy-in and swift implementation as well as diverse viewpoints.

Every team has inherent strengths, unique capabilities, passionate individuals with keen insights, and the opportunity to succeed. Invariably, however, time seems to work against innovation and helping teams find the time to do something uniquely significant can be tough work. Culture can impede team progress. It is important to provide the permission, resources, and support for teams to feel it is okay to brainstorm, invent, and implement new ideas.

Bulldog Drummond of San Diego uses a five step process to guide teams through innovation:

STEP 1:  WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? 

While it sounds obvious, framing the challenge clearly is the first step to take. Use the power of “Why?” to ensure the challenge is clearly stated and that everyone on your team understands the problem or the opportunity. Frame the challenge as a question. 

STEP 2: UNLEASH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS

Brilliant minds inside companies are often under-utilized because there isn’t a venue to bring them together. These minds don’t get enough time with their peers and are rarely put into environments designed to produce them with enough time to attack a single issue. When solving a challenge, don’t just have marketing or product development teams attack the problem. Instead, unleash the power of cross-functional teams and, if possible, more than one. 

STEP 3: PUT THE CONSUMER (AND KEY INSIGHTS) INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE CHALLENGE

Millions of dollars are flushed down the drain because people aren’t paying attention to the data and the knowledge it contains is not organized in a manner that tells a compelling story. Bringing the consumer to life as people, not just as data, places the consumer and key scenarios into the middle of the challenge in an organized and insightful approach.

STEP 4: DESIGN AND FACILITATE AN AMAZING PROJECT EXPERIENCE

When attacking a challenge, envision the entire experience from beginning to end so that the teams can focus on solving the challenge. We begin by defining success with the project leaders and then choose an inspiring offsite venue and bring 5 to 10 cross-functional teams together. We make sure there is homework completed in advance preparing the teams for their time together, including gathered research, trends, and suggested work in the field. Next, we design the experience—from music and food, to a range of carefully facilitated exercises—and we model a passionate curiosity to solve the problem. At the end of the one or two days we always have amazing, actionable outcomes. 

STEP 5:  ACT QUICKLY ON THE OUTCOMES 

The key to success is to ensure that the ideas are not lost because they haven’t been framed correctly, or they don’t get the time and attention due to the day-to-day activities. Make sure that post the summit, the learnings and outcomes are synthesized in a compelling way, and that a project champion is chosen to lead the ideas into development.

Well-designed innovation summits are characterized by creativity, fun, and enthusiasm. Your organization can empower its teams with resources, support, and approval to dream big dreams and develop ideas that will benefit the organization. It is then incumbent upon leaders to move quickly to implement the ideas.

 

Endurance Runners Are Like Entrepreneurs

In writing for Inc magazine, Patricia Fletcher draws a comparison between entrepreneurs and marathon runners. In addition to being a little crazy, she says both have a plan to follow that prepares them for success. The performance for which you are judged is predictable from the “practice” that leads up to it. Here are Fletcher’s observations about the right mindset both need–

Get comfortable being uncomfortable for long periods of time.  Believe it or not, this will become a badge of honor.  Most of your work as an entrepreneur requires you to try new approaches, to push yourself beyond your limits. This means that you will fail a lot. You will struggle for funding–a lot. You will lose customers and opportunities–a lot. It’s all part of the training process. Your response to rejection is as good a determinant of your entrepreneurial ability as your response to success.

Adopt a resilient mindset. You are going to have some tough days; days when you question your own sanity and want throw in the towel.  Much like a marathon, the entrepreneurial experience is long, twisting, and filled with ups and downs. Every successful entrepreneur and marathoner I have talked with believes mindset is either your biggest asset or your biggest barrier. The pros handle it by maintaining an objective mindset that looks at setbacks as opportunities for improvement.

Embrace others like you. Working in a vacuum is not going to help you finish the race. Runners find running partners or join running clubs. They get faster because they push each other. They become stronger because they share tips for nutrition and avoiding injury. You can do the same thing. 

Connect with other entrepreneurs. Get together to practice your pitches, test your demos, and talk about go-to-market strategies. Working together will give you practice and insights while creating the relationships that will push you forward.

Don’t over-train. In my first few years as a runner and professional, I over-trained, thinking it would make me stronger and better, and prove that I belonged. Instead, I burned out. You will not succeed if you have 10 No. 1 priorities. Identify your top three goals. Don’t do anything that won’t make a big impact on your progress toward those three.

At conferences, I have heard several speakers tell up-and-coming women entrepreneurs and executives that they should say yes to any high-profile opportunities. I disagree. Go after new opportunities only if they’ll help you achieve one of your three big goals.

Measure. A good plan incorporates key performance indicators to track your progress. It also helps lessen risk by proactively addressing problems. What measurements will tell you that you are making progress?  How often should you track your progress?  What are your biggest obstacles?  Which do you need to address and which can be ignored? 

As someone who has been a distance runner for over 30 years, I can relate to each of these. When I was competing, I had a mental edginess honed from the daily effort I put into psyche and development of my skills. As an entrepreneur, I have  been more successful when I have brought my “A” game to what I do. How about you?

 

How To Grow Business All the Time

 

Whether your trade is producing software, computing tax liabilities, or manufacturing tangible goods, the success of your organization is going to be tied to strong sales (business development/ “bizdev”) performance over the long haul. Yet, few organizations are able to create a bizdev model that is sustainable and that constantly fuels the capital needs of the enterprise. Bizdev, however, is something that far too many senior executives (or, business owners in the SMB world) think must be acquired through osmosis or tenure. While I don’t actually believe that they think that, their actions would indicate otherwise.

Virtually everyone in North America has had a frustrating experience with bad sales execution. Either one has been on the end of trying to convince someone to buy, or the other end where we hate to be the recipient of “sales.” There’s much wrong with the selling models that are so pervasive that negative experiences abound on both sides of the equation.

Mahan Khalsa, who led the Sales Performance Group at FranklinCovey for a number of years, is one of my favorite authors on the subject of business development. His background included developing instruction for one of the old Big Eight CPA firms, then turning his attention to training almost 100,000 salespeople and consultants from all over the place in many different verticals.

Khalsa says, “Most professional sellers have good intent. They know manipulation and deceit hurt rather than build long-term sales success. They know that building trust is essential to both creating and capturing value. So they eliminate a lot of what would otherwise be dysfunctional—no surprise there. Yet most also consistently engage in actions that are not value adding–for them or for their customers. Even when great intent is present, there is a lot of room for improvement in eliminating dysfunctional behaviors.”

Both Khalsa and Neil Rackham find the tendency to jump to solutions before having completed the questioning process to be the bane of many folks involved in bizdev. I have observed noted rainmakers stumble in prospect meetings over this very subject. It’s as though the brain clicks into autopilot and, rather than seeking to understand, hubris takes over and the rainmaker is intent on being understood. Often, the solution that is recommended is premature–it doesn’t bear the wisdom of listening and consultative due diligence.

“Looking a little more holistically we could say the missing link is the ability to successfully blend excellent inquiry with excellent advocacy – to do a superb job of matching our story to the client’s story. Good inquiry is essential and most often the more undeveloped portion of the balance – and it is still only part of the equation. I’ve seen people get good at inquiry and still not be able to convert on advocacy.” (Khalsa)

When Khalsa left FranklinCovey, part of his intent was to transform the way business developers approach their work. He felt there was room for continuous improvement over an entire career. To that end, he began to wed together the twin concepts of business development and change management, with a sprinkling of performance measurement. In order to see strong long-term results, he argues, there must be an environment supportive of continuous improvement and a repeatable process that can be practiced and refined. 

Edward Deming once said, “It is not enough to do your best. You need to know what to do and then do your best.” So the quality of the practice and application is as important as the quantity of practice – and the quantity is essential. Khalsa subscribes to this concept as it relates to bizdev, stating “What I find liberating and motivating about the research is that everything, repeat everything, we need to do in order to get really good at sales is learnable – if we are willing to practice. It doesn’t have to do with our DNA, our native IQ, our personality type or social style, our years of experience. If we are willing to engage in a high number of repetitions of quality practice we can become as great as we want to be. That’s powerful.”

A key factor in effective bizdev is the ability to build a trusted relationship with the other party. Khalsa firmly believes that trust can be built intentionally and that it is tied strongly to value and information flow. In fact, he would argue that anyone who has two can obtain the third. Fundamentally, a rainmaker will have to become consistently better at doing what is promised and establishing a culture where the other party feels safe to share meaningful information.