Business Savvy

Have a grateful heart

Grateful Heart Art Print
Pope, Katherine &…
8 in. (200 mm) x 20 in. (508 mm)
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Sometimes things don’t go as you, in all your wisdom, want them to go. The best business books – you know the ‘scratch with the turkeys or soar with the eagles’ ones will tell you to redouble your efforts even if it means bursting that vein and going to the great beyond…

My experience (learned with some pain, mind you) is that some time it’s best to just let go that particular idea, and see what alternatives present themselves. Often the solution that appears is so magical, so innovative you would never have thought of it in common hours. I believe it is best to approach things with a grateful heart and be open to the gifts that the challenges bring. And, yes, I know the pain of not getting my own way, but I generally try to avoid acting like a spoiled brat when the universe has another plan.

Have some faith in yourself, change your thinking, be grateful for the challenge – lesser people than you would’ve given up by now. Prove something to yourself.

Easing buyers away from their existing suppliers

I think there are few things more frustrating than trying to sell to a buyer who is already happily buying from another supplier. You know you’ve got a good product or service, maybe even better than the competitor’s, but your buyer is perfectly happy as is.

Don’t give up. I’m the kind of person who will the same thing for lunch every day, so I relate to the buyer not wanting to change suppliers. But here’s the deal. If my lunch place puts the price up, or the quality goes down, or the staff suddenly change and are no fun, then I quietly go and find somewhere else to eat. Your buyer might well be just the same. Resistant to change, sure, but not impossible to change.

And things do change. If you are patient and work at it, you’ll become part of the buyer’s landscape too. When they become dissatisfied with the supplier they will come to you because they know you.

If you are working in sales (and if you have your own business you ARE working in sales) you have two issues to address – a) maintaining your existing customers, and b) finding new customers. You have to do this ALL the time.

In the same way that you are maintaining your customers, your buyer’s supplier should also be doing the same thing. The question is – are they better at maintaining than you are at finding?

Thing change, all the time. I like to take the approach that, “the supplier’s goods are good, sure, however, in the event that you’re looking for a new choice, this is what my product has to offer. In fact, here’s the comparison. Today so many things are much the same, so, let me point out the difference that makes the difference… and here’s my card. Call me, I’ll be standing by to help.” And I move on fairly quickly, to either service an existing client, or find a new client. It is vital though, to leave your doors open for communication. Under promise, over deliver.

If you come up with a new product, go back as soon as possible and touch base with the buyer. Could be just the thing they’re looking for. Service existing or find new customers. I’m also inclined to ask for referrals – if this is not for you, can you suggest someone who might be interested?

Buyers can also be interested in window-shopping – out of curiosity or comparison, or long term planning. They’re not making a decision today, or indeed any time soon, but they need to know what’s available for strategic purposes. Things change all the time. If you give the impression of being a credible performer you will have an edge over the long haul. Existing suppliers can grow fat and complacent – their service might lose some of the gloss over time.

Buyers also change – they move on for one reason or another. Their manager can equally move or change. I know very few people who are doing exactly the same job, in exactly the same way, that they were doing five years ago. Read the papers and trade journals to spot change – you might even get a chance to preempt it because of your excellent business intelligence. Keep up to date on the changes and diversifications in your field.

Quick Questions:
1. Do you know of an existing buyer/seller relationship that might be eased apart?

2. Are you calling regularly on buyers who buy elsewhere, “just keeping you informed?”

3. Do you thoroughly inform buyers of the benefits of your products?

4. Does this include delivering great presentations, even if the buyer is otherwise committed?

5. Do you stay up-to-date with finance/business intelligence via papers, net, journals?

6. Do you give outstanding service to your existing customers?

7. Do you ask for referrals? How about any upcoming changes in the buyer’s organisation?

8. How many new accounts have you landed in the last three months?

9. How many of these were previously serviced by another supplier?

10. Who is a prospect, right now, whom you think you can make into a customer? Call them, set up a meeting.

Creating a well rounded business

Becoming a well rounded person is an almost universally desirable objective – creating a well rounded business is also a desirable objective. How might you go about the process of creating a well rounded business? After all, you can’t exactly send your business off to finishing school, a gap year, or the big OE (Overseas Experience).

Take some time out and select some areas of your business to serve as initial headings. It’s ok to use a fairly broad brush at this point, you can drill down to more detail later. You’ll probably end up with headings such as sales, finance, accounting, strategy, communications, training, marketing, staff, R+D, plant and equipment, and so on. You’ll need to adjust the headings to reflect your business.

The next step is to rate where you and/or your business is at on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is equal to the very best. Because I’m a visual person, I like charts – create a radar chart (aka spider chart, star chart, clothesline chart, umbrella chart), and then from a distance you can see gaps, or signs of unevenness.

In this quick sample chart I built in Excel we can see the business sales are ‘lagging’ compared to marketing – these would be working in concert, and the measures we’ve used are little better than guess work at this point. In general terms it appears our company has got communications, finance, and accounting well in hand, the staff seem trained and ok, however, strategy, plant and equipment, and research and development (R+D) seem to be problematic. This doesn’t mean the business is necessarily in trouble – this is when you would start to drill down and find out more information.

Looking at this chart I imagine it could be of a manufacturing business that has been established for years, with long term staff and experienced management. The low points suggest ‘slipper’ levels of comfort (“We know what we sell, we know our market, we know how to make it and sell it at a good profit, and we don’t need any new computers to tell us this”). The company would probably hold good information about turnover, variable and fixed costs, gross and net profits, earnings, working capital, stock, debtors, cash, creditors etc; and perhaps rather less information about sales and marketing, and less again about the development of new products and/or business opportunities. Anything below 30% requires further investigation, however, none of this means anything is necessarily bad or wrong. It is possible for a well run niche business to have a chart like this, and be very comfortable all around.

Once the big picture is resolved, the next step would be to look at each of the topic areas, and tease out more specific information. In my case I’d chart them again, with subtopics forming the arms of chart. In the case of marketing I’d use the standard marketing mix split – price, place, product, and promotion – and then look at aspects inside of those topics in more depth. As an example, for promotion I’d look at the advertising (press, journal, radio, tv, point-of-sale, web, publicity etc) and see what information was available there, and then I’d take the numbers (0-100) and average them for the point on the chart.

Creating a well rounded business requires you to focus on areas for development without losing sight of the big plan. The object of the exercise is to find areas of your business that could do better, and then work on that area to improve it. It’s vital that you don’t ‘optimise’ one part of your business at the expense of another. In six months time, take another look at the overall business. If you keep the charts and overlay the images, over time you’ll see where the business has become more rounded. There’s a further benefit in this kind of regular review – again, over time – quality is likely to improve.

Challenge Yourself

Challenge Yourself, Extreme Sport Poster
36 in. (914mm) x 24 in. (610mm)
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Mark Twain said:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Ultimately the game is all about you. Launching your business, running your business is a scary and yet incredibly rewarding thing to do. But you will be rewarded, often in ways unexpected, and who knows, you might even make some money along the way. Sometimes things work out fantastically well, sometimes it’s just a disaster. But that’s all part of the challenge. Stick to your game plan, don’t fret about the size of your business – a small garden, well tilled, is something to be proud of. You’re writing the story of your life – you might as well come back with great stories of the day you caught the perfect wave. Or would you rather tell about how you managed to unjam the photocopier, or how you opened a new packet of paper clips and chained them all together…