Executive Wisdom for Business

Marketing Strategy 101

Business is really simple when you peel away the layers.

Whether you're a lawyer, an accountant, a milkman, a hardware store or a bordello; business is about converting prospects to sales.

During the Professional Services College, I ask the participants what they do.
"I'm a patent attorney."
"I'm a forensic accountant."
"I'm an independent financial adviser."
"I'm a business coach specialising in supply chain and logistics."

When I tell them they are first and foremost a marketer, the dissent comes hard and fast.
"I am most definitely not a marketer, I am a litigation lawyer."

Yes you are a marketer. It's just that you may well be a very poor one!

Creating a winning marketing strategy involves the careful positioning of your product or service in the marketplace so that it has a fundamentally unique appeal to a defined group of target customers. And, if possible, you will gain further advantage if your product, service or relationship is difficult for competitors to copy.

1. Identify your organisation's distinctive competencies
2. Analyse and segment the market
3. Establish, define and source the right target market
4. Focus and concentrate your marketing efforts
5. Make the rules (rather than following them)
6. S = CVh + YCl   Success equals higher customer value with a lower cost to you
7. Clearly define and articulate your competitive advantage
8. Sell only what the customers want and need
9. Think until it hurts

Here is a real-life example we created for an accounting firm that attended the Professional Services College in Queensland in 2007 ...

1. Specialising in rural accounting and farm-business advice
2. Family-owned and operated farms and livestock stations
3. Farms geographically separated from regional cities by more than 3 hours drive
4. Marketing would be entirely through alliances of other organisations providing goods and services to the farms, especially banks, mortgage brokers and legal firms
5. Clients would be educated on how to upload information simply via a proprietary software application through the internet, reducing the need for face-to-face interactions with the accountant
6. "No Bull Farming Accountants" - We only do accounting for farmers and graziers. We only do accounting. And, we never talk city-bull!

Ric Willmot - Delivering Breakthrough Executive Performance

Is your business in sync with customer needs?

Today on the Gold Coast I have had meetings with two members of my Mentor Program; and these meetings reminded me that in times of economic turmoil it doesn't hurt to return to basic business thinking (with strategic intent) to clarify your objectives and regain your individual business focus.

Ask yourself these questions about your product or service to determine if you are congruent with your customer's needs.

Consider your product or service. List the features, benefits and advantages, and then investigate ...

1. What problems does your product or service solve?
2. What type of person or business would be most likely to have those problems?
3. Conversely, what type of people or business would NEVER use your offering? (Contrary to conventional wisdom, not everyone is a prospect!)
4. What else needs to be certain and true about these people or customers for them to have a need for your offering?
5. What additional services or products would these people or businesses have to have?
6. And, what other problems could it solve?
7. If your current market disappeared, what could you do to stop from going out of business?

Dakota loving the surf today at Tallebudgera Beach.
I always find ways to have my family enjoy my work!

Ric Willmot

The Field of Expectations

How come some people think Big, and others don't? What do we mean by "thinking big?" Why do some people seem to have a lot of ambition, and others are satisfied with getting along and going along? Can we make any predictions, using conversation and interview techniques?

Here come Benny and Jared, 12-year old boys, each with a fishing pole and tackle box. They're on their way to the local lake, expecting to catch some fish this fine summer afternoon. Jared also is taking along a net.

Although an outside observer might not know much about fishing, he or she might draw at least one conclusion from the equipment each boy is carrying. Jared seems to have higher expectations than Benny. Now, it's true that Benny's expectations may be to catch a lot of fish, but Jared's seems to be to catch a very big fish.

We'll meet up with them as they reach a rundown wooden dock, set up their poles, and start to fish. Talking with Benny, we find out that he's from the local neighborhood, grew up around this lake, and hasn't done much traveling. He's hoping to catch a 3-lb. bass, or maybe even two of them.

Jared, on the other hand, has recently moved into the neighborhood, living just down the street from Benny. They've become friends over the summer, but Jared has mostly grown up in a coastal town on the Atlantic ocean. He's been out with some fishing boats, and one time, he caught a 12-foot shark. It scared him quite thoroughly, but his eyes light up with excitement, telling us about that fish.

We expect whatever it is we can imagine. We imagine whatever it is we've become accustomed to understanding.

Karina and Sharon both tend to stay close to their own neighborhoods. They're both about 13 years old, and neither one comes from a wealthy family. Karina loves to read, and visits the library constantly, taking out adventure stories, romance novels, and epic historical dramas. Sharon prefers playing video games, and enjoys chatting online with her other friends.

Neither girl has traveled, but Karina has developed a global field of experience in her imagination. She perceives the entire planet as a backdrop for life, adventure, problems, solutions, failures, and success. Sharon has a narrow field of experience, expecting things to happen mostly within a few miles of her home.

We expect things to happen within our field of perception, our field of expectations. When we understand only a local neighborhood, we expect all our problems and solutions, good and bad fortune, to take place within that small area of geography. But if we understand an entire state, a region, or a whole country, being familiar with roaming this area in our mind, we look to a much wider field for our solutions and ideas.

Anyone's field of expectations can be correlated to their geographical world view. Imagine hiring a marketing person who never has been anywhere other than the town in which they grew up. They don't enjoy reading much, and get most of their news and culture from 30-minute newscasts in the evening. How broad would be their marketing campaigns?

Think of a retired senior citizen, even someone who's been around the world during their working career. Their health is failing, they're tired, and they tend to narrow their focus more and more to their own back yard. With limited resources, how would they expect adventure or unusual events to take place? Looking around, seeing only the nearby sidewalks, road, and houses, they don't expect anything to matter to them if it's more than 10 miles away.

All of us search our mind and imagination for solutions, ideas, and methods by which to change what we don't like. That area in which we search is a field of experience — a field of expectations.

I think you over-thought

It seems that many people in business have a knack for making even the most simplest of things difficult. A member of my Mentor Program telephoned needing urgent advice. You do know that dentists, doctors and lawyers receive urgent phone calls from their clients. As a management consultant, it is not common for me to receive life or death phone calls seeking my instant advice. What was so important?

“Should I, or shouldn’t I, change my company name to ...”

This consultant who is exceptionally good at what he does, was bereft with anxiety about the business name for his practice. He had become consumed with this dilemma. What had compounded his stress was asking twenty or so people whether they liked his existing business name, or alternative (a), or alternative (b). Naturally, the jury was anything but unanimous, which only compounded in his mind the predicament.

This simple, yet far too common instance of misdirected energy, is nobbling even the quality thoroughbreds in business today. In the past, too many business books, consultants and speakers have needlessly confused and intimidated novice and expert business people alike. People today worry that if the answer is not complicated and convoluted then how could it possibly be any good?

In the fourteenth century an English logician and Franciscan friar named William of Ockham iterated a principle which has become known as Occam’s Razor. The principle is the Law of Parsimony: “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.” Literally translated it is “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Often paraphrased as “All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”

I have been accused of being intolerant, narked, acerbic, and other generally displeasing attributes at some point in my work and with responses to participants in my mentor program, and I think they are for the most part correct. However, my role as a professional consultant and mentor is not to be loved or idolized. It is unfortunate though, that some take offense when I interrupt a diatribe and ask, “What’s your question?” It is not just the decision-making that people are overcomplicating, it is the asking of questions and the dissemination of information as well.

One of the first rules for members of the mentor program is to make questions as specific as is possible, and ask the question first before providing a lot of background. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Fred Astaire was a magnificent dancer because he made it look effortless and natural. The challenge for us all is to dance to our own tempo and not be concerned about tangling-up trying to tango. If you ask enough people what they think of your business name, somebody will consider it their job to tell you it’s wrong.

Many decisions in business at a managerial level or above are over-thought. The hoofbeats are probably not zebras.

© Ric Willmot 2008 All rights reserved.

Everyday Business

With over 200 graduates through my Mentor Program you can understand that I am witness to commonalities in shortcomings, regularities in obstacles confronted, and similarities in approaches done poorly. Many of the mentoring delegates in the very beginning of their six months working with me, ask the same single question (although the wording may vary, the intent is exact):

"Where should I start to improve my business?"

Here are my Seven Steps to making everyday business, extraordinary:

1. Know what it is you really want to be doing. Get some focus.
2. Know who your REAL customers are. The one's who generate significant revenues for you, provide you with referrals and recommendations, and who you enjoy working with. Get to know these customers, never give them an opportunity to forget you, and treat them very well.
3. Stand out from the crowd. Be memorable for delivering significant value and for offering what your customers need that your competitors do not or cannot.
4. Engage the very best people you can to partner with you. That is, your employees, your sub-contractors, your suppliers, etc. Get the best, so you can be at your best. Trying to save money in these areas is false economy to delivering exceptional value to your own customers.
5. Build a brand. Be recognized for what you are.
6. Continually measure performance, and not just your financial indicators. By measuring your performance you can check the results against the desired state and make adjustments on the go, rather than being blind-sided as your business withers through poor performance.
7. Increase your sales team in your business. And you can do this at no cost! Satisfied customers are your penultimate sales team. Ask for referrals, recommendations and testimonials from them, always.

And never run with scissors in your hand.

© Ric Willmot 2008 All rights reserved.

Being rejected can be very liberating

Recently, a question was put to me: "How do you take criticism, without it making you upset?"

An entrepreneur had  offered an invention to be reviewed by a respected catalog for inclusion. After a lengthy period of silence, followed by numerous emails seeking an answer, the entrepreneur was declined for some minor health and safety concerns of the invention.

The entrepreneur became incensed and went through the five stages of grief all at once. "I take rejection hard anyway (who doesn't), but it's things like this that make me want to throw in the towel."

The reality is that we are all going to be rejected regularly in business ... and that is exactly the issue; it's not personal, it's business (in my best Godfather voice impersonation). Rejection is a normal component to business, to entrepreneurship, to relationships, you name it, receiving objections for your services and products will happen. It is how you respond that will determine your longevity.

If a buyer doesn't buy from you, more fool them; they are buyers, their job is to buy from you and they didn't. I have been turned down more times than the bed in the Executive Suite of the Marriott; I am still here and doing very well, thank you. If our brave soldiers can be shot at doing their job, you can continue to have your inventions initially rejected for insertion by a catalog.

The son of a close friend, is a pilot for Cathay Pacific Airlines. On January 7 this year, while captaining an Airbus en route from Brisbane to Hong Kong, with not a spare seat on the plane, the cockpit and cabin filled with smoke. With hundreds of lives depending on him, Michael piloted this mammoth flying missile from 36,000 feet to the ground at Cairns airport in 18 minutes! If he can do that on Flight CX102 we can all handle  from our clients some tough questions, rejections and stalling tactics not to buy.

If Dr Victor Chang (who was tragically shot dead by extortionists in 1991) was able to successfully complete heart transplant operations on patients, what have we got to worry about when a prospect says, "No, I don't want you, we can't use your product, or your price is too high"?

I have never been bruised, bloody or broken from being rejected in business. The upside is of course, you now know that prospect is not interested, so you do not have to find the time to continue with them. That additional time you now have at your disposal can be used on marketing to quality buyers who respect and appreciate the value you bring to the table.

Being rejected can be very liberating.

© Ric Willmot 2008 All rights reserved.