Aug 11, 2014 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Things to avoid
Small retailers see themselves as under siege, and many just hunker down and work harder to survive, for many, it is too hard.
For those that survive, some are doing really well, and there seems to be a few common themes. Few are doing them all, but all seems to be picking one or two and really delivering:
- They treat the shopping experience as an occasion, they set out to deliver to their customers fun, social acceptance, an opportunity to express themselves, deliver serendipity, information, and advice to their customers. In short they are not there to flog product, they are there to provide a service, which happens to involve customers buying stuff.
- They carve out a niche, something distinctive, and set out to “own” it, at least in the local area. A friend of mine runs a small retail business, “Affordable Decor” in suburban Croydon on Sydney. It is a small store, set away from the main roads and shopping centres, but it is unique, a reflection of Maureen’s great eye and her connection to her customer base that comes from across Sydney.
- Digital capability is almost table stakes, if in no function beyond inventory management, retailers need to be digital capable. My mate Maureen down the road in Affordable Decor does not have anything digital in her store, everything is still pen and paper, there is no website, (despite my pleading) but there is a really focused program of text messaging to her cohort of loyal customers.
- Mobile friendly is evolving as a real differentiator. A huge proportion of customers and potential customers connect using mobile, so being there is fundamental.
- Big data gets all the publicity, but what about Small data? Successful small retailers are in a position to know the details, small data, of their customers likes and dislikes, successes and failures on a personal level. It is this intimacy with customers that big data cannot hope to match, for all its great value.
For those small retailers reading this post, how are you doing?
Need someone to talk to who undestands the challenges?
Aug 8, 2014 | Management, Small business
clickconnect.com.au
Most SME’s I see are run by a single person, without the benefit of any sort of advisory board beyond those with whom he/she has dinner sometimes, when they get the time.
The hats they wear make Josephs coat look bland.
CEO, CMO, CTO, COO, CFO, CSO,…. The list goes on, up to and including CCO (chief cleaning officer), CBW, (chief bottle washer) and CSK (chief shit kicker)
These multiple roles have always challenged small business leaders, their primary resource beyond domain capability has always been time, and that is non renewable. Recently the explosion of the time and expertise necessary to have a chance at competing effectively in the face of commoditising and transparent markets, aggressive competitive activity, increasing customer scale in B2B, and marketing automation, has multiplied the size of the marketing hat enormously.
Where does the time come from?
Two places:
Focus and discipline.
- Focus on customers, and a niche where you can be significant. The old adage of big fish in little pools rather than the opposite hold truer than ever.
- Discipline to build a plan, assemble the resources to execute, then to execute with the agility necessary to respond instantly to new information, changes in the market, customer preferences, or whatever it may be, but not to be distracted from the broad objectives of the plan. The second part of discipline is to measure progress, not just against the plan, but more importantly, towards the objectives of the plan, the better to understand the next step.
Most SME’s I see have bits of both, not enough of either, so they are like empty drink cans bobbing around in a rough sea, unless they can keep upright, and plug the hole, eventually they sink.
Need some thoughts on how to identify and plug the holes?
Call me.
Jul 29, 2014 | Customers, Sales, Small business
Most of us recognise that the best sales lead you have is a satisfied existing customer, so why do SME’s so often fail to capitalise on them?.
It seems to me that there are a number of reasons, usually they boil down to not allocating the time, not thinking about it, or thinking they need some fancy CRM system beyond their means. All excuses that should not be allowed.
There are a few simple things every business should do, they should be baked into your sales and customer service processes, however simple or complicated they may be.
- Meet the promise. Make sure the sale you have just made at least meets the standards promised, much better when they exceed. Many SME’s seem to think the sales process stops at delivering the order, perhaps receiving payment, but that is just the start.
- Be visible. Make sure you are visible, and available during the delivery/installation process. This ensures that molehills do not morph into mountains.
- Ownership. Take ownership of any problems that occur, not only are the problems things that have to be solved, taking ownership of them is a powerful tool that communicates commitment to the customer, and they will not forget.
- Say Thank you. The two most powerful words in sales are: “Thank you”. Just saying them makes you feel good, and certainly it makes the buyer happy to hear them, creates an empathy, and opportunity to strengthen the relationship.
- Over-deliver value. Be more than a salesman, be a resource for the problems and opportunities that your customer faces. Send them snippets of information that they may find interesting, opportunities and ideas they may value. Not only does that keep you top of mind, it builds on the relationship, you stop being a salesman and become a contributor to their success.
- Be personal. In this day of electronic communication, email, content marketing, and all the rest, one of the oldest forms of communication works better than it ever has, just because it is different, and demonstrates you care. A snail mail thank you, personally written, stuck in an envelope, and posted will be read every time, and is guaranteed to generate a warm feeling in the receiver out of all proportion to the effort that goes into it.
Doing these things builds trust, and trust is the foundation of sales, we all know that, so why not just do it as a part of the process.
And the seventh?
When you have done all the above, and have a relationship with satisfied customers, ask them for leads, introductions and recommendations. Put yourself in this position. Someone you know, who knows a bit about you and your business rings and tells you of one of their trusted suppliers will make contact, and that they think you should talk to them.
Do you take the call when it comes? of course you do.
Jul 27, 2014 | Change, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
The single biggest stumbling block I see to successful digital marketing is not the technology, or the money, desire, or need, it is simply the unwillingness or inability to create relevant, engaging content of value that suits the context in which it is seen.
Usually it reflects a lack of a solid understanding of why they are in the business, other than to pay the bills. As Simon Sinek would say, the “Why” of the business.
Interestingly, the same stumbling block exists with bigger enterprises, they may have websites stuffed with words and pictures, but often that is all they are: words and pictures without value.
The same reasons exist for the failure in both categories.
- Lack of marketing leadership. Where marketing is seen as an expense, and customers are all those out there from whom we need to extract money. In these cases, creating content is always a barrier, and where it exists, it is usually a steaming pile of crap. Irrelevant, hard to navigate, bland, talking about themselves, yada, yada. Almost always the content improves when the customer is put as the focus of the content generation activity, answering the question “how can we better inform our market” When everybody in a business recognises that they have a marketing responsibility, you get the environment where content can be improved, and this is a leadership function, to drive the culture.
- Content is not recognised as an asset to be leveraged. Knowledge is the new currency of success, in almost every business. Those who know more, and can leverage that knowledge, find success. Knowledge management is therefore crucial and where does it reside? Between the ears of employees, stakeholders, suppliers, and often customers. When that simple fact is recognised, steps can be taken to extract the knowledge, and organise it in some way to become information of value to customers. Intellectual Capital, is knowledge that can be used, and unlike physical capital, the more it is used, the better it gets.
- No process to record and organise ideas. Content is everybody’s responsibility, but there needs to be processes in place that make it easy, and encourage the contribution of ideas and information that can be massaged into content of value. The best i have seen are a bit like the traditional sales funnel, everything that comes in , and coming in is everybody’s job, is recorded, then the ideas and information progressively filtered and organised in a process that creates value for recipients at the end. You really need an idea bank into which everyone makes deposits, and deposits are rewarded, and used to create valuable content.
- No focus on content. The old adage, what gets measured gets done, is true, if it is important, and is treated as such, it will get done. One business I work with is led by a lady who sees content as important, so she devotes a part of her considerable energy to creating it, and by that simple example has tuned the place into a content generation machine over a relatively short period, and they are getting the sales to prove it works.
- Content is marketing’s job. NO. It is everybody’s job in an enterprise to assist the customer.
- You think you know it all, and why would you tell your competitors?. When this syndrome becomes obvious it is time to leave. Most commonly I see it in other wise sophisticated technical businesses, where the history tells them that keeping information to themselves, and dolling it out to customers like a drunk offering a swig at his bottle when they ask nicely is the way to gain and keep customers. Rubbish!
- Content for contents sake. Putting up any old stuff on digital platforms is counter productive. Our digital world has given all the power to the customer, if you post rubbish, it will be seen as a reflection of the business, and who would want to do business with you?
There has been a lot written by all sorts of people on the subject of “content” and there is a lot more coming. However, there are a few simple rules that should be followed:
- Make sure whatever content you put out there is a reflection of the business, its priorities, strategies, and value proposition.
- Know who your primary customer group is, and what they are looking for in a supplier in your space
- Always look at your content with the eyes of your customer, and in the context of the competitive landscape in which you are competing for your customers attention, engagement, and ultimately, money. If your digital face is not up to scratch, why should customers trust that your products and services are any better?
I would be very happy to talk more about all this over a coffee.
Jul 18, 2014 | Customers, Marketing, Small business
As a young marketing graduate in the 70’s I was given a scholarship to attend an intensive marketing management program in Boston, run by Harvard professor Jim Hagler.
He changed my life.
One of the many things he rumbled to me (he spoke, but it came out as a rumble) was:
“Son, find out how they intend to stay in front of the curve”
Sage advice.
Marketing is all about staying in front of the curve, the challenge most businesses have is defining the curve.
Most businesses have a choice of curves, but you cannot be all things to all people, so choices are made.
The price curve
The cost curve
The innovation curve
The Value curve.
It is just this last one that really matters to customers worth keeping. They want value, however they choose to define it.
Whatever else you do, for your chosen group, niche, cohort, or however you choose to define your ideal target customers, stay in front of the value curve.
Look around you, there is no successful enterprise that is behind the curve.
Jul 15, 2014 | Leadership, Small business, Strategy
The complexity of the world these days demands an approach to strategy that is counter intuitive, perhaps even a contrarian approach to the accepted best practice.
For decades managers have sweated and planned, and set out to execute, just to see the planning go to crap at the first hurdle, as things rarely happen as planned.
In the “MBA model”, you push on regardless, because it is planned, the resources gathered, prioritised and allocated, a “push” model of strategy development and deployment.
If the opposite were to happen with strategy, as it does with agile software development, how would it differ?
A continuous process of combining strategic hypothesis generation and A/B testing, going hand in hand with incremental resource allocation from a diverse pool of experts, rather than a from pool of available bodies? Seems to be a sensible alternative, so why don’t we do it?
Generally we people like certainty, clarity, and a minimum of ambiguity, and that comes with a detailed plan. Problem is, plans are only as good as our ability to read the future, which is generally pretty ordinary. The better way is to know the end point, and if we can manage the ambiguity and uncertainty, make our own away there based on the obstacles we encounter.
In this uncertain world, we need a compass, not a roadmap.
Maps tell us to move forward a defined distance, take a left, followed by a right, and so on, whereas a compass tells us the direction, not necessarily the detail of how to navigate the immediate terrain.
This counter intuitive approach to strategy is often what SME’s do, without really recognising it as such. They react to what is in front of them, rather than what they may have planned to do, often the plans do not even exist in a formal sense. Their challenge is to apply some focus on the longer term, not just the burning bridge they are standing on.
