Trish Takes On

A new direction

It's been a bit since I wrote here. Writing my own stuff has always taken a back seat to writing for my clients, and that's just not right. In spite of stiffening my resolve more than once, I have continued to neglect putting my thoughts down here--partly because I kept thinking I needed to have fully formed ideas, topics, thoughts etc. to write about. And because I felt that I needed to always be the voice of authority on whatever I was writing about.

But I don't want to do that any more. I think there is more creativity, innovation, and potential in rough edges, ideas that aren't all polished and done, than in well-crafted words of wisdom. Rough edges are personally risky, I admit. I may look stupid. I may not make sense. I may say something that I change my mind about later. I may look like I don't know.

Well, fine. I've reached a point now where all that ego stuff just doesn't matter all much. Oh, it's still there. It just doesn't matter.

So here I am, in all my stupid glory. Some days I may write something that moves you, motivates you, makes you want to engage in conversation. Other days I may write something boring, listless, and not useful in any way. All days you will get me and my brain, noodling on things that have come to mind and that I want to write about. It may be about marketing--a lot of the time it won't have any relation to marketing at all.

I'm going to have fun with this new direction. And I hope you do too!

News for My Peers-the Solopreneurs

In this case, my peers are the solo small business owners working to grow their work, income, and freedom.

It seems to me that so much attention in the small business media is on the idea of entrepreneurship that the fact that there are other viable choices gets lost. I don't know about anyone else, but I confess that I have no wish to grow a big entrepreneurial enterprise. I'm not that enamored of business for its own sake to find that idea attractive.

I don't want a business empire. I want a place in the business firmament, yes, but when I close my eyes and conjure up my ideal scenario, my active role is that of a highly valued resource for a small elite group of clients. My passive role is more in the mentor mode, providing resources, advice, and (dare I say it?) coaching to other solo practitioners coming up behind me on the path.

Here's a significant part of that ideal scenario: I am alone. Meaning that I don't have employees to manage or an office to run. Instead, I have a robust web of contractor partners that take care of administrative details, overflow work, and support services. And I'm growing the business, making my very ambitious target revenues, and taking time to do lots of non-work stuff.

There's not a lot of support in my current herd for any path other than the multi-million dollar entrepreneur. The business owning sheep that I graze with pretty much all have bought the idea that the only way they get their business-owner merit badge (sorry for my mixed metaphor) is to bust their woolly butts to make the entrepreneurial grade.

And, so, here's another confession: I've been feeling "less than" for not wanting to go that route, confused because I know in my gut that there's another way that will work better for me but not knowing in my brain what it is, and very very shy about vocalizing that to my peers.

And then I ran across Bruce's site and the article linked to the title of this post. Good alarm bells went off for me because he briefly spells out two other choices for solo-owners: virtuoso and solopreneur. While the two are very attractive because they both fit my ideal scenario, I think I like solopreneur the best. That's the route that will let me keep working for many more years without being shackled to the business.

Sadly, it looks like Bruce's site has been dormant for a while. That's too bad. I hope he (or someone else) reactivates the resources and material there. Those of us who prefer the "other two" options need to know there really is another herd out there!!!

When Marketing Your Services, Trust Tips the Scale

How do your prospects decide to buy from you? What criteria do they consider when shopping for services like yours? 

Buying decision lists include things like:

• Experience
• Track record
• Testimonials/references from customers
• Value proposition
• Expected return on investment

Along with those and other considerations, the fundamental criterion, and one that a prospect might not even think about consciously is trust. You could score a 10 in all the items listed above, and if the prospect doesn’t trust you, you aren’t likely to make the sale. Or, if you do, the new customer will micromanage everything or require a lot of attention--and if you slip up once, they will be gone.

Trust is the critical success factor in any business, but it is especially important for a services business. A product-based company certainly needs to be trustworthy; unlike a services company, though, it has tangible products that the prospect can see, touch, taste, test drive. In many cases, the prospect focuses on the thing they will buy and gauge trust in terms of its usefulness, craftsmanship, and esthetics.

A services business doesn’t have a thing to put in front of a prospect. It must convey trustworthiness through words and actions. And the place to start conveying trustworthiness is right up front, in your marketing:

Respond to queries quickly, completely, and positively. When you are contacted by a prospective customer, respond right away. Answer any questions they have posed, provide materials that will give them more information without any hard sells, and invite them to make an appointment to talk further with you.

Be on time for meetings. A prospect (who became a client) once told me that he sets up phone meetings with possible providers to test their reliability. He was impressed that I had called him when I said I would!

Create certainty. For example, set a price ceiling on a project you are costing out. I offer price ceilings for clients who know what they want but want to maintain some flexibility so that we can tweak as we go. In these cases, I offer a “not to exceed” price: If we log less time than estimated, the client pays only for the time spent; if we exceed the time estimated, the client doesn’t pay more than the price ceiling. This has proven very effective for many of our engagements.

Reassure your clients.Make guarantees for your services. I offer a “no questions asked” full refund to any client who feels they have not gotten what they wanted. I also offer a partial refunds if a good collaboration is not producing the right results.

Do what you say you will do.This should be a no-brainer, but the truth is that if you follow through on your commitments, you will be way out in front of your competition. And you will cement the relationship with your client, which will encourage their loyalty and advocacy (that is, they will tell their friends and associates about you!).

Another difference between a service company and its product-oriented counterpart is that the trustworthiness door swings both ways. We talk a lot about being trustworthy to win business, but you also need to be discerning in terms of the prospects you take on. Clients who are not trustworthy are a drain on a company’s resources and will undermine your growth in many ways. The way a prospect interacts with you during the sales process will be a good indicator of how they will work with you once they buy. It will serve you well to have criteria with which to gauge prospects, and to pursue only those that meet your standards.

Marketing by any other name...

What does the word “marketing” mean to you? When you say “we need to do some marketing” or “we need a marketing plan,” what is the end result you are picturing?

Of all the functions that contribute to business growth, marketing has got to be the least standardized. Not only do the activities associated with marketing vary from company to company, but the purpose and goals of marketing differ widely. In many cases, marketing is a synonym for sales, which in my opinion is one of the biggest strategic mistakes a company can make.

Marketing is not sales. But marketing better be contributing to revenue generation or you’re wasting time and money. And probably lots of both.

Here is a simple way to think of marketing: your marketing activities need to make your sales process easier.  How they do that will vary depending on your company and market.  Product marketing is very different from service marketing. Business to business marketing is very different from business to consumer marketing. Marketing high cost goods and services requires a different approach from marketing commodities.

Even in the same industry and marketplace, how one company markets will differ from the way its competitors market.  Just watch a couple of beer or car commercials on TV and you’ll see what I mean. This is because company culture, personality, and brand will impact marketing activities and messages.

So, I ask you: Is your marketing program making your sales process easier? Be careful when answering. There are nuances to marketing that are important to consider. Some activities are more direct than others and so are much easier to gauge. An example is direct response marketing. Another is e-commerce web sites with incorporated shopping carts.  In both cases there is a clear link to the sales side. This type of marketing can be very easily quantified and its impact on sales can be accurately measured.

Some activities, though, are more subtle. Things that get your company better known in the marketplace will help the sales process, but not as clearly as direct response or “click here to buy” activities. They are qualitative in impact but no less important.

Effective public relations, for example, will certainly influence your target market by keeping your name top of mind in the people you want to buy from you. This type of activity, of course, is nowhere near as measurable as more direct things. Does this mean you shouldn’t do it? Absolutely not!!  It does mean, however, that you need to stay awake and find ways to gauge how successful these more subtle activities are in making the sales process easier.

Here’s the bottom line. Take time to clearly and accurately define what marketing means specifically for your company, and define how it can make the sales process easier. Don’t just accept any published definitions, no matter how exalted their sources.

Use your definitions as the context for all the activities in your marketing program, and use the second definition, the one related to the sales process, as the basis to measure and adjust the activities to improve results.

Also, and this is very important, use your definitions when obtaining the services of marketing professionals to help you. We are not all the same. There are as many types of marketing professionals as there are types of marketing—so make sure that you hire people with expertise in the type of marketing you need. If you don’t, at best you aren’t going to get the best results you can and at worst you will end up losing precious ground in your business and your marketplace.

Is Your Content Actually Connecting?

The written word is king of the marketing hill these days. Between the intangible nature of services and the intangible marketing challenge known as the Internet, having content that increases interest and drives sales is a service firm imperative.

When selling services, content is your "free sample," the equivalent of the people in supermarkets giving out little cups of various kinds of food products for you to try before you buy. OK, well, maybe not exactly like that, but thematically the same. Your content conveys your company's personality (known in more stuffy business circles as your culture) as well as your expertise, which are both part of the criteria applied by prospects when making buying decisions.

So here's the question that constitutes the title of this article: Is your content actually connecting? You can have loads of articles, white papers, web pages, and email messages, but if the words in those pieces aren't making a strong connection to your market, all that content is worthless.

Here are some suggestions for creating connections with content:

Be context specific. A piece of content needs to talk to a specific audience at the right level. If you market to financial advisors, for example, assume that your reader understands the financial planning field at least at an intermediate level if not higher. Don't write "Finance 101" stuff for these folks. If, on the other hand, you are a financial advisor selling your services to small and solo business owners, assume that your reader is knowledge-deficient in the exact areas where you shine. Content for the first group would be way beyond the second set of readers, while content for second set would bore if not insult the first group.

Write like you talk. Said another way, write like your company talks. The style, voice, and tone of your content will be very different if you have a more informal "shorts and t-shirt" way of doing business than if you are operating out of an urban high-rise and "dress for success" in designer duds. Keep your language and style consistent with how you want to be perceived.

Stay away from the third person. Use first and second person in your content. If the piece is authored by one person, as with an article or a white paper, use first person singular; if the speaker is the company, use we and us. Talk directly to the reader using you and your.

Be inclusive and at the same level. Involve your reader. Instead of saying "if one looks at this situation," say "if we look," or "let's look." And instead of being instructive or positioning yourself as the guru on the mountain, stand next to the reader. "The challenge we face is..." is far more attractive in the reader's mind than "the challenge facing you is..." Avoid potentially condescending or patronizing phrases like, "You need to understand..." or "It should be obvious that..."

Finally, be passionate. We are all passionate about what we offer, and we need to be proud to show it. I, for example, think that good, authentic content will pave the way to quality relationships with great customers. That's why content is a practice all by itself at 4R, why I talk about it so much, and why I enjoy creating the right content for my clients.

Quick! What's the difference between marketing and sales?

Don’t worry if you can’t answer that question: Though business literature implies otherwise, most people are unable to make a distinction between the two functions…even people in big corporations.

Actually, sales is pretty easy to get a grip on: It’s about bringing in business. Generating revenue. Making the line on the chart angle upwards.

But marketing? Marketing is not about bringing in revenues—at least not directly. If you are doing something that you call marketing and it is producing income, that’s not marketing. It’s sales.

There are as many definitions on the street as there are companies. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but there is an amazing variation in how different “experts” define marketing.

For example, there are stores that provide a wide range of services that use the word “marketing” to describe what they do. These outfits produce brochures, flyers, graphics, business cards, graphics, and a lot of other "stuff" that can be used for marketing purposes. While those can all be useful, a business needs to get more than just "stuff" to have effective marketing programs.

Try Googling “marketing” on the Web and you will get another angle on this “clear as mud” function.

Your first page of results will likely equate marketing with sales (as in “how to close more leads”), offer web site hosting and design services, or list a slew of marketing consulting companies that offer all kinds of ways for businesses to spend money.

Well, then, let’s turn to the American Marketing Association. What better place to get a useful definition of marketing than the AMA? This august body of marketing professionals should be able to clearly define marketing. Here is their latest, released a few months ago with much flurry of public relations:

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Huh?

What does “creating, communicating and delivering value” actually mean? And “ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” is yet another buzz phrase that is so general that it’s meaningless.

A small business can't afford to devote its valuable resources simply to “creating, communicating and delivering value” in some nebulous way. How does one measure marketing activities to gauge whether they are doing that? Marketing activities must patently and measurably contribute to business growth. There just isn't enough time and money to tolerate fuzzy programs.

So what is marketing really? The definition may be context-dependent; for example, marketing for a large consumer products manufacturer will likely look quite different than marketing for a four-person legal practice. For small (actually, all) businesses, here is a suggestion that articulates how marketing should be considered: Marketing is a business function that increases awareness and generates interest in the company so that sales opportunities increase and the sales cycle decreases.

Think of marketing as increasing awareness and generating interest in ways that make selling easier.  And also keep in mind that:

• Marketing is not sales, though it had better be a close, trusted partner of the sales function.
• Marketing is not just “stuff’—though printed and electronic media will certainly be needed to succeed in its function.
• Marketing is not limited only to target customers-it extends to any audience that the company wishes to influence positively (this could include employees, vendors, channel partners, the community, or other important interest groups).
• Marketing is NOT a "one size fits all" proposition-you must be very clear about what you want your marketing to accomplish before you can decide what activities to pursue.

Your marketing activities should be increasing awareness and generating interest in ways that grease the sales wheels—mainly by generating leads and referrals. And if your marketing can go as far as serving up qualified leads and referrals, so much the better; your sales energy can then focus on real prospects for your products and services.

Integreted marketing and you

On the surface, integrated marketing is simply a coordinated marketing message across different media, but it is actually much more.

Integrated marketing is an aggressive planning process that allows the development and tracking of marketing strategy. It uses an extensive amount of information to make the marketing initiative greater than the sum of its parts, if those parts work together to support each other.

All too often, small business owners tend to follow a “Ready! FIRE! Aim!” approach when they market their offerings.

Actually, and perhaps surprisingly, this back-asswards strategy is not limited to small businesses; large companies can also be surprisingly fractured in terms of how marketing is implemented.

The roots of fractured marketing may vary. In a company where sales dominates marketing, programs can get created as knee-jerk responses to how sales is doing. If sales are down, marketing get used in an attempt to turn things around. If sales are up, marketing…well, marketing tends to get ignored. The result is as if marketing has attention deficit disorder: resources are moved from initiative to initiative, things are started and not finished, and everything is done for short term results.

This effect can also take place when the same person is doing both sales and marketing—which is often the case with small businesses. When sales are rocking, who has time to market? And when sales are down, the only marketing strategies that are interesting are those that will generate leads today.

Another reason for disconnected marketing initiatives is simple lack of planning. It can be very difficult to step back, take a deep breath, and dedicate a chunk of time to plan—beginning with overall business planning. There are so many choices when it comes to deciding how to pursue marketing that, unless you know what you want to accomplish for the business, it can be difficult to figure out what to do.

Steps in an integrated marketing system are:

1. Set up the customer database. This is an essential element to implementing Integrated Marketing that helps to segment and analyze customer-buying habits.
2. Create strategies that support business goals. Insight from analysis of customer data is used to shape marketing, sales, and communications strategies.
3. Determine tactics. Once the basic strategy is determined the appropriate marketing tactics can be specified which best targets the specific markets.
4. Implement tactics.
5. Evaluate results. Customer responses and new information about buying habits are collected and analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the strategy and tactics.
6. Make modifications to tactics and, if necessary, strategies.
7. Repeat steps 4 through 6, ad infinitum.

Marketing to "wants" rather than "needs"

A widely held belief is that people buy products or services that they need. The real truth is that, once basic needs get met, people will buy what they want rather than what they may need.

We need to eat; we want to dine out. We need shelter; we want a 3,000 square-foot home in a particular neighborhood. We need to clothe ourselves; we want a particular look or a specific designer’s duds.

Needs are totally rational while wants are purely emotional. Needs are based on fact while wants are grounded on perception. Needs are product- or service-specific while wants have very little, if anything, to do with the product or service being offered.

And here’s the kicker: Prospects always know what they need, but they may not necessarily know what they want. And what they need is often what they should want—but don’t—so they may not cop to the truth.

This is where savvy marketing (and then sales) come into play. If you effectively offer your target market what you know the majority of the consumers really want, you are going to make more sales.

Why? Small businesses that focus on the things humans need can’t compete with bigger competitors on the three things that are essential for this business strategy:

• Price, because the big guys can sell those tires, TVs, and beds cheaper than we can buy them at our vendor's highest discount.
• Location, because the biggies can afford to pay way too much for that corner with all the traffic.
• Advertising, because in the world of advertising, they're a foghorn and you're a piccolo.

Here’s the good news: Those same three factors work in your favor when you focus on wants rather than needs. Check it out:

• Most folks are only picky about price when they're buying things they need. When they want something, they're more likely to pay a little more for whatever it is they crave. For example, a bar of soap is about as basic as anything in the world.  But when two women open a boutique and sell their own handmade brands of scented soaps in not-so-uniform shapes and tied with satin ribbon, do their customers pay 100 percent more for their soap because it will clean their bodies better? Hardly. They buy because they want something special, which includes knowing the face and the name of the person who actually made this product for them. And, of course, the ribbon.
• You don’t need the corner property with all the traffic. Customers can park within a few feet of your front door instead of in a 40-acre parking lot. Plus, you've made it cool to drive a couple of blocks because your storefront looks more like they're coming home than walking into an institution.

Integrated marketing can leverage these factors to give you an edge as a small business. I’ll talk more about integrated marketing in future posts.

Entrepreneurial Hypochondria – An Epidemic

The November issue of Harper’s magazine reports in its always interesting Index that only 45% of the U.S. GDP is represented by salaries and wages, and that this is the lowest percentage ever since the statistic has been tracked (in 1929).  My logic says that a reasonably good chunk of the remaining 55% is coming from the self-employed or entrepreneurial among us. With that kind of marketplace, it isn’t surprising that the business coaching market has blossomed.

Unlike other types of advice-giving vocations (therapist, minister, CPA, for example), business coaches don’t need any kind of training or certification. All they basically need is something to sell and a mechanism to sell that something.  Oh, and credibility.

Interesting thing, credibility. It can be manufactured from nothing. Get somebody who is charismatic enough, and who doesn’t have a problem with distorting facts like they were Silly Putty®, and credibility can be established with very little basis in reality. That same charisma will do a great job selling, too, so a lot of money can be made on just a little bit of real experience.

Business coaching (and its close relative, life coaching) is a great place for silver-tongued quacks to create a perception of value in their constituents’ minds. I know a number of coaches who fit this mold, and there is no denying that they are a persuasive lot. They work hard to keep their customers spending money with them—which means that they have to keep implying that “you can’t succeed quickly without me.”

So, rather than having a coach who helps you become an independent thinking and true entrepreneur, you become so dependent on the coach that you never gain the confidence to fly solo, which is something a truly successful entrepreneurs must do, at least in terms of thinking and decision making.

This creates entrepreneurial hypochondria, with business owners unable to make any strategic moves on their own because they are convinced they are too “sick” to do it alone.

When you conduct due diligence on many business coaches (that is, find out the important facts about their business experience beyond company name and revenue produced), and sit down and really listen to what they are saying, it doesn’t take long to figure out that 1) they aren’t really saying anything new and 2) their advice is too generic to be of use on its own. A business owner in search of input could read a few good business books to get the same information and save a bunch of dough.

Having come down negatively on the topic, I must say that I think that there is a place for coaching in a business, but it is a very specific place.

When a business owner identifies an area that they need to master in order to grow, it can really help to find a coach who specializes in that area and hire their services for a finite period of time. Over the course of their career, such a business owner may have numerous coaches, each one helping with a particular aspect of the business and only around until mastery has been transferred.

There is only one business coach who has passed my own due diligence, and he is the only one who has made a real, honest to goodness difference in how I run my business. Sure, this guy wants you to stick around and keep buying from him, but not at the expense of your ability to stand on your own two feet and make the right decisions all by yourself. That’s my kind of coach!

What's Old is New -- Educational Marketing

I've been in the business of "educational marketing" for most of my career. To me, it's the only kind of marketing that makes sense, especially for service businesses.

Educational marketing now has a new name and a new venue: Today it is "content," and it dominates the Internet. White papers, ebooks, blogs, articles--the value of information as a marketing tool has been "discovered" by the marketplace thanks to the Worldwide Web.

One of the most productive channels for marketing content is the article bank. There are many article banks out there, but my heart and loyalty belong to EzineArticles.com, an excellent site to upload and download articles--for free.

I will write more about this in a GM4C article one of these days, and for sure will write more blog stuff about it. For now, though, check out a blog entry I triggered from Christopher Knight, Mr. EzineArticles himself, and explore the site to see if this "new" marketing channel is for you.