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Hi,
This week’s e-zine is winging its way to you from the sleepy hollow of Hengelo in The Netherlands (all this travel is going to come to a screeching halt once Baby Deakin arrives!) but in the meantime we are happy to engage with clients in person if they choose to.
Most of our clients these days prefer to work remotely via conference call, email, and web-cam. Are you finding that too? It certainly keeps expenses down, removes travelling time, and that much spoken about 'carbon footprint.'
Having grown up in South Africa and learnt to speak Afrikaans fluently, we have a definite advantage when visiting The Netherlands. The Dutch dialect spoken here is not terribly different. We really do have to concentrate closely when engaged in conversation, and while we don’t catch every single word we can all understand each other pretty well. (And our Dutch is improving!)
By now you would have received your personal invitation to join us as our guests at Business South on 4th March. If you missed the invite, read more in the diary section below or visit our private page to RSVP. Places are limited so get it in your diary straight away!
Enjoy this week’s article!
Until next time,
The 'Performance-Tuned Networking' Seminar In-a-Box
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The live seminar was held in August 2008, and now you can get your hands on the entire audio recording and workbook as a ‘home study’ course!
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Two Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
in Your Start-up Business
You can hunt ducks and pheasant with a shotgun – a weapon that sprays tiny pellets around a broad area. But if you want to bring down big game, that approach won’t work. Why? Because the mass of the pellets is simply insufficient to bring down the animal. So you need to change your weapon, and use a hunting rifle instead. Hunting rifles are designed to propel a massive bullet with sufficient velocity to get you your trophy – but there is a downside. You can’t just aim in the general area of the target and ‘spray’ bullets. You need to be pinpoint accurate with your shot – and most times you get just the one shot.
Right about now you’re thinking: “What the …? I don’t read this ezine for hunting lessons!” An understandable reaction, of course, but in a roundabout way that is exactly why you read this ezine! As business owners and Sales and Marketing people we are hunting down new business and revenue streams, and we can learn lessons from things hunters already know. Like the fact that you can hunt rats and mice (and birds) with a ‘spray and pray’ approach; but when you want the impressive wins you need very sharp aim.
Small businesses pass through four phases in their passage to becoming big businesses, and each phase requires a slightly different aim. Over the next few articles we will look at each phase, and analyse the Sales and Marketing ‘aim’ required in each.
The four phases come about at the intersections of two key dimensions: Your offering (we’ll call it a product), and your market.
Primary Focus: The Start-up Phase
When a business first begins operations it sits at the Product/Market intersection labeled 'New/New'. An untested product offering is being marketed to an audience of prospects who have never done business with the organisation before. It goes without saying that this phase is fraught with dangers and challenges! However, the good news is that once you have passed out of this phase there is no need to ever re-visit it – although some willingly step back into the maelstrom for reasons which escape me.
The Indiscriminate/Ineffectual Approach
There are two ways in which we can get it wrong in this phase: First (and very common), we can take a shotgun and fire on anything that moves. We don’t care what we kill, as long as the pot doesn’t remain empty at dinnertime! Here at Zee2A, we call this the Indiscriminate/Ineffectual approach. It is manifested by a high level of marketing activity, spread across an impossibly wide range of channels. Think: three or more networking commitments a week in widely different environments; brochures; flyers; adverts in the local paper(s); AdWord campaigns; Yellow Pages-based cold-calling – and the list goes on. If you’re checking boxes for the majority of these in your new business, you may well benefit from going back to First Principles.
Why does this approach not work? For starters, by taking the shotgun rather than the hunting rifle you have pretty much guaranteed that you will only ever bring home ‘rats and mice’. None of your many marketing initiatives is massive enough to influence substantial prospects into doing business with you. And there’s a further consequence – by blazing away at big game with a shotgun you run the risk of causing irritation, thus losing the chance to ever do business with that prospect. This happens when you put in front of a key prospect an ill-prepared marketing message or sales proposal – because you didn’t have the time to focus on their real needs. Once the door closes behind you (and it will) it will be extremely difficult to open it again.
Another reason to avoid the Indiscriminate/Ineffectual approach is because even duck-hunters have to have some semblance of good aim! Yes, the shotgun makes it easier, but you still have to be pointing at the right area of sky, and be able to time the shot.
The Discriminate/Ineffectual Approach
A second way to get it wrong in the Startup phase is to take our hunting rifle, then use it to shoot at ‘rats and mice’! Sounds crazy, I know, but we’ve seen it happen. This Discriminate/Ineffectual approach is characterised by a small set of highly-prepared marketing and sales initiatives, delivered with precision to the wrong audience of prospects. You’ll know you’re doing it when you find your order bookings are rising but your profits are shrinking – then when you try to raise prices to address the profit issue your order-book shrinks. You’ll also be guilty of it if you invest so much of your time and skills in working with the prospect before getting an order that they then don’t place the order because you’ve addressed their need for free.
Why does this approach not work? Principally because the business won doesn’t warrant the investment in winning it. It’s a gruesome visual, I know, but imagine how much would be left of a rabbit struck by a bullet from a rifle designed to hunt Wildebeest. Not enough to go in the pot for dinner – and that’s precisely the problem!
Being both Discriminate and Effectual is the Key
How can we avoid these mistakes in our start-up business? Consider the following pointers:
- Know what you are hunting. Understand clearly who your target market is, so that when you get a prospect in the cross-hairs you can decide in an instant whether to take the shot or keep looking.
- Know where to hunt. Know the demographics and psychographics of your target market, so that you can choose marketing and sales initiatives that will bring them – and only them – into your gunsights.
- Be confident and positive in offering your product to prospects – after all, they’ve never done business with you before so they don’t know what to expect. Planning and preparation are the key to success in this area. Hunters don’t ask for permission – and they’re okay with the fact that they don’t hit the target every time.
In a future article we will look at the marketing and sales focus needed to a business in the Core Market phase of growth. In the meantime, Good hunting!
©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited 2009. Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph: David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing mentor who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level. Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit www.zee2a.com.
What they said about the Performance-Tuned Networking Seminar
'I found the Performance-Tuned Networking Seminar very informative. It was great to get innovative ideas from the guys at Zee2A but also from other delegates from a variety of different businesses. I would recommend these short seminars to organisations looking for a fresh approach to marketing'
– Craig White, Business Development Manager, ACTIVE
'I came away from this seminar with a much better Verbal Signature, a clear strategy for asking for help with referrals, and the confidence to tackle my future marketing efforts more professionally. Vanessa & David brought clarity, energy and encouragement to a sometimes daunting activity'
– Ann Lewis, Leadership Coach.
'In the Performance-Tuned Networking Seminar you gave us proven tools and techniques to increase our chances of fishing in the right ponds for profitable new business. You highlighted planning, persistence and patience as being three of the keys to success, along with, of course a well-honed Verbal Signature. Plenty of great ideas and tips'
– Michael Warner, FCA.
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ISSN 1756-350X
Volume 2 Issue 3
4 February 2009
www.zee2a.com
You have received this newsletter because you signed up for it or registered for one of our programmes.
In This Issue
David and Vanessa,
Your Zee2A Mentors
David and Vanessa work with Executives in the Professional Services Industry that are frustrated and dissatisfied with their current marketing activities, profitability, and business growth.
Through personal one-on-one mentoring they teach them how to become Marketing Masters, by among other things helping them create sustainable and repeatable marketing strategies that actually work!
Click to learn more about our mentoring programmes
Click to find out about our home-study information programmes
Food for Thought:
"I will not condemn you for what you did yesterday, if you do it right today."
- Sheldon S. Maye
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