Archive for category Customers
Secret to successful negotiations
Why do some people succeed at negotiations when others do not?
The most likely cause is that neither side seriously considers what the other side wants.? Instead they only think about what they want. They may only think about the surface but they never dive deep.
The next time you are negotiating a deal, after you decide on your points, take out a separate sheet of paper.? Put yourself in the other side
Startup charities have to earn our attention.
Startup charities are like any startup business; they have to earn our attention.
My premise is that startup charities do not command it because of the nature of being a charity. There are plenty of fakes that hurt the real good ones. They need to be treated like any other startup business: validity of the people behind the cause first and then the worthiness of the cause.
The number of charities in the United States that are considered tax exempt are between 40,000 and 50,000 and could number more. Although these charities are registered with the IRS, the number of charities indicates that they may exceed the IRS’s ability to vette them completely each year; some of these charities may exist for dubious reasons.
Those two points appeared in an article in the New York Times, this Sunday (December 5, 2009) on page 1 and page 29, titled Grab Bag of Charities Grows, Along with U.S. Tax Breaks (written by Stephanie Strom). You can read it here.
Remember on Nov 30, I wrote Believe in your charity by believing in other charities? The point of that article was that just because a person is running charity does not entitle them to get the services for free.? Some people tend to use their charity as an excuse to get free or discounted services.
On page 29, there is an article also by Stephanie Strom: Seeking Profits At a Nonprofit. It is a fairly unflattering piece about an energy company.? This energy company is accepting federal funds and donations to develop alternative sources of energy and patent them.? However, the reporter discovered that their one and only patent is NOT in their name but in the name of one of the founders. Given that we are not given any details, or the circumstances of the patent, we are left to believe that this is someone using the veil of charity to profit.
It is also a piece of terrible marketing for the energy company.
Unfortunately, some worthy charities have difficulties because they are just not popular as a way of showing that you are good citizen.? Last night I sat in a fund raiser for another charity, one that provides education for adults. One of the speakers, a professional fundraiser, pointed out that it is much harder to get donations for them versus a hospital. Why? Education is not sexy like a hospital. You gave money for books? Ho hum. You gave money to cure a disease!! That is very good of you. That is the mentality they deal with every day.? I donate to them.
Someone asked me why I should donate to them and not to someone that is more worthy. I said, They are worthy. I checked them out. The big charities get a lot of money already, but this small needs it too.
To reiterate my points:
- Just because you are a charity does not mean you should get services for free.? You have to earn that privilege.
- You CAN earn that privilege but you have to do deeds that demonstrate your intent.
- Talking about deeds and planning deeds do not count. You can try to convince me of the worthiness, but then I am going to judge you by you and your validity (just like any investor).
A startup charity is just like any startup business in the sense that you have to not just believe in the cause, but believe in the people behind the cause.
Build Your Own Brand
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 3, 2009
On Monday, an article appeared on CNN, Me 2.0: Branding yourself online. Great article on personal branding as it defines branding and then goes into discussing social branding online.
Definition: Personal branding is promoting yourself like a brand . You have have skills, values, expertise that you can deliver to someone that needs it.
They only touch on a few things but essentially you use the internet, blogs, social websites, and manage your personal brand like you would any other brand. Problem is that you may not know how to do that. Two things you can do. Buy the book they talk about, Me 2.0 (visit the website, www.personalbrandingbook.com) or click on Job Seekers on the right and read the articles. Furthermore, we are going to go into further depth on how you can build your brand.
As a pat on my own back I will state that I have been writing about this for some time. As a job seeker and entrepreneur, build your own brand!
Why? Read yesterday’s post. Building your brand is as useful and as critical as building the brand for your company. People will tie the two together and for startups, which has more history? You! Use it.
Note: This is not an endorsement for Me 2.0. I have not read the book. However, it got mentioned on CNN and it may be worth checking out in the bookstore.
Use your personal brand when you start a business
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers on November 2, 2009
In the past I have talked about the multiple focus of the job seeker, that the goal is to advertise yourself on the web. This also applies to the entrepreneur because your personal brand is as important as your business brand when you start.
Why? When your business starts which has a longer track record, your business or you? It is you! Leverage that track record into a brand, tie it to your business, and people will start to believe that your business has that positive brand as well.
Features, Benefits and Advantages
Everyone talks about features and benefits. Well, almost everyone. A lot of people confuse the two, and then they do not even consider a third category: advantages.
Three simple ideas.
Features are the tangibles of your product or service. How big is it? How long does it take? What color is it? How many calories is it (or isn’t)?
Benefits are what it does for the buyer. Enables the buyer to do more. Saves the buyer time and money. Helps the buyer lose or gain weight.
Advantages are a third category. It comes in between features and benefits. Think of it answering the question, “What does this feature enable me to do with this product?” If all the appliances are white, the advantage is that you can put them into pretty much any kitchen and they will match. If
Advantages are not really third since they come between Features and Benefits. Really, it should be presented as Features, Advantages and then Benefits. I put them third because most people forget about advantages and mix them up with Features and Benefits.
Benefits are important because that is what you are selling to the buyer. It is important to sell the “what is in it for you” because that not only differentiates you from others but also addresses the needs and wants of the buyer. You can call it the “trigger” for the sale.
There are many sites on the web for Features, Advantages, and Benefits. Do a Google Search and you will find many examples of how to do this. One is at Presentation Pointers titled Sell Features, Advantages, and Benefits.
In the end, remember to divide up your product qualities into these three groups when you are developing your sales and marketing message. With this exercise you have a better chance of hitting the trigger points and making the sale.
Learn from your mistakes
The hardest thing is NOT admitting a mistake. The hardest thing is learning from a mistake and improving.
Companies make mistakes all the time. What gets all the press is how they dodge admitting it is a mistake. Either they hope it goes away or they come out and admit they were wrong and are trying to improve. Most recently you see AIG not admitting how they handled the bonuses being a mistake. After congressional hearings and a lot of press uproar it has pretty much died down.
When I worked for Texas Instruments, they had a process for learning from mistakes. Essentially, we would first discuss the problem and the short term solution. Then, we would look to see if it was systemic and if a long term solution was needed. We would implement that long term solution, and finally, we would come back later and determine if it was corrected.
Unfortunately a lot of companies do not get beyond step 1: discuss the problem. The put in a bandaid fix (maybe) and then say that they cannot fix it because either its too big, not that important, or its our culture and so you should give up.
Those companies eventually fail.
TI is going to be around for a while. Once, a customer told me that the reason they bought from TI and paid premium prices (some of the highest in the business) was that we were consistently on time with the quality they needed.
Next time someone does not want to fix it in the long term ask them if it keeping customers who pay good prices is big enough, important enough, or part of the company culture.
Using Social sites to generate awareness for your company
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers, Plan on April 30, 2009
More people are finding the numerous social networks online a valuable tool in generating awareness. They are very low cost and can have a high impact…if they get the following they want.
MySpace was one of the first social networks to hit it HUGE. Started a few years ago, it stays small until over a period of three months it explodes in users. Finally, the owners sell to NewsCorp for a lot of money and enjoy their windfall. MySpace remains one of the most popular social networks. Its primary demographic is the teenager, and person involved with/interested in entertainment.
Facebook is rapidly becoming more popular in the mainstream. Instead of just teenagers, the mainstream adult population is embracing it. Why? It looks more “average” so appeals to the average person.
Twitter just recently exploded with users. Instead of having a space, it provides a real-time channel directly between people. Limited to 140 characters you have to be concise. The problem with this, is that any busy entrepreneur, investor, (or anyone else for that matter) really does not have time to engage in a Twitter. Makes me wonder what all that wasted time could be turned to… but I digress.
How can you take advantage of social sites? When looking at how you use a social network, consider the stakeholders: the company (and the entrepreneurs), customers, stockholders, investors, and people affected by the customer’s use of the products/services. We should also include the potentials of each of those categories and those the “affected” people are usually the customers of the customers. Remember, why does a company buy your stuff? The answer is to make more money selling their stuff to someone (maybe you!).
Who is your primary audience, and what would they like to see, do, or say? Answer this question, and you will figure out how to use it. One technique to use is Voice of Customer, VOC. More on that in a later post.
I found a link to an article written Nov 27, 2006 by Eileen Cruz Coleman on techsoup.
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/archives/page9173.cfm
The article talks about how certain non-profits take advantage of MySpace. To summarize:
- Raise awareness about their cause, product, or service.
- Keep people informed on the current status of their company or activities.
- Engage an audience and create a two-way dialogue with their stakeholders.
- Offer tools that enable a stakeholder to participate online and offline.
- Direct people to their own website and to take action, becoming “customers”, “users” and overall lending more credibility to the company’s program.
The two biggest concerns were time (resources) and monitoring content to keep it on message. They welcome dissent and discussion of differences of opinions, but have to be watchful to stop flamers (people that start arguments for no purpose other than to gain attention) and inappropriate material (not just off-topic but truly inappropriate for that audience).
Their recommendations center around marketing your site, making regular updates and involving the audience:
- Ask people to take action by subscribing, creating links, etc.
- After writing entries, invite people to comment. Market your site via word of mouth and other media. Write articles, give lectures/presentations, and get people to go to your site.
- Add other media like images and video to make the space more interesting.
- Keep it current.
- Match the look and feel to that of your brand.
- Reach out to other companies and people. Make alliances to spread your word.
- Add your URL to all your collateral (web sites, business cards, email signature, etc.)
Bottom line, it is a product you are creating around yourself or your company. Choose a social site that fits your target, your brand, and that you can make a commitment. Then market it. If you are a job seeker, do the same thing. Treat yourself like a product and market it.
Can a Duel Focus work?
Posted by Steve in Customers, For Job Seekers, Pitch, Plan on April 22, 2009
What if you have two things you could do? You do not want to leave out one for fear of closing off that opportunity. The dilemma is very common for entrepreneurs: the company can do two things very well and it is struggling for cash flow. They are not established enough to have two brands, or well understood brand extensions.
First, let us examine the entrepreneur case and why this is important. As an investor, there are many questions that come up. First, are these products (and/or services) related? Second, does the entrepreneur truly need to spend the resources promoting both or are they better off picking one and spending double the resources on that one? Thirdly, are they mixing the message too much to the marketplace and thus confusing them? Fourth, is the entrepreneur just unwilling to focus on one thing?
All are valid questions, but as you can see, there could be a tendency for the investor to start thinking along the negative path. This puts doubt in their minds about the company and about the entrepreneur. This also troubles potential customers, because they are now taking a risk on a startup and want to know whether the company will deliver on-time, on budget, and with the expected quality and service. (Please note, I did not say best price, best quality, best service…that’s for a later article).
The suggestion is for the entrepreneur to ask themselves the same questions. If the answer comes up that these products (and services) are related then the question is how to pitch them?
This is nothing new, so we can look at the traditional marketing answer: Know your target audience, and pitch the appropriate message to the right channel! Pick the channels and understand how they work. Deliver the focused message on each product to that channel.
As an example, let us take a shoe company that has a patented shoe which provides the best support to active people. This company could make basketball shoes, running shoes, football shoes, soccer shoes, climbing shoes, and even men’s and women’s dress shoes. They have a factory and craftsmen that can make any type of shoe; and needing cash flow they instruct manufacturing and sales to sell to everyone. (Note: Everyone is our customer is for another article)
What if the company came out and said: “We make the best shoes, whether you it is a business dress shoe or a basketball shoe, then you need to come to us?” People would not believe it because there are already companies out there that specialize in one over the other and they do not mix up their brand.
One answer is for the company to break it up into channels. They pitch the sports shoes publically as an active shoe company: We make the best sports shoes because we understand the needs of the athlete! Advertisements during basketball games are for the basketball shoe. Advertisements during football games are for the football shoe. They could even make crossover advertisements that feature athletes from multiple sports with the common theme that they need these shoes to compete better in their sport.
For the dress shoes, they instead partner with another company that specializes in dress shoes. The sports company provides the technology to make the dress show more comfortable and fit better. They can even co-brand the shoe with their name; however, they let the dress shoe company lead off with their brand and their advertising. The sports shoe company hopes that their sports advertising creates enough of a brand impression that the dress show buyer wants that dress shoe. The dress shoe company hopes the same thing, obviously.
How do they pitch to investors? First, since they are going to promote themselves as a sports shoe company, they should pitch as a sports shoe company with a patented shoe. In the pitch, they describe how they will target the different sports channels and leverage their ability to make sports shoes to go after these channels. Also, in the pitch, when they come to product line extensions, then they can discuss their partnering opportunities, “Since we hold the patents on the technology, we will also be seeking out licensing arrangements with companies establish in other channels that do not compete with ours: dress shoe companies.” To the investor, that seems like a logical extension and comes off smart because the sports shoe company realizes their strengths and is selling that to the unrelated channel.
FYI, Nike is the sports shoe company. They sold the technology for Nike Air to Cole Haan (a dress shoe company). Cole Haan has a Nike Air line, which are essentially Cole Haan shoes with a Nike Air insole. It is sold under the Cole Haan name at Cole Haan stores. You cannot walk into a sports shoe store and find a Cole Haan dress shoe. The salesperson may know about it, but only bring it up if asked. They would direct you then to a Cole Haan store.
In conclusion, the entrepreneur needs to pick the focus of the company and market that in the primary channel. If there are multiple channels that are related, then they could still market their product. However, for truly unrelated channels, they need to very wary. One answer is to partner with another company, letting that company sell their product under the other brand name.