Business Development Archives | Page 3 of 215

One massive home run

March 9, 2020 by Jim Connolly

A little while ago, someone emailed me with a problem. His email opened with; “I need a major breakthrough, Jim!”.

In short, he wanted me to personally introduce him to someone who’s very wealthy and a friend of mine. The unknown emailer apparently has a proposal, which he’s sure my friend “will want to be in on”.

Let’s ignore the fact that the person he wants me to introduce him to is not a friend of mine, just an acquaintance.
And let’s also ignore why on earth I would recommend a total stranger to anyone.

Instead, let’s look at the mindset the emailer is using.

Because although his email was certainly unusual, a lot of business owners adopt a broadly similar approach.

Allow me to explain.

The thing about major breakthroughs

When looking for a major business breakthrough, the temptation can be to focus on a massive home run… a home run, which will save you years of effort and land you in the big time.

“If I could just get 20 minutes with (insert name of famous billionaire), maybe they would back my idea”.

That’s one way to succeed.

However, major business breakthroughs don’t tend to happen like that. There will be exceptions, but they’re called exceptions for a reason. They’re exceptional.

Instead, major breakthroughs are almost always the result of lots of mini breakthroughs. The process usually follows the same, proven path.

You decide exactly what breakthrough you want to achieve and put a plan together.
You chunk your plan down into a series of steps (mini breakthroughs).
You then apply intelligent activity to each step.
You carry on taking steps forward, until you’ve achieved your major breakthrough.

Recommended reading: How to know if you have a winning idea.

It’s far less glamorous than scoring lunch with Jeff Bezos or Mark Cuban and being handed their full financial backing. But it’s far more likely to actually work.

You’re probably doing it wrong

March 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Did you know, the massive majority of small businesses are built the wrong way round?

It looks like this:

The business owner decides the type of service they’re going to offer.
They then try to find clients for their service.

That’s nuts!

It can’t work in any meaningful way.

Why? Because it’s literally (yes literally, not figuratively) the wrong way round.

The most effective business owners do the exact opposite.

It looks like this:

They decide the kind of clients they want to work with. For example, clients who appreciate quality, clients who are happy to pay a premium fee for a premium service, clients with the right mindset, etc.
Then, and only then, they decide what services to offer. The service is based around the things, which their ideal profile of client will value and desire.
They then market this service exclusively to these high value clients. They shun everyone else.
And it works spectacularly well.

If you struggle to attract the right kind of clients, consider reviewing your current strategy.

Focus on the kind of clients you most want to work with. Then, consider rebuilding your services so that those ideal clients will find extremely attractive. Delight these ideal clients and they’ll tell their friends.

It’s way more effective, than trying to sell people a service that:

Wasn’t specifically built around their needs.
Is similar to what your competitors are offering them.

I built my business around this model. As a result, I work with fantastic clients every day and get 93% of my new clients, via client referrals.

The problem with knee-jerk reactions

March 4, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

…is that they often leave us looking like a jerk.

And more importantly, they can seriously damage a business.

In today’s post, I give a very recent example of how nasty a knee-jerk reaction can be, along with a strategy to avoid it happening to you and your business.

Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, a business owner responded angrily to a customer complaint on Twitter. The customer replied. A very heated argument ensued. The business owner then deleted his angry tweets, aware of the damage this could cause him.

Problem solved, right?

No.

As often happens, someone took a screenshot of the business owner’s angry tweets and shared them. Then more and more people shared his tweets. The problem escalated fast. He was soon being attacked by lots of his customers for the way he handled the original complaint, and his attempt to cover his tracks.

4 minutes

Knee-jerk reactions happen fast. Those offensive tweets were sent over a period of just 4 minutes, yet they’ve created a considerable marketing problem for the company concerned.

Marketing problem?

Yes!

Many of the company’s Twitter followers are customers. Some tweeted to say they were going to switch providers. What’s not known is how many other customers saw what happened and will simply leave. However, he also has a longer-term problem to deal with. Tweets are indexed by Google. Any prospective customer researching a new provider can easily stumble upon what his angry customers are saying.

That’s a heck of a marketing problem to overcome.

He’ll need to try and rebuild his connection with his customers. He’ll also need to earn their trust again. Some in similar positions have needed to invest in a rebrand. Others have needed to appoint a new CEO or leadership figure.

All because of 4 minutes of angry tweeting.

I believe the best thing we can learn from situations like this, is to develop a strategy that stops us making the same mistake.

Here’s the strategy I use. I hope you find it useful.

Pausing our knee makes us less of a jerk

Knee-jerk reactions only happen, because we react almost instantly… when emotions are running high.

Just as it’s hard to solve a problem using the same kind of thinking that caused the problem, it’s hard to respond with *love, when you’re still feeling angry or irritated.

*Yes, love. If we don’t love the community we serve, we’re in the wrong job.

So, my strategy when someone puts me in a toxic frame of mind, is to press pause before I respond. This inserts a time cushion between the incident and my response. I find 15 to 20 minutes is ideal. When possible, I use that time to go for a walk. I find a change of scenery makes my thinking even clearer. Either way, I’m able to respond in a much more thoughtful, measured fashion.

That approach has not only helped me professionally, but been enormously useful in general. After all, no one likes a hothead.

The key is to find an effective strategy, before you need it. If mine doesn’t work for you, keep looking until you find one that does. It’s so much easier to avoid knee-jerk problems before they happen, than to have to deal with all the damage afterwards.

Are your prices too high?

February 28, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

They could be.

Alternatively:

You could be marketing to the wrong people.
Your marketing could be reaching too few of the right people.
You could be asking people to make a decision, before they have all the information they need.
Your marketing promises could be too similar to those offered by your lower priced competitors.
Your marketing could be failing to clearly demonstrate enough value, making your prices seem high.
Your marketing could be suffering from Toxic Complexity. This is dangerous and extremely common.
You could be responding to enquiries too slowly (or too quickly).
Your branding could be positioning you (in the mind of your marketplace) as a lower priced provider than you actually are.

And there are tons of other reasons. None of which have anything whatsoever to do with your prices.

Here’s the thing. Lowering your prices can be tempting. It’s a quick and extremely easy way to make your products or services seem better value.

However, it’s a terrible strategy.

It kills profitability. And it engages you in a pricing race to the bottom, where the cheapest provider wins. They ‘win’ the worst possible slice of the marketplace… low profit customers, who’ll leave as soon as a cheaper provider turns up.

A far better alternative is to find out what’s actually causing people to think you’re too expensive. And to then focus on improving your marketing in those key areas.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for answers, that brief list above is a useful place to begin.

Bon courage or good luck?

February 26, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’ve never really liked the phrase, ‘good luck’.

I get the idea behind it. I also know people say it with the very best intentions. But to me, especially when related to business, it really isn’t particularly useful. That’s because it places things totally outside the person’s control.

My wife speaks, reads and writes in French. When we first met, she taught me a French alternative to good luck: Bon courage! I find bon courage far more relevant and useful than good luck. Especially when it comes to business. And that’s what this brief post is about.

Bon courage

There are a couple of ways to interpret bon courage. One of them is that you want the person to have the strength or courage required for (whatever).

Here’s how bon courage stacks up against good luck:

Bon courage is internal: You summon the courage.
Good luck is external: You hope that good luck will appear.

It’s impossible to achieve meaningful success in business, or anything else for that matter, without courage. Courage is required to stand out, when it’s easier to blend in. Courage is required to zig when your competitors zag. Courage is required to launch a new idea, when it feels safer to just do more of the same.

In fact courage is required for every major move we make; renting / buying our first home, falling in love, starting a family, starting a business, etc.

The next time you want a friend to succeed, try wishing them bon courage. If they ask you what you mean, explain it to them.

And next time you notice yourself wishing for better luck, find a way to summon bon courage instead. It really is hard to overstate what you can achieve, when you have a great plan and the courage to see it through.

Stability through impact

February 22, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

There are 3 broad ways you can guide the direction of a business:

You can aim for stability.
You can aim for impact.
You can aim for stability through impact.

Here’s how those 3 options pan out, and why one of them gives you the best chance of fully achieving your maximum potential.

Primary focus on stability

Business owners with a primary focus on stability, plan and act with a safety-first mindset. This often blocks them from making the improvements they need, even when their business isn’t growing. If something ‘kind of works a little’, they’ll hold onto it tight. They do, this rather than try something new with an infinitely greater potential to help them.

They want things to improve. Of course they do. But they want things to improve, without them making any meaningful changes. Change equals risk. And risk feels scary. Too scary.

Primary focus on impact

Business owners with a primary focus on impact, plan and act with a mindset that’s driven by the desire to make a meaningful difference. They have a vision of the impact they seek to create and are motivated by the desire to see that vision become a reality.

Within this broad group are business owners who are well-prepared, with a thoroughly researched idea, which they are passionate about. However, this group also contains business owners who have a deep belief in their idea, but their idea hasn’t had the necessary rigour applied. There’s no market for it. The numbers don’t stack up.

We see this all too often, when a new business opens with an expensive launch, lots of bold claims and in no time, they’re gone. It’s heartbreaking.

Focus on stability THROUGH impact

The business owner whose primary focus is stability through impact understands something, which the vast majority of people totally miss.

They’ve figured out that a balance needs to be achieved.

They know that hunkering down, avoiding change and hoping things will magically improve is a terrible strategy. You can’t hope your way to the top. Or even the middle. At best, you’ll go broke slowly. (which is a lot more painful than going broke fast, as it traps you for years in a stressful, under-performing business).

They also know that stability is essential. If you’re only focusing on making an impact, without ensuring you have a stable foundation, you’re very likely to fail. Nothing of value can be built on flimsy foundations. You need that stability. It’s a must.

So, what do they do?

They decide what impact they want to create. In other words, they choose the thing that they want to be known for… the difference they want to make to their marketplace (or the world). Then they do the research and put a plan together. A realistic, costed and robust plan.

Then, they work the plan.

With the stability of working to a solid plan, and fuelled by the motivation of making an impact, you can fully activate your maximum potential.