Grow Your Business

To challenge the status quo first you must identify the barriers to changing the status quo. What are the sacred cows? How can they be abandoned or improved? Redefine the new approach for success and put it in action with persistence, diligence and focus.

I’ve heard it called paying your dues, sweat equity, falling on your sword, and doing what it takes to survive. Bottom line it’s a red flag your business model is broken. What am I speaking of? Not paying yourself what you are worth.

I’ve never seen a business fail because the owner was being paid properly, but I’ve seen many businesses fail because the owner was not taking a check home.

If you are not getting properly rewarded for your efforts you will lose interest and energy and there is where the business failure comes from – you start just going through the motions.

You aren’t running your business to be a non-profit or damage your lifestyle. Remember why you started your company to begin with – to get paid what you are worth and improve the quality of your life!

If your business isn’t paying you enough to at least support the lifestyle you had when you started the business, why are you operating your business this way? It’s an important question to ask yourself.

This is not a question about your work ethic, how many hours you are putting in or how much desire you have to succeed. Ever watch a gerbil on a wheel? He has focus, desire and exerts lots of hard work but he never gets anywhere.

When you find yourself in this situation re-evaluate your business model because the red flag is waving indicating something is wrong. There is no joy or reward in being a martyr for your business.

We had a thunderstorm blow through here one evening and the local news channels interrupted all programs to tell us Armageddon was upon us. The ubiquitous scrolls continued all evening with nothing newsy or important. Doppler radar was filling the screen with multiple colors with news terrorists flailing about in front of the blue screen. Yes a tornado touched down in a spot (they think) and blew around some tin and knocked over a couple of trees. It was March – it happens every year.

All the major networks had dueling meteorologists competing for viewership each trying to raise the volume and hyperbole to the point of frenzy. Somewhere Jim Cantore was smiling.

Television news departments were once the bastion of information, the town crier, the people you trusted completely (Walter Cronkite take a bow) and now they’ve dissolved to the point of the boy who cried wolf.
We have gone from inviting news broadcasters into our living rooms to having them throw themselves at us during our program viewing. These are acts of desperate people in an industry that is going away. Going away?

Yes going away. Network television with set viewer schedules, local news broadcasts at 6 and 11, and blackout ball games are going away. The internet provides people with unlimited options whenever they want to view them, sports leagues and college conferences are getting their own channels, and quality stories no longer have to reach the masses.

Customers now want the controls

How do you need to be reaching your customers differently?

Where do you find yourself shouting to be heard above the noise of the competition? It’s time to find a better way. The louder the noise, the more customers distrust the information they are hearing and then get angry. Remember the frustration over phone solicitation to the point we now have a no call list? Do you have any idea how many angry calls the stations got for interrupting programming and live sports events? People will find options to avoid the interruptions.

Consider how you need to be doing things differently in:

Getting your customer to want to hear your message
Letting the customer take the controls
Avoiding the old school methods of interruption “programming”

Recently I’ve been told a Guinness over a couple of scoops of ice cream is delicious. I’ve been told sky diving is very liberating. I’ve also been advised doing housework won’t kill me.

As leaders we need to be constantly exploring and experimenting with new ideas. Some of these ideas should be explored on a personal level and some of them on a professional level. It’s easy to fall into ruts, especially at work and these days to stand out and be up to speed on the norms of your industry you have to be trying new things.

Explore and experiment with the following:

Your operating hours: Most of them are for the convenience of the owner or the employees, not the customer.

Marketing: How much have you tried with experimental marketing online? My new experiment with online video (BizWizTV.com) is showing great promise.

Your dress code: How can you be the top of the heap when your employees dress from the bottom of the barrel?

Your promotions: What would it take to get customers lined out the door? Remember those days?

What new technology can you explore and reward? Who is your foursquare mayor? (I have businesses sending me thank you comments via twitter for checking in to their places.)

New combinations: For example, people love to mix fountain drinks. Why not offer suggestions with funky names? The Reduced Rooty – Diet Coke with a splash of Root Beer (my personal mix of choice)

Contacting your B2B customer: Call up your B2B customer and ask them to pick a number between 1 and 10. Whatever number they pick tell them they win and send them a gift or a reduced rate on their next order, etc.

We’ve lost the fun in business. Put it back with your experimentation. Not everything is going to work, but people will enjoy the excitement along the way!

In case you were wondering – I’ve been told I am over the weight limit for a tandem sky-diving jump. I’ll take their word for it. The Guinness milkshake is on the agenda for this coming weekend, and vacuuming, dusting, cleaning glass and folding laundry DIDN’T kill me – who knew!

A business growth strategy isn’t sitting and waiting on the phone to ring and hope customers just walk in. You must hustle, be agile and adapt to change in order to make your own luck. Leadership makes luck, because luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. Looking for ways to make your own luck in business? Check out this short video on the 3 Ways to get “lucky” in business.

Last year the buzz at SXSW (SXSW.com) was Foursquare and a year later 450,000 people are eager participants in the location-based phone app that is changing the marketing picture for businesses by placing it in the hands of customers.

What is foursquare?

Foursquare is a smartphone application that allows the user to “check-in” to an establishment and get points for doing so. With the right combination of check-ins a person unlocks badges and scores points. This “game” is shifting how word of mouth on businesses is transferred.

Anyone can enter a business into Foursquare, in fact the first person to enter a business into Foursquare gets additional points, meaning as a business owner you may not even be aware you have a foursquare page. I recently entered the Anytime Fitness location I am a member of and told the owner I had just done this. She gave me a blank look as I explained how it worked and what it could mean to her business. She blew it off.

Why is Foursquare important?

Every time a person checks into a business using the Foursquare app they have the opportunity to enter a comment or a tip about the business. Foursquare also allows the user to set up notification to all Facebook and Twitter friends and followers they have. In my case that means when I check into a business 1100 Facebook fans and over 6800 twitter followers see what I enter.

Bad service? I let almost 8000 people know in an instant. Do a great job for me? I let 8000 people know! Research shows repeatedly how word of mouth marketing is considered the best and most reliable and with the new technology friends comments become instant information to thousands.

Grab opportunities

The person who checks into your business most frequently with Foursquare becomes the “Mayor” I am the Mayor of a local grocery store, a local lunch spot as well as a hotel I stay at in Louisville, KY and Gate B4 in the Louisville airport my flights always use.  What should this matter to a business? Plenty.

Customers love to be the insider and foursquare users take great pride in being the mayor of a place. Want to drive good word of mouth? Treat your mayor special. Giveaways, thank you notes, even marquee recognition gives an organization a chance to be part of the game, while also driving positive word of mouth.

Imagine the next time I check into the Louisville hotel I am the mayor of that I am greeted with, “Mr. White thank you for being a gold member (which I get every time I check in here) and I see you are our current mayor! Here is the chocolate coin for being a gold member and as mayor you get breakfast complimentary.” You think I won’t be telling close to 8000 people about my mayor breakfast?

Foursquare is an emerging marketing opportunity savvy businesses will enjoy creating customer insiders who will spread the good word.

In other words: How to prevent the competition from telling everyone about your weakness.

The Verizon map ads seem to appear on TV every 10 minutes. Their unrelenting message caused AT&T to fight back with Luke Wilson ads that just don’t work. Why? Because Verizon found the glaring weakness of their competitor and cleverly got the word out to potential customers while the AT&T ads are just attacks on a competitor. Sour grapes does not gain market share.

What is AT&T going to do about this?

AT&T Will Spend $2 Billion To Improve Wireless Network http://bit.ly/d8db63

Now they are making upgrades they should’ve done before. Instead of gaining momentum with upgrades it appears they got caught with their pants down and appear to be reacting to the competitor’s ads. Meaning, instead of gaining customers for the upgrades they appear to be simply trying to keep the customers they have. That is a dramatically different return for a $2 billion investment.

How could they have prevented this from happening?

1. Be honest with yourself about shortfalls

When I work with organizations on strategic planning we often discuss the problems they have in-house and problems the competitors have. Which list do you imagine is longer? Many executives are blind to their own in-house problems and seem more focused on justifying why their situation is like it is.

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