Around 30% of businesses fail in the first two years and about 50% in the first five years. Anyone setting out on their own should be rightly concerned about giving themselves the best possible shot at success. Sooner or later there comes a point at which the business must make enough money to cover costs and to make profit to grow and thrive, and while some make this look easy, it seldom is!
Planning for Success
Here are some fundamentals to help maintain clarity about what you are doing, keep control of events and help you maintain discipline and focus when, not if, times get tough:
- Sell for more than you buy.
Pretty obvious isn’t it? However, people often get tempted into selling for less than they are worth. It happens when people try to compete around price. If you turn over less than £100 million – you are not competing on price. If you commoditise yourself, you are going into Aldi and Lidl territory which for you is the killing fields. Many also commoditise their time. If you answer the work phone at 3am – you are not differentiating, you are commoditising your life. As many businesses fail from unsustainable operations as fail commercially.
- Have something good to sell.
If you’re not the cheapest, why buy from you? It’s not you who decides what value is, it’s your customer. They decide whether you are the solution to their problem, the answer to their question. How well you do this gives you value. This firstly helps you understand your own value and stay true to point #1 and secondly helps you know who has the right problem.
- Find the people with the right problem.
Having identified your ‘most valuable customer’, you can seek them out and tailor your message to them. Where do they hang out – both physically and online? This is the essence of marketing! Instead of spending treasure and time to broadcast yourself at the world, you can now get your message in front of specific people who need to hear it.
- Say your message well.
You are now speaking to a select group of people, so make sure it is in their language. Remember point # 2 – they decide what value is, and the best way to find out what they see as value is to ask them. Talk with your customers and endlessly refine and tune your message to show them how you understand their problem, will solve their problem and how you are the easiest option they have.
- Say your message often and consistently.
Your message has to find its way into their brains again and again. So many fail because they set up shop, and wait for business to roll in. It doesn’t. There is no easy way. It is very easy to be seduced by tech as a solution and we’re bombarded with messages about paid ads, google ad-words, SEO, landing pages etc. etc.
These have their place but consider communication. Dr Albert Mehrabian, author of ‘Silent Messages’, says only 7% of what we say is communicated with words, 38% of what we say is through vocal elements and a full 55% is through non-verbal elements (facial expression, posture, gestures). Are you willing to give up 93% of your capacity to understand your target’s needs and 93% of your capacity to tell them how you can solve their problem?
In short, you need to get in front of people to show them what problems you solve, and to me that means networking.
Networking for Success
Many see networking as ‘nice to have’, some fear it and some and dismiss it if it doesn’t produce instant results. People buy from people and the ability to speak face to face is your best chance of securing business. Networking however is about far more than simply selling. You network to:
- Create a ‘tailwind’.
Networks are communities of allies genuinely keen to help you. This does not mean going into a room and selling, but meeting, knowing, liking and trusting people. They will help in unexpected ways. Some ‘like’ and share your content online. Some lend you some extra credibility, agreeing with a comment or post that you make. Some will come and listen to your presentation and helpfully ask questions at the end. They can turbocharge everything you do on and offline.
- Gain from giving.
Reciprocity is a basic human instinct. It feels great to get help – but even better to give help. This is a great place to ‘get owed’ as well as enjoy the benefit of truly helping others. Not only is it rewarding, the more it happens, the more it turns into real opportunity – often from the most unexpected of sources. That lady in the group from the charity? Her son in law is Marketing director of a firm launching a marketing campaign.
- Create your virtual board of directors.
When small businesses are faced with a problem, they can turn to their friends, the yellow pages or the internet for expert advice. Networking groups contain all kinds of professionals whom you have come to know and whom you’ll see again. Many offer free tips and advice in quantities that would cost thousands if you engaged them professionally, and are great sounding boards and bench-markers if you are using other professionals.
- Create your own virtual sales team.
A networking group that understands your message gives you up to 30 people advocating for you. I regularly attend 5 networking events a week with an average of about 20 people per group. That’s 100 people who know my message and know what problems I want to solve.
Which to Choose?
Networking groups all have their own flavour, but all have the same overall purpose – to help each other in business. It is a bunch of people meeting and using some sort of format to achieve this. Here are four typical networks and how they differ in flavour or content:
- Your Chambers of Commerce.
Your local Chambers are an opportunity to access their membership. They hold informative and helpful seminars and meetings around topics that you would often pay for (GDPR, MTD, BREXIT, Exporting, Funding etc.) and hold regular networking meetings. They can even use you as an expert speaker if you are so inclined.
- BNI Networking (bni.com)
BNI is a ‘single seat’ membership group with only one person from each profession in each meeting. There is an expectation of referral and contribution making it perfect for people who feel that they want to know what business they are getting and giving. Their networking app tracks all business passed within each group.
- Sterling Networking (sterlingnetworks.co.uk)
Sterling is also a ‘single-seat’ organisation, but no tracked referrals. The expectation is that you have one-to-one meetings with other members and feed-back the activity. A similar approach and atmosphere you will find in the Business Over Breakfast (BoB) clubs (www.bobclubs.com).
- 4N Networking (4networking.biz)
4N allows people of the same profession in the room. Meetings are designed around three ten-minute ‘one-to-ones’. A key feature is ‘passporting’ which means you can network nationally and up to six times a week (if you can handle that many cooked breakfasts!). This is great if you want to create a presence and get your name and reputation far and wide quickly.
Most of these cost ca. £300-£500 for a year membership – about the same as a half page advert in a newspaper. However, it is not just access to the person that you are gaining, but access to the hundreds of personal contacts they have as well.
If you would like to know more about what Jason does, find him on www.businessdoctors.co.uk/jason-french or jason.french@businessdoctors.co.uk