Starting a business takes courage! No, not just courage, shear guts and determination! It isn’t for the weak, wimpy, or the guy that is going to “try”. If you’re not “all in”, then you’re not in at all! Since 1999, I’ve started about a dozen different business ventures. From EBay selling to real estate, it seems I’ve always been on the lookout for a great business to start! Some have been great successes while others have left me limping home with my tail between my legs.
No matter how much advice I give you or how many books you’ll read, you will face adversity, pain and trials. You’ll shed blood, sweat, and tears. You’ll feel betrayed, beat up, and will often wonder why you can’t just be happy with a regular job like most people!
Hold On! Starting and Owning a Business is Wonderful!
The point I want to share with you is that though it isn’t easy, it is worth it! Is anything in life easy that is worth something? Of course not! I was twenty five when I started my first real brick and mortar business with employees. I was indeed a dumb kid! I read book after book, but it didn’t change how green I was. Today, I want to share with you three key areas that you need to focus on if indeed you will survive and thrive as you start your successful small business.
1. Systems & Clarity for your New Business
You’ll be tempted to say, “Systems? Who needs systems? I’m just a one man shop.”
While you might be a small company right now, eventually, if you’re good at what you do, you’ll grow. It is important that you have your systems in place and clarity on how you’ll run your business. A system is simply how you’ll run your business when you get started. Even when I started my consulting company and it was just my here, I had to put together systems before I started. For example, I had to know how I’d bill my clients, how I’d update them on the work, how I’d receive payments, what phone system I’d use, what software, ETC.
I sat down one day and laid out everything I would use and figured out the cost, learning curve, and made sure that each system would work. I then began to write processes for how I would do things.
- I will update my clients on Fridays.
- I will send automated reports on Tuesdays.
- I will reply to emails at 11:00 am and 4:00 pm.
Yes, these are pretty simply systems, but when I started it was just me. Now our organization has grown drastically with live seminars and thousands of people in our database. We have employees and intricate systems in place. If I didn’t have systems in place today, things would slip through the crack. Customers wouldn’t be happy and we’d have a big let down in our business.
Let me give you an example…
Five years from now, you walk into your office about ten minutes to nine in the morning. You have a meeting in ten minutes, but you’re not stressed as all you have to do is print out a few documents. Your office girl is running late, so she hasn’t made coffee yet, and the office has a chill in the air. You quickly go to make coffee and turn on the air, but you realize that there is only decaf coffee left and there are not any clean cups. You start washing a cup while the decaf brews and you hope your client won’t know the difference. You turn on the heat and open the rest of the office up! No big deal you say to yourself and make a mental note to remind your staff to pick up more coffee.
Finally, with two minutes to spare, you sit at your computer and get ready to print off the documents that need to be signed and the green light on your printer turns red! You’re out of toner. ”Crap!” you say with your fist clinched. You go to the office storage room, which is a disaster and can’t find anything. There is no extra toner!
This is the average small business. How could this be fixed? Well, if there was a job description for your employee with a list of things she needs to check on every week.
__- Coffee
__- Toner
__- Paper
Then she could order whatever she needs to! You come into your office and there is always coffee, toner, & Paper!
The system is the checklist that you give your office staff to review weekly. It is pretty easy to keep that system accountable. If there is no coffee, she isn’t doing her job! Systems are not just checklists, but it is the written process for how you will run your new small business.
In my years in business, I realize that systems in general are the most important thing for starting a new business because it builds consistency for your customers. It is basically, how you do things, how it is managed, and how it is kept accountable. No, it isn’t fun! It is boring, but every month, you have to review your systems.
Michael Gerber wrote a book called “The Emyth Revisited” and it is one of the most life changing books for small business owners. I’ll go so far as to say that if you don’t understand the systems of the Emyth, then you’re probably going to be doomed to fail! Stop what you’re doing and go and buy this book! Read it and read it again!
Big companies don’t get big by chance! They get big because of clarity of operations! If you don’t have clarity you have chaos!
2. Marketing your New Small Business
As a marketing consultant, every day I see so many small businesses trying to build a brand! They say the secret is to “get your name out there.” WRONG! You don’t need to get your name out there, you need accountable marketing that generates revenues in your bank account. If branding works so well, why the heck did General Motors spend a billion dollars in marketing and still need a government bail out? You’re a small company! You don’t need to spend money to get your name out there, you need to spend money on what brings in revenues.
I’ll share with you our Four Step Marketing process that we use to help businesses grow. To be straight forward, this method works. Companies who use it have grown by 400% in as little as seven months.
1. Develop a Strong Unique Selling Point – Learn to compete not based upon price, but on the other factors that the consumer cares about. It isn’t always about price, but it is about trust that you are the right person for the job. If you innovate your company so that you are the best and head and shoulders above your competition, then you will win the market share. You need to be able to say exactly what the customer wants to hear. Is it free shipping? Overnight service? Lifetime Warranty? It could be anything, but the only way to know for sure is to do research and figure out what customers hate and what they want. Once you have your USP (Unique Selling Point) you’ll say that in 100% of your marketing.
2. Build a Database with Platforms & Offers – The goal for every business should have a detailed list of prospects that could buy and might buy down the road. To explain this briefly, your platforms are every place you come into contact with prospects. If they call you, a phone would be the platform. If they visit you online, then the website is the platform. A platform is simply anywhere a customer comes into contact with you in which a database exchange could happen. The offer is the other part of this step. You need to find something that you could give away to generate the potential customer to raise their hands and say, “Yes, I’d like to get that to find out more information.”
It could be a free DVD, CD, whitepaper, MP3 audio, brochure, coupon codes or anything that has perceived value. The goal here is that we want to start generating leads everywhere. If they call in, we offer them the free report. If they come to our showroom, we offer them a free Starbucks gift card for filling out a survey of why they didn’t buy. If they visit us online, we give them an opportunity to download something that will help them with their buying decision.
If a company uses offers on their platforms, they will see their list of potential customers grow very quickly. A key point to note is that when we give away our free report, we’ll be sharing with them some amazing information (our USP) about why they should buy from us. We’ll also have that prospect in our database so that we can follow-up with them again and again in step 4.
3. Use the Marketing Arsenal – The marketing arsenal is all the marketing weapons we can use to drive eyes and ears to our platforms (places we come into contact with customers). The list is huge, but I’ll share a few with you here.
Google Adwords – Drives traffic to our website platform where they can take us up on an offer.
TV Commercial – Drives calls to our phone platform where they can buy or take us up on an offer.
SEO – helps your website rank high so people can land there and take you up on free offer.
Direct Mail – Invites people to call or visit the showroom to buy or take us up on an offer.
The secret with the marketing arsenal is that it must be used to push people to the platform. No branding! We want action! We want them to see what we offer and we want them to either buy or give up their information showing us that they are a potential buyer. For my clients, we measure all of this and what is amazing is that we see our clients’ databases growing because of the accountable marketing. We cut out dead forms of marketing that don’t generate sales by tracking everything.
The result is simply a lower cost of marketing and a higher return on investment.
4. Use Marketing Automation – This is where the magic comes in. If you first plan a powerful Unique Selling Point then you are a very good company on the inside. If you then start generating leads by giving away stuff, you’ll build a very large database. If you use the marketing arsenal to drive people to your offer, your database will grow very quickly. The last step is marketing automation, which will then follow up with all of your prospects automatically. Wouldn’t it be cool if you had software that could send emails, make phone calls, send direct mail letters, and touch base with people as they go through the buying process?
Technology today exists for the small business to have these types of resources. It is affordable and by automating your follow-up, you’ll see dramatic growth in your sales. Not only have I seen it for my clients, I’ve seen it in my business as well. We took a brand new start up to a million dollar company in less than a year by simply applying these four steps.
What is really amazing about the marketing automation is that every time you communicate a follow-up message, you will be saying your Unique Selling Point. When the time is right for people to buy, they will go with your company!
There is a lot more I could say about marketing as after all, I’m a marketing consultant, but if you’d like to learn more about the entire process, you can visit www.LawMarketingSystems.com to learn more about our four step marketing process.
3. Innovation - Last but not least!
The last key to starting and running a successful small business is innovation! Innovation is one of those words you hear so often from speakers, but does anyone really know what it means?
As a business owner, we’re talking about making things better and better for your customers! We’re talking about blowing them away with faster customer service! We’re talking about RAVING FANS of your business.
Ken Blanchard wrote it so well in the book entitled “Raving Fans” and I would highly, highly suggest that you read this book if you’re in business. You might be thinking, “It’s just me Matt, why do I need to innovate?”
You need to innovate because if you don’t, your competition will!
The world is changing at breakneck speed. If you don’t adapt, you’ll be run down by your competitors.
Take this for an example…
15 Years Ago – Did it matter if you had a website? Probably not! Not many people did! Today, if you don’t have a website, you’re in the stone age!
10 Years Ago – Did it matter if your sales guys had cell phones? Probably not! You gave them those large beepers and your customers would just page them!
5 Years Ago – Did it matter if you used social media? MySpace is for kids right? Now, people are flocking to social media and using it daily. If you’re not using it now, you’re losing the battle!
I could go on about email, voicemail, web 2.0 properties, outsourcing and so much more… The point is, are you changing with the times?
It sounds like you have a lot to do right? Not really! You see, when I started in business, I had to focus on so many things I felt overwhelmed. I just didn’t know where to focus. There are just 3 major areas that need your attention.
1. Systems and Processes
2. Marketing
3. Innovation
No doubt someone out there is saying, “But Matt, what about my product. Don’t I need to focus on my product?”
Yes, you do! But, you could have the best product and still lose in business! The key is to focus on progress, not perfection. If you wait to long to launch your business, you’ll get beat out. A fast nickle is better than a slow dime any day. The truth is, if your business model stinks, you won’t make it anyway. It is better to know that before you spend several hundred thousand dollars building infrastructure only to see that the model isn’t profitable.
If you’re making money and it is profitable, then continue to invest into your systems and into innovation. This will make your company a “rock star” compared to your competitors. As you market your business using the four steps, you’ll see a huge growth in revenues and can continue to build your business.
Question: What mistakes have you made when starting a business that can help others?
Quote of the day: Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein
