A New Audience
September 17, 2009
If you’re doing a good job serving your customers, they’re going to be looking for the “next big thing” you can offer them. And while you should continually strive to meet these needs, it can become challenging to constantly create new products and services.
Fortunately, you can take a lesson from a talented magician and try a different approach.
Michael Ammar is a fantastic magician, and a great teacher of magic, having written numerous books, and produced over 40 different instructional videos. And if that’s not enough, his lecture tours – teaching advanced strategies to other magicians – are extremely popular, and booked months in advance.
As a child growing up in West Virginia, Ammar took an early interest in magic. He ordered tricks from catalogs, and put together an actual show, which he presented to different groups within his small community.
But as he became successful, and as people invited him back for repeat performences, he always had to develop new material. One of his big breakthroughs was that if he expanded his radius, he could do shows for people who hadn’t seen him before, and this, of course, took considerably less effort.
In other words, it was easier to get a new audience than a new show.
During these challenging economic times, when you might not have the capital available to develop new offerings, you can make a deliberate effort to find new markets for what you already have.
* Who else sells to people who might become customers of yours?
* Is there another use for your products that could open up entirely new markets?
* Can you bundle your products with someone else’s to make something new?
Just because things are slow doesn’t mean there aren’t abundant opportunities for growth. Growing your business isn’t magic; it just takes creative implementation of proven strategies.
Hot Tuna
August 26, 2009
It’s always a struggle to know when to keep working and when to move on. Similarly, what’s the right balance between learning and application – how much do you need to know about something before you start actually applying what you learn?
In one of my regular attempts to resurrect my long-dormant and very rusty guitar playing, I happened to come across the web site for the Fur Peace Ranch in Southeast Ohio.
Founded by legendary guitarist Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna) and his wife Vanessa, it offers a variety of intensive guitar-study weekends, along with a host of concerts featuring many of Jorma’s old friends from “back in the day.” (In case you don’t know – or can’t remember who Jorma is, click here for a quick video with an instantly recognizable song he originally recorded way back in 1966.)
He’s truly one of the masters of what’s now known as “fingerstyle” guitar. When asked in an interview a few years back how he described himself as a guitar player, he said, “I consider myself an intermediate-level guitar player with a lot of experience.”
Now part of that was genuine humility, but part of it was a somewhat accurate assessment of the level of his technical expertise on his instrument. I’m not saying he’s not a good guitarist – he’s outstanding, and his acoustic album, “Quah” with Tom Hobson is an absolute masterpiece. But he’s not lightning fast like, say, Spanish guitar legend Paco de Lucia, or Tommy Emmanuel from Australia.
The point is you really can’t just pick up a guitar with no training whatsoever and be truly successful. On the other hand, though, you can’t study theory your whole life and never actually play the instrument.
In business, people fall into these two traps all the time: either starting a business without a clue of what’s involved, or spending so much time on business plans that they never start the business at all, falling victim to “analysis paralysis.”
By all means, take advantage of the opportunities you have to sharpen your skills. But there’s no better classroom than the real world. Find the right balance, and you’ll make beautiful music in your business.
What’s It Worth?
August 14, 2009
When making purchase decisions, cost isn’t always the most pressing consideration – sometimes there are other factors that take higher priority.
We’ve been playing “musical cars” at our house recently. Our son’s 2003 Camry recently died, just shy of 200,000 miles (precisely the reason we bought another one last year for ourselves.)
Our daughter starts college this week, so we’ve been trying to find a reliable and affordable car for her to use. And the “Cash for Clunkers” program had us considering replacing an old 1995 Jeep Cherokee that was beginning to show its age.
Teenagers and cars make for a complicated mix, so a few years ago, we decided to let our son drive the old Camry, and we’d replace it with an inexpensive “basic transportation – gets you from A to B” kind of car that we’d keep until both kids were out of the house.
We asked our mechanic to keep an eye out for something, and he found one for us – a 1995 Subaru Legacy that one of his customers was selling. The mechanic had been taking care of this car since it went out of warranty, and his recommendation was good enough for us to consider it.
We dutifully looked up the Blue Book value of the car and came up with a figure we were willing to pay, and contacted the owner. After a test drive, we made our offer, but she was unwilling to budge from her original asking price which was about $600 more than our number. We said, “thanks, but no thanks.” and drove back home.
On the way back, though, Lorie and I talked about it and arrived at these conclusions:
* The car had been maintained by a mechanic we trust
* It was what we needed to hold us over until we were ready to get newer cars
* We would have to spend more time and effort to find something comparable
It was this last point that convinced us to call the woman back and tell her we’d take the car at the price she was asking. (Our son is now driving this car until he finishes college in December.)
You see, it’s not only a matter of cost; sometimes you have to consider opportunity cost – the value of your time and what you’re not accomplishing when you choose to do something else.
We could easily have spent more time and effort looking for other cars or waited until our mechanic heard about another option, but then there was the issue of what we wouldn’t be getting done while all this was going on – activities that would have generated significantly more than $600.
Sometimes you have to consider the big picture when determining how to use your time. Make sure you understand what an hour of your time is worth, and make decisions that will maximize your earning potential – even if it means spending a bit more elsewhere. Remember: how much you make isn’t as important as how much you keep.
At the End of the Day, It’s Just a Sport
August 5, 2009
I recently read an article in the American Airlines in-flight magazine about tennis great Rafael Nadal. Published in the June 1 issue, it was a natural lead-in to the upcoming Wimbledon championships where, just a year before, Nadal had stunned Roger Federer to take the title in what has come to be regarded as the best tennis match ever played.
They were naturally predicting a rematch this year, but Nadal couldn’t play because of a knee injury. Fortunately there was another exciting five-set final with Federer eventually prevailing over Andy Roddick to win his 6th Wimbledon and 15th grand slam title – a record on the men’s side.
As competitive as Nadal is, he’s also, well, a genuinely nice guy – a rare commodity in the world of elite professional sports. And a lot of this can be traced back to his early days in the sport when he learned the fine points of the game from his Uncle Toni, who has been his one and only coach.
Toni set three ground rules if he was going to train the young Nadal:
1. If you ever throw a racket, we’re finished. They’re expensive, and when you throw a racket, you don’t just disrespect the sport, you disrespect all the people who can’t afford equipment.
2. Losing is part of competing. You will lose. And when you lose, it’s not going to be my fault or the fault of your racket or the balls or the courts or the weather. It’s your fault, and you will accept it and try to do better next time.
3. Have fun. When you stop enjoying this, it’s no good. You’ll find something else that gives you pleasure.
And these same three rules can be equally applied to our business environments.
First, if you get into a jam, don’t lose control, work to find a solution.
Second, you will fail from time to time. For all our success in this business, we’ve also had some monumental failures. It’s inevitable – you can’t have one without the other. And when that happens, there’s no point – and certainly no benefit – in looking for someone else to blame. Recognize that there is no failure – only feedback. Learn from the situation; brush yourself off; and get back on the horse.
Finally, you should enjoy what you do. I’m not saying work should be like a heavenly nirvana with beautiful music, colorful flowers, and birds singing. But for all the time you spend at work, thinking about work, and taking work home, you should at least enjoy it a little bit. If not, then maybe it’s time to look for something new.
And, above all, try to keep things in perspective. As Nadal put it, “Of course I want to win, but at the end of the day, it’s just a sport.”
Why Are You in Business?
July 23, 2009
People start businesses for many reasons: because they’re passionate about something, because they see a market need, or sometimes because they like to start businesses. But there is another significant consideration in any business that cannot be ignored, and yet, frequently is.
Let me explain…
I was listening to NPR on my car radio one morning, and there was a segment about the medicinal marijuana stores in California. In case you haven’t heard about these, you can get a prescription from your doctor, take it into these places, and walk out with high-quality marijuana to be used to help manage chronic pain.
Of course, although legal under California law, apparently, federal law supersedes this, and there’s an ongoing conflict over the legality of these establishments. Fortunately, this, and the underlying ethical questions are not the subject of this article.
What is important are the comments of one proprietor who was weighing in on the issue of taxing this product to help alleviate the current economic crisis in California. Speaking to the interviewer, he made comments to this effect:
“We’re in business to pay taxes, create jobs, and do good for the community.”
People driving around me must have wondered what was going on, because I’m sure I must have had the most bizarre look on my face after hearing that. That’s because I strongly disagree with that statement, and with the business sentiment it embraces.
The purpose of any business, at least a for-profit business, is to make money for the owners and investors of that company. And for non-profit organizations, the rules are pretty much the same – you can’t provide services, support, and legislative advocacy for your members and constituents if there’s nothing in the bank.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for creating jobs if adding an additional person to your team generates revenue in excess of the expense of hiring, training, and paying that person. For that matter, you should take a long hard look at everyone on your payroll and make sure that the same return on investment holds true today.
Doing good for the community? I’m all for that too – if that’s something you choose to do with the profits of your business and as an owner of the business you can do that. But it’s not the reason you’re in business.
You’re in business to make money for the owners of the business who have invested time, capital, and effort, and frequently taken considerable risk to create, develop, and grow the business. People seem to have come to the unfortunate conclusion that making money is somehow “evil.”
It is not. Small business is where most of the growth in our economy is going to take place in the future, as it has for the last few years. And professional and trade associations help provide community, networking, and support to help fuel this growth.
This is important to keep in mind as you make critical decisions in your business.
Timing is Everything
July 10, 2009
Serindipidity – basically being in the right place at the right time – is a wonderful thing. But timing is everything, and sometimes events completely out of your control can have a profound impact on your life.
Starting on June 25, and continuing as I write this now, the airwaves are still dominated with stories, retrospectives, and allegations about Michael Jackson. I suppose this is fitting. After all, he was one of the major musical figures of my generation; his 1982 release Thriller is the best selling album of all time, having sold over 28 million copies; and, well, he was good!
Unfortunately, earlier the same day, another icon of the ’70s also died: Farrah Fawcett. She was in a collection of TV commercials, did a couple of guest spots on several shows, and is best known for her role as Jill Munroe on the hit series “Charles Angels.”
She also holds a record – her pinup poster sold over 12 million copies, and could be seen everywhere during the late ’70s.
But on June 25, 2009, because she happened to die on the same day as Michael Jackson, her entire legacy – the complete body of her work, including her outstanding performance in 1984’s “The Burning Bed” – was reduced to nothing more than a footnote in the media circus surrounding Jackson’s death.
Even Billy Mays – the near-screaming pitchman for “OxyClean” and “ShamWow!” who died just three days later got more press than did Fawcett.
Setting aside the tragedy of three people losing their lives and the impact on their respective families, there is an important lesson for us as marketers: make sure you’re not playing to a crowded field.
This means identifying and targeting specific niche markets, developing value-rich propositions, and presenting them when the target audience is most likely to be receptive.
It means recognizing your competitors’ fears about spending and taking advantage of a less-crowded media space to draw more attention to your offers.
And it means you have to truly understand the concept of timing as it applies to every aspect of your business. It may not be possible to control everything that happens in your environment, but to the extent possible, remember that “timing is everything” and make that knowledge work to your advantage.
Jon & Kate Plus 8…Minus 1
July 1, 2009
Focusing on benefits and not features is a critical skill most people still struggle with. You have to understand what’s important to your customers, clients, and members if you’re going to get any brand loyalty at all.
Earlier this week, I was presenting at a conference, and happened to glance at an issue of USA Today. On the front cover of the Life section was this headline: “It’s official: TV’s Jon and Kate have filed for divorce.”
As I was explaining to the group the difference between features and benefits, I pulled out the newspaper and read the headline out loud, and saw puzzled looks on the faces of most of the 200 people in the room. I asked how many of them knew who “Jon & Kate” were, and about 20 hands went up. When I asked how many people cared that they were getting divorced, one hand went up. One person out of 200.
(In case you don’t know who they are – I didn’t before seeing the article – Jon & Kate Gosselin are the parents of eight children: a set of twins and a set of sextuplets who have their own reality TV show.)
This whole story concerns me for two reasons. First that people can become famous and get their own TV show for having six kids in one shot, or for being rich (Paris Hilton’s “The Simple Life”) or for being promiscuous (“A Shot at Love”) – all extremely popular shows, by the way.
The second reason is that many people seem to get caught up in these shows, obsessing on other people’s realities while short changing their own. Don’t get me wrong, I watch TV, and you could question my own choices in programming. But I’ve overheard conversations where people just go on and on and on about what’s happening to the people in their favorite reality show, while completely neglecting the actual work they’re being paid to do, or even worse, underestimating what truly matters: their own lives.
The lessons here are important to achieving success in your own marketing. First, make sure that what you think is important is also important to your market. Don’t make assumptions for other people based on your particular viewpoint on a given issue. Remember, in most cases, you are not your customer.
Second, recognize that people do crave diversion and escape from their own realities. If you can provide this through your own products and services, you can tap into a marketing channel that most people completely miss.
You don’t have to be a reality TV star, but you can position yourself as a “rock star” in your own sphere of influence.
The Montblanc “White Thing”
June 10, 2009
If your business is struggling in the face of this recession, then maybe it’s time to try something different, and it’s always best to start with what’s working for other people.
A while back I was in a local office supply store, and happened to be near the glass case with the pens. Not the basic 12-black-pens-in-a-box-for-$3.99 pens; no, I’m talking about the really nice (and equally expensive) Montblanc pens – you know the ones with the little white “crown” at the top.
On a lark, I asked the clerk to take one of them out. She told me a little about the pen, and then she told me the price: $119.95. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another pen lower down in the case that looked very similar to the one I was holding in my hand.
I asked to see that one, and discovered that it was, in fact, virtually identical to the Montblanc pen, same weight, same balance, even the exact same ink cartridge! Two things were different: the second pen didn’t have the “crown” at the top, and it only cost $49.95.
A little puzzled, I asked the clerk why one pen cost $70 more than the other. She smiled and said, “The white thing,” pointing at the crown on the top of the Montblanc pen.
In this challenging economy, you have to constantly try and find the “white thing” in your business. What makes you so unique, valuable, and special that people will be willing not only to do business with you, but to pay a premium price for the privilege of doing so.
That’s a strategy you should write down – with whatever pen happens to be lying around!
“Middle of the Road” Springsteen
June 4, 2009
Sometimes people have a tendency to wait for exactly the “right time” to do something – to launch a new product; to hire a new person; or even to take a vacation. But sometimes things don’t have to be absolutely perfect.
Bruce Springsteen played here in North Carolina last year. While I’ve seen him before, I didn’t make this particular concert because I was out of town. I did read David Menconi’s review in the local paper, though, and it contained an important message for all of us:
“Of course, every Springsteen show can’t help but conclude with triumph, thanks to ‘Born to Run,’ arguably the greatest encore song in classic-rock history. It wasn’t the best version of ‘Born to Run’ I’ve seen, or the best Springsteen show. In fact, I’d call it middle of the pack. But middle-of-the-pack Springsteen is still better than just about anything else out there.”
The same thing applies in your business: if you employ strong, proven marketing tactics – and do them with “middle of the road” quality – you’ll still be way ahead of the vast majority of people who insist on doing things the same tired old way they’ve done them for years.
Things don’t always have to be perfect – sometimes “good enough” is good enough. People spend far too much time making certain that every conceivable outcome in a marketing campaign is considered and addressed…to the point where they never launch the campaign or miss an important window of opportunity.
There’s a story you may have heard about two friends camping in the woods. Suddenly, they hear a rustling in the distance and see a bear starting towards them. One friend reaches into the tent, grabs his sneakers, and starts putting them on. The other friend says, “Are you crazy? You can’t outrun a bear!” To which the guy with the sneakers responds, “I don’t have to outrun the bear – I just have to outrun you!”
Put on your marketing sneakers and let someone else deal with the bear!
Conrad Hilton Says…
May 28, 2009
Conrad Hilton founded the Hilton Hotel chain, along with several other businesses. He also has the dubious distinction of being Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather. I think we’ll stick with the hotels – these business strategies are far more interesting than Paris Hilton and her latest antics.
A copy of his autobiography, Be My Guest, published in 1957, is placed in every room of every Hilton hotel, and that’s where I found my copy.
As I was reading it, one quote in particular jumped out at me because it’s especially relevant to these interesting times: “Success seems to be connected to action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
This quote, written over 50 years ago, cuts right to the core of what separates successful people from those who choose to be spectators, letting life happen to them instead of working diligently and tirelessly to create the reality they truly desire.
It’s almost word-for-word the same quote from Lance Armstrong that I shared with you last week. And if I wanted to, I could find enough similar quotes from 50 different people and include in this newsletter one each week for an entire year.
The problem is that people either get it, or they don’t, and no amount of coaxing, coaching, or cajoling will change people’s basic belief systems on how things should work.
In yet another version of a situation that occurs with frightening regularity and frequency, I brought our new car into the dealership for the 5,000-mile service and to fix a wobbly rear-view mirror. We parked in front of the used-car building which was right near the service area. Two “salespeople” (and I use the term loosely) were milling about, leaning on the cars parked in front of the building, and waiting to pounce on us…until they realized we were there to service a car, not buy one.
Big mistake, because if they had even half a brain, they might have struck up a casual conversation with my wife while I was checking in the car. They would have discovered that we were in fact going to be looking for a reliable used car for our daughter to use when she starts college in August.
For that matter, I’ve not heard anything from the salesperson who sold us the new car – no personal newsletter, no three-month follow-up call to see how he might be able to help me – nothing!
And it gets better (it always does, doesn’t it!) – my daughter, who has been scouring the internet looking for her ideal car, actually found the exact model she was looking for at a dealership about 50 minutes away.
Lorie called to find out how we would get the car to our mechanic to look it over; he explained their easy procedure…and then thanked Lorie and ended the call.
Not, “My name’s Bob; can I have your name and we’ll schedule a time for you to come in for a test drive?” Not, “So you live in Raleigh, would it be easier if we brought the vehicle up to you so you didn’t have to drive all the way down here?”
All four of these individuals will go home at the end of the day and complain to their friends and families about how bad business is, and blame the economy, when in fact, they squander opportunities to generate business and choose instead to lean against cars on the lot for a living.
Maybe they should follow Conrad Hilton’s advice: take action, keep moving, and don’t quit.
