May
13
How To Overcome Your Biggest Challenge as a Small Business Owner
Filed Under challenge, fundamentals, learning
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Loading ...I get to see ‘both sides of the tracks’ working with small owner-managed businesses as well as large corporate organisations. You’d think the people doing the selling in these two very different kinds of organisations would have different challenges in many cases, wouldn’t you.
Well, they don’t, at least, not from where I’m standing!
The number 1 biggest challenge they have is the same ting, and it’s personal:
How do I find time to market my business or myself?
For sales people in large corporates, doing administration, servicing existing opportunities and customers – there never seems to be enough hours in the day.
For the small business owner or salesperson in the small businesses, it’s the same, perhaps more so, as there’s less people to spread the workload across…
And if you happen to be the one-person business, often operating from home, you often have the bigger challenge of balancing the needs of the business and the needs of the family.
In working with such diverse situations I get to see some fantastic strategies and techniques where people really make it work.
And I also see some real nightmares! I’ll just focus on the good stuff here!
Clarity of purpose: consider the implications and consequences of not doing any marketing. There’s some simple maths here: zero marketing = zero clients = zero sales.
The trick is to do just the right amount of marketing in terms of time and resource (money!) and also the right kind of marketing, to the right selection of prospective clients. This suggests some kind of sales and marketing strategy is needed – there are so many permutations and options for the kind of marketing and who you market to. Having this clarity of purpose will stop you wasting time (and money) on marketing activities which are misdirected, even if very good.
Focus on who: it’s not just which companies for example that you may want to market to, but what kind of people to market to – job titles and areas of responsibilities – in short, those who influence and/or take the final decision on what & when to buy, and who to buy from…
When you focus on the key influencers and decision makers you avoid wasting time, effort and money on those who have little or no influence in the final decision. This is as true when selling to private individuals (including retail) as it is when selling to other businesses. Again, this suggests some kind of sales and marketing strategy is needed…
Perspective: I don’t agree with those who say that marketing is the number 1 priority task you have. I believe it’s the number 2 priority. The trick is to make sure it doesn’t become #1 or #3, #4 etc.
Here’s why I think this, based on real experiences:
Priority number 1 is to close or bring home business that’s about ready to close, and then deliver it. You can’t assume this will happen by itself – continue to work the opportunity until the cash is in the bank. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who tell me how they lost business at the 11th hour because they ‘took their eyes off the ball’ – or how many tell me how they won business away from a rival at the 11th hour…
If you make marketing the number 1 priority you risk failing to deliver on existing commitments and you lay yourself open to having somebody steal some business off you at that crucial 11th hour.
If you make marketing a lower priority than number 2, you run the risk of reduced or even stalled growth because your competition will be out there, making themselves known, when you aren’t. You can miss out on the chance to win business at the 11th hour too…
But don’t confuse the priority level with level of effort and involvement. Bringing home that almost-won business should need relatively little time at this stage of the sales process, but it does need to be top priority.
Avoid Overkill: so many people I work with have made the mistake of spending whole days doing this. How boring can that get?! Plus, if you’ve read any of Jon Medina’s stuff on how the brain works, you’ll know that you can have too much of a good thing, and you can do too much of a good thing too! You will achieve greater impact when you do smaller bursts of good quality marketing, say 1 or 2 hours at a time…
In short, do it ‘little and often’ – continuously, not just 2 or 3 days a month, mostly clumped together. After all, potential customers don’t confine their buying and searching for their next purchase to just the odd day here and there each month, do they!?
Reframe: replace the question “How do I find time to market my business or myself?” with a more useful and constructive one, like “what can I do to market my business or myself today/now?”
Call to action:
Consider each of these items I’ve described here, and take action on each. The following will help:
- What is the purpose of your marketing activities? In retail, it will be to get customers in to your shop, real or virtual, hopefully to make a ‘buy’ decision quickly. In more complex sales situations several people may be involved, and may need to talk things over with you on more than 1 occasion. Each situation requires a different marketing approach in order to achieve the different outcomes. What outcome do you need at each stage? Base your marketing plan on that.
- Who are your customers likely to be? Who do you want them to be? Who would you rather not sell to? (seriously!)
- Based on your personal and business circumstances, identify ways you can ensure marketing becomes and remains always your number 2 priority. What signs can tell you that it’s not your number 2 priority? How will you look out for these? What actions could you take to put things right if your priorities do get skewed?
- Plan to spread your marketing activities throughout the month, especially if you have (or plan to have…) very busy weeks when you may get little or no marketing done…
- Find a way to easily, conveniently ask yourself frequently: “what can I do to market me/my business right now?”
- Take a look at Dave Allen’s stuff on “Getting Things Done” – especially if traditional time management techniques don’t seem to work well for you!
Let me know how you get on!
Cheers
Martin
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