Posts Tagged ‘Business Development’

While there are many ways to harness the power of segmentation, one of the broadest and most valuable applications is for designing your marketing strategy – a strategy that clearly defines who you’re targeting, what you’re going to offer them, where you’re going to reach them, and how you’re going to sell them on your product & brand.

The key “superpower” of segmentation is that it enables you to take a population of consumers and group them based upon similarities they share with respect to the very attributes that you use to define your marketing strategy (i.e., who to target, what to offer them, etc.).  What this means is that the segments you derive from the segmentation process will have their preferred marketing mixes already “baked into them”.  Powerful stuff.

Segmentation for designing marketing strategies is a 2-step jig

Step 1: Identify “the who”
In the first step you identify “the who”.  Who are those consumers in the population who have expressed interest in your product category or who have needs addressed by your product category?  In this step you’re simply separating out those interested consumers from the rest of the general population.

Step 2: Identify your target segments
The second step is where things really get cooking. In step 2 you take the population of interested consumers and group them based upon their similarities with respect to “the what, why, where & how” of your product category.
In this step your goal is to identify the most attractive segments for your business to target – segments for which the following are true.

To read more about segmentation and your marketing strategy, visit Sparxoo.com, a Marketing, Branding and Business Development Blog.

Connecting with clients is the simplest aspect of creating a true marketing habit. It’s easy, free and takes up less time in your day than grabbing a cup of coffee. The key? Make sure you’re connecting with the right clients. Focus on the ones who consistently bring you business… or consistently refer business, and get to know and understand their business. Here are four things you can do today to nurture your relationships, up your client service and drive your business development all at the same time

Get in front of them. Nothing can replace face-to-face interactions with important clients. Schedule a time to stop by THEIR place of business and see how they’re operating. Not only will it remind clients of your place in their business life, actually seeing an office and what goes on day-to-day may spark ideas for ways to help them with their legal needs. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy stay… stopping by for coffee and a quick meeting may be all you need to bring them back to your office.

Show an interest in their industry. One of the easiest, and most helpful, things you can do for a client is present them with information about their own industry…with a legal spin. Set up Google Alerts with their industry or company name as keywords and see what turns up. If something comes through that relates to their business attach it to an email with a quick explanation and invitation to speak regarding any questions they might have. It’s a quick and simple way to show you’re looking out for them.

Relate your expertise back to them. Clients aren’t always up on the most recent changes to laws that concern them… that’s what they rely on you for. Take it one step ahead and spend a few minutes each month looking over Session Laws to see what might apply to them… it sounds obvious it’s often forgotten.

Pick up the phone. The next time you have something to relay to a client, do it over the phone. E-mail is an incredibly useful method of communication much of the time, but it can’t replace genuine conversation. Instead of letting an assistant or paralegal do the communicating pick up the phone and do it yourself. You’ll be able to answer questions instantly and give a better picture of what it is you’re explaining to them. Conversation builds relationships.

Sometimes it’s the simplest gesture that can bring in the greatest returns. With technology on your side (Google, Google Alert, RSS Feeds…) it’s easier than ever to keep up with clients personal and professional lives. Spend 10 minutes a day looking over your contact list and building relationships and your law firm marketing habit will flourish—along with your business.

rodrigoinacio.com http Understanding that the answer to your business development is to develop your leadership value first

Business development has the goals of gaining new customers and a toehold in existing markets. This is especially important for a new business. Growing your small business takes a lot of planning for your efforts to be truly successful. However, by using some basis techniques you can use “measure twice, cut once” principle for developing your business strategy since a thought-out plan can identify any possible trouble areas beforehand.

Identifying your target market will help you figure out a number of other factors, such as how to reach these customers with marketing and how best to position your brand. Your target market is the customers who need or want your product or service. This could be narrowed to a specific geographic region, interest or hobby, gender, profession or any other traits. Doing research into what demographics are purchasing similar products from your competitors might help you identify what markets are currently being targeted and if there are any visible gaps for your own business to market to.

Something else to think about is your own business. What makes your product or service different from your competitors? This is called your unique selling point. If you are the first business to offer your product or service, your unique selling point is obvious because your customers cannot get the same thing anywhere else. Other selling points include different product features, lower prices, better availability, or better customer service. Finding what makes your business competitively different allows you to emphasis this in your marketing.

Branding your product goes along with your unique selling point. Usually this is thought of as merely your company logo, but it is much more than that. Branding is all the thoughts, emotions, and experiences that a person associates with your company and products or services. This is important to keep in mind not just during marketing your business, but during sales as well.

Being attentive to customer needs is critical to maintaining a personable image. This is part of customer service. Think of it this way, if someone treated you well would you want to be around them? Of course you would.

The same goes for businesses. Another way to keep customers is through loyalty programs. These offer incentives, such as a discount or a free item, for multiple purchases over many visits. Loyalty programs can take many directions, it just depends on how inventive you want to be.

Technology is playing more and more of a role in planning and marketing businesses. One of the these new functions is lead generation. This is the process of collecting names and addresses of people, companies, or institutions for the purpose of increasing sales. There are many ways to accomplish this such as manually by visiting websites and collecting it yourself, by purchasing a lead list from a vendor, or through automated programs.

Growing your small business does not have to be difficult. There are many resources that you can use to successfully plan out your marketing strategy. Small business consultants can be particularly helpful. This may be an option worth looking into depending on how comfortable you are with making business decisions, or it may enhance your existing ideas.

What does it take to develop a home based business that goes from no income to leaving your day job and soaking up all the freedom that you deserve?

First of all, I am here to tell you that becoming rich overnight does not exist. Quite a few dishonest Marketers use this style to get you buying from them. The sales page on the website will normally promise riches the next day and they do ruin lives by practising such methods.

Your home based business development comes from daily planning and followed up with determination.Too often businesses start very well but deteriorates gradually due to that lack of commitment.If you really want to achieve great riches, you will have to put some work into it.

So lets start the 3 steps of developing your home based business:

1.Finding your niche market

Finding a profitable market where you can promote yourself is very important. The mind set of chosing the correct niche must be spot on due to many failures that occured doing the opposite. So which one should you choose?

Normally it is your hobbies that you are passionate about that can generate a great income for your home based business. If you are passionate about fishing for example, you will know more about that niche than the average joe will.

You will also have to concentrate on how strong the competition is in that certain area of your choice. The more saturated it is, the more difficult it will become to be recognized. “Google Trends” is a fantastic tool to find out what people are searching for at this present moment.Also the keywords taken from those tools can help you establish the number of searches in the google rankings. If you have less than a two hundred thousand, it is a good sign that your home based business can enjoy great exposure if implemented correctly.

2.Expand your knowledge further on your niche

Imagine having already the knowledge in a particular field and then defining that further to an expert level. This will allow you to stand out far above the other home based business owners and be seen as the person “to go to” for advice.

Researhing and learning additional elements of that niche contributes to your success.Remember that we will always be students of this world and learning more daily can only improve your skills.

3.Understanding what your customers need from that niche

One way you can profit from attaining this information without paying for it, is the right website(s). Yahoo answers have millions of question about every niche you can possible think of. If you search for your market on the website, you will quickly establish what people want and need on a daily basis.

Isn’t that a great free tool that can be used under the radar for a better approach? You can even join Google groups and forums to comprehend the habits of your future customers.

Taking time daily to digest what people need through these sites will be a great help for you in the years to come. These 3 steps for your home based business development is the first gateway that needs to be considered. After doing all that research, everything else will become a second nature.

A checklist can be used for quality control, for accuracy checks, as a memory assisting device, as a roadmap through a complex project and even as a guide to preparing an income tax return. As a professional you use checklists every day but do you have one for maximizing your business opportunities, or are you leaving practice development to chance?

 

If you are an accountant, a wealth manager, a tax preparer or a financial advisor, you have just emerged from the madness of tax season. I can almost guarantee that you have been using some kind of checklist, perhaps more than one, for the last few months. But how many of them include items for maximizing your business opportunities?

 

Many people think of the IRS form 1040 as a summary page for a tax return. I prefer to think of it as a checklist. As you complete the form you answer important questions about the client (marital status, age, number of dependents) that determine personal and family deductions and exemptions. The form then leads you in reviewing all sources of income and all types of deductions. Finally, you calculate the amount owed or due to be refunded by the government.

 

You have probably used other checklists, as well. Your firm might have a process for preparation, review, and other checks of returns before they are delivered to the client. You also might have a checklist of what materials are to be returned or delivered to the client, what is to be mailed to the IRS, and what you should retain. In some firms, you might even have a checklist of checklists.

 

I can guarantee, however, almost none of you have been using a checklist for maximizing your business opportunities during the last few months. 

 

A checklist for maximizing your business opportunities should be a fundamental tool in every professional services firm.

 

Why? If you care about maximizing your business opportunities, you need to be as intentional and consistent about business development as you are about every other process in your firm. A checklist for maximizing your business opportunities is one of the ways you can grow your business from the inside.

 

Accountants and other professional and financial services professionals often prefer this approach over scouting for and selling to new prospects for maximizing your business opportunities for several reasons:

1.  You are providing additional value to people with whom you already have a relationship. 

2.  It feels far less like selling to offer additional services you have reason to believe the client needs.

3.  Clients want you to introduce new ideas; using a checklist will ensure that clients are introduced to new ideas

4.  Numbers people are comfortable with process. If the question or the offer of services is part of the process, it is more comfortable.

5.  Checklists are most commonly used by everyone in the firm. This puts everyone on the same page, with the same responsibilities and accountabilities.

6.  Running a checklist can be objectified, documented and evaluated.

7.  Checklists give the firm common language to use.

8.  Checklists increase internal business and introductions.

9.  Checklists allow training to be consistent and specific.

 

What would a checklist for maximizing your business opportunities look like? It might be an independent checklist that you run just before you deliver a tax return to the client. Another approach would be to make the maximizing you business opportunities checklist another item (or group of items) on your quality control checklist. No matter how you handle a maximizing your business opportunities checklist, it probably should occur before the final review of the documents within the firm.

 

A checklist for maximizing your business opportunities would list

 

–  key personal events, changes, business activities, financial opportunities

–  key business events, needs, opportunities

–  key external events and changes

 

Each set of documents prepared for a client would be checked for each of the items on the maximizing your business opportunities list. You would then have the appropriate conversation for those circumstances with the client.  For example, if the tax return indicates that the client is a business owner and has just reached age 60, maximizing your business opportunities means you should ask

–  if the client has a succession plan,

–  if the client has made plans for managing funds from a 401k plan or other retirement investment,

–  if the client is comfortable with the current valuation of the business or would like help increasing the value of the business quickly,

–  if the client needs help reviewing investments and changing strategy.

 

With a checklist of events and changes that offer triggers for your professional or financial services firm to provide additional services to the client, you have a significant opportunity to take comfortable action for maximizing your business opportunities and grow the firm from the inside. Whether the work you currently do for the client is accounting, tax preparation, investing, estate planning, or other services, all you need is the checklist, the commitment to take action, and comfort with the appropriate conversations in each set of circumstances.

Copyright 2010 by David Wolfskehl

Today I am about to let you into a secret. A secret that will help transform your business. It is something that all business coaches and business development people know and teach and it is something that all successful businesses do. And the best part of all it is (on the surface) very simple to do.

Think of this article as your mini business building program. If you follow these steps and apply them to your business, your business results will grow in a way that you will not have imagined was possible.

If you want a wildly successful business there are only 3 steps you need to take. That’s right – just 3. Everything else is just window dressing.

So what are these three steps? The three steps to business success are that you need to align your business in thought, word and deed.

Each of these words are a major step in your business building program and each are sequential which means that you can’t skip steps or do them out of order.

You need to apply each step in precisely the order: thought – word – deed.

Let’s explore each of these steps a bit more.

Thought – The Essence of Your Business

The first step of creating any success is the thought – you need to clearly think about and know where you are headed. Think of it like setting out for a journey in your car – you need to know the destination you are headed. You don’t just get in and drive – you think to yourself “I am driving to Brisbane”.

With your thoughts you need to be able to visualise where you are going and to capture the essence of your business. You need to be able to clear the pathways in your mind and in your space to know what you want to create.

You need to be able to know in every fibre of your being where you are headed – be totally clear on what you are aiming for.

There are lots of tools you can use to help you with this process ranging from facilitated planning sessions, brainstorming, thinking about your ideal client and your ideal day, thinking about the sort of staff you want to have working with you and right the way through to drawing a picture of the essence of your business (or having one drawn for you if you are not artistically inclined).

Word – Create the Magic

The next step is converting your business essence into word and form.

Throughout the ages people have known that words have power. They have the power to harness emotions (think about speeches such as “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King), they have the power to declare a position (“We will fight them on the beaches” by Winston Churchill) and they have the power to inspire action (“We will place a man on the moon” by Kennedy).

Without putting pen to paper or speaking your business essence out loud, all your thoughts are just dreams.

Some of the things you can do to put your thoughts into words are create a business plan, create a corporate plan and a marketing plan, put together your website, have letters written to potential businesses, write down the process and systems you will be using to deliver your service or product, writing your position descriptions and get the essence of your business converted into design through business cards and your logo.

At this stage your words and form need to be clear, compelling and clearly reflect your business essence.

This is the stage where you may want to talk with a Feng Shui consultant or energy worker to clear your space and set your words into the space of your building.

Deed – Take the Actions

Action is vital. This is where you put everything you have thought and written about into action. You actually implement and measure the results of what you have done.

This is where you send out the letters, make your website live, put your systems into practice in the workplace, implement your business plan and do the work of your business.

But strangely enough if you have fully taken the thought and deed stages – sometimes the action comes to you!

One of my clients had this experience. We stopped and talked about her business – her dreams for what she wanted, her ideal clients and lots of other things. She knew deep in her heart what she wanted to create. I then wrote her a 3 page letter outlining her services to potential businesses.

The funny thing was as soon as she received the final letter – she had a “yes that’s right – that’s who I am” feeling deep inside her. The next day her phone started to ring and she is now fully booked. Oh – she still hasn’t sent the letter out – she hasn’t had to!

So there you have it. The three steps to business success are thought – word – deed.

If your business is not performing the way you would like it to then you need to go back to the thought stage and start with your big picture dreaming.

If you have a clear picture but are still not getting business – then words and form are your blocks.

If you have clear and powerful words but are still not getting business – how committed are you truly to action?

Align your business in thought, word and deed and reap the rewards.

It’s amazing to me that most sales people, mangers and corporate officers believe they know what their prospects and clients are thinking and wanting.  On the surface and/or in general terms they may be correct sometimes.  However, it’s not the vague generalities that win sales.  Besides, when in a selling situation you don’t know if you are working with the rule or the exception.

As I’m mingling at a networking meeting an elderly gentleman stops me and offers a hello.  He asks me who I’m with, so I say, “I help people develop business.  So what are your major issues as it relates to business development during this economic down time?” And he says, “Getting more business.”

Then I ask him, “Do your current clients have business that you’re not getting?”  At first he says yes, but then quickly moves to tell me how he’s getting all the business from one of them.  So I say, “What about getting more from the others?”

Well, somehow he dodges this question and tells me what his company has that others don’t.  “We can react within a day,” he says.  “Our competitors need 1-2 weeks.” 

So I tried to say, “What if your other customers are not in a hurry, then what?”  But he didn’t answer this.  He just kept bragging about what he felt made his company special. 

So here are two points to learn from this story.

You may feel you have a differentiator – fast in his case, but be careful.  Not everybody wants what you think they should want?  In his case fast is a macro differentiator.  This can be used in marketing campaigns to attract leads that want work to begin with a few days.  However, once someone shows interest, you’ve got to move to the micro differentiators.  These are the issues and concerns that the individual wants solved and/or the desires s/he wants you to deliver.  Fast maybe one of them, but there may be others.  So just in case another competitor can do it fast also (because they have extra capacity during the slowdown), you’d better have some other deliverable that the person wants that you do well.

Not everybody wants you’re macro differentiator even though you think they should.  So when you’re going after a project and you want premium pricing, you have to find those that have to have you’re macro differentiator.  Actually this will be one of the criteria of you Ideal Customer Profile.  You want customers that need your services delivered right away. 

For those that don’t, you’re going to need other differentiators or else you’ll have to be the low bidder.  So, are there other things you do well?  Of course there are.  Start documenting how well you do them and what experience you have doing them.  Then when someone says they want services like you have, but not for a few weeks, and they want it done accurately with quick follow-up if needed, you can tell them how accurate you are and what your follow-up program is, as you back it up with numbers of jobs, testimonials and other proof.

The moral of this story is that in a recessionary period seek customers that fall in your sweet spot, but also open your thinking to other things you do well.  Document those other things and market those strengths also.  You don’t have to be the best or the only, just good.  And, the best place to start is within your existing client base.  You want 100% of the business from 100% of your clients.

And now I invite you to learn more.

Bonus tip:  FREE SALES TEAM ASSESSMENT TOOL.  Would you like to see something tangible that gauges the skills and behaviors of your sales people?  Just click this http://www.sammanfer.com/cleveltest.htm  C-Level Relationship Selling Link.   Sam Manfer makes it easy for any sales manager to be effective coaching his or her sales people to feel comfortable connecting with and relationship selling C-Level leaders. 

The fact is that proposal writing starts well before you even put pen to paper…because the proposal is only part of the business development cycle. Sure, there are the technical things you need to know how to put the proposal together and to write persuasively, but if you know your client and know what you can do to help them, then writing the proposal should be the easy bit…

In order to get to where we have to write a proposal, we have to have a client and a need identified. And either of those could come first.

If you have a product that fills a certain need, then you can target organisations that have that need. Presuming you have a genuine value proposition then it shouldn’t be too hard to sell…and presumably you have the need in mind when the product was developed…if you didn’t then you have a strange way of going about product development.

      

But what if you are more services-oriented and don’t have an off-the shelf solution to sell? How do you find and create opportunities? In many ways the same way…surely you have a marketable solution that you can offer to a target organisation…

You may have a long list of target organisations, but how do you get in the door. Maybe they have an incumbent offering a similar service already. Firstly, get to know them. Get an appointment – if you can get a call to a decision maker then asking for a few minutes of their time shouldn’t be hard – as long as you can demonstrate that you can offer better value to them than a competitor or provide them with something that solves a business need.

Use a SWOT analysis to help you quantify your own value proposition and refine it. Use competitor evaluation tools to help identify your market position.

There are of course occasions when tenders and RFPs are advertised, but by then the organisation has done it’s research and knows what it wants – to get the most out of opportunities, try and get in there first and create your own. What tenders provide you with though are information about the business and especially their procurement cycle. The more professional procurement gets, then the better you have to be ready to handle it. Remember that not all your competitors may not jump through all the hoops as well as you, so use the procurement process to your advantage.

Once you have a target client, then create an account plan for how you will achieve your goals. Start those goals small – a phone call with your target buyer. Then a meeting, then an identified opportunity stating at each step of the way what you need to do to close the next goal that you have identified. Remember that getting any kind of action from the client – agreeing to a phone call or meeting is a close…and if you keep closing you end up writing a proposal (hopefully writing a winning proposal) for your client.

Plan regular meetings and calls with the client and once you get to know them, give yourself a monetary target that you are looking to get from that client.

No-one is handing business out these days – you have to go after it, and create your own leads. So do research on potential organisations where you can make a difference, find out how they buy, what they need and go after them with your value proposition. It’s not going to work every time, but you will end up with more opportunities to write proposals for.

Learn to Write Proposals is the leading Internet business proposal resource center.

At Learn to Write Proposals you will find all the tools that any proposal writer needs to manage, write and review a proposal. This includes training material, templates, tools and resources all designed with one goal in mind – to help our members create better proposals, faster.
http://www.learntowriteproposals.com

In our last year-end review session, we plotted your past client projects on a revenue vs. fun matrix. I hope you enjoyed that exercise!

Periodically, it’s important to take stock of the ways in which your company has grown and developed in terms of its capabilities. It’s not just about the eggs the goose has produced; it’s also looking at the larger environment or the whole farm. Though there are dozens of factors to consider in each business, here are seven key areas to consider in this session:

1. Core competency skills; How have you developed in your career field?

2. Business development; What techniques and systems have you found to work well?

3. New offerings; What products and services are you offering now that weren’t available a year ago?

4. New internal capacities; In what ways has your team grown? What new systems are in place to make operations flow smoother on a consistent basis?

5. New technology; Have you upgraded systems, software, servers, or networks? Have you started using new tools or accessing information in new ways?

6. Community enhancements; How have you contributed to your community through sponsorship or volunteer work?

7. Body of work; What articles, booklets, books, websites, audio programs, learning systems, etc have you created to educate your prospects and clients? Continue adding to the list ways that your company has grown as a result of your decisions and actions.

Not every entrepreneur consciously puts energy into each of these areas each year. And unfortunately, that’s one of the reasons that so many start-up businesses fail to grow and prosper.

Certainly, having accomplishments in each of these areas each year isn’t mandatory to grow. With your business coach or other trusted advisor, determine which ones make the most sense for the current stage of your business and where you want to grow in the coming year. Those are decisions you make.

Because you’re serious about building a stronger business, you can look back on your efforts in these areas and feel a sense of satisfaction and pride over what you’ve accomplished and how you’ve grown.

Next week I’ll share one of my favorite business goal setting exercises with you.