Marketing Insight Archives - Page 5 of 15

Risk Taking

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

As an entrepreneur I’m not afraid of ‘considered’ financial risk. Just like any Plumber or Electrician would guarantee their workmanship, we must provide a satisfaction guarantee. It’s a great way to reduce purchase barriers. Something most successful brands do…. here’s a little exercise for you: Next time you a buy a household cleaning product or chocolate bar, flip it over and read the fine print and *bang* you’ll see a money back satisfaction guarantee. We must provide that too.

I’ve also done this on my latest little project Startup School. Here’s a recent conversation I had with my wife over email:

ME: Hey check out my Startup School receipt – pretty cool huh? (below is a part screen grab of said receipt)

Wife: As a law graduate of course, I would nervous about making guarantees but up to you… Like the poetry!

Me: One must embrace risk in entrepreneurial fields and guarantee work, or revenue wont happen. it’s that simple. It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.

Wife: I know….that’s why YOU’RE the entrepreneur!

Unlearning & decorporatisation of self

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Another interview I did with Fiona Boyd the uber successful on-line entrepreneur who built and sold www.artshub.com.au about ‘Unlearning’. A concept which we need to embrace when leaving the corporate world to start up land. Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwvP-bxaO7U]

Fiona has a great site with interviews and ideas on niche content. www.nichecontentmillionaire.com The title says it all – and she’s done it. Check it out.

Steve.

Selling – breaking down barriers

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve been out selling rentoid to major Australian rental companies and I’ve come to the following conclusion:

In personal selling being liked is more important than our product, price or offer.

Unless they like us, we wont really get the chance to explain the benefits of doing business with us. We might be saying it, telling them all the good reasons why we should be doing business, but they a probably not really listening.

What I’ve been doing is looking for relationship links. Things which we have in common. I know it sounds quite obvious, but when we have something in common we are essentially paying them a subtle compliment. We are saying “Oh, me too, your smart, you have good taste.”

Here’s some of the simple things of been using to find said common ground:

– Geography – Living in the same area, having an office close to theirs. People like dealing with locals. Geagraphy matters.

– Sport – Footy finals, if I see an interest in football or see some physical evidence then I get straight into it.( a bit blokey this one, but it works a treat)

– Industry Love – if we show you really care about the industry they are making their living from it’s a good thing. It means we are supporting what puts bread on their table. They like us if our objective is the help the industry we are both working in grow.

There is physical evidence all around us in sales calls from which we can find a link to develop a micro yet ‘instant relationship’. We just need to be perceptive while we are out there. It isn’t about being deceptive either. We’ve got to find a common interest. Something we actually believe. If we fake it they’ll smell it and we’ll blow the sale.

We need each other

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I used to think my skills base limited the areas of business I could play in. I remember thinking back to the dot com boom in the mid and late 1990’s wishing and dreaming that I could some how be involved in the excitement, the fervor, and yes, maybe even the money. But I wasn’t a programmer, a digital designer or media player or a venture capitalist. I was merely a marketing manager trapped in the industrial complex of consumer goods. The bust came and I was quietly happy that peoples paper fortunes and egos got busted too. Which in hindsight was not a nice way to think. It was built on jealously, lack of knowledge and immaturity on my behalf.

dot com boom

Since then I’ve learned this: The type of skills we have matters far less than the fact we have a skill set which is valuable.

Translation: We don’t need to be a technology gurus to be operating or starting up in the technology space.

Maybe we are good at sales, marketing, raising capital, managing and motivating a team, project management, accounting. All of these skills will be needed in whatever business we start or are involved in. What matters is that we can add value in the chain somewhere which takes us from idea to revenue. Where we sit in that chain isn’t as important as we think. What really matters is being able to create the value chain.

It’s a rare combination indeed for a person to have tech genius and business brilliance. Fact is we need each other. We couldn’t have succeeded at rentoid without the business heads or techies collaborating. I wish I’d known this 10 years ago.

Sure it can be an advantage to startup in an area where we have expertise. It can be an incredible way to keep our costs low. But it’s not necessarily a barrier to entry. If we want to success, we’ll have to build a team in any case. And building a revenue infrastructure is what we ought be focusing on as entrepreneurs.

Irrational Complexity

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I just got back from the gym, and tonight I saw what I see every time I go for a workout. A very out of shape person doing some kind of ridiculously complex exercise for a particular body part. Which any experienced trainer will know is clearly a waste of time.

The reality of weight training is that the entire body can be trained incredibly well with 5 simple exercises:

Bench press

Chin ups

Squats

Shoulder press

Running

Everything else really is only for the hardcore and professional sports people. Problem is this truth doesn’t sell books, personal training sessions or gym memberships at locations which look like a NASA astronaut training facility. Success in gym programs is more about eating well and doing simple exercises which well executed with good frequency.

There is actually an important human psychology associated with such behaviour in the gym. We think there is some kind of secret formula. That success is associated with a complex algorithm which we must try and find, unlock and use. That success in the gym is rare because it is difficult to know how to do it. That when we find these special trick techniques, our success will come much quicker. That we’ll be transformed overnight.

As humans in the 21st century we have a preference for irrational complexity. We know the truth, but we’d rather pretend it isn’t so. We’ve been so shaped by the media and a lack of hands on experience that we often believe success is hidden behind secret walls. And so we look for get fit quick schemes (Get rich quick scheme anyone?) rather than a get fit slow routine, which requires a consistent diet and a lot of sweat.

It’s pretty much the same in startup land. There aren’t great deal of tricks out there either. The formula is hard work, a lot of sweat, serving customers well and using the age old business maxims which were written about by Adam Smith over 200 years ago.

How to be remarkable – Mr Price

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Do stuff that people just have to tell their friends about. This I am about to do.

On Monday I had the pleasure of being invited to a restaurant for lunch with colleagues. The place is called Mr Price. It is run by Mr Price himself.

Upon entering you know you are about to have a different experience. An experience which is extremely unlike any other restaurant meal. The decor and mixed demographic alone is evidence of this:

As you can see from the photos above it could well be your favourite Aunties or Grandmas. But it’s Mr Price. And what Mr price does is open his restaurant (home?) in North Melbourne at lunch time only, 5 days a week. He only serves who ever gets the four tables he has – that’s it. Each table gets served once. He decides what to cook that morning which will include 1 entree and 2 main meals. if you don’t like it – too bad. (Believe me you’ll like it).

Mr Price comes out and greats your personally and provides you with the menu of what is available on the particular day. It will be given to you on a hand written piece of paper which he writes himself. He has very neat hand writing. He’ll have a nice old chat and is a very well spoken articulate man. Once you choose your meal, he retreats to the kitchen to cook it. Oh, he’s also the waiter.

At the end of the meal he comes around the tables and has a little chat. It was during this time that he told us that he likes to sleep in and after doing the dishes, he shuts the doors and goes home until the next day.

Mr Price is a nice guy. Mr Price provides an experience. Mr Price isn’t like other restaurants. Mr Price is remarkable.

What are you doing to make your startup remarkable?

Espousing others

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

In world of media proliferation it’s becoming harder to get someone, anyone, let alone our target audience to listen. A better way than blasting our own foghorn is to espouse others. Something I’ve seen a lot of smart startups do lately is become brand advocates. That is, take a lead role in communicating, promoting and essentially spreading the love for other companies whose values we feel aligned to. It’s even better if we all move in the same entrepreneurial circles. Though it doesn’t have to be this way.

When we share great stuff other people are doing it rubs off on us. Just like proper referencing does in academia. We need to find stuff other companies are doing that we think is worth sharing. Ideas we think rock and companies with cultures we admire.

This is my current love list of other Startups & SME’s

Some of which even loosely compete with each other. This is fine in my view as often the biggest challenge we have in startup land is market development. Helping our competitors, though counter intuitive, can also benefit us. It get’s more people interested in the space, generates mainstream media coverage and can increase market size. This type of thinking would have been a sackable offense in my old consumer goods marketing days. The world has changed.

We’ve always been told it’s better to give than receive and the on-line world is the greatest exemplar of this theorem. It’s also a super way build significant brand credentials and trust. When people trust what we have to say by introducing them to other cool stuff it gives us a chance at gaining our own momentum.