marketing Archives - Page 42 of 56

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.

Why cash flow matters

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a simple description of why cash flow is the most important financial measurement in business.

Cashflow positive means: More ‘actual’ cash money is coming in than is going out. It does not mean revenue exceeds expenditure.

Hence:

It’s impossible to go broke while your business is cash flow positive.

It’s possible to broke while your business is making a profit.

This is the most important financial fact startups must know and understand.

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.

What Entrepreneurs can learn from Science

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Think back to grade 9 school. Specifically your science classes. In science we had a specific method of learning: beaker muppets

Aim / Objective

Hypothesis

Method

Materials

Results

Conclusion

(back to start)

The thing that the science community do much better than the business world is that they know that the really powerful part of the system is the actual experiment. When scientists speak we hear them talking about the experiments, not aims and methods. The experiement is the focus – not the plans and paper work. This is something the business community must take heed from. It is beyond me why the business world obsess with the aim (forecasts) and the method (business plans). The truth is we’ll never know until the experiment is done.

As entrepreneurs it’s compounded again. We’ve got to experiment more than existing businesses with real revenue. We’ve got to do this because we have no results or conclusions which have formed a refined aim or hypothesis. So the more experiments we do, the more robust our hypothesis becomes. Until we experiment we wont really now what materials we need (which in the business world is referred to as resources). Constant planning refinement is as useless as constant refinement of an experiment method would be. Our focus instead must be repeated experimentation.

It’s only when we do this that our startup has a chance of graduating to become a bone fide business.

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?

most important thing of all…

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

…… for entrepreneurs is this:

We must put ourselves in as many Yes / No positions as possible every day.

What’s a Yes / No position?

It’s a call to action.

It’s asking for something we need to get to the next step.

It’s asking for an order

It’s asking them to buy

It’s making an awkward phone call

It’s facing fear and rejection

It’s taking rejection straight into the ‘next Yes / No propostion

It’s putting momentum above all things.

The number of position proposals is directly proportional to our success – and our success rate as a percentage increases as the volume of propositions does.

That is all.