From Stairs To Stares, Marketing

Work The Tools You Understand

Every business desires to experience good growth.  They especially want growth they can handle.  Too much quick growth can and does kill profitability.  Those small businesses who have experienced this kind of fast growth know all too well how it can hurt more than help.  Many with these pieces of quick growth in their past successes do not desire to have it happen again.  It was too painful to manage the last time.  That is why we like our growth to occur under control.  We want growth to come from the stairway, not the elevator.  The elevator is sometimes too fast.  The stairway gives us time to process growth properly.

This information may be something a bit knew to those who have never experienced fast, strong growth.  However, to those who have stumbled with this kind of development it might have left a scar on the back of their business efforts.  Those are the ones carrying the reminder.  Fast growth in a short period of time can hurt your business processing.  It can outrun your ability and knowledge level to manage it.  Pay closer attention to the fast growth action of your business if it has stepped off the stairway and decided to shoot to the top of the building on the elevator.  It can become a dangerous ride.  Get very serious about budgeting when this occurs.

For those businesses who have suffered through this recent recession I suspect any kind of growth would be welcomed.  I know.  No growth is worse than fast growth.  That is true.  However, growth that eats up the profits faster than it can be outrun will do more damage to your long term future than most stagnation could ever do.  It seems impossible, but it is true.  Either way, business is not fun to manage when these challenges appear.  Both hurt the checkbook just as badly.  In the end, I am not sure which one comes out better when the hard lessons are won.  Both can leave some ugly scars.

As the economy repairs and comes back together, growth will happen.  Growth will show up as time improves the wounds this past recession produced.  When growth appears, so does added competition.  I love how a business owner often forgets to consider this little detail.  Competition always comes alive when recovery shows up.  In most cases, the growth we experience is often immeasurable or slight.  This is due to the fact that increasing business activities become shared by the new competitors that enter the recovery business scene.  The new growth that occurs becomes spread out to everyone who survived and to the new players coming in.  Business owners often fail to recognize this component of the recovery scene.

Furthermore, most of the new and early competition will be of the healthy kind.  The new competition will be seasoned business approaches from some very savvy operators.  They will come to your field of business play with good ideas, excellent motivation and stronger financial positions than those who suffered through the recession and survived.  These new players saw the need, they witnessed a market suffering and decided to take their fresh ideas to your market and give it a try.  Do not become frustrated with this development.  It is welcomed competition.  As the economy strengthens, so does the competition.  Just get used to this pattern.  It is par for the course and one of the most ignored pieces of how the economy recovers.  New and exciting competition arrives with each step of improvement a recovering economy suggests is occurring.  It is one of the most predictable patterns that is heavily suppressed.  Only the stressed out, over-extended business operators who survived the recession see this picture well.  They witness the new kids on the block with a better shovel and stronger diggers with less rotten debt to manage.  They capture our stares.

Page two.

Find Better Tools You Can Manage

The hard recession wiped out the competition that was not able to do your gig as well as you survived yours.  The ones who went into the recession with too much unmanageable debt got wiped out first.  The second set of businesses that got wiped out were the ones who truly did not belong there in the first place.  The next level that got wiped out were the competitors that did a fair job of business operations but lacked enough good stuff in their trade to weather the rotten numbers produced by the recessionary times.  These competitors may have been associates or friends in your trade but did not possess enough good skills to do what it took to survive.  They failed.  This is what a tough recession does.  It wipes out the 'also rans'.  It takes down the ones who did not belong there in the first place.  It turns over some of the good ones who were not able to pull it off.

When the recession begins to turn for the better, the remaining ones who survived are deeply in debt with the wrong kind of capital debt and are often caught holding a bag of disappointed spirits.  They are battered and torn from the battle to survive.  Their customer attraction presentations are tired, worn out and out of date.  Their facilities need upgrading, some consumer improvements and a fresher more polished approach.  They need to find better lines of products, new items to peddle and improved products to sell.  Each of these demands are faced with a serious lack of cash to make it happen.  The recession took the wind out of their buying abilities.  They find themselves placed in a very limiting business position.  They have expelled their energy, come to the recovery with little cash and have destroyed the production of human resources needed to properly climb any recovery stairs.  Any growth is nearly impossible to manage.

As the economy improves, new competitors discover some open opportunities.  They decide to do what your business does.  They see how weak the recovering market is being treated.  They begin to show up with each step of improved numbers the economy reveals.  Most of these early new business competitors come to your competitive scene with very good skills and fresh money.  They use that fresh money to capitalize on their facility improvements.  They work overtime to dress up their consumer attraction policies.  What's worse, the consumers love it.

These new business start-ups are the ones who step into the improvement pattern early on and are able to do what the consumer wants to see done.  They are the ones who know best how to do what you do.  They come to your marketplace with sharp skills, fresh ideas, good presentations and with a fair amount of liquid funds to be able to construct the right kind of look.  They also come with the idea that they should own your market.  Trust me, you notice them well.  They capture your stares.  Their marketing ways offend your senses.  You see them as enemies.  You discover how much you dislike what they are doing.  Your survival efforts went from stair climbing to stare doing.  Do not become mesmerized by this stairs to stares marketing effect.  Many small time business owners get all wrapped up with this simple effect.  Avoid it.

Look at it this way.  These new competitors catch your attention.  They do create your response as if it becomes a stare.  You notice how you pay close attention to them, all of the time.  Your customers see the same thing you see.  This is good news for your business trade.  As the water rises in the improving economy, the healthy boats rise.  The ones with holes in the bottom sink.  As these newly designed competitors bring on their improved ways of operations the water in your trade rises.  When this happens remember this rule of marketing; all boats rise when the water lifts up.  Make sure your boat begins doing what helps it rise.  Become part of the consumer stare.

Fix the holes in your boat.  Make sure yours business boat rises as well.  Secure growth that will slowly allow your business to work on its own improvements at its own speed.  Stay off of the elevator.  Remain steady on the stairs.  Be patient, be persistent and stay focused on working higher with greater improvements each single step of the way.  This is exactly the same method you used to survive this last recession.  It is the same method that will grow your business at a speed you can handle.

These simple steps happen to recovering industries.  Every small business has these kinds of opportunities come to their circle of marketing influence.  Pay attention to these growth patterns and marketing things.  Build a stairway for your business to follow.  Get loosened up and exercise what you can do better.  Work to improve how you present what you do.  Get on the stairway and climb higher to the top of your business game at the speed your business recognizes.  Do not allow your new and healthy competition take over what you once owned.  Make sure you do not do what they do only because you see what they get.  Play within what your abilities allow.

Good luck.  Stay on the stairway and climb higher each day.  Sooner or later, the stares will be back where your business resides.  Stair to stare marketing, try it.

Until next time...