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.

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Marketing The Buyers Intent

In this world of technology we have become accustomed to enjoy the world of vast volumes of useful data.  Data we did not have access to in the 70's or 80's, now becomes second nature in this millennium.  I know, sometimes too much data can be overwhelming.  In fact, we have become prone to waste too much time chasing useless data just because it exists.  I am guilty.  This effort can become a terrible waste that easily drains the profits business efficiency offers.  It may not sound like sucking down profits but it sure ends up shorting up the checkbook.  Wasted time is very expensive.  If you are a business owner you know exactly what I mean.  Employees get paid the same, regardless of their time wasted.  Owners pick up that tab.

We need to be very careful how we pursue the assembly of important data.  We also need to make the best use of what we find useful.  In the world of marketing, this is where the most waste can occur.  Marketing is not a very exact science.  Some would argue against that point.  They are either blind to the real cost of wasted time or they do not live in the world of ownership.  

Wasting valuable time in the pursuit of useless data can become very easy to do.  Marketing is not like accounting.  It does not have a finite set of rules to follow.  Marketing does not remain steady in a closed circuit world like accounting prefers.  Marketing ideas and methods love to wander about the map where consumers get lost.  This reality has a tendency to suck in the sellers of goods and services.  They, too, become lost with the customers they are trying to attract.  It is a funny game to watch unless it happens to you and your own business investments.  A chewed up wallet is not a very funny matter.

Our technological world has delivered data mining efforts that scour anything from rubber band use to rocket fuel efficiencies.  We have discovered within our ability and virtual files reams of consumer research and information that describes how consumers indicate what they prefer to buy.  Consumers say stuff about what they want as well as tell us how they want to shop for it.  They reveal how they suggest they want to shop.  Consumers tend to share their buying intent.  It becomes an important part of the virtual world of technological discoveries.  Sellers love to work these files.  Sellers love to mine this data.

In the virtual world; manufacturers, distributors, investors and retailers alike compile these consumer notions into patterns they feel they can use to improve the capitalization of their production efforts.  It all makes good sense.  It fits very nicely into the mode of thinking we feel we can quantify.  There is one problem with this whole idea.  We all can boast how well we know what the consumer says they prefer to do, but in reality, they don’t.  Buyer intent is a moving target.  What one consumer group says they will support and buy from the screening tests and questionnaires they complete is often quite a bit different than what they really support and buy.  A good deal of the suspected data does not always pan out to be accurately projected.  Consumers often go left when they indicate right. 

This happens because consumers do not always tell the producer the truth.  Consumers sometimes do not exactly know what they are truly wanting to do.  As a result, they say what they do not know will be how they really move.  They also are prone to move in ways they do not actually support.  This kind of misleading data can easily confuse the supplier, and it does.

What's more, there are reams of proof that can be found that contradict what these consumer supported patterns promise.  Much of what we learn about how consumers say they will support something they plan to buy can be as fickle as not knowing anything at all.  Often times the descriptions they suggest they will support rarely pan out as becoming part of the real truth in sales we expected to see.  The buyer’s intent turns out to be quite a bit different than the actions they promised to deliver.  Wow, bummer if you bought a ton of the wrong stuff to sell.

There is no shortage of surveys that suggest what the buyer says they will support.  There is, however, a real shortage in matching these suggestions with the performance of what we expected them to buy.  The two worlds do not collide as often as we might think they should.  There is a real shortage to the matching of these promises to the reality of what sells.  This is what provides every marketplace with an element of guesswork that still remains to be conquered.

We just do not always know exactly what to develop, what specifics to produce nor which types of items to supply.  Golly, gee whiz...some of the greatest companies, like Apple and Dell, miss the mark.  We do not always know what price lines will work, what colors will sell or what functions may dominate how the consumer ultimately moves.  There is still a good deal of mystery added to the methods of marketing.  Consumers have and will continue to prove how fickle they can become.  It is the nature of enterprise.  It is a staple of enterprise that will likely never go away.  Get used to this kind of business diet.  It will likely dominate your plate.

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Tough Times Do Not Last

We live in a complicated world.  We have spent the past six decades trying to mold systems of protection, systems of efficiency, systems of respect, systems of increased knowledge, systems of improved spirituality, systems of improved health, systems of increased financial growth, systems of added pleasure, systems of increased family understanding, systems of social equality and systems of improvement for anything you can virtually think can happen.  Each one of these vast efforts requires learning knew things.  It also requires the adoption of practicing different ways for living.  As each individual learns how to carve their way down the paths that prove important to their own ideals and dreams they discover how many new complicated lines of discipline are added to the motions in their lives.  The world then grows much more demanding with too much to do and very little time to do what we feel we need to be doing.  It begins to look very complicated.

In the business world, this is especially true.  As each competitor adds a new wrinkle for attracting more consumers and revenue growth so goes the comfortable world of staying the same in our own endeavors.  When the competitor adds new services, we must follow suit if we plan to attract the consumers who moved to those new services.  Each time this kind of addition occurs our business model must get in line also.  If we fail to recognize the value in this kind of management we fail to address how to keep revenue growth moving towards the plus side of the ledger.  To ignore these rules of business engagement is to ignore one of our most important responsibilities of trade.  Our volume might suffer without practicing this duty.  Business life can become very complicated at times.

As life spins out all of its increasing demands for rules, regulations, adherence to social pressures and our natural desires to improve what we do the simple things that once were required to maintain a successful business life now become extremely complicated to find their way to success.  The level of things that are now required to make profitable business moves occur are found on a list more than a mile long!  The list is longer than we had ever imagined.  The world of managing business affairs has become a seriously complicated matter.  This is true for those who want to, at minimum, stay the same.  Let alone, grow!

This kind of demand placed upon the things we must learn to do adds pressure to the life of a business leader.  More demanding tasks come to the daily table than ever before.  What was once a casual load of required duties and a small respect for elective ideas have grown up to become demanding activities for providing the minimums that a simple business requires in its pursuit of success.  The risk factors that parallel business life have grown off the charts.  The work loads have consumed the owners time.  Business responsibilities have become an all consuming piece of that persons life.  Survival seems always to flirt with failure.  Tough times lurk around every new corner.  No business model can easily escape this complicated mess.  We all face these requirements.

Even so, some will fail.  Even so, some will win.  Those who win will gloat comfortably about making it well.  Those who lose will hide that fact as best as they can.  Welcome to the complexities of human nature.

So what happens to those who get swallowed up by the complicated winds that this world has brought about us?  What happens to those who lose big?  What happens to the ones in business that find their debt too large to manage?  Where do these failing business models go?  Better yet, what happens to their leaders?  How do these leaders deal with the reality of losing big?

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Business Advice, Smorgesborg And Consensus...All Come With The Same Mask.

Do Not Be Afraid To Change Your Selections

I love to eat.  Food is usually something I can do without much hesitation.  I love to eat.

Potlucks can be a bit scary to attend, but a smorgasbord...now that is another story.  I love to eat at a good smorgasbord restaurant.  I love to have all of those wonderful choices.  I can eat foods that are good but ones that we rarely prepare at home.  It offers us a chance to go eat some good stuff that we do not usually serve in our home menus.

We have gone to smorgasbords with other couples.  We have watched them eat the same stuff they usually prepare at home.  It quietly surprises us at how they select the foods they choose to eat because they know them the best.  If a meat and potatoes guy eats a lot of meat and potatoes, that is what he selects at the smorgasbord.  He passes up on the quiche, the vegetable wraps and the baked salmon.  On his plate is two large slices of prime rib and a huge pile of mashed potatoes and dark gravy.  He had almost the very same thing last night at his home.  The only difference between the two was his steak at home was ground round and the mashed potatoes were baked and smashed with a fork just before he buttered them up to eat them.  All else was essentially the same level of choices, maybe a bit of some upgrades added.

I have also eaten at smorgasbords with large groups of people.  I occasionally ride with large groups of guys on Harley bike trips.  With a group of people like that out on a day ride it is best to keep the meal stop short of a couple of hours.  The best way to do that with large groups is to hit a smorgasbord facility.  That way the order taking process goes much quicker.  Everyone just gets up and goes to retrieve what they want to eat.  It saves a lot of time.  It provides for less confusion.

With a large group the smorgasbord experience has an additional benefit.  Someone describes something they just ate as being an excellent choice.  Then someone else confirms that view with their take on how good that same item was.  Once a third person shares this same view, everyone else begins to go get some of that wonderful stuff.  Consensus takes over.  A low choice item just became the days hit.  Soon it becomes the favorite item on everyone's plate.  Large groups provide this interesting dynamic.  Consensus draws power.

Business development operates much the same.  Business leaders practice exactly what they know.  They continue to do the things they know how to do.  If they know nothing about book keeping and accounting, they usually have crappy data and poor financials.  They stick closely to what they know.  If they routinely eat meat and potatoes, they stick closely to meat and potatoes.  The only time they hire a good book keeper is when they are sitting around a group of their business buddies and hear how some of them have found a great temp agency that has helped them clean up their accounting ways.  Now with consensus working overtime, they get in line to do the same.  Consensus and smorgasbord activities wear the same masks.  They both perform exactly predictable.  They slip on the same look over the face of all types of business affairs.

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When Losing In Business Becomes Real, What Next?

Is It Time To Graduate From The School Of Hard Knocks?

The power of positive thinking is a real thing.  It can help generate some of the most amazing results.  I have seen athletes, business leaders and troubled family members rise out of the depths of despair through some very powerful positive thinking.  Those people simply willed their poor conditions into something worthwhile.  We have all seen these examples in our lives.

We have also witnessed troubled people turn their lives around by doing completely different things producing completely different results.  These patterns of life change have examples laying all over the trail of life.  One does not need to look very far to find excellent examples of recovery.  The world is chock full of them.

When a business owner spins out of control and begins to make losing a reality, what happens next?  What happens to those who are completely over-taken by the negative effects of a poorly guided business model?  What becomes of those business leaders?  Where do they turn now?  What do those who realize they are losing big do when that reality truly hits home?  What is next for them?

I work with business leaders who constantly flirt with this reality.  It is not a place for the faint of heart.  Junk happens and it happens deeply.  Working around and through this kind of stuff will wreak havoc on the strongest egos.  The toughest guys will whimper like a new born baby when the reality of losing comes home to settle.  When the notices arrive that take the business away the truth usually sets in.  That is the time when that strong ego gets its last final crush.  The debris of losing begins to fly everywhere.  Nobody is left out when this kind of unraveling begins its course.  Hearts get torn.  Emotions burn out of control.  Depression sets up tent.  Denial and fault shoot off like sparklers flying out of every corner of the business design.  Crap happens everywhere.

What happens when this kind of business experience flips out its ugly fire?  What hose, which flame and what little fire needs to be extinguished first?  What happens next?

How do we repair a broken business model?  How do we repair a broken personal life?  How do we repair the damaged relationships that come with the connections that linked up those lives in that business life and business doings?  Where do we begin?  What is next?

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Subtle Stuff Can Kill Your Business Success, Without Your Knowledge.

Jumping At The Chance To Start Your Business Needs More Thought

Last week I bumped into a complete stranger.  We had a monster discussion about some of his business ideas.  He shared his plans about his mission, some of his creative ideas to service that mission and how he planned to make it happen.  He also shared what his limitations were.  He described the 'pitfalls' he was facing.  He got passionate about the potential he could effect.  He has internalized this heartfelt position of where he wanted his business idea to be.  It was refreshing.  It was sincere.  It was real.  I liked what I saw and heard.  I liked it a lot.

I took the time to stall where I needed to be and decided to listen closer to what he had to share.  I had another commitment that could wait a bit longer so I could take in as much information from him as he felt comfortable in sharing.  He did not recognize the burden his sales pitch presented to my committed schedule, however.  He was too involved with sharing what he felt passionate about sharing.  His posture fell off the end of the table.  He did not notice it falling.  He expressed desperation in the process of his early developments, not joy.  He could not hear those cries.  They must have been meant for my ears only.  I played cards with my eyes, expressions and ears.  I listened closely.

He made a couple of quiet promises I know he did not hear.  Sometimes when we are selling our wares we get caught up promising what we have no intention of delivering.  We are humans and we equivocate more than we expect to truly serve.  We have so much desire to get our picture sold that we easily slip away from the realities of what we truly plan to do.  We learn the art of tickling our buyers ears.  We want that pitch sold so badly that we forget to hear how we try to make that part happen.  In the end, we over promise and under deliver.  It is one of the most damaging things a small business owner can practices in their business affairs.  We seem only able to recognize it when someone else does it to us.  It is one of those funny things about human beings.    

I liked his ideas.  They have huge merit.  They are very timely and carry a great potential for consumer support.  His ideas are standing on the edge of incredible.  He seems to know some of this but does not have the capacity to recognize the magnitude of what his ideas can become.  He may agree with this perspective but lacks the fortitude to do what it takes to sacrifice what he feels he needs to hang onto.  This kind of business wisdom comes with a lot of years of bloody noses.  His business background lacks those bleeds.  His experience in business carries a lot of those illusions I carried when I first began my business career.  Reality came in so many unfriendly ways.

Learn how to take tough lessons a bit more seriously.  Listen closely to what others have to say.  Do not try to step over their suggestions as if they were already part of what you already know.  Most business beginners do not recognize what a seasoned veteran really sees.  We sometimes get so consumed by our new enthusiasm that we flop over some helpful tips without even noticing they flew by.  I am a master at this narrow path.  I have missed many great suggestions that I discovered through rough and tumbled rotten experiences.  Those suggestions came from helpful others long before I was able to feel how they could truly hurt.  Unfortunately, I was not in the listening mode when those suggestions first arrived.  I, like many, had to carve them out myself through damage and pain.

If you are building a small business look around you and witness all of the business owners you know who get this first step of listening all wrong.  They carelessly get confused and mix their ideas, dreams and plans into a bag of energy and doings that dominate their business life as well as their family time to produce what they think they will achieve.  Take stock of this pattern and look around you.  Once you quietly witness how other business owners have commonly missed the mark on this valuable tip, look at their outcomes!  Most are not good.  That has been my experience, also.

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Where Do We Find The Glue That Holds Our Business Together?

What Kind Of Relationships Have You Built?

A first time business owner has a lot of ideas and dreams on their mind.  When they get started they have more to do than they have time to use.  Each moment is filled like a race to squeeze in more stuff.  Excitement dominates the energy levels.  Enthusiasm blankets all of the other undone edges.  Hope is filled with blind faith.  The new business is up and running.  It has activity.  It has enthusiasm.  It has energy.

These unbridled dimensions help to produce some interesting growth.  The business stirs up some selling interests.  Consumers get a bit caught up in the excitement that is produced.  The newness blooms some enjoyable results.  This new business owner is off and running.  Now the seriousness has been set in place.  Sustainability becomes the main effort for the next few years.  Making sales growth happen with enough good controls in place will be the new business owners next test of ownership.  This kind of pattern will lead that new owner down the path of 'on-board' business school, the one which includes a lot of hard knocks.  This becomes the middle of that new business owner's life.  The invisible but tough lessons of owning a small business begin to arrive and make life interesting.  This process looks like a bell curve.

Small business owners find this bell curve a strong reality when they look back at their ownership career.  They see the up-tick beginning that produced so many hopes and dreams.  They can graph out the climb to volume that supported the excitement they once developed when they opened up the gig they started.  They can see how the bell curve was running uphill on the charted graph.  Those were exciting times.  The level of blind faith was much like the first proposal that landed in the hearts between a future husband and his wife.  Both could see only the wonderful things that were about to occur.  Neither spouse could see how the first real spat would turn into a dividing line between them.  Certainly none could see the fighting that occurs between their three little children when one physically hurt one of the other two and the third child lied about it.  Those were not the visions these two love birds once envisioned when they proposed to each other.  This is exactly how a small business owner begins their trek through the business ownership forest.  It all starts on blind faith then as it grows with excitement as it morphs into this huge bag of challenges to manage.  The bell curve begins to turn downward.

So how do these self taught business owners keep it together?  How do they learn how to manage the first serious business obstacles that have been planted in front of the road they are travelling?  What provides the glue that holds them together when important and cherished stuff begins to fall away?  How do they keep it all together when they wreck their ship along the bumpy shores of trial and error?  These kinds of challenges are not silly things when they park their existence inside the doors of a troubling business model.  How do those owners apply the glue that holds it together when this kind of pattern comes home to stay?  Let's face it, big challenges are coming.  They are part of a growing business.  I have yet to meet a single successful business owner who could not tell a deeply tough story about how they had to learn how to make it through some of the most challenging stuff ever imagined.  In business, this kind of work is a reality.  It may not show up during the first six months when all of that newness and excitement is overflowing, but it will arrive.  Crap will happen.  It will seem much like living through a car wreck and losing some of your most important friends.  It can get real ugly.

Some business owners find challenges in lawsuits, employment issues, theft, fire, accidents, insurance claims, bad publicity, mismanaged funds, out-of-balance checking accounts, terrible losses, disrespect from staff, marriage separations, children resentments, time issues, location changes, popular product discontinuations, increased and fiercely added competition plus countless more that come inside the halls that do their damage.  Small business need to find some glue to hold it altogether when these things happen.  Where do they find this glue?

Page two.

Individual Rights Exceed Our Business Skookum

"Nope.  I Ain't Gunna' Do That!"

I had to look up the spelling of this word, 'skookum'.  Although I have used it in many sentences when I speak I do not ever remember writing it down.  I looked it up.  Technology is great stuff.  I typed the word and they corrected the spelling for me.  They even defined the word more clearly to me.  Now I have it correctly spelled and its meaning very much in tack.  Is this donkey above exercising its business skookum or is it practicing to protect his personal rights?  We see the difference, don't we?

Skookum is a term that gives the impression that something is strong, dominate or very accurate.  It represents something that is 'right on' or 'smart' and 'understanding'.  It reflects a positive position.  It suggests that someone has the right kind of knowledge happening at the right time it needs to be employed.  They have skookum.  They are 'right on' the target.  Good perception on complicated matters.  Skookum does suggest a bit of stubbornness, but in the right way.

How well is your business skookum?  Is it producing a long list of profitable outcomes?  Your pocketbook will tell you the truth.  Your bank account reflects how well you are doing.  Your debt accumulation reveals the level of your business skookum.  If any of these three rates of business measurement are a bit lower than what they should be, your business skookum might be running a little bit low.  Everyone in the business world is facing tough times.  Nobody was passed over.  Therefore, do not use this as your excuse for having a poor cash position, too much debt or a terribly shaped checking account.  This bad economy hit everyone.  The ones with the best skookum have come out better than the ones with less skookum.  No doubt about it.

Skookum.  It all comes down to skookum.  What kinds of things interfere with our level of business skookum?  It comes down to our level of skookum.  How well do we understand complicated matters?  How well do we navigate the complexities of human relationships in the slippery waters of business management?  What levels do our skills reveal?  What are our weaknesses?  Where are we deficient?  When do our strengths run out of room to move?  What is our skookum level?  This is where the world of business success meets the road.  It has nothing to do with how well we repair automobiles, if we are a mechanic.  It has nothing to do with how well we bake cookies, if we are a bakery.  It has nothing to do with how well we build cabinets, if we are a carpenter.  It comes down to our skills of having enough skookum to deal with all of the complexities and challenges that a small business must learn how to manage.  It is within these crossroads that a business leader learns how to profit well.  It comes surrounded by our skookum levels.

Page two.

In Business, Things Always Pair Up.

Owning a small business can be become a cruel path to walk.  There are times when the path is so unfriendly that we wonder sometimes what the heck we are doing.  Nothing seems to be unfolding favorably.  The checkbook is always overdrawn, the bank is always calling for more deposits and the creditors are appearing on the caller ID more frequently.  Owning this small business becomes a pressure of sleepless worry and endless challenges.  Every day seems to start off with two steps behind.  The fun has completely disappeared.

Every small business owner recognizes this mental position.  The ones who have not witnessed this pattern of worry are either very new at business ownership or very good at what they do.  In reality, very few miss this pattern of feelings because they are very good at what they do.  Most miss it because they have not owned their small business long enough to produce this position of ownership.  The later is usually the truth in how it really works.

Unfortunately, nobody told the new business owner that this would eventually become some of the stuff they would need to learn how to manage and endure.  New business owners are not privy to these kinds of terrible patterns about how tough owning your own business can become.  Furthermore, even if someone with a lot of knowledge and credibility about this pattern was able to share how this works with new business owners, most new owners would not have listened anyway.  That is how stubbornness works.  I have found very few owners able to escape this pattern.

Things happen in patterns and fall along the lines of a series.  We seem to pair up what goes badly.  If the checkbook is out of line, so are the credit cards.  If the promises in business relationships are staging unreal stories, so are the relationships at home.  If the slippage of productivity drops its patterns into the employee ranks, it also begins to erode the accounting responsibilities.  Prevarication drives the flow of information while equivocation dominates the patterns of sales.  Bad stuff happens in pairs.

A driver delivers some products to the wrong house.  On the same trip, they forget some important tools on another installation delivery.  Stuff happens wrong in a series of events.  They seem to happen in pairs.  A bid for auto repair was offered too short to make a profit and due to some parts delays gets completed late with an unhappy customer who expected it done sooner than what was delivered.  This unhappy and lost profit repair job then discovers some of the work failed two weeks later and the repaired auto was returned for customer service adjustments, adding injury to insult.  Things happen in pairs.

Every business owner recognizes this unfortunate pattern of business control.  Unfriendly stuff comes in pairs.  The old saying goes, "When it rains, it pours."

The true leadership of the owner gets qualified when bad stuff comes in pairs.  The true colors of leadership show up when the feathers are ruffled.  We can see what color lies behind the outer coat.  It is at these times a small business owner paves the path to better success.  This is exactly the time when the true qualities of the best leaders comes to the surface.  The best business leaders show up when the pairs of events do not match up as they had hoped to be.  The business owners who manage the worst events well are the ones who profit most when the dust settles to the ground.

Here's why.

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