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You Need Hands! February 11, 2010
I was captured by the following paragraph i read in Paco Underhill‘s “Why We Buy” book. Indeed a very good book especially if you want ideas but for a retail business, this is a must read. Let me recite the paragraph:
“A woman is carrying a handbag, and that she’s wearing a coat, which she’ll probably want to remove once she’s inside the store, meaning she’ll have to carry that, too. God gave here two good hands but she’s shopping with one. If she selects something, the free hand carries it. Now she’s down to no hands. Maybe, if it’s small and light, she can tuck the purchase under one arm. Perhaps she’ll sling the handbag over a shoulder or forearm. Then she’ll have….let’s call it a hand and a quarter. If she picks one more thing, though, she’ll run out of hands. Only an extremely motivated buyer will persevere. Human anatomy has just declared this shopping spree over.”
What do you get out of that? I said, “I need my hands!!”. And i want to relate that to strategy.
Strategy, in that story is our “business” hands. If we are too occupied or “full” with strategies we are going to get stucked. Just like that woman’s hands. There was one CEO i know that has his hands full of strategies until he can’t carry it anymore. In our hands, we can only carry certain things for a limited time only. then we have to unload.
With our strategies (hands!) also, business can pick and choose what they want and what they do not want. For example for a food retail business, they can choose to sell inside the mall or outside the mall. Both require different strategies. What if they want to sell both inside and outside the mall? Chaos! I have seen in Malaysia, whereby few retail brands try to have “captured both sides” of the mall but fail to do so because people are confuse. Customers are confuse on two things. Firstly, why do you need to have two outlets in the same mall? And which one should i go to? One thing about customers, when we are given options to choose most of the time we fail to choose. Customers go somewhere else to other outlet that has single message per outlet.
On the other hand, for business to business (B2B) businesses, having “hands” definitely very important and have to set it right from the start. i recently learned that large companies operation is very complex. A lot ogf stakeholders and usually steps taken are far too many and planning is on very long range too. Therefore, making sure the “hands” are picking up the right strategies are very crucial.
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Alternatively, business hands also can be extended. Say you want to expand to new market in new country, you definitely cannot do it alone. We need a helping hand. This is where friendly parties, partners, sponsors and networks play very important role. We need to talk to them, identify and select them accordingly to become our extended hands for our business.
I recently met one CEO of a growing global university and he shared me a story. he said that in some African countries, people are still don’t want to spend on education. people save money under their pillow because they are so worried and have low access to information. they don’t trust bank so much and they live a traditional life. he also added, to set up a global university there definitely a big challenge, but the moment the country wakes up (just like China!), it is going to give a handsome return. So how he plans to do it? Find strong local partners and support them. This is because local partners, most of them have less money and do small trading business. The idea of effective and efficient are definitely alien to them but they are hard working.
I personally found this approach is very interesting and unique. Nevertheless, a good example of extended hands are needed if you want to go beyond your home base. But what if your hands are still full?
One, is to pray to God for a stronger back and not a lighter loads! Two, you need to prioritize. Prioritization is easy said than done. Even i sometimes overlook prioritizing, especially during busy period. I remember someone said, “when the going gets up, everyone is very happy!’. This refers to stock market bullishness, when it’s up everyone starts to forget basic things. But it certainly helpful to get our priority right.
I normally write down and prioritize based on time, processes and outcome. Lastly i also measure ROI. Sometimes, certain things you do is very painful but it’s going to give the highest ROI, so i choose to do that first. But as for you, you need to decide what’s best.
I will discuss more on Maven marketing in my next post, how to use it as your extended hands for your business. Cheers!
Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC is READY! Buy it HERE (ONLY USD 19.90 WITH LAUNCHING DISCOUNT)
TEN Tips for Successful Marketing Implementation January 31, 2010
How much do you spend on your marketing initiatives? How much is your ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)? What is your sales right now? Does your sales increased? Why your sales team not in the field but in the office? When is your new product going to launch? When is the competition going to end? Who is your competitors? Check out the following TEN Tips for Successful Marketing Implementation:
1. Have a plan
- i’ve been emphasizing this for many years; in fact my book Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC is addressing this issue; we need a marketing plan. Without plan, we are directionless and we lose money on daily basis. I recommend you to check out my book Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC for FREE Download the Summary.
2. Over communicate
- often when we implement marketing initiatives, only the marketing department busy with all the collaterals, strategies, PR, CSR, campaigns and they donned everywhere in the company as if they (the marketing deaprtment) is the most important department in the world! They are wrong! If you are a marketing manager or business owner, i suggest you to over communicate and start realizing that your job is to make champions from other departments, not the only champion!
3. Price correctly
- this is exception when you are new in the business or launching a new product line that you never had before. For example if you all the while in IT business, suddenly you diverse into restaurant business, chances of getting wrong pricing entry is high. when you already in the business for quite sometimes, try few types and levels of pricing vs your offerings. Try price discrimination.
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4. Talk to your distributors
- having a network of distributors are really cool but if they are not performing why keep it silent? Most of the time, only 20% of your distributors work hard and sell your product. others are dormant or actively selling your competitor’s product. it is hard to have exclusive distributor nowadays unless you have lots of $$$$ incentives to offer. One way to make them love you is to talk to them. make them important and the secret is “give them target and incentify”.
5. It’s the customer, stupid!
- i’ve repeated this many many times. in fact other marketing gurus also said it. Moreover in my recent reading of Harvard Business Review that the role of Chief Marketing Officer is going to be obsolete because now there is a new trend of Chief Customer Officer especially in MNCs. This customer is KING not going to go away for at least the next 50 years! Unless you plan to do business to years from now, let’s focus on the customers!
6. Advertise Advertise Advertise
- i believe in advertising. advertisement allows you to promote, acknowledge, inform and sell about your products and services. for small business owners and entrepreneurs, advertising will make them a little more like celebrity and they rather shy away and be “the background person!”. I learned it from the hard way. I know a self-proclaimed internet marketing guru that set up a Facebook Fanpage on social media but he himself the only fan there! Advertise!
7. The experience
- let’s don’t even think of launching when your product is not ready. Experience lasts forever same as first impression! At least create the plan on how to approach your launch. I recommend you to read my Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC because i cover this section.
8. Budget wisely
- not having budget at all for promotion is sure way to fail. I realized that many small business owners and entrepreneurs too rigid on allocate some money for promotion. Did you ever wonder why a large pool of customers only go to large businesses or retailers? BEcause these large companies put aside $$$$ for promotion and campaigns. But i don’t think we should do the same, but at least we make and show presence in the market. And never accumulate what you spend on your marketing and business, and end up sum it up and said, “i can buy a new BMW with this $$$$ spent on my business!!” wrong thinking my friend!
9. Give time
- when you do something on your business, it takes some time for people to know you. I have set up this blog almost a year ago, coupled with Entreprenovator blog but only recently i got some traffic and have better presence. I also recently launched my book and i am not in a hurry to make money. Because my bigger goal is to democratize knowledge to the masses especially small business owners and entrepreneurs like you. After all my Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC is only USD 24.50 (ONLY USD 19.90 WITH LAUNCHING DISCOUNT!)
10. Corrective plan
- while usually the final point is more soft like “have faith!”, i rather be realistic. we all have faith but we don’t normally have corrective plan. plan down a lot of ‘what if’s” and ‘how about”. Sometimes what we plan don’t turn out to be as planned. But you can only have corrective plan once you started something. otherwise your corrective plan is counterproductive! You follow?
Honestly, the TEN Tips for Successful Marketing Implementation is just the tip of the iceberg of my book Marketing Plan Breakthrough S6PEC, Download FREE Summary. I highly recommend you to spend just USD 24.50 (ONLY USD 19.90 WITH LAUNCHING DISCOUNT) to get your marketing right and at least manageable. What is USD 24.50 (ONLY USD 19.90 WITH LAUNCHING DISCOUNT!)? sure way to manage and get results of your following $$$$ marketing initiatives!! Isn’t that worth the money? 
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