As a coach, I’m always interested to know what happens once I’ve worked with a client. Sometimes I find out when a client tells me they’ve been referred and then I reckon things must have gone well. Most times I don’t know the end result. But I do know the work that I put in and the responsibility that I expect of my client, I believe, increases the likelihood of success.
Conversations with business-people over the past months and statistics cited on the progress of people into a successful business lead to me ask, what happens when it doesn’t work?
The Pareto 80:20 Principle
Well, general estimates are that about 20% go on to make a good to excellent living with their business, which is great – but this means that 80% don’t and it’s this group of people that interests me the most. Again in conversations with a variety of people, it appears that approximately 10% of people only ever went into business because they were the second earner in the house and it would be a nice thing to do. Another 10%, I believe, are quite content to sit on the sidelines and just let their business tick over – it’s essentially a pastime. So that leaves 60% of business-people and what happens to them? Are they simply no good at it? Can’t they manage to develop a succesful business? Well again in conversation with people, the thing that comes across, time and time again, is that they are usually STUCK. Not stuck on their skills or their profession but stuck on the BUSINESS.
The Entrepreneurial Myth
Many people who have gone into business, may well have worked in a corporate environment, an organisation or in a small business, but they don’t have any direct commercial, sales, marketing or business development experience and it’s here that people often get stuck. And it’s the same with many professionals. People get stuck on the business. And this is what is often called the Entrepreneurial Myth or E-Myth; the belief that an expert in a given technical field can be equally skilled at developing & running their business.
The Biz
Now let’s explain what business is and isn’t. Creating a website, or business cards, or brochures or social networks is not the business, nor is it marketing. These are just some aspects of PROMOTION in the marketing mix and often these parts are the easy bits. Why, because we have so many gifted people in these areas, within easy reach and at affordable prices. Even setting up a company, finding an accountant, getting legal advice and finding premises are relatively easy these days.
So you’re asking, then what is BUSINESS? Well it’s everything that incorporates & facilitates the profitable transaction of products and services to a client or customer. Oh dear, that sounds fancy and did I say profitable? Well, this is where the challenge starts.
You’re probably saying to yourself right now that he’s making lots of assumptions here and where’s his evidence? Who says that 60% of small-businesses are stuck? Who says that only 20% of small-businesses develop into really succesful businesses?
Well, welcome to the business world. In the absence of evidence, in business we have to make assumptions until we have evidence. Unless you make assumptions or what I call ‘guesstimates’ then you will stand still and you will be stuck.
So how do I make these assumptions and where do they come from? Well they come from talking to people, getting out there in the ‘market place’ and talking to potential clients, competitors, other professionals. It’s called ‘putting yourselves about’ or networking and the more you network in a structured way, the better. 4Networking and other models have shown how succesful this can be time and time again.
And once you realise and accept that you are stuck, then you can begin to move forward. And the GROW model in coaching is an excellent model to use, not only to move clients towards their goals but to move you towards your goal of developing a successful business.
Chasing Rainbows
Every day I get emails from people saying that if I follow them on the internet, watch their webinars, buy their books and download their recordings then I will become a millionaire in six months, have hundreds of clients and be happy beyond belief. Well, that may well work for a small number of people, but remember, I want to shift a good number of the 60% of people who are stuck on their business and they are there only because they lack the business training and knowledge to move themselves forward. And we want realism not idealism.
So often, as businesses, we’re pushed into a corner really early on, being told to find our niche – “You must find your niche”, “What’s your niche?” “You’ll only be successful if you niche” Niche, niche, niche. If you’ve only just started your business, you’re probably asking “How on earth do I know? – it’s too early to tell”
Someone said to me, apologetically, in a meeting the other day that they have “10 niches and they really must only have one to be succesful”. Wrong! 10 is better than 20 is better than 30 – the scatter-gun approach. My answer was, that if they continue the process, then they’ll get down to two or three; and this takes time. But you do need to develop this process of refining your focus and this happens by taking, amongst other things, the following steps.
SWOT & PESTs
As a marketer and business developer for many years, I know that you can’t identify your niche until you have audited the marketplace and all the dynamics there, by using well known processes such as SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) or by doing a PEST (Political, Economic, Social & Technological) Analysis. OK these sound all wordy and complicated but they are easy to learn once you’ve done it a couple of times. It’s like stock-taking in a shop or like reviewing all the options when you buy a car. You are doing an audit.
Next, you need to do an audit of your own skills, qualifications, experience and importantly PASSION. Oh yes, lots of PASSION.
How many of you have even thought of including PASSION in your planning? It is central to your being and to your future success. Imagine what it will feel like, doing the sort of job that you passionately like, passionately care about and passionately get out of bed for every day.
And it’s then, after you have written down all of these important dynamics of your future business that you can begin to look at arranging all the pieces on your ‘battle-plan’.
The Four Ps
A model called the Four Ps of Marketing can help you to synthesize your business plan. PRODUCT identifies all aspects of what you are offering, from the features, benefits and Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – what makes it special to what makes you different from the competition.
PLACE looks at the marketplace, your target customers, the sectors you want to serve and your competitors.
PRICE is price and all aspects of it, how high, how low, how often, how much and what, compared with the competition.
And finally, phew, PROMOTION. Yippee, now you can finally play with developing websites, brochures, Twitter, Facebook etc., Can you see, it’s taken quite a bit of time and effort to get to this point. Business Development isn’t just about producing all your promotional items, it is the process.
And that’s why I reckon that there should be Five Ps of Marketing and the last one is the most important and it is PROCESS. The process drives your business development through all the aspects that I’ve detailed above and it’s just like the GROW Model – it is a model, a strategy for looking at ALL elements of the business mix and it needs to have movement. And to have a successful business, you need to go methodically through these, just as you do every time you make a sale. And the final result will be your Business Plan.
All you have to do is learn a new model – the Business Development Model. But fear not, this is not complicated. It only appears to be, because you have probably not encountered it before. As you learned how to ride a bike, how to drive a car and even how to use a computer, so you will learn the skills for Business Development
So, if business isn’t quite happening for you at the moment and you want it to, then accept that you are not a failure, you are not doing it wrong, you’re not missing the point, you are probably STUCK. That’s often why businesses don’t do The Biz!
So, imagine learning an exciting new skill for yourself and your business, imagine the experience of creating ‘shift’ and imagine moving FORWARD towards your wonderful goal.
But, more importantly, liberate your PASSION and unstick yourself.
Follow me over the coming months on the 4Networking Forum and in ‘Recent Articles’, to learn more about how to develop your business, how to SWOT the PESTs, find your P’s and develop your Sales Pipeline. Or visit me on www.cognitions.co.uk and sign up to my upcoming free Webinars on ‘Developing Your Business Mojo’ for March 2011.
Workshops for ‘Developing Your Business Mojo’ will take place in Reading, Swindon & London.
The Power of Partnership