Rapid Business Growth’s Blog

To develop any business you need to understand how it is currently working. Here you get an easy to follow 4 step process to building a snapshot report.

An unexamined life is not worth living (Socrates) So too, an unexamined business is not worth running! If you don’t know why your customers buy from you then you are going to find it difficult to get them to buy more from you! In these days of economic woe all Irish Businesses are suffering. If the purpose of running your business is to make sizeable profits then you probably need to refocus on why people buy and where the cash is really coming from.   That is why I offer a Market Research phase to my clients and I’m going to share it with your here.

Step 1: Ask your clients. Don’t assume that you know everything. Go and ask your clients the basic questions where did they hear about you, why do they buy from you, what annoys them etc. If they know you too well then get someone else to ask the questions. Make sure you ask current customers and lapsed ones, and from each of your segments.   You can learn a huge amount from those who have left you already. Often there is something small which they are annoyed about and you can win them back.

Step 2: Your staff. This will be tricky for an owner manager, but your staff are the front line - right?    There is no better source than asking your very own staff, who you pay to be loyal to you. Yet a lot of the time we don’t trust their instincts or we assume that we know more than they do.   They are the ones who look into the customers’ eyes at buying time. They know if customers are happy or ecstatic. They know if clients are loyal or just lazy. You need to know this stuff too. So ask them!

Step 3: Your competition. When did you last take a good hard look at your competitors? The chances are one of two of them have been innovating! Some of them will have done stupid things but others will have made clever choices. You may not choose to copy, but at least you need to know what they are using to compete for your customers!

Step 4: The Web. These days every business has an element of web competition. Some people buy on the web others research and others gossip. It does not matter whether you love or loathe the web. You need to look at Key Word Densities, Header tags and a handful if other key indicators. You need to understand how the new Gods (Google and Yahoo) rate you. If they have not found or understood your website correctly, they will not guide paying customers to it.

If you follow the steps outlined above you can make a good platform to build a business strategy from.  With a strategy that you believe in you can make plans that you will execute because you will believe in them. Plus as anybody who has had to deal with the banks lately knows you need a strategy to secure any funding.  

If you want to talk more about research, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.

Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

A lot of people complain that business is either a feast or a famine.  They are either selling lots or nothing. Yes you can blame external factors, if you want: blame the seasons, the competition or the government.  When I’m invited to look at businesses with that problem I invariably find that there is no Sales Funnel in use.    

Let’s be clear here, a “sales funnel in use” is not the same as “having a sales funnel”.  By “Sales Funnel” I mean a system that tracks prospects from first contact onwards through the  sales cycle.  It does not have to cost millions or involve complex software.  What it must have is be easy to use and comprehend as well as be appropriate to that business.  There are lots of cowboys out there who will sell you over specified rubbish when a pen and ledger will do just as well. 

If you don’t have a sales funnel you can decide on the building blocks over the weekend.  First break down your sales flow into components.  First contact, free samples, site visit, rfp/rfq, Tender, negotiations, contract signing  these are all elements that may be involved.  Grab a pen and sketch out your idea sales flow.  Then add your most common deviations and you have probably covered 90%+ of your sales.  Now jot down all the prospects that you have closed over the past period, from memory try to run these guys through your new sales model.  Did they move smoothly?  Are some sections too long and need to be broken down?  Are some sections too short and could be merged?  Hint: Normally 5 or 6 phases in a sales flow is about right.  Add a few durations, how long does each phase last.

Now as yourself the really obvious question, how do you know when a prospect moves from one phase to the next?  It could be they say “could you customise one for me?”  or money could change hands you will know.  At this stage you can label the end point of each phase with a fairly clear statement that marks it successful conclusion. 

Now you take all your existing prospects and position them across these different sales phases.  Because this is your first time doing this lots of your prospects will be long timers who are stuck for whatever reason.  Don’t worry about those right now.  Just sit back and feel proud, you have a solid list of prospects that you can market too.  Plus having look at this for a few hours you should now know the prospects are getting stuck in the sales cycle.  (ask about your sales barrier demolition workshop)

Congratulations you have now developed a sales funnel (or model) and lots of consultants will charge you 6 figure sums for doing this work alone!!!!

Now that you have this list of prospects at different phases you can see where the peaks and troughs are.  One you can see them coming you are in a position to do something about them, and that is called Sales Management.   

If you need to figure out how to get prospects into your sales funnel or how to move them along, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.

Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

The constant chit chat about economic disaster is overdone – now is a time to look for opportunities.

Relying on our Dublin based media to explain what this means gives a very extreme interpretation. We are all doomed! Time to bring back the emigrant ships and TB. Let’s face it you will never see a newspaper headline saying ”Government did a great job – everything calm”. It is in the media’s interest to make stories as dramatic as possible. Not so long ago we had Ford building cars in Cork, and Digital making hardware in Galway . The loss of those industries was a tragedy for the people who lost their jobs, but was not an existentialist threat to the Irish economy regardless of how it was portrayed at the time. The Ford site in Cork gave birth to the Marina Commercial Park. Shutting Digital triggered a whole series of indigenous small business were spawned and rather than being a tragedy, it is now widely acknowledged as a great boost for Galway.

Recessions are cyclical events that remove inefficient actors from the economic stage. There are many people involved in parts of the economy who can’t pay their way. They will go out of business, free up the capital they are tying up and in time, both people and capital will redeploy to other sectors. As Warren Buffet said “It is only when the tide goes out that you see who has been swimming naked”. The Irish Economy is in a period of retrenchment (-1.9% says the ESRI’s quarterly update) , so the demand for goods and services is shrinking. Added to the shrinkage is the relentless march of progress in the shape of increasing efficiency. In broad terms each year less people are required to produce a given amount of output. So if demand remained constant we would require less people employed year. Right now we have a reduction in employment due to efficiency growth coupled with a loss due to the decline in economic activity. This is regrettable for the individuals concerned but has the beneficial effect of holding down wages. (see what has happened the latest national pay deal)

Poor economic circumstances can be great times for small business. Large companies are inward focused and incapable of reacting quickly. All their energies are focused on what Sequoia calls “The Death Spiral”. Where poor economic conditions lead to a swingeing round of cost cutting that saps morale and triggers a further drop in performance, that leads to more badly implemented cost cuts and so on. The fallacy that you can starve a business in to heath constantly returns during downturns.

Small Businesses and especially good small businesses don’t have these problems. There is a much closer connection between the market and the production side. Internal communication lines are tighter. Decision making cycles are short. This means that Small Businesses can be flexible enough to pursue opportunities. Lots of opportunities will appear, as they always do but there are now additional drivers as people change their spending habits, big business outsource and put expansion plans on hold and competitors go bankrupt.

The Irish Economy is still worth about 200 Billion, farming is doing really well, energy cost dropping, inflation has been beaten, wages are stable and interest rates at an all time low! This is a great time for small companies to grow wisely. The about 200 billion euro will be spent in the Irish Economy in 2009, nearly 5 million people will continue to eat butter, wear socks, play games etc. If you are smart enough and brave enough there are loads of opportunities. Think what one successfully exploited opportunity would mean to your business?
For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.

Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

There is no doubt that the business climate in Dublin is tough at the moment. A lot of people are telling me that they are cutting costs to the bone, delaying payments and generally trying to be a lean as possible. As a marketing guy you probably expect me to say “Increase spending on every type of marketing”

Well I hate waste as much as anybody so I won’t say that. I think you should look very carefully at your marketing budget and figure out where your new business comes from. Is there a match? I’m a great believer in the 80/20 rule.

Sometimes businesses spend money on marketing for historical reasons, well there is no room for that anymore. Lots of Advertising people talk about brand awareness but any Advertising that brings in 100s of queries that doesn’t result in a sale are worse than useless. Those queries just get in the way.

Each cent should bring a reward and the best way to measure that is by looking at sales. Compare your sales figures to your marketing campaigns and map the peaks AND the troughs. If your sales cycle is fairly long then the least you should measure is “Qualified Leads”.

Lots of businesses did very well in the boom years without any real marketing systems. The result is that many do not have a way of tracking what impact marketing campaigns have. But times have changed, good leads are harder to find and without good information it is impossible to make valid decisions about what works and what doesn’t.

The good news is you can implement a system for tracking leads quickly and easily. Once you have the system in place you see that you now have a list of unconverted prospects which can be a very useful side effect. You can develop a system in-house or you can out-source, it doesn’t really matter how you do it, just do it!

Once you have that system in place then you can spend each cent in a way that maximises its return to you.

So should you spend money on marketing? My answer: Spend money where you get the biggest result.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.

Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

Marketing is about convincing the prospects that you have something they want. So it should be personal to them as possible. I.E. You should try to look at the situation from their perspective - agreed? So here is a little test you can try out.

The next time you look at some marketing material, your own or something you have received try this. Count the number of times the words “I” and “You” plus their derivatives are used. So “I”, “we”, “our company”, “name of product” etc are all “I” words and “you”, “your”, etc are all “you” words.

Then divide the number of “You” words by the number of “I” words and you get a “caring index”. Less than 1 means the author has just spoken mostly about themselves, their company or their product. Above 2 means they are looking at matters from the clients perspective. Simple and easy to do - right?

You can do this with your own marketing material, your own public speeches or even listen to your staff on the phone. The higher value you get on the “caring index” means the better job you are doing at getting into the prospects shoes. Try it out and see what result you get, you will learn a lot from actually paying attention to what is happening.

Next look at what you competitors are doing. Surf their WebPages, do some mystery shopping, scan the trade press. See who gets the best “caring index”. Now you have a target to beat and we all love competitions! As long as you can make your marketing material better than everybody else’s you will get the lion’s share of whatever business is out there.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.
Best wishes
Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

Have you spent money on a website but aren’t seeing the benefits?  Do you need more visitors to your online shopfront?

The key to getting on traffic to your website is having your website on the front page of search engines.  Studies show that surfers are notorious impatient and while they are highly motivated, they have a very short attention span.  If their interest is not grabbed immediately by you, they will wander off to whatever topic shouts the loudest at them.  

So how do you get high up the rankings?  Well the first step is see where you sit right now.  There are various services to check your page ranking and while you are there try a few of your competitors websites also.  So where do you sit? Best in class?  Midway? or Tailend Charlie?  Store these results and check back often until you get a decent feeling for how you are perceived.  If you are number 1 and stay there - congratulations.  You are winning the a big share of business that comes via the web. 

For everybody else you now have a target to beat.  One very important element in Search Engine Rankings is the number and quality of the inbound links to your website.  The more and better links you have the higher your page ranking.  So the second step is to look at your own inbound links and your top competitor.   Check it out and take note of who is linking to your top competitor and not to you.  Repeat this for all your competitors who have a higher Page ranking than you.  

Now you have a readymade list of websites to contact to seek reciprocal links! Just send them an e-mail and ask for a link.  What is the worst thing that can happen, they say no?  Why do they link to your competitor and not to you?  Perhaps you should seek links from their competitors? In other cases you will see that links are from directories who will all have a subscribe mechanism, which you can also use. 

In this way you can start pushing yourself up the page rankings and getting to the top of the search engines.  There are a few other tricks such as articles like this one, blogging, social book marking that will be the subject of future articles.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.
Best wishes
Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

In this time of economic uncertainty in Dublin, many business will go under.  That is regrettable but an essential part of the capitalist system.  Capital and other resources need to be recycled into newer and more viable ventures.  So much for the big sanctimonious picture, you are probably thinking how do I keep my business from being yet another statistic?

The answer is to innovate!  Pure and simple.  People are still buying products and services and if you can make your offer standout you will get business.  You can innovate on quality or cost or a host of other factors to appeal to any specific target market.  Just follow these 4 steps:

1              Study your target market, their behaviours, attitudes, like dislikes etc ask questions!

2              Decide how you can match one or more of their wants or needs

3              Test Market it to them

4              Return to step 1 and REFINE

You need to constantly refine your offering because customers now have the whip hand.  They aren’t begging for your product or service anymore!  You need to convince them to buy your offering from a host of “me to” offerings.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.
Best wishes
Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
+353 1 491 3328

Have you ever wondered what amount you should set aside for marketing each year to grow your business?

How do you know what the optimum amount is? As an Marketing specialist, I’m often asked this question by startup and small business owners.

So what’s the answer? Whilst many business owners are looking for an answer such as €5000 or 10% of sales, I think this completely misses the point.

I believe the answer is…

You should not put a limit on your marketing budget

Let me explain. Whenever you undertake any marketing activity, you need to know whether you make a profit or not on that activity. The only way to do that is to measure the results of the marketing.

To do this you need to undertake direct response marketing as opposed to purely brand marketing. For small business especially it is crucial to ensure money spent on marketing is not wasted. The best way to do this is to record the results of any marketing activity, whether that be direct sales letters, advertising, telemarketing, email marketing, pay per click campaigns, seminars or whatever.

As a minimum, you need to know…

•             The cost of the marketing activity

•             The sales generated from that marketing activity

•             The profit made from those sales

And if you make more from the marketing than it costs you, it makes sense to continue spending on that marketing activity until it stops making you a profit. You’ll of course know when this is because you are measuring your results.

By testing on a small scale to start with, you’ll never lose too much money if it doesn’t work, but when it does work, if you gradually increase your spend on this particular activity, you should continue to do so until it no longer makes you a profit. It doesn’t matter how much you spend, as long as you make a profit, it makes sense to continue to invest in the marketing.

And don’t stop at just one marketing activity. Test another marketing activity and if that makes a profit continue with that in the same way. Eventually, the aim is to have multiple marketing activities. This is the key to exponential business growth. Not being reliant on one activity, means you continue to grow even when one stops working.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss with you how we could help you further.without charge!
Best wishes

Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
+353 1 491 3328