Monitoring your industry

 
 

Archive for August, 2007

Idenitifying cash creators

Monday, August 20th, 2007

Do an expense shake down. Take time at least once a year to scrutinize each and every company expense. Remember that old habits die hard. Evaluate you travel expenses, telecommunicate expenses, insurance costs, subscriptions, and so on. If the expense doesn’t contribute company’s profitably, eliminate it. You’re  just about guaranteed to find areas in which costs can be reduced or cut out entirely.

Clip coupons. okay, not exactly coupons, but find good deals on business services. Everyone from Costco to Microsoft is catering to the small-to mid sized business market. Make those companies win your business by comparison shopping. This idea is great when you’re talking telephone or cellular phone plans,suppliers, or even interest rates on company credit cards.

Increase your prices. Not everyone can do this. But if you can back up your price increase by better products, service, and quality, you’re likely to keep your customers.Most people are accustomed to the idea of getting what they pay for. ( i have herd the advice of increasing your prices 10 percent per month until u lose 10 percent of your business. Then stop. You might try it again when you  improve your products  services. The concept is interesting and it may have some value for your business.) Be clear about your payment terms. From the get-go, institute a consistent and firm payment process. Most customers appreciate your professional approach if the way you do business is clear. You may consider letting your clients make payments over time, but the cost of having customers who pay late is significant, not only on he cash side but also on time spent on collections.

Ask for more business. Do your clients and past clients know about all the services you offer? not only should you educate your customers annually bout what you offer, but also ask for more business. Chances are, you’ll get it.

Responding to what you’ve discovered

Monday, August 13th, 2007

Responding to your market is critical to being market-focused. You can generate information and communicate it internally, but unless you respond to market needs, nothing gets accomplished. Your company should be driven by:

  • An understanding of what your customers want
  • The knowledge of how to meet the customers’ needs
  • The delivery of the product or service customers want

Many of you reading this may already be doing most of these activities. Great job! If you aren’t, it’s okay. Take some action to formalize your process. Studies show that companies that link these activities together achieve greater levels of performance when compared to their competitors. A company that increases its market focus by ten percent can see a growth of between 17 and 20 percent in overall performance.

Want to evaluate how market-focused your firm is? Check out this free, online assessment tool.

How to write a positioning statement

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

The purpose of writing a positioning statement is to ensure that all of your marketing activities for a customer group are consistent and clear. (And it saves you tons of time in the long run.) Initially, focus on writing a positioning statement that’s only used internally. In the future, you may end up using it for other purposes such as in your marketing collateral. But if you throw that into the mix the first go around, crafting a statement that makes sense may be more difficult. Ready to jump in?

To write your positioning statements, follow these steps:

  1. Select the target customer group you want to focus on.
  2. Develop a list of needs your customer group has that you intend to meet (if not already included in your customer profile).
  3. List your product/service’s benefits that uniquely meet these needs.
  4. Use the lists of customer needs and product/service benefits to finish this sentence: When this customer group thinks of my product or service, I want them to think: ____________________.
  5. Evaluate your positioning statement by making sure it’s simple, clear, and consistent.
  6. Get the word out to everyone by consistently communicating your positioning message in everything your company does for this customer group.

Don’t forget: The customer himself does the real positioning by paying attention and deciding to buy your product/service. What you do have control over is assessing what positions exist in the customer’s mind and then determining which of those you have the best chance of occupying and defending based on your own strengths.

Visualizing The Direct Path To Your Success

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Over the past month in this space, we have discussed the key elements of successful strategic planning. In addition to analyzing your strategic position and defining strategic objectives according to the Balanced Scorecard framework, we have talked about creating an environment that connects your employees to the organization’s mission, surrounding yourself with the right people with the right competencies and skills, securing sufficient funding and time to support your efforts, and setting structures of management, authority and communication.

A strategic plan is a valuable management tool that serves the purpose of helping an organization do a better job because it focuses the energy, resources and time of everyone in the organization in the same direction. For all that we have already discussed, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Hence, the graph below which aptly demonstrates how each of the elements we discussed must all work together for your success.