All Posts by Chris

How Does Your Offer Reduce Effort?

You save your customer’s time and energy, if your customer uses your offer to reduce effort. These can be redirected to more productive activities or work-life balance.

What is It?

Effort is productive.  To spend time and energy learning new skills is highly productive.  We learn how to do something new and gain insights into how it works.

However, doing something ourselves is not always productive.  Repeating the same activity over and again becomes tedious.  It ceases to be learning and becomes a chore.

Do-it-yourself hoovers up time we could use on more productive tasks and absorbs energy we need to do new things.  If it is something we are not particularly good at, it becomes more likely we make mistakes.

This is not about being lazy.  It is about the best use of time.  In other words, reduce effort in certain areas to increase business capacity.

Value to the Customer

Spending money to pay someone to do something that consumes time and energy builds capacity.

Consider the advantages.  You

How to Get There?

Consider where the customer needs help with a task.  Will they employ someone outright or buy a service?  How will they decide which tasks to outsource?

You need to educate your market about the advantages of reducing effort and how to find the help they seek.  What are the advantages of your way to reduce effort compared with your competitors?

Your Offer

Consider the range of activities that reduce effort for your customers.  All aspects of administration or accountancy, plus research can be productive. Research is a skill that takes time to learn properly.  Engaging a researcher may be real value for money if they do a thorough job.

Similarly online activities reduce effort.  For some businesses, help with SEO or social media saves time and energy and generates more results.

However, the more vital the work to the success of the business, the more vital a good working relationship.  There is always employing someone to do the work or training a member of staff.

Like most functional elements, your offer may already reduce effort for your customers.  If so, spell out exactly how your offer reduces effort.

Be clear about your expertise or qualifications.  The customer needs to know they can rely on you and you are insured where that is appropriate.

This is the twenty-fifth of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

Next: Avoids Hassles + 5 more

Telling Your Marketing Story

Overview

I begin with the icing on the cake.  Once you have a marketing story, how do you promote it?  Why start here?  My first priority is to show how a good story is necessary for marketing.  This sequence of posts focuses on storytelling and as we get into detail it is important we don’t lose sight of the reason we tell stories as business owners.

How do you know whether you have a good marketing story?

1. Does it directly address the interests of your market by posing a problem and offering a solution?
2. Does the story help you stand out from your competitors? How does it position you in the marketplace?
3. Does the story appeal to your market at an emotional level? Does it move them so they are likely to respond to your call to action?

If you answer no to one or more of these questions, don’t abandon your story just yet.

How Marketing Has Changed

We’re all familiar with the rise of the Internet and understand it opens up opportunities for small businesses.

We’ve moved from a world where broadcast marketing was commonplace to one where targeted marketing is more common.

30 years ago you were in one of two possible places.  You were a big player who could afford broadcast marketing.  Television and radio, hoardings and publications were the main places to advertise.  Most of this was brand marketing although sometimes businesses used ingenious approaches to direct marketing.  Most direct marketing was through the post, once people signed up for something.  Mailshots were expensive.

There is little doubt these methods worked because businesses deployed them.  However, smaller businesses were at a disadvantage.  They were forced to use more localised methods, eg flyers handed out on streets or put through letterboxes.  Local publications might carry adverts at reasonable prices.

Perhaps the most effective marketing was through shop premises where there were several methods business owners used as people passed by or entered their shop.

All these approaches are available today but the big change has been the advent of the Internet.  This brings on board many new approaches and makes traditional approaches more affordable.

Hub and Spokes

Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is the Hub and Spokes analogy.  The spokes bring traffic to the hub.  The hub is where your keynote story is heard in full and where you build relationships with your market.

Your Hub

The hub is the focus of your marketing and you aim to bring people into the hub and retain them there.

Here are some hubs:

Consistency and Innovation

Assume you have a keynote story, a hub and spokes.  How often and when do you tell your keynote story?

First consider traffic and conversion.  You may find your story works better for one of these.  Does it lead people to find out more or to buy?  Does the way you tell it favour one or the other?

It’s worth having versions of different lengths.  A one minute or less version is useful for networking and equips you with a quick summary.  A short version sparks interest, longer versions build relationships.

Do you tell the story in the hub or the spoke?  In the spoke, your audience is unlikely to be familiar with you.  You excite their interest and tell them how to stay in touch.  You need a clear, compelling call to action.  At the hub, can you assume people are interested in your offer?  How often have they heard your story?

Always the Same Story?

How consistent do you need to be?  Most people think their market gets bored.  The only thing that matters is whether your story creates interest and generate income.  Some say you stop telling your story only at your accountant’s request.

So consistency or innovation?  To a degree storytelling is always innovative. You tell the same story over and again but always experiment with the way you tell it.  Even the time available rings significant changes.  Once you have a good story that resonates with your market, why change it?

When you address a room full of people, they can’t get out.  They have to hear you even if they are distracted by their mobile phones.  On social media, it is much easier to opt out of listening.  You may find you need more innovation there because people actively seek novelty.  You may need a range of stories or anecdotes to generate traffic.

Looking Forwards

In my next three posts I work further down through the layer cake.  When we get to layer one, it opens up seven more posts as we explore traditional stories.

So, next time we’ll look at the next layer down – your market’s story – their problem and your solution.

How to Market Connection

This element of value brings people together by making a connection.

What is It?

Bringing people together extends social networks and causes change through shared activity.

Sponsorship sometimes achieves this aim.   Some companies sponsor sporting events, for example.  They might equally sponsor arts or hobbies.

Whilst it undoubtedly has value and is a welcome contribution to culture, this feels slightly odd because the thing sponsored need have no connection with the business.

Furthermore, where sponsorship includes advertising the sponsor on sportswear or similar, the whole event sometimes feels tarnished.  For example, some years ago tobacco firms frequently sponsored sports events.

In any event, sponsorship is something for larger more established businesses.  How can connection help smaller businesses?

Value to the Customer

Offering activities where people meet, share an interest and learn from each other may be an advantage.

Business network events are one example.  Whilst some networks are businesses in their own right, they offer opportunities for smaller businesses to enhance their reputation locally.

Alternatively, you can organise events to bring people with shared interests together.  Workshops are popular and well-promoted can be a good showcase for your business.

Similarly courses and webinars are opportunities to bring people together.

How to Get There

Mostly, sponsorship or otherwise, this is brand marketing.  You can sink a lot of money into activities, with no sense of how valuable they are to your business.

Workshops work as direct marketing if you find customers through the workshop.  They may use your services if the workshop builds their trust in you.

If you deliver workshops, review your marketing to check you highlight how your offers increase connection.

Your Offer

This is another functional element of value that rarely stands alone.  Your market by definition shares common interests.  Is it possible to bring them together?

Possibly not if your business is something people are not prepared to share.  If you coach people who suffer from stress, they may not wish to share that interest!

Even if they are prepared to attend workshops, do they really attend to meet other stressed people?  There may be ways you can show them value in such encounters but this requires careful planning.

This is the twenty-fourth of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

• Social impact: Self-transcendence
• Life Changing: Provide Hope, Self-Actualisation, Motivation, Heirloom, Affiliation and Belonging
• Emotional: Reduces Anxiety, Rewards Me, Nostalgia, Design / Aesthetics, Badge Value, Wellness, Therapeutic Value, Fun / Entertainment, Attractiveness, Provides Access
• Functional: Saves Time, Simplifies, Makes Money, Reduces Risk, Organises, Integrates, Connects

Next: Reduces Effort + 6 more

How to Design Your Business Story

I listen to many business stories through my Telling Stories: Making Business Lunch and Learns.  We all benefit from telling and hearing business stories.  This is the first in a series of posts about how to design your business story.

The Problem

Most stories I’ve heard over the last year have been life stories.  The challenge is how to turn a life story into a story to promote your business.  Many life stories do not work for marketing, not least because may don’t work as stories.

So, this sequence of blog posts is about how to work your story into a story that works for marketing.  Much of what I write applies to any storytelling and so may interest anyone interested in stories.  But my focus is specifically on what works in a business context.

Alternatives to Life Stories

Before I explore storytelling in more depth, let’s think about alternatives to life stories.  Similar rules apply to any story but it’s worth considering alternatives to your life story.

I’ve encountered two types of life story.  Perhaps the most successful describe a life-changing event.  Everything arranges itself around that event.  Sometimes someone with such a story has already written a book.  A book, whether self-published or through an established publisher, is potentially a great marketing tool.  I may return to this in a future post.  The problem is what to say to promote the book.  How much of the story to cover?

The other type of story is where there is no single life-changing event and so the story becomes one thing after another.  Some stories have a theme, eg depression or “how I got to where I am today”.

Both types share the problem of too much material.  How can you focus the story to help your audience grasp your message?

Here are Some Alternatives

These mostly don’t draw on the life story:

These alternatives overlap.  Use them to interrogate your story and see it in new ways.  You have far more than one story to tell and for marketing that is an advantage.

How to Structure Your Business Story

You’ve found a story to tell.  Good.  The next step is work out a structure for the story.  This is harder to explain than it is to do!  People have told stories for millennia.  It is an art-form and as Fats Wallah said of song-writing: “It’s 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”

Think of your story as a layer cake.  All four layers need to be present although some may not be immediately obvious.  Together they structure your story. Here is a basic overview and in future posts I offer deeper exploration.

1. The deepest layer is a traditional story. I shall  explain what I mean by traditional in a future post.  The aim is to find a traditional story that resonates with your story.  This contributes an underlying structure to your story.
2. The next layer is your personal story. It is likely to be one of the alternatives I suggested above.  It could be something else as I make no claim to have covered all possibilities.  This is the story you are telling, structured by the lower layer.
3. The topmost layer of the cake is your market’s story. Sometimes, eg case studies, you draw on this more than others.  But keep this in mind because these people are your audience.  Your story is for them and so they need to be part of it in some way.
4. Finally, you have the icing and decorations.  It is all the means you use to promote your business.  Aim for congruence between them.  So everything from business cards and flyers, through websites and social media to speaking and networking tells your story.

Looking Forward

In my next four posts I work down through the layer cake.  When we get to layer one, we’ll find this opens up seven more posts as we explore traditional stories.

So, next time we look at the topmost layer – the icing and decorations – your marketing story.

How Your Offer Integrates Products and Services

This survey of functional elements of value, considers practical aspects of products or services.  One challenge is to show what integrates products and services in your higher level offers.

What is It?

If you sell a service, is there anything you can automate at the same time?  The aim is convenience.  For one set of inputs, the customer receives a range of outputs.

Let’s say you market a system for recording accounts.  Your customer’s primary concern is end of year accounts for tax purposes.  Each month, you enter their income and expenditure item by item.  At the end of the year, the system produces annual accounts for tax returns.

This same information generates monthly management accounts with projections.  This may be of more value to the customer than the annual accounts.

If you are a life coach, offer other services as bonuses to your main offer.  As you get to know your client, if they want those services, offer them at no extra charge.

Value to the Customer

You may find secondary items integrated into your offer are more popular than the main offer.  Most accountants integrate annual accounts and management accounts.  Customers approach the accountant because they need help with annual accountants, which they must complete.  They find management accounts more useful, even though they did not expect them when they first approached the accountant.

However, be aware piling on more bells and whistles is not always positive.  We all use software that does far more than what we use it for.  It is possible we would use more if we knew how to use it but a lot of these add-ons are clutter.  They take up disk space and confuse an otherwise user-friendly interface.

How to Get There

If you create bricolage, one thing piled on top of another, it is not integration.  You are likely to produce a confusing mess.

A well-integrated package brings together several services customers want and delivers them with least possible inputs.

How do you work this out?  It depends on knowing your customers and what they need and want.  How do they go about their work?  How can you develop something they find easy to operate that delivers what they need with least effort?

Your Offer

Think about your customers, the way they work and what they need to complete their work.

Offer integrated products and services that exceed their expectations.  Aim for simplicity combined with high-powered utility.

This is the twenty-third of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

Next: Connects + 7 more

The Myth of the Rational Consumer

You may think your clients make rational decisions; show them how you solve their problem and they immediately decide to buy!  If only the rational consumer existed!

The Rational Consumer

Right-wing economists who believe economics is a science, developed an imaginary construct, the rational consumer.  Assume thousands of consumers all behave in their own best interests and you can model the economy.

The political implications are catastrophic.  Some politicians genuinely believe the economy works in this way.  More than that they claim their madcap schemes are the will of the rational consumer.

Experienced marketers are aware the rational consumer is a myth.  Most people do not act in their own self-interest because they do not know what their self-interest is.

Why do people not act in their self-interest?  They have in effect two brains.  Their emotional brain is fast and overwhelming.  Their rational brain is slow and logical.  Often they act on their emotional brain before their rational brain kicks in.

This is not to say the emotional brain is necessarily wrong.  Marketers sometimes encounter buyer’s remorse, where following a good purchase the rational brain kicks in and finds reasons to regret the purchase.

Good marketers engage with both brains, using the urgency of the emotional brain and the logic of the rational so their client feels comfortable with their purchase.  Motivate your client to take full advantage of their purchase. This is especially important for coaches.

Behavioural Economics

1. How does your behaviour vary from the profit-maximising rational behaviour classical economists insist upon. This may help you understand the reasons for your clients’ behaviour.
2. How much choice do you offer your prospects? Remember too much choice can be counter-productive.
3. How do you position your offers to guide prospects to your best offer?

Slow Down Your Thinking

There is value in thinking about your own thinking.  Too often we rush to a decision without giving it proper thought.

Take time when you make an important decision.  It is easy to get stuck in a narrow definition of the problem.  Try to see the problem in its wider context.  The problem as it initially presents itself is transformed when viewed from another perspective.  Consider using a coach or mentor to help with decisions.

You sometimes find another perspective by taking time out and allowing your mind scope to reflect.  Walking is an opportunity to do this and a good night’s sleep is also effective.  Even turning to another problem allows your mind space to find another perspective.

Beware of Premature Solutions

Beware of the solution that presents itself as a problem.  A prospect who presents with a request for help with their website is presenting a solution.  They may be right and have already done the thinking for themselves.  Still, it is worth finding out: what is the problem the website solves?  Once you know what the problem is, you can assess the proposed solution.  Sometimes a well-defined problem goes most of the way to solving it.

This is a really important point.  The costs of solutions masquerading as problems is immense.  An example of this, now in vogue is Brexit.  There is no agreement about what the problem is that Brexit is meant to solve.  Is it immigration or sovereignty?  Both these problems are poorly defined.  Worse the real problem may have nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with how we make decisions in the UK.  A referendum takes power away from representative government.  It disables opposition, which means the government is no longer held to account or able to receive feedback on its legislation.

Always find out what the problem is first! Sometimes clients resist this and insist on their solution.  If you can help them understand their problem, they are likely to see their problem in an entirely different light.

Following this thirty-ninth and final post in this series to encourage coaches to reflect on relational marketing, take this opportunity to sign up below.  You get a weekly round-up of my posts and a pdf about how to make sure you are charging what your business is worth.

How Getting Organised Benefits Your Clients

Getting organised benefits your clients and so this is an important element of value.

What is It?

Organisation is one aspect of administration.  Generally, the aim is to organise so that specific items are found with minimum fuss.

Human error always limits organisational systems.  I once worked in an office responsible for properties across the UK.  There were thousands of paper files, stored in a room in a particular order.  Everyone knew how to find a specific file and how to return it to the shelves.

Files still went missing.  They never left the building but sometimes a file would disappear for days.  Experienced admin workers were usually able to track down missing files.  The problem was users did not organise their desks to the same degree.  Everyone had their own system and passed files informally around the office.  Once a file left its shelf space, the rules no longer applied.

And of course, once you found a file, it would not necessarily contain everything it should.

All systems are subject to human error, including online systems.  But any system is better than random piles on the floor.  A well-managed system saves much time.

We can distinguish two approaches to organisation;

Value to the Client

Let’s dig deeper into the time savings.  Lost items are the most time-consuming elements in an office with a complex filing system.

Lost items don’t just consume time searching for them.  They consume mental energy.  Can they be replaced?  Has a member of staff removed it from the office, against regulations?  What was in that file?  How do I explain the lost file to the client?  And on and on.

No system can guarantee against lost items.  People make mistakes.  However, with a good system:

How to Get There

The basic principles of organisation are well-known.  However, an experienced administrator knows the pitfalls and designs a system that works for their office.  They save time by guaranteeing stuff does not go astray.

Another way things get lost is where vital papers disappear into a pile of paperwork.  This could have serious consequences for an office if bills or cheques go astray.  The well-organised system processes and files everything new to the office.

Your Offer

If your offer assists with any of these activities you can market this element of value.  You don’t necessarily have to offer complete solutions, you could market filing systems to administrators, for example, to help them do their job.

This is the twenty-second of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  Access posts from this sequence here:

• Social impact: Self-transcendence
• Life Changing: Provide Hope, Self-Actualisation, Motivation, Heirloom, Affiliation and Belonging
• Emotional: Reduces Anxiety, Rewards Me, Nostalgia, Design / Aesthetics, Badge Value, Wellness, Therapeutic Value, Fun / Entertainment, Attractiveness, Provides Access
• Functional: Saves Time, Simplifies, Makes Money, Reduces Risk, Organises

Next: Integrates + 8 more

Making an Offer that Reduces Risk

The world is a risky place and so an offer that reduces risk is attractive.

What is It?

Risk reduction can be internal or external.

External risk reduction may be easiest to understand.  Your offer addresses some inherently risky aspect of life.  An accountant prepares accounts for tax purposes and reduces risk for the business-owner who otherwise prepares their own accounts.  An Independent Financial Advisor manages investments and so reduces risk for the asset owner.

For any professional service, this Element of Value is crucial.  State risk clearly because the prospect may not immediately see the need for protection.  However, risk reduction alone may not be enough, where the prospect considers more than one provider.

Internal risk reduction usually takes the form of a guarantee.  So, the accountant might guarantee accounts prepared properly and submitted to the authorities on time.  If the accountant fails, the guarantee indicates the compensation the prospect can expect.

It is easy to see the power of an offer that reduces both external and internal risk.

Value to the Client

Internal risk reduction is primarily reassurance.  We all know things go wrong from time to time.  Guarantees simply recognise that fact.  The prospect has faith in the professional provider and the guarantee covers the unlikely possibility something might go wrong.

External risk reduction offers more advantages to the client and opens up more possibilities for professional service.

You might keep accounts of equal accuracy and reliability to the professional provider.  So, why consider taking on their services?

There is  the time you save.  If you use the time it takes to prepare accounts to generate more income, professional assistance might be attractive.  The chances are professionals produce accounts as good as or better than yours in less time, because they do it all the time.

They can do more.  Accountants produce management accounts and offer advice about financial arrangements for their client’s business.  They may be able to save their client money.  OK, you may be clever enough to work all this out for yourself but do you know that for certain?  They take responsibility for the risks you take when you do it yourself.

How to Get There

Do you really control risk?  A risk is an external threat.  It is there whatever the prospect does about it.  Internal threats are weaknesses the prospect has some control over should they choose to exercise it.

Do non-professional businesses control risk?  A gymnasium might reduce risk of ill-health.  If it trains soldiers to fight in wars, maybe it reduces risk.  Similarly, nutritionists deal mainly with weaknesses, problems prospects can address themselves.

Both of these claim to constrol risk of ill-health.  These are problems prospects address themselves and can be solved only if they do so.  Their client may need help to develop a plan and stick to it but the risk is internal.  Guarantees support the offer through reassurance but work only where the client co-operates.

For professional firms threats are external and so the client’s co-operation is less critical.  Changes in tax law or falls on the stock exchange are external and the accountant or IFA addresses them without interventions from the client.  All the client does is make regular contributions, eg by submitting income and expenditure for the month.

Your Offer

Consider whether the threat is internal or external.  Shape your offer, being clear about the expectations of your clients.  Consider whether you need a guarantee.

Your clients need to understand about the risks they expect you to tackle and what your expectations are of them.

This is the twenty-first of 31 posts about elements of value.  Make sure you don’t miss any by signing up for the offer below.  The posts in this sequence can be accessed below:

• Social impact: Self-transcendence
• Life Changing: Provide Hope, Self-Actualisation, Motivation, Heirloom, Affiliation and Belonging
• Emotional: Reduces Anxiety, Rewards Me, Nostalgia, Design / Aesthetics, Badge Value, Wellness, Therapeutic Value, Fun / Entertainment, Attractiveness, Provides Access
• Functional:   Saves Time, Simplifies, Makes Money, Reduces Risk

Next: Organises  + 9 more

How to be an Impresario and Promote Your Business

A lot depends on personal circumstance but the draw of doing what you enjoy (your job) is at the expense of running your business.

Your Job and Your Business

This is a common mishap for the self-employed.  One reason you became self-employed is you enjoy doing something; you are a coach and you love coaching.

Perhaps you put on an event and as a result get 6 clients.  Maybe that’s hard to imagine but bear with me.

You set to work.  They pay your fees.  For the next 6 months you live and breathe working with these clients.  You are successful in every way, you have enhanced your reputation as a coach.

Then one day you wake up to find you have no clients and no money.  You have done your job, as a coach but neglected your business.  You need another event and it will take weeks to organise.  Many businesses fail because they cannot recover from such a mistake.

You need a programme of events, to keep yourself in the public eye, so you continue to enrol clients.  You may have problems managing new clients when still working with old ones but that is a different problem, one of capacity.

Let’s stay with the problem at hand.  What can you do to remain in the public eye?

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone

1. What do you create that people will miss it when it’s gone (and hope it comes back soon)?
2. What could you create that offers a real incentive to tell my friends? That makes news?  Who can get the word out in exchange for a share of attention?
3. What would happen if your promotion didn’t work? What would happen if it did?

Impress an Impresario

Ok, a few definitions.  A promotion is an event you put on either in real life or online.  Real life promotions might be public speaking, a stall at a business fair, a workshop, training event, a network event over a meal, lunch and learn …  Online promotions might be a blog post, social media campaign, webinar, online course.  These need not necessarily be free events but usually they are fairly low-cost.  Your aim is to find clients.

An impresario is someone who brings people together to work on and promote an event.  You may be aware of impresarios in your own community.  You could join in with what they do.  If you spot a gap in what they are doing, perhaps you can step into the impresario role?

Next, do you need a schedule of promotions to keep you in the public eye?  I find it is best to have a few regular promotions punctuated by occasional experimental promotions.

Can you build a team who work with you because it helps promote their businesses and strengthens their message?  How you do this is flexible.  You might have a team who consistently work with you.  Alternatively, if you have a regular event, you can invite people to take part, perhaps as a keynote speaker or trainer.

Remember, the aim of marketing is to create change and so your events should aim to do just that.  How do you promote change? By being remarkable!  When people talk about your promotions, they are your audience.

Following this thirty-seventh post to encourage coaches to reflect on relational marketing, take this opportunity to sign up below.  You get a weekly round-up of my posts and a pdf about how to make sure you are charging what your business is worth.