What is Intentional Business Development?

I’ve based this sequence upon a talk I heard recently about intentional faith development (IFD).  As I listened, I found the points made mapped onto my understanding of business.  And so I invented this new phrase, intentional business development.

Everything I do relates to my Methodist faith.  Some posts in this blog are for those who share my faith or at least have sympathy with it.  This sequence is not part of that spirituality theme.

When I asked at the end of the talk about IFD and business, the speaker said he had drawn a lot from business.  This is no surprise.  Faith and business have a long history together.  However, my focus is on business and how insights from religious faith can help businesses understand what they do.

Understanding Intentional Business Development

Isn’t all business development intentional?  Well, yes and no.  In one sense anyone who sets up in business does it intentionally.  They may stumble upon some insight or product by accident but the decision to go ahead is intentional.

The real issue is keeping it intentional.  Your aim is to grow your business.  You may have stumbled upon something that offers immediate profit but then what?

In the next five posts, I shall explore five movements that apply just as much to business as it does to faith.  Before I outline the five movements, allow me to make a few points about faith.

What is Faith?

Faith does not mean belief.  I may believe in God but that does not mean I have faith.  The meaning of faith is more akin to trust.  Setting up in business is always an act of faith.  More usually we talk about risk.  You take a step into the unknown and cannot possibly know in advance your venture will work out.  You will never know if you don’t try it.

Therefore faith should never be confused with superstition.  If you believe the earth is flat, you are choosing to believe something in the teeth of the evidence.  All the evidence points away from the earth being flat.

Faith is in something that is not proven one way or the other.  To start a business venture is always an act of faith because there is no way of knowing in advance the venture will be successful.

Faith, Politics and Business

The reason so much political activity is not faith-based is many politicians are ideologues, believing their view is absolute.  We see this in politicians who believe Brexit will be a massive success.  The evidence mounts that it won’t.  The need is for politicians who are ready to find a compromise that works, even if it pleases no-one.

The truth is the only sand we have to build on us shifting.  This is as true for business as it is for politics.  The only certainty is change.  When we set up a business we seek to change things in a world already changing.  Without faith you are either moribund or absurd.

Faith is a Christian word and other religious traditions have their own words.  The five movements describe what intentional business development might look like.

Five Movements

1. From self-centred to world-centred. The key word for this movement is discernment.  To be successful in business you need to focus on your market and their needs.  You seek mutual benefit out of self-interest and not self-centredness.
2. From individual to collaborative. The key word for this movement is listening.  To go into business is to move from the private realm to the public.  As well as seeking mutual benefit between your business and your customers, it is also possible to work in partnership with other businesses.
3. From technical to adaptive. The key word for this movement is transformation.  Being in business is never simply applying proven tools to a given situation.  The businesses that succeed are those ready to adapt without necessarily knowing the outcome.
4. From cognitive to behavioural. The key word here is embodiment.  A successful business demands commitment from the whole person: mind, body and spirit.  It is not solely about what you know.
5. From theory to practice. The key word here is Praxis (action / reflection).  An alternative key word might be learning.  No-one has ever learned from experience, they learn from experience reflected upon.

What Next?

There is no guarantee these five movements result in a successful business.  Perhaps some people have been successful through serendipity and never paid attention to any of this.

However, perhaps on reflection some would say: “Yes, actually these five movements were important.  I didn’t realise at the time but on reflection, I followed most of these movements.”

This is the first of a sequence about intentional business development.  It’s a part of Market Together.  Sign up below so you don’t miss a post and visit my new website by following the link.

The Social Dimension to Your Market

People with shared worldviews tend to cluster together and become sensitive to what is new in the group.

The Social Dimension

Let’s think about your market and how they relate to each other.  Are there places where they meet?  The aim is not so much to go there yourself, although it may be a good place to develop business relationships.  The aim is to work out how the group develops and maintains its worldview.

They police new ideas, behaviours or products.  If you offer a solution to a problem they share, they must find your solution acceptable.  Some groups may be open to change and so to give something new a try.  Others may resist change, preferring old views to changes that might threaten their interests.

Groups willing to try your approach may move quickly to decide it is not for them.  Others reluctant to try at first, may find it is for them and adopt it wholeheartedly.  You can’t control what happens but you can be aware of what is happening.

 Defining People Like Us

1. Where do your market meet? Socially or for business?  Online or in-person?
2. What do they need, fear or desire?
3. Are they likely to try new things or resist change? How likely are they to stick together when welcoming or resisting change?

Cultural Change

How do you, as an entrepreneur affect cultural change?  You may wish to look back to your promise.  You aim to bring change to your market and this means changing the groups within which your market associates.

It is tempting to think groups never change.  But isn’t it likely they have never encountered an opportunity to change?

Is it possible you are not courageous enough to offer them what they really need?  One day, someone will have the insight and courage to do just that.  Could you be that person?

So, review your offers and ask yourself whether you have an offer that fully addresses the needs of your target market.  Are you playing safe or offering a genuine radical alternative?

Following this eleventh 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.  Most weeks you receive an email with helpful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.

Your Lifestyle Purpose in the Wider Community

Trade has always been at the heart of community.  Some say prostitution is the oldest profession.  But humanity must have established trade for all professions to emerge.  Professions emerge to meet needs and wants from the wider community and so trade is normally closely related to community.  Lifestyle purpose in the wider community is relevant and important.

Think Global, Act Local

People used this slogan during the eighties as globalisation moved centre stage.  We have seen massive changes since then in the way we understand trade.

The silk roads across Asia existed for at least 1000 years, probably a lot longer.  They link China to the Mediterranean Sea.  They still do, or would, were it not for conflicts in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.  Plundered wealth from the New World added a new dimension to world trade, as Europe found a new source of wealth.

Mostly, people bought from merchants who lived close by and so localised trade.  Those merchants traded with other merchants and so brought more exotic products to local communities.

What has changed is not that the world has started to trade between far-flung countries but control of that trade.  Large corporations centralise power over the markets.  They accumulate wealth by controlling the products on the market.  Local traders must find a small niche to help them find their place in the economy.

My aim here is to suggest trade happens anyway; we do not need corporations.  Any small business helps create space where local economies thrive and adds value to products and services.

The Agora

The agora or marketplace, is where the local economy happens and note it is the core of any community.  Community does not create wealth, wealth creates community.  Look at what happens to neighbourhoods that do not have an economic centre.  They become estates where people live with little autonomy.

The wealth of a community offers freedom to its members.   With more money in circulation, there are more opportunities for small businesses; capacity offers niches for new enterprises.

Everything else that is public or Negotium, takes place in the Agora.  This is the place for government, for law courts, places of worship, news, debate, entertainment …  It is where people bring what they develop in Otium and  use it to build community, usually through business.

Practicalities

It is hard to see a way forward in the present day.  With too little wealth in the economy, we do not see the Agora as a whole; we compartmentalise our lives, fully assisted by electronic media.

The world is on the brink of massive changes as climate change increases and competition over resources becomes more pressing.  We need to look to the past to inform how we exist in the future.

For now, remember the way you use your time is important to you, your family and friends.

Communication is currently easier than it was throughout history and we should use it while we have it.  At the same time, it is the human mind that transforms information into value.  That value is not solely monetary, it is in the relationships that trade properly depends upon.

Ultimately the outcomes of our business are not financial so much as relationships, the common causes we make together.

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Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Using Worldviews and Avatars

To define your market you need three things: their problem, your niche and their worldview.  This post will help you understand worldviews and avatars.

Your Market Definition

Let’s review each of these in turn:

1. Your market’s problem – this is the problem you solve and so your market is the people with the problem! If there is no problem, there is no market.
2. However, there will be competition for this market and so you need to decide your niche. Your niche is external factors you impose on your market to narrow it down to something you can target.  For example, you might choose to market those with the problem who live locally to you.  The factors you choose for your niche are sometimes described as demographics.
3. Perceptions of reality differ. Your market’s worldview is their perception of reality.  Their problem may reflect a perception that needs to change.  Your marketcomprises people who share perceptions and your task is to name just what it is they have in common.

How to Identify Their Worldview

1. Consider your market and ask: what are the perceptions they hold that might reinforce their problem? How must they adapt to solve their problem?
2. How does your choice of niche help you understand your market’s worldview? Or does it hinder your understanding?
3. Is there anything else they have in common that might help them view your offer positively?

Market Avatars

A clear understanding of their worldview is likely to give you an edge over your competition.  It helps you speak from heart to heart and move them to find out more.

It is a good idea to create one or more avatars.  You should not have too many but perhaps your market divides into a few distinct groups.  Your avatar shares the problem, belongs in your chosen niche and experiences their world through their worldview.

Give them a name and be specific.  You may include details that are not strictly relevant but help you relate to the avatar.  You address your marketing copy to this person as you write it.  This helps you bring warmth or humanity to your copy.  Anyone reading the copy will pick up on the warmth without being aware of the avatar behind it.

Following this tenth 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.  Most weeks you receive an email with helpful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.

How Your Client Benefits from Your Lifestyle Purpose

And so we move from work in private (Otium) to the public dimension (Negotium).  Here you find opportunities to deploy not only the skills of trade but also your private passions, interests, skills and enthusiasms.  So, let’s consider how your client benefits from your lifestyle purpose.

Your Coaching

It may not be obvious how your life-experience, passions and interests benefit your client.  They purchase your services because you have expertise or experience.

Remember the way your life-experience informs your work is most likely implicit.  For example, someone who offers health therapies may find conversations with business owners easy because they already use conversations to put their patients at ease and help them open up.

The key lies in preparation for each meeting so that you know what to offer the client as they struggle with a particular issue.

The implicit promise made by coaches is they listen to their client to free their speech.  This is valuable because most offers on the market assume the client needs a proven solution to a known problem.

There are benefits to the business-owner who can automate their offer.  It saves time and increases the number of clients they can handle.  It is difficult to automate coaching.  Actually it is impossible to automate coaching, although it may be possible in part.

Preparation is crucial and we see Otium‘s importance.  The coach must prepare for each meeting, reviewing their client’s records, preparing questions and suggestions for the client to consider.

Types of Question

It may help to have a set of questions to use for all clients.  These move the sessions with the client forwards.  They change slowly, through experience.  Without such structure, it is likely the sessions will never move forward.  They decide what you consider.  It helps get everything relevant on the table.

The coach may prepare subsidiary questions for the client, based on their answers so far.  The client will act between sessions and so it is important to discuss their actions and results.

And there will be questions formulated and asked during the sessions, in response to what the client says.

All these stages of preparation can and should engage the whole person.  What can the coach draw on from their experience to help their client?  This will range from directly relevant experiences, eg work in the same industry; common human experiences, eg family life; through to unique experiences that introduce a new perspective.

Stability

Knowing the coach has a lifestyle purpose is one way to decide whether the coach can deliver.  A coach overly focused on profit, for example, may be prone to burnout, stress, loss of perspective.  A coach who turns up for meetings tired or rattled does not present the best opportunity for the client to make progress.

Also, a coach aware of their own lifestyle purpose will be sensitive to the need for a similar purpose in the client.  There is no problem where lifestyle pervades business, especially for self-employed people, where marketing themselves is their business.

Large companies may frown upon employees bringing their own lifestyle purpose to the workplace, perhaps undermining the company’s consistent message.  But this is not true for the self-employed, they are the message and if they can find an approach that draws on what they enjoy doing, their enthusiasm will communicate.

That sense of being at ease with business and life is a big draw to people; to communicate that ease to their clients increases trust.

These benefits extend, of course, beyond the client to the wider world.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Do You Need Market Research?

Marketing has changed so much over recent years and so you almost certainly don’t need market research.  You do however, need something else.

What’s Wrong with Market Research?

By market research I mean things like demographic data, focus groups and statistics.  These are not without value.  If they are to hand they may help but I would not go out of my way to find them.  Why?

This means selling for money without caring no longer works.  You must care about your customers.

Caring for Your Customers

1. How do you practice curiosity about your market?
2. How do you show your market you care about them and their problem?
3. What insights about your market do you have that give you an edge over your competitors?

Walking in Someone’s Shoes

The key to this is to learn to practice empathy.  Can you see the world through the eyes of someone different from you?  Think of someone who is different, the more different the better.  They need not have anything to do with your market.  Spend a time consciously viewing the world as they might see it.  This should ideally be several consecutive days.

The aim of this exercise is to learn what it is like to walk in someone’s shoes.  Can you do the same for your own market?  They may be more like you than the subject of the exercise.  Do you find this makes it easier or harder to empathise?

Following this ninth 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.  Most weeks you receive an email with helpful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.

Marketing Your Implicit Promise

The real challenge to marketing your implicit promise is, how implicit should be?  You move from Otium to Negotium when you market.  The preparation you do as a private person, ready to invest in your client, is crucial.

Three Types of Consultancy

Let’s revise three approaches to consultancy.

1. The expert consultant is someone hired to solve a specific well-defined problem, eg a website designer. Expert consultants act as temporary staff members, contributing specialist skills.
2. Non-directive consultants – start from the assumption the client is the expert. I normally refer to them as coaches.  A coach draws out the expertise of the client.  These are people who listen their clients into free speech.
3. The hybrid coach, uses both coaching and expert consultancy. Usually, they help the client meet their objective as a coach and provide advice and guidance in the coach’s specialist area.

I guess most coaches are type three – hybrid coaches.  Their role as a coach is their implicit promise.  How implicit does their coaching promise have to be?

Marketing Your Implicit Promise

Coaches do not offer technical solutions.  Hybrid coaches need to be clear when they stop coaching and switch to teaching.  The challenge is to help the prospect understand the distinction.

The coach offers adaptive as opposed to technical change.  This means the coach helps their client change their behaviour.  Their aim is to name behaviours that prevent the client reaching their goals.

Changes in behaviour imply changes to the techniques the client uses to meet their goals.  Adaptive change drives technical change.  Many problems people encounter emerge when technical changes demand adaptive change.  This is why people find new techniques don’t work because they demand changes for which they are not prepared.

How do you market this?

You put the client in the driving seat.  Not only are they the expert in their business or life, they also drive the coaching.

It is their responsibility to choose what they discuss with coach, what they implement and how they implement it.  The coach may offer accountability but it is the client’s responsibility to make sure change happens.

I am not there to tell clients how to run their business or life.  My responsibility is to create the space wherein the client can share their thinking.  When we get it right my role as coach is to boost their thinking, help them go further, faster.

We may spend a lot of time rejecting possible approaches.  If the client has difficulty making decisions, we name barriers and seek ways to approach them.

My clients set the agenda for the meeting.  I create the space in which we discuss their agenda.  I might challenge the agenda, eg by asking why they want to discuss this topic.  But it is always the clients’ agenda.

I help the client by using my structure.  I have questions for the client between sessions.  These help the client name the issues to discuss next and help me understand the client’s perspective.

Where we need to discuss technical approaches, we may move to a more didactic approach.  I offer a done-with-you approach or recommend third-party support.

What the Client Needs to Know

The client needs to understand their problem.  I use an enrolment interview to help them.  Then we discuss whether I can help.

If we believe I can, I explain my approach.  Some people seek technical solutions and so are not interested.  For others, clarity about their business or life is more important than taking immediate action.  This is not to say they put action on hold until after the coaching.  Indeed, action is essential throughout the coaching.  It provides the raw material on which we can reflect together.

If this interests the client, we can discuss terms and conditions.

How to Recruit Clients to an Enrolment Meeting

This approach to marketing means you do not have to sell outside the enrolment meeting.  The aim of your marketing is to get consent to a meeting.

So, you use marketing to be creative any way that addresses your business purpose, using lifestyle choices to support your marketing.  The enrolment meeting has its own dynamic and the experience is different from the marketing campaign itself.

Let’s say you are a coach and a musician.  You could deploy your coaching skills to your marketing campaign.  This might be to offer an audience an experience that helps them understand your offer.

Alternatively, you might use your skills as a musician, even though your music might have little to do with your coaching.  Why do that?  The big advantage is it creates some distance between you and other similar coaches.  The trombone playing coach is likely to stand out!

Of course, there may be intermediate approaches you could take up, combining coaching and musical skills.  The aim is to be memorable and present yourself as a rounded human being; someone to know, like and trust.

To neglect your lifestyle aim is to lose a critical dimension to your business.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

What do People Want?

Successful businesses are aware of the wants and needs of their market.  Broadly, wants are desired and needs are necessary.  The original Maslow’s triangle shows needs at the bottom, eg food, accommodation, safety and then spiritual values at the top.  What do people want?  As they become wealthier, people tend to move up the triangle.  You must fulfil each level before you move to the next.

Maslow’s Triangle for Businesses

You may be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  The link goes to a version that applies what businesses supply to Maslow’s triangle.  The idea is once you complete a lower level, the needs kick in from the next.  So, it is something like this:

1. Functional needs – these are the technical fixes every business needs. Most marketing solutions are at this level.
2. Emotional needs – these are elements that enhance life by meeting immediate emotional needs.
3. Life changing needs – these are needs that meet aspirations, eg the changes that people need to make as they approach retirement
4. Social impact needs – this is about changes in the wider world.

I first encountered Maslow during the 1980s and I remember the story of a nun who, upon seeing the triangle for the first time, commented that it is upside-down.   Once you know your social impact needs you need to think in terms of the changes you need to make, then the emotional needs you need and finally your technical requirements.

It’s easy to focus on the functional and fail to ask why we need to function.  Too many businesses, community and political projects are efficient but not effective.  Motoring down the wrong road at speed is not about making meaningful progress.

What Does Your Market Need?

1. Think about your market and decide which level they primarily work at? For example, a financial adviser works mainly with people at the life changing level.
2. Now think about your business. What level do you major at?  Many marketers offer technical fixes at level 1 and yet their market may need adaptive fixes at level 3.
3. If your business straddles more than one level or needs to, what are the implications for your marketing?

How to Help People Work out What They Want

If your business majors at the functional end, you sell to anyone who rolls up and says they need your product or service.  Perhaps it is not in your interest to find out whether they need it.  That is unless at a later date they decide it does not work and complain.

A lot of online marketing depends on people who do not know what they need, opting for solutions that may be relevant but are not necessary.

Businesses that operate at higher levels are more likely to work out what their customers need.  The customer may not be ready for this but a skilled business owner guides them.  Your challenge is to work out where you are and how crucial to long-term success the way you package your offer is.

Cheaper products are not too crucial.  If someone finds it is not right for them, they can bear the loss.  Expensive products need more care in sales and after-care.  You want customers who use it successfully because your reputation is important.

Many businesses have a mixture of low-end and high-end products and use this business structure to build long-term relationships with their customers.

Following this eighth 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.  Most weeks you receive an email with helpful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.

Your Business Offer of Yourself

Your business offer of  yourself?  When I discussed offers under business purpose and financial purpose, I considered offers of a vision and a service in exchange for money.  Here the offer is of yourself.

Whatever form of coaching you offer, there will be an implicit element that relates to your contribution as a coach and what is Otium for the client.

Lifestyle is never irrelevant and in a future post I shall write about the benefits to the customer of your lifestyle choices.  Your implicit offer is to pay full attention to your customers.  Business owners get few opportunities to talk at length about their business to someone ready to listen.

Paying Attention

The biggest challenge every coach faces is to listen actively.  The aim is to listen the customer into free speech.  To speak freely about their business, their life, whatever preoccupies them is of immense value.

You formulate questions that have never been asked and so move the client’s thinking into a new perspective.  The coach understands they are not an expert in their clients’ lives.  Indeed it is a disadvantage to have prior deep knowledge.  The coach is an expert in asking the questions that deepen the clients’ understanding of their own business or life.

Most people recycle ideas they pick up from elsewhere.  The word education at root means, to draw out. Coaches are educators par excellence because their aim is to free their clients’ speech.  Coaches free clients from the ideas of others so they arrive at a new place no-one has visited before.  Contrast this with the role of the trainer who plants new ideas into their clients’ heads.

With free speech, the speaker discovers

The listener when fresh and not preoccupied, responds to their client with the right questions.  Start with questions prepared in advance and then progress to questions in response to the reality of the clients’ responses.

Spending Time

The coach must be prepared with questions and with time.  Free speech cannot be rushed.  It takes at least 20 minutes to get to the point where someone speaks freely and after that there comes a point where stock is taken, conclusions drawn, action steps decided and agreed.

The coach does not normally take action steps for the client but will have some of their own; the steps to remember and work out how to build on what has gone before.  They need time and space to mull things over, remember key ideas and check the client remembers next time.

Preparation

You can see the important thing is preparation.  The coach turns up prepared and ready to listen, helping the client remember what went before.

Training assumes proven methods to be conveyed, understood and applied.  This can be creative but the bulk of the speaking is with the trainer.  It answers the question: How?  How can I do this?  How can I apply this to my business?

The coach helps the client answer the question: why?  Without a why there is no point in asking: how?  Most of what we do asks: How?  This is why so much does not work.  We literally do not understand what we are doing.

The trainer turns up with a programme and whilst flexible, they know where they are going.  The coach turns up with a few questions and an open mind.  They are ready to listen the client into their own reality.  They cannot do this when preoccupied, rushed, prejudiced, opinionated.

The coach then has an implicit promise to market.  How?  I’ll make some suggestions in my next post in this sequence.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Some Reasons to Always Be Testing

The key to successful marketing is imperfect action.  I subscribe to slow marketing but not so slow you never make any changes.  The key is to slow down thinking but act quickly and decisively.  So, you must always be testing; trying new things.

What Does Testing Mean?

Online marketing is full of opportunities to measure and test.  There are many testing tools available, eg Google Analytics.  Used properly these are helpful tools but not everything benefits from this approach.

The term “always be testing” applies to a more general approach.  Whenever you try something new, you should understand it is something you are testing.  Whatever action you take to get your offers into the world is a test.

This is a positive mindset.  The results of a test has value.  The fact something did not work, you lost money or looked a bit foolish, is all experience you use to improve your next offer.

Marketing methods are iterative, trial and error.  The alternative is to wait until you have a perfect offer and marketing campaign.  You will wait for a long time.   Trial and error is always faster.

Practical Risk Taking

1. Think about your life experience. When have you moved quickly with success?  Was it the success you expected or something new?
2. Think of all the reasons it is a good idea not to take the initiative. Look at them and ask: are these good enough reasons to not take action?
3. Is there anything in your life more important than your fear of taking action?

You and Your Fear

Perhaps the biggest fear coaches have is they are not good enough.  It is a big responsibility, helping someone overcome their fear.  Your fear could reinforce theirs and result in a terrible catastrophe.

Yeah.  So, you think you may be worse than you think you are?  Isn’t it possible you are better than you think you are?  Consider the possibility your problem is not fear so much as selfishness.

You are brilliant and want to keep your brilliance to yourself!  There may be people out there who suffer because you do not offer your services to them.  How can I possibly know that?  There is only one way to find out.

Following this 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.  Most weeks you receive an email with helpful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.