I had noted in an earlier Blog that the key to marketing is to make someone unhappy, it is then the job of sales to them make them happy, that's how the two work together.- -So what are the tools of unhappiness?
Try F.U.D.the acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt!
If someone is happy with what they have you clearly aren't going to sell them a replacement.Only when you break the relationship between what they have and how they feel about it can you expect to get new brain space, and brain space is what you need to convert them into a customer.
So F, U, and D are three great pry-bars or tools you can use to loosen up some brain-space.All of them start out as probes, until one hits a chink in the armor and gets some traction you have nothing, you just slide around on the outside of someone's "satisfaction shield".
You must probe with constant FUD questions to elicit response that will start someone thinking.Do this and in most cases a door will open.Is this marketing or selling? Maybe it's both.
Anyway you must do a series of probative adverts, always asking questions that center around 'what makes you think you are happy'.Maybe you communicate a message that shows why they should be unhappy or happier.Maybe you do positioning statements or explanations that are really questions in disguise.Statements like 'new' or 'better' or the like are really questions, they ask 'why don't you have the newest or the best?'.
Ever consider that the opening of any sales pitch is a marketing message or proposition?You bet it is!Every opening sales pitch is essentially an advertisement.Even if the target says no and walks way, just how is that different than having looked at an ad in a magazine or on TV and passed on it?It only becomes a sales pitch when some brain-space opens up and an idea goes in that can feed the unhappiness and start a change to occur.
In most ways technology marketing and sales is the easiest.Technology offers an addictive solution.Whatever the customer has, it is on the way to being out of date, not enough, too slow; whatever was good about it and made the customer happy is fading away.Technology is about change and change means something better is coming.It is only a matter of time.
What does this mean to the entrepreneur? - - It means two things.One is that the range for new ventures is almost unending and virtually unlimited, it is as wide as the scope of human endeavors and ideas.The second is that you only need to change one thing to make it new; only one problem has to be solved to tap a market.Your business will be based on what makessomeone unhappy. It really is simple after all.
At the Bootstrap Growth Subgroup meeting Monday, NeelanChoksi delivered an inspiring discussion for business leaders about characteristics and decision-making strategies when their company is in growth. Having founded a company with two partners, taken it through growth and then joining the company that acquired it, coupled with his C-level employment in another start-up and moving them through their first round of funding, Neelan has a special perspective and experience, coming from different sides.
He outlined three characteristics that are present when a business is in the Growth stage. The leader:
starts saying "no" to business
is more concerned about marketing and less about sales
begins leveraging people and resources
To begin with, the Bootstrap leader finds themselves starting to say "no" to certain business that comes along. This essentially is when we find that we are being more choosy about what business we're taking. Our visual shift also moves from focusing on the sales to the marketing we're doing. What's more, we start thinking about what we can outsource and delegate. With all these characteristics, our focus is changing from what it was during the Valley of Death (VoD).
In making good decisions, particularly regarding the opportunities to pursue, the leader of a business in the Growth stage is well-served with these three strategies:
make decisions quickly and listen to your gut
employ stages and gates to protect the business
limit the amount of time researching and deliberating
In these strategies, we keep the business swiftly moving and keep the momentum of growth, take advantage of opportunities that can generate greater success and take small risks toward that success without sinking too many resources into the unproven.
A mind shift necessarily occurs for the leader when the company is in growth. As our focus shifts to building the company, there is a "letting go" of some old strategies and practices that must occur. However, as we go forward, we need to keep some of what we were doing because these are the features that indeed brought us to our success. The process is akin to adding a new ingredient to the mix rather than discarding old ones.
The kernels of wisdom shared at this meeting were vast, but all generally held the themes that there is a right action for the right time. Additionally, what we learn from the experiences we gain taking our business through Ideation, Valley of Death, and Growth can teach and prepare us to make bigger, better, and more efficient decisions leading to greater success for ourselves and our business.
Nancy Schillis the founder of Executive Intelligent Coaching, a company that works alongside business leaders and their teams in the growth stage of business to achieve the vision, strengthen influence and employ an inspiring culture. She can be reached at nschill AT executiveintelligentcoaching DOT com
