The Best Strategy to Know Your Business

The best way to test your business plan and to learn is to talk to customers.  Customer interviews are about exploring what you don't know you don't know.  

Avoid surveys or focus groups since surveys assume you know the right questions to ask and as a results surveys assume you know the right answers too. The main problem with Focus groups is that they quickly evolve into "group thinking".

When approaching customers make sure:

• To understand the customer problem before you pitch a solution

• Don't ask customers what they want, measure what they do, validate what they say with what they do.

• Stick to your script, you need consistency to instill some method to the process

• Narrow down and filter your customers as you progress

• Face to face interviews will be more accurate

• Start with people you know who fit your target customer profile -  it helps you practice.

• Take someone along with you, it helps you to keep more objective

• Pick a neutral location, more casual atmosphere

• Ask for sufficient time, it provides right time expectations without rushing

• Don't pay or provide incentives to prospects, it could skew the results

• Avoid recording interviews, it makes people self-aware and biased

• Document results immediately after the interview while your thought is still fresh. 

• Prepare yourself to interview around 50 people in order to get an accurate picture.

Now let's get to work; it's time to tart developing a strategy and put all this into practice.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

Cheers!

Nurture Your Business… Start Small, Grow Tall.

I have always been curious about the way large monopolies such as Apple, Google, or Amazon came to be. It seems as though every business owner looks at these corporate giants through narrowed eyes and a hand stroking their chin, wondering what exactly the secret is to build such a fruitful business.

With this question in mind, I started reading some books to gather clues for the winning traits of these companies and stumbled upon a book that effectively taught me how to grow a business.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, wrote a hint for a successful startup in his book Zero to One: “The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors” (54). The whole idea behind this quotation is essentially to be patient and start small. The way to become a monopoly is to start off by dominating a small market of your target audience. You have to find your niche and cater to only that niche exceptionally well. Having a few dedicated customers is better than have many uninterested customers.

Once you’ve captured your small but strong audience, you can now begin to expand your market. The trick about growing your market, however, is to move to the closest thing to the market you already have. You just want to dip your toes in territory that isn’t too far from your own. This kind of growth is slow but steady. If your business is good at what it does, this should work well.

So, if your goal is to become a large corporation, be sure to start with a strong grip on just a handful of loyal people, and when you’re ready, work your way to a bigger slice of the market.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

Tailoring Your Company for Long-Term Success

There have been plenty of companies that hit their peak too soon and fall miserably to the bottom of the market, where they lay sad and forgotten. These companies have one thing in common: they couldn’t see the future. Of course, this is ridiculous; no one can see the future. I don’t mean the “That’s So Raven” kind of future seeing, but I mean the calculation and anticipation of the company’s long-term success.

Some businesses are so obsessed with week-to-week survival that they bury themselves in short-term statistics that tell then nothing about the future of their company. They want to know how many clicks their website got, or how many users signed up this week, or how many products were sold. These are all wonderful statistics to have, but you need to start thinking about the long-term.

There are a few things you can check to measure the durability of your business. After all, what a company needs is for it to grow and last a long time, as opposed to tripping over the finish line that came miles too soon. One thing to check (with an impartial perspective) is the quality and irreplaceability of your product. If you sell something that tons of other businesses sell, too, then most of your profits will be wasted away on the competition. To escape that problem, your product needs to be 10 times better than anyone else’s. Products that are entirely new and nearly impossible for someone else to duplicate are key to creating successful monopolies.

The second thing you can check is potential for popularity. Being smart about how you spread your product can help determine future success. This is kind of common sense, but now that the times are a’ changing, you should focus on the modern aspects of today’s marketing schemes. If everyone is online, don’t spend more money on poster-ads than on web banners.

Third thing: does your business have the room for growth? Peter Thiel, author of zero to one, once wrote, “A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design” (51). If a business wasn’t built to become huge, then it will never grow bigger than its design allows.

The last thing is branding. The image of your business should be attractive and modern. However, keep in mind that you could have the best branding in the world, but your business would not launch unless your product is amazing, too.

Overall, there is no set way to make your business a roaring monopoly. The only thing business owners can do is keep learning and finding new ways to lead their company to success.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca