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Start, Run & Grow Your Business

The folks at Palo Alto Software have put together a nice collection of tools, services, videos, sample business plans to help you Start, Run, and Grow Your Business.

The package comes in two versions - Standard and Plus. The standard version includes 40 tools and $400 in discounts while the Plus version includes over 45 tools and $500 in discounts. 

You can buy online or find it in your local Target Store.

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Featured Article

Strategy Before Tactics - Networking

If you have been a subscriber for long, no doubt you’ve heard me talk about the Duct Tape Marketing principal of Strategy before Tactics. You may even be sick of hearing me talk about it. I am a big believer that this principal is key to your marketing success. I believe most of the frustration surrounding marketing professional services can be traced back to violating this principal.

This week, I thought I would walk through a specific marketing tactic and show how it is different when it is connected to a strategy. Most professional service providers give networking a try at some point, with varying results, so I’ll use networking as our sample tactic.

When we first begin networking, it can take a great deal of time – I know it did for me. It often becomes a numbers game. We go to as many events as possible, in an effort to meet as many people as possible. Because we are diligent and serious about growing our business, we follow up with the people we met. We get together for coffee or lunch in order to begin building a relationship with them. We can spend an awful lot of time in meetings before we meet a qualified prospect or someone who is willing and able to be a strategic referral partner.

As we become busier, we start looking for ways to be more efficient in our networking activities. When working with my clients, this is where we take a step back and review (or create) their marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is the combination of our Ideal Customer Profile and your Core Difference - the thing(s) that set you apart from everyone else who claims to do what you do.

Why is this important? Because it helps us answer the important questions that must be answered to become more successful in our networking efforts. The first question that always comes up is “Which networking events should I attend?”. We want to attend events that are either attended by people who fit our ideal customer profile or by people who can introduce us our ideal prospects. If we don’t know what they look like, it’s going to be difficult to find them.

As our networking progresses, we also want to meet strategic referral partners. These are people who share our ideal customer profile, but provide different services than we do.  In addition to these two criteria, they must also be able AND willing to introduce us to prospects. Our ideal customer profile tells us who our prospects are, what they value, and how they make decisions. Knowing these things ahead of time makes easier to identify strategic referral partners. Contrast this approach with the typical approach of meeting “people we seem to like and could probably get business from someday”.

Once we identify potential customers and\or strategic referral partners, we need to be prepared to have a structured conversation to determine if they really are the type of folks we are looking to meet. We don’t need a script, but we do need to have objectives and tools that will us accomplish them, when we meet. By building this conversation around our strategy, we can quickly determine if  their is a good fit to continue building a relationship upon.

A well developed marketing strategy will help you, in the words of Stephen Covey, "begin with the end in mind", which will help your marketing tactics be both effecient and effective.

Take care and best of luck in growing your business.

Bill

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