Never Ending Thoughts…

Courtesy: SachinWalia.Net (http://tinyurl.com/3dpyb53)

In one of my previous posts – “Smarketing – The Perfect Blend of Sales And Marketing” – I tried to put a new perspective on the way Sales and Marketing can be done. I provided my justification on why it makes lot of sense for Sales and Marketing efforts to merge and complement each other. However, I realized that even though it all makes sense and looks simple, it’s still really hard to implement in real life. In this article I will try to cover the top three reasons why such an endeavor could fail.

Are Your Sales and Marketing Teams “Doing Each Others’ Job” Or “Helping Each Other Out”?

Take for example an Email Marketing Campaign. When designing an Email Marketing Campaign, there is a lot that the Marketing Team can borrow from Sales. For example adding details of an upcoming promotion in the email, or perhaps using marketing technologies that seamlessly integrate with the company’s Sales CRM solution. However the “design” and “template” of the Email, or the “Marketing Slogan” & “Punch Line” is really something that Marketing Team should be doing. It’s not that a Sales guy cannot come up with a good marketing punch line; but get this: If the sales guys start spending too much time on thinking about marketing slogans and marketing strategies, who is going to “actually sell” the product!

One way out of this is to simply “use common sense”. See where to draw the line. Of course it’s not going to be easy. So use time management tools for the first few months to figure out where exactly the line exists in your company and then use that knowledge to teach your sales and marketing teams about how to effectively work with each other but not work on each others’ tasks.

Are You Merging Your Sales and Marketing Charts?

Another thing to watch out when working on a combined sales and marketing strategy is forgetting that at the end of the day these are two different tasks. At a granular level both these tasks run on different parameters and are measured by different parameters. For example using marketing related parameters to define and monitor your sales process will most probably make it worse and vice-versa.

Is Your Smarketing Effort Turning Into Resource Optimization?

Many people have this misconception that by effectively combining sales and marketing efforts they’ll be able to work on the same goals with lesser staff. That might come out to be true as you stern ahead and put new processes and p0licies in place to make smarketing work, but it definitely should not be your first (or even any) goal. Smarketing helps sales and marketing teams work in coherence. It does not, in any way, aim at delegating tasks between sales and marketing in an effort to optimize resource allocation. As explained earlier too, the last thing that you want to do is get sales work done from marketing folks and marketing work done from sales folks.

Have you tried combining sales and marketing efforts in your company? What was the reaction? What issues have you faced? Feel free to share!

Competition is something that’s considered as “a consumer’s friend and a business’s foe”. Is that really true? It might be true in some cases. However in most cases, my belief is that it’s not true. And here’s my justification:

Competition in business is something  that many business owners are afraid of. After all which businessman wouldn’t want to live in the World where only he/she is the service provider? Wouldn’t that be great? You will own the whole market without the fear of loosing any share! However, if you look at it closely, that’s not really true! In fact competition is something that every business should welcome and consider it as a friend! Say for example Google practically owns the Search Engine Market. Microsoft, although getting sluggish, still practically owns the Operating System Market. And So Forth. How did these companies become as big as they are now? The answer is by carefully looking at the competition and making sure that they remain above it! These companies have to constantly work hard to make sure that they remain at the top.

Competition Helps You Improve Your Product

It’s hard to get feedback from customers regarding how you could improve your current product offering. If customers don’t like your product, most of the times they just leave without providing any feedback. Very few actually give you a hint of where you should be focusing. The best way to solve this problem is to look at your competition. What are the features that your product is missing? What’s that people are finding attractive in your competing product? How can you match that or come up with an even better feature? By carefully analyzing your competition, you can find answers to these important questions.

Competition Helps You Easily Define Your Goals

One of the important aspects of running a business is being able to clearly define short term and long term goals. Having a goal like “becoming market leader in clothing industry” or “gaining 500 million customers” are too abstract and hence difficult to accomplish. Looking at the competition will help you clearly define your goals. For example, if you are in the Pizza Delivery Business and your Competition Delivers Pizzas in 15 minutes, your goal can be “Delivering Pizzas in less than 15 minutes”. Competition helps you identify where your product or service lacks and then helps you define goals in order to fix those gaps.

Competition Helps You Be True To Your Customers and Hence Build Trust

One of the best ways to measure your success is by comparing where you stand against your competitors. If you won’t do this, your customers will! So it’s always a good idea to compare your self against your competition and see where you stand. For example, on our lead generation product – ellipsis dive! – we have created a feature comparison page that gives a clear and measurable matrix of our product offering against our competition. When doing a comparison against the competition there is no harm in showing where you lack. Often there are cases where the customer is not really looking for “those extra features” that your competitor has. By showing a true comparison you will not only build trust, it will help setting the right expectations with your customers regarding what you have to offer.

So I believe competition has a very big role to play in the growth of any business. What do you think?

Every small business starts with a great idea but most of the times a really crappy (if at all) business plan. And there is nothing bad about it. The fact is that in the first two years of your small business, you’ll most probably be just “discovering” your business and will be figuring out the best business model that works. It’s only after one or two years that you’ll have a fairly good idea of how your business is actually going to take shape. This might not be true in every scenario, but is pretty much holds true for technology companies, especially if it’s related to a new concept.

So is a Business Plan absolutely necessary to get VC Funding? I think the answer depends on at what point you are lo0king for funding. One thing is for sure though – you need to have a working prototype and if you have few customers on board then it’s even better! My experience after talking with several VCs has been that it’s not always necessary to have a formal business plan especially when you are at very early stages in your start up. The idea of a business plan is for anyone (not just a VC) to get a quick grasp of what you are trying to do. You don’t have to worry about figuring out if the idea has a potential and what will be the exit strategy etc. All that can be added to the business plan later. In fact VCs have a very good role to play in filling up those parts.

People sometimes get too carried away regarding business plans and not actually spend time on building a prototype and giving life to the concept. Sure if your idea is way too complicated it might not be possible to build a prototype. However, if it is possible, that’s what you should be doing first. I think if you have something great going on and are able to get customers on board, that’s what you need to focus on. A business plan should be a by product of your actual work. You will notice that as your business plan will start taking some shape, you will actually get much more understanding of your business and your vision yourself! However you do need to have “some business” and “some customers” to attract any VC (well… almost any).

So in a nutshell, spend some time actually giving life to your idea and try getting some pilot customers on board. You should worry about a full fledged business plan when you are really ready to take your start up to the next level. Do you agree? What has been your experience?

If you are a budding entrepreneur looking for VC funding, trying to make your brilliant idea into reality, you’d have gone through the frustration of writing and maintaining a business plan. If you haven’t yet, then believe me you will hit that bridge one day; the sooner you do the better it’d be! There’s a reason why VCs give so much importance to a business plan. Well if you ask me, what other document do they have to be convinced that their money is going in the right technology, effort or hands? After looking at over a hundred posts on various VC Funding related forums about what should and what should not go in a business plan, I thought to sum it all up to at least what shouldn’t go in a business plan. I chose this because frankly a good business plan, if you have written or are writing one, you’d know already, is the one that is never complete. It changes (not very drastically though) and it lives for much longer time than many people think. The more material you add to it to help the VC understand the value of what you are doing, the better it is. However there are a few things that you must and must avoid.

Getting too passionate about the “philosophy” of your idea

Many people start with few pages of how they think the world should be. How things should be done and so forth. They tend to explode a very small and cool idea into more of trying to prove as if they have come up with a new way of living. No one wants to blow up the current World and start from scratch. And remember, if you become too much philosophical about your idea, chances are that someone on the other side of the table would tend to disagree with you and that will many time become the reason of your failure to be able to even initiate the next discussion.

Not Backing up the Financial Data

One of the biggest hurdles with a new idea is that there is no way to tell how the market will react, how much will be the revenue in the first year, the second year and so forth. More than that, what about the hidden costs involved in bringing that idea to life. You may spend a year of your own research trying to cover each and every mathematical model to predict all this, but in VC’s eyes all these are nothing but numbers, baseless numbers. Why? Because they are not backed up by any solid survey. So spend enough time doing research in similar fields. Do surveys. Involve some Industry experts and get the to review your results. Yes as you can guess this is going to be the most challenging part of writing your business plan. But remember, this is “the only” part that will actually get you the money you desperately need.

Saying that all other alternate solutions are crap

Another mistake that many entrepreneurs make is getting overly protective about their technology and vision. Remember that the more you try to spin that idea the more you are putting into trouble. VCs need some way to relate your idea with something already existing, even if it’s remotely present. That gives them some way to extrapolate and evaluate the feasibility of your idea. Take an example of a soda bottle opener. There are scores of designs available for this. Is there anything wrong with them? No. Is there any fundamental issue with them? No! So if you come up with another design, what you should be focusing on is how it is going to a) save money for the manufacturers b) will be more likable by the customers and so will sell more and c) nothing else!

So in essence, if you have a great idea, go build a prototype and test the waters first. That itself will make you appreciate the complexities of the problem you are trying to solve and will also help you understand issues and limitations of current solutions in a much more better way. You will not only start appreciating what’s currently available to solve the same problem that you are trying to solve, it will also give you a much better picture of how to tackle the real problems and make your idea actually implementable and actually generate some good profit for both the VC and yourself.

Got questions? Drop in your comments!

We hope that till now, our series has not bored you and taught you a little bit more about what means to do online businesses and become a successful entrepreneur. No one knows for sure what are the qualities that entrepreneurs, and especially online entrepreneurs need to have. However, patience and perseverance are some of the skills that a successful business person needs to have in order to achieve success. Thinking small is not the right attitude. Online entrepreneurs need to expand their activities and assure that their business activities are not implying any major risks.

You need to understand the fact that any business today represents an adventure. It is essential to understand the fact that in order to earn vast amounts of cash on the Internet, you need to come with a new product or service. Look at Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or any other popular service that is now on the Internet. Look at these websites and online services are success stories. Lean anything that you might need to know in your business from these kind of stories. We hope that this series was really interesting for you and we hope that you will continue to read our blog.

Not only your website’s aspect are important. A website needs to be practical too. The aspect of your website counts a lot, but if a client clicks on a link and the page that is showing up is not the right one (or expected one), your business fails. Our business is mostly related to providing lead generation services, but on this blog we discuss miscellaneousservices that might help the company’s clients, readers, web visitors to understand about how online businesses work and how they can be improved.

The improvement of any website needs to be done on a constant basis. As an online entrepreneur you need to be ready to experiment the latest technologies. Don’t be afraid of being creative and try everything that is new or has any kind of potential.

The interesting part is the fact that the Internet is not an ordinary tool anymore. Millions of people are already shopping online. The potential of internet-based businesses is practically infinite. Your website needs to be innovative and offer numerous other features and functionalities that your online competitors have not yet discovered and used. As the title says, do not think small, think BIG.

We will now publish on this blog a series of tips for online entrepreneurs and webmasters who are interested in selling their goods and services in the best way possible. The truth is the fact that most of the current online entrepreneurs do not really know the fact that you need certain skills in order to sell something. Of course, you may choose several lead generation tools that might help you find the clients, but these tools and methods must be correlated with certain skills and the entrepreneurs need to know this in order to fairly succeed in their businesses .

Well, we will talk in this article about the image that the entrepreneur needs to project to the audience in order to turn the visitors into customers. The customers are the persons who buy the goods and services and they are not just “fairly” interested in your businesses as the ordinary visitors. Your websites need to be professional, having an inspiring logo, and also the design must be creative. Let your designers to use their entire passion and imagination when designing your website. However, keep the design simple enough, in order not to confuse the visitor or reader.

The internet offers great opportunities for people who are interested in getting more attention regarding their businesses. Besides being an environment that supports communication, the Internet has shown to be good in bringing people and businesses closer than ever before. We have talked a lot about this subject and about what are the opportunities and advantages of using the Internet in businesses.

It doesn’t really matter if your business is online or offline based. Building and maintaining a good image on the Internet is a pretty difficult engagement that needs a lot of passion and seriousness. This is not a thing for amateurs.

Your online presence will always need to have a logo. A logo is an image that represents your company, something like a trademark that will determine clients and interested people to recognize your brand. It is not important how good you are at what you do in real life, but it is more important to do things in the right manner in order to have the best possible image. The image is the most important asset that any company has at its disposal. There are certain things that even money can’t buy.

The prestige of any company can be built and lost in a minute on the Internet. Every second there are millions of people who share thoughts in one way or another. You will need to use the Internet with a lot of attention to details and care in managing all the issues that might appear.

You may have the best content in the world, or the most efficient products or services available on the market, but this is not enough in order to be successful. Improving marketing performance is a well discussed subject, however, no one really knows what it is all about. This is not just about implementing the best technology, such as marketing automation, lead scoring or nurturing when developing your own marketing campaign. The most important aspect is represented by creating a strategic process and involving people in the process, meaning developing schemes in order to sell products or services. Use referrals and try to determine a person to promote your brand. You need to understand that direct marketing is hard to achieve so the money that you would potentially pay to referrals will represent a small price for its expected results. The power of people’s word has been considered essential even some decades ago when companies let individuals to become corporate representatives in the communities and try to market their products and services.

The human touch may represent an impressive impact over the marketing performance. There are some aspects that cannot be denied. Companies have the potential to benefit from their human resource only by being open minded. This type of perspective is not only practicable in the offline environment. It works in the online environment too. Do not underestimate the employees’ roles in the company. The human resource is as important as the managers believe, however, if a manager has hyper-qualified people, it would be a pity not to profit from their expertise and know-how.

A recent article on mspmentor.com talks about “six ways to generate leads without asking for them”. In this article, we take that discussion further by explaining how those six things can not only improve your business and CRM processes, they can also generate leads as a by-product of your efforts!

1. Play the Field – Get out there and start talking with your customers, prospects, industry, vendor partners and distributors. Today’s technology provides various ways to achieve this. Utilize as much of them as possible. Start with Social Networks, blogs, forums, have quarterly meet-ups with your customers and leads. It’s not just about selling your brand and product but rather listening to your customers and leads. This will help you understand your own limitations as perceived in the eyes of your customers and prospects and hence fix them proactively. In addition, this will help attract more customers.

2. Share Your Successes - Tout your wins and celebrate your accomplishments in every way you can. If you have done something great that has helped someone, don’t shy not to talk about it to others. People trust more if they see that a solution has worked at a similar place. Remember, if you won’t talk about it, no one will! Inculcate social bonding between your current customers and your prospects. Let the prospects talk with the customers (of course on prior approval from the customer).

3. Build Relationships - Don’t be Oz. Lead Generation is not something that you can do like buying an off the shelf toolkit. Yes, lead generation companies have a very big role to play; that is to give you a head start and get you in touch with your prospective buyers. But that is just a start! Remember, lead generation companies generate leads, they don’t generate sales! It is your product and your job to entice the prospect and get him/her to buy your product and service. All the lead generation company can do at best is try to hook you up with the best possible prospect.

4. Make Yourself Available – Don’t shy away from participating in vendor events, news releases, testimonials, success stories, and other press efforts.  Many small companies, especially the ones that believe they have a great idea think that just because they have a great idea customers would automatically come. Guess what? That’s not how the real world runs! If you believe in your product so much, spend some time and effort marketing it via right channels. Get the Industry experts involved and talk about it and give you feedback. This will not only help you shape your product and future goals as a company, it will bring in immense exposure and leads would come automatically!

5. Do Some Marketing – You don’t have to “go big” as they say, but have the basics in play. Ask your peers who have started companies. If you are a budding entrepreneur, don’t give up thinking that a $100 spending on marketing won’t lead you anywhere. You have to start from somewhere. Manage your finances and put the money on marketing that you are comfortable with. Remember that every effort is useless if it’s not implemented. Limit your spending give your best shot. In different lines, imagine if you did have the money to attract very high traffic and leads. Do you think your product has matured enough to get the right feedback? Most probably not. Take it as a positive thing. Starting small means small marketing, means fewer leads, means you would get a chance to try out your product sales on smaller sample set of people and quickly fix issues and glitches before you go big!

6. Give Leads to Get Leads – And last, but certainly not least…share the love. This a very unique way that can help generate leads and also build lot of trust in your product or service. Lead Generation is not just about getting more customers to buy your product but rather it’s a relationship building. If that lead was your brother or sister and if they were facing some other problem that you cannot fix, but you know your friend who can, would you refer your brother or sister to your friend? Obviously! Think of leads and customers the same way. Understand them and help them connect with each other if need be. This will help you create a very unique social bond with your customers that will help get extremely strong leads in future.