Author: jeanneleez

Best Practices for Strategic Communications

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Many companies suffer from what I call “siloing” or the encapsulating of departments as walled gardens where none shall enter. Because no company can effectively execute on any business plan without interdepartmental dependencies, this “siloing effect” predictably kills any effective communication across the company, which in turn means poor execution. Milestones are missed, target dates for launches pass without even a whimper from your development team, great people quit because they don’t feel their voice is heard or ideas shared are negatively received… I’m sure many readers will have experienced this situation at some company in their career. Many CEOs like to be the single point of contact for all departments, but if your CEO doesn’t communicate effectively, your company will not grow to its potential.

Establishing a Rhythm of Communications

It doesn’t matter what size company you are. It doesn’t matter whether you are a five-person law firm or a 10,000 employee manufacturing company, all organizations need an established rhythm of communications that facilitates discussion, debate, innovation and feedback in order to remain relevant. If your company is working the same way it did five, ten years ago, odds are that you have not grown much if you are spending all your time working in the business instead of on it.

A basic structure should be:

  1. Daily: 10-minute standup meetings devoted to the focus of today’s work, escalations that need to be addressed, reassignments, new ideas, etc., are discussed, then followed up with additional meetings with the team(s) required to meet objectives.
  2. Weekly: 60- to 90-minute meetings focused on activity, the status of current projects, new ideas, potential threats, etc. These meetings should include all stakeholders of the projects whenever possible, inviting feedback, ideas, and suggestions for changes in processes in order to realign stalled projects or to create new ones.
  3. Monthly: Half-day meeting focused on the one major initiative that was executed last month, and planning of the current monthly initiative. Focusing the entire organization (or department) on one milestone per month will enable your team members to understand the current situation, their role in executing it, and discuss how to address any delays or substantive changes in the industry that affect your goals.
  4. Quarterly: Full-day meeting devoted to company priorities, processes and learning. This meeting should consist of a post mortem of what went well last quarter and how to continue expanding and leveraging that activity as well addressing any delays and finding solutions to issues that came up during the quarter. This is also the right time to plan your next quarter, identifying what projects to focus on as a leadership team, and how to communicate those projects downward through the company.
  5. Quarterly: Town hall company-wide update on all initiatives from the past quarter and plans for the current quarter. With a Q&A session, a brave CEO can answer all the questions your staff may have to address the changes you are making and enabling them to air grievances. Chances are, if one person is saying it, ten people were thinking it. It is important to address the rumor mill before it gets out of hand. If your employees only get their information from hanging around the water cooler or the coffee machine, you are not communicating effectively and your company as a whole will suffer.
  6. Annually: Two-day summit focused on strategy, budget development, market research and learning. This would typically include all department heads and focus exclusively on where opportunities lie in your industry, reports on what your competitors are doing, and discuss distribution of where you need to invest your profits in the coming year. Leadership development can also be scheduled as part of these summits. Many people at the top of the food chain tend to become isolated and while development of others is typically part of their roles, they are no longer given any type of leadership development themselves. Great leaders will do this on their own, even if the company does not support it. Understanding how much money you have in your budget requires discussion on the expected return on investment. Obviously, the budget for finance will be less than that of your marketing department, however finance will not have to defend their spending as vociferously as marketing will.
  7. 1:1 Interviews: Individual meetings with all members of your team to connect, coach, share ideas and learn. These should be done as often as possible, but at least once a year. These should not be performance appraisals but meetings where you ask probing questions to learn what the company can do better, what you can do better, and learn how you can help them become better at what they do.

This may seem like a lot of meetings, but communication is the only way to break down these walled gardens and getting everyone working together to achieve clear, actionable goals. With better communication, workers feel their ideas are worth listening to, that they are empowered to improve and innovate. Leaders are better able to understand the whole company and not focused solely on their own job or their department. They will be better prepared to answer questions from their teams. They will have been included in the decision making, which in turn, gives them insight into why the decisions the business makes are made.

Leaders who don’t have that type of vision, that think that not sharing knowledge secures their position, should be replaced. Leaders like that are insecure, don’t have the confidence in their own abilities and are quick to blame others. Leaders who take responsibility, think about succession, and develop their team members to take on more responsibility, ensure their own seamless and rapid movement upwards.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

What to Include in Your Business Plan

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Some ventures don’t need a business plan, In fact, most just need an idea and a person willing to execute on that plan. It probably doesn’t require a lot of money to start and you simply begin by selling to friends, neighbors, and other who learn about your product or service through those friends or neighbors. That’s completely fine.

Business plans are required when you have a more ambitious goal to pursue such as seeking funding, influencing a particular audience, or to develop growth strategies. Business plans should be organic and revisited on a regular basis. Many external pressures such as new technology, new competitors, political or regulatory changes may require changing your methodology, pivoting, or radically reorganizing or consolidating.

Business Plans typically have the same components written for different audiences. Here are some of the common sections typically found in a startup business plan:

Summary and Objectives

This first section details background information, company description, general industry data, measurable goals that you want to achieve, and long-term objectives.

The Big Idea:

What is the problem you are solving for consumers or businesses? How dire is the situation? What is the potential market of people that would want to buy your product/service? How much would they be willing to pay? What is your value proposition and how does it differ from existing competition? Are you working on a disruptive technology that will change the industry?

Go-to-Market Launch Strategy and Marketing Plan:

Provide market data and an outline for how you will launch, market and sell your product/service. This exercise enables you to deeply understand your target audience and your plans for branding and distribution. Defend your plan with supporting numbers and statistics from verifiable sources, not just from some random web site on the internet. Also include separate, detailed sections on customer characteristics, and distinctive product features in your marketing strategy.

SWOT Analysis:

I know this is super old school, but you have to know WHO is already doing WHAT in your market and how your business will differ from them. Why should potential clients convert from their existing vendors? How will you minimize that risk? By creating a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, you can maximize what you do best and minimize the risk on what you’re competing with.

Your Management Team:

A description of management positions (existing and planned) and professional advisors provides an organized look at key roles, the experience individuals bring to the business, and important consultants or mentors. You can also include resumes for key employees and startup owners if the business plan is supporting a loan application or investor pitch.

Financial Plan/Forecast:

Estimate expenses as accurately as possible and ensure you’ve added in costs for Plan B’s (because nothing works on schedule and that slick developer just ran off with a pile of money and you have nothing to show for it). Create estimates through thorough research, and your expenses should include both Capital Expense (CAPEX) and Operating Expenses (OPEX). A comprehensive financial plan can include profit and loss projections and other budget forecasts in order to provide a clear picture of your startup’s financial standing and future outlook. This is your business model. Know how you will drive revenue.

Two words investors love are “diversified” and “recurring” when it comes to income streams.

This section is concerned with the fixed CAPEX startup costs, along with OPEX and projected revenues. Some people like to show one year, others three; some provide worst, typical and best case scenarios for year one. You may want to include details on location requirements, production methods, legal issues (such as licenses or insurance requirements), staffing information, vendor needs, and other operational elements.

Where You Are Today:

Seed investors will be very happy just hearing an idea that hasn’t gotten beyond the idea stage. Institutional investors will expect there to be a fully fledged product/service with real clients and revenue. The section should include where you are today. Who’s on board, who’s working on what, do you have a minimally viable product or service (MVP)? Have you performed and focus groups or managed to generate a BETA testing group of potential clients providing you with feedback on your MVP? Do you already have paying customers?

As part of your business plan, generate a forecast of where you expect to be and how you will measure that success. Will it be the number of employees by year end? Top line revenue or profit targets? Number of locations? This is the part of the business plan that needs to be revisited regularly to ensure you are on track or meet to see what else you can do to meet those targets on schedule.

Pitching Takes Practice:

Business plans don’t always require you to go outside and pitch for money, but having a solid business plan makes the pitching process easier. What you’ll need to do is create a simple, easy to follow twenty minute presentation based on your plan and how much money it will take to get you to the next level in your plan.

It’s not easy to get up in the front of the room and ask people for money. Especially a lot of money. It can be quite daunting to present your idea to a field of people typing on their phones, looking at their watches and updating their social media on their laptop while you’re up there. Start by pitching to family and friends and get their advice. Then, if you have people who can are in the business who can play “devil’s advocate”, you can practice dealing with difficult people and questions. Anticipate all the hardball questions and have good, well thought out answers. You probably still won’t get the money from the first few real pitches you do, but you never know. The more pitches you do, the better you will get.

Guy Kawasaki, a serial entrepreneur, evangelist and investor has some great tips for building a pitch. In fact, he also features an infographic which really shows how succinct and focused you should be in pitching your business plan. I highly advise any one looking to pitch to simplify, simplify, simplify. You can always provide a booklet with additional details about your project for those at the meeting that provides a lot more detail about your market, financials, forecasts, team bios, etc.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

Five Ways to Kickstart Your Business Development Engine

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Whatever your startup does, you should already have a diversified and hopefully recurring revenue plan in place. I used to work for the second largest search engine company in the world and now, they’ve been sold so many times, no one remembers their name anymore. I was always trying to discuss revenue and they kept responding with, “Just focus on the eyeballs and the money will come.” It didn’t.

You want your business development efforts to yield the best results, so they should always be there, running in the background, keeping up the interest in your services so you always have a pipeline of work and the chance to really grow your startup the way you want, taking the work you can do well, and focus on your long term vision.

Five Tips to Build Your Sales Funnel

#1: Have a Drink with Someone

Business development isn’t something you can do alone. The best tips, intelligence and advice – as well as the work – will always come from someone else. So if you’re always head down at your desk just grinding away, you’re not going to get anywhere. You need to get out from behind the screen and speak to people to remind them you exist.

So pick up your phone now and ask someone if they’d like to go for a coffee (or something stronger). It could be a client, a referrer or even a colleague. Don’t sell, just shoot the breeze with them and let them know about the kind of work you’re doing. But, more importantly, ask them about themselves. What are they doing, what issues are they facing, just learn more about them and their company. (Document this later. If you have CRM software, upload any info you get from meeting with them, no matter how inconsequential you may think it is at the time. You never know what will prove useful. I once had a meeting with a person whose boss just would not purchase our stuff. No matter the pitch, promotion, or type of outreach, she just didn’t seem to like our company and I could never find out the reason. The person I met with mentioned she was pregnant and I noted that down in my CRM software. Ninth months later, my sales person had a contract in hand from that company because we pitched them while she was out on maternity leave.)

After you’ve had your first informal chat, promptly organize others so that you’re having coffee with someone at least every couple of weeks. Even if you’re “not in sales”, every person managing a team or department in your company should be having these short meetings with people that could be buyers, employees, or suppliers. They’re all important to your startup ecosystem.

You’ll find it soon becomes second nature and that in no time at all you’ll have a consistent process in place.

#2: Maintain Consistent Client Feedback

In one company I worked at, we had quarterly telephone interviews with every single one of our clients and they rated us on a one to ten scale on ten different questions. Okay, fair enough. That gives you some understanding of where you stand and if you’re in danger of losing that client. I recommend three open-ended questions that will give you a much better of your understanding of your relationship with your client:

  • What is it about our company that keeps you as our client? This tells you what you are doing right and you can them ramp up those aspects of your service to ensure client satisfaction increases across the board. If they say something like price, that you’re cheaper than your competition, that’s a red flag. Dig more. Find out if that’s the only reason. There may be significant issues that they aren’t telling you about that you could improve without it affecting your Return on Investment (ROI).
  • If a colleague were looking for a company that does X, what would you tell them about us? This can give you clues about what you are doing right or what you are failing at doing for this client. I was once asked for recommendations for architects since I had recently built out two office spaces. I hated, I mean really hated, the first architect. He was disorganized, he showed up for our initial meeting two hours late; sometimes not showing up at all to progress meetings and sending his lower level staff that weren’t architects or designers. But he lowballed the bid and my CEO accepted it. We nearly lost our own business due to the delays and cost overruns. The second office space was built by my first pick who worked with us personally and stayed under budget and we opened two weeks early. I told my colleague everything. I unloaded all the cheating, the safety issues, the poor construction, everything. In fact, this bad architect would just show up with potential clients to show them our office. One time, I found out about it and I walked straight up to the group and said, “Excuse me, but I’m the CSO here. Are you planning on hiring this company?” When they replied yes, I showed them all the faults, while the architect tried to get them to leave, and THEN I took them over to where the other architect had done the work. I told them that the first architect had forced us to use his metal fabrication company to make the cubicles at 18,000 rupees a piece, while the second company outsourced the furnishings for less than 8,000 rupees each (we had over 600 cubicles). The architect never came back. Do you think my colleagued ever called that guy? Not in a million years. He went straight to the other one.
  • If we doubled our prices, what would we have to do to ensure you continued to do business with us? People will be pretty straightforward with this one. All the responses will feature aspects of your business that you not have realized could be hurting you or keeping you from upselling to that particular client. Perhaps its your payment terms, maybe it’s how quickly you deliver, it could be a paperwork vs. online automated system, it could be your customer service – the list is endless and a great way to find ideas from existing customers on how to improve and find ways to increase sales. It could create new business services or products to add as part of your offering.

#3: Get Your Next Blog Out

If your startup is ever going to be considered as an expert in your field, you need to publish. It’s never been easier to publish in the entirety of history. And yet you’d be surprised how few companies blog regularly. Fewer still do it well.

To make this easier, ask your management for volunteers. Some will love writing and posting updates. Set aside a few hours yourself once a month and bang out a state of the company blog post. If you don’t know what to write about think of a question you keep getting asked or something interesting that’s happened in your field. Tell people why it matters and what they need to know about it and then get it published on your website.

Make a schedule for the managers and meet once a month to discuss topics for them to write about. Your HR department can create posts about openings or how to prepare for an interview. Your sales department can post about a promotion happening that month. Gamify it. The blog post with the most reads gets a free drink, coffee, dinner, whatever.

You may also want to invest in hiring a social media professional, even part time, to create social media corporate pages, and update those pages with links to the blog posts and other pages of your web site, answer posts to the pages and drive traffic back to your web site and your sales department.

#4: Update Your Decks

When was the last time you did a marketing audit to see what the sales department is using for business development? Does your logo need a freshening up? What about your pitch decks, web site and sales literature you leave behind with the client? What about the quotation, scope of work or proposal that goes out to a prospect? Are they in line with your branding guidelines? You have branding guidelines, don’t you? Don’t you?

Do a full review and see what needs to be redone. Anything that even remotely touches a client, prospect, or potential employee should align with your brand. I’ve said enough about the importance of quality brand management here.

#5: Recheck Your Financial Situation

Not entirely sure that audits are required, but in some industries and in certain countries they are required every year. Public companies have to announce their earnings regularly. You’re not there yet, but you need to keep an eye on your Profit and Loss (P&L) statement on a regular basis. I recently heard a story about a new employee who had just joined her organization and she couldn’t get a company laptop due to “cash flow issues”. Later, she found out why. Their biggest customer had not been invoiced in six months. She recouped $2MM just by making sure the invoices went out and were paid on time.

So pull up the spreadsheet of who you’ve billed and what you’ve billed for and see if there are any surprises. Is there something that’s been particularly profitable you weren’t previously aware of? Or perhaps there’s something that you’ve invested a lot of time in that hasn’t been profitable at all? Perhaps some sales people aren’t justifying their salaries, let alone any commission? I once had a promotion going in the office supply industry and we would give the sales person five cents for each roll of Scotch tape they sold. We paid 28 cents per roll. He was selling them for 20 cents each. And he expected his five cents per roll. Seriously. This is a true story. We lost a bundle on that guy and he had to go.

Business development always works best when it’s based on data. So whatever you find, use these numbers to inform the next steps you’ll take. Work out how you’re going to find more of that stuff that pays the bills and keeps the lights on, and how you can streamline and cut costs. There is nothing worse than losing sleep trying to figure out how you’re going to make payroll. It’s an entrepreneur’s worst nightmare.

Business development is a tough job. I’ve known companies where the best sales people make more than the CEO and rightly so. Their work pays everyone’s salaries. But you’ll find that once you’ve taken the first step and created an organization where everyone participates in business development in one way or another, the rest comes more easily and if you keep going and keep up the hustle, in no time at all, you’ll be prettiest girl at the dance and everyone will want to be working with you.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

How to Make a Viral Video

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"How to Make Videos Go Viral" - ibuildcompanies.com by Jeanne Heydecker

Actually, there is no real way to know what will or will not go viral on social media. Many people have their recipes for making a viral video, go all in with a celebrity(ies) or influencer(s), or try anything to see what works. You can try to quantify any data to see if you can create your own formula for guaranteeing success, but there isn’t one. You never know what the next parachuting from space, gold/blue dress controversy or creepy dancing baby video is going to be.

There have been some studies that indicate that people click on links due to two impulses: “curiosity” and “controversy”. That’s why you’ll see a lot of clickbait sites entitling their posts with words like “you’ll never guess what happened next…” People are curious and they will want to know the end of the story. Titles to content using controversy are typically political advertising and NGOs where the use of it can dramatically increase donations. Here are the steps I go through before starting to produce the video.

Understand Your Market and Your Competition

What do they tend to share? Where are they on the internet in substantial quantities? Who are their key influencers on each platform? Are there editors at industry blogs that you should know? Setup company accounts and follow them. Copy down their hashtags. Make a spreadsheet to list their content, its format and schedule. Keep the data for later. Do the same with your competition.

Have the research reviewed by everyone on your creative team, then start brainstorming ideas. Write everything down. Throw candy at people. Sugar keeps people filled with energy. Make it a game. Write them all down, put them in a fishbowl and read each one out. Pick a few of the best and separate into teams to see if they can generate a quick synopsis of what the video would look like start-to-end. Keep everything open: no budget restrictions, hiring only the best, as much time as you need…

Then you need some gestation time. Creatives need time to let their brains do their thing. Come back and do the same thing again three days later or after a weekend if the first meeting did not produce desired results. Once you’ve come up with something exciting, and I mean, you really should feel excited about the idea, it’s time to go about beginning the writing process.

Using the data you already scored through market research, make sure that the concept is unique (at least in your industry and doing it in yours would make it funnier, more poignant, etc.). After examining your budget, decide what format to use. Will it be studio produced or something office-made with a hand-held? Can you afford a fully immersive 3-D virtual reality experience or just a video using internally-made or stock images that move with text and a voiceover? Once you have your plan, finalize your script but stay flexible.

Create the Best Video You Can Based on “Time, Money Budget: Pick 2”

Produce the best video you can based on what you can afford today with the personnel and tools available. The more users enjoy the video, the more views, shares, and attention it will draw. If your video feels commercial enough, you can add a short end credit with links to social media. Don’t forget to focus on what you put in your thumbnail and Use as a Title – CRITICAL TO CLICK-THROUGHS! Add a custom transcript with additional keywords, content as part of the description, hashtags, and upload that video to Youtube. Then post to all the other platforms. There are ways of automating this.

Get as Many Views as Possible in the First 48 Hours

The first 48 hours is the only period when your video has a chance of going viral. You should already have been active on your social profile accounts prior to dropping the video. You want to be uploading content regularly, adding followers, and networking with influencers and editors of on- and off-line media/publications throughout the time spent on production. Email everyone you know and have been adding to your email lists since the start. Ask them to share. Get on social media and ask your friends/followers to share it. Getting featured on a big industry blog is the quickest way to go viral, but tough to secure. See if those editors might be interested in a guest post. Advertising can almost be as quick but far more expensive. Worth it? Could very well be. Getting enough views to hit the tipping point is the key to success.

You Need 50,000 to 75,000 Views to Be Taken Seriously

Your video should start going viral at this point because the algorithms start taking notice of quickly rising videos. Once you hit around 50,000 views, you’ll start ending up in Honors categories (which are basically categories) and the more categories the better to get your thumbnail on each user’s home page. Likes and comments are both important to eventually earning Most Popular status. You can buy likes and comments on a variety of platforms as well. Expensive? Can be. Focus on the ones where your markets are. You may already see your competition there so be prepared to beat their numbers.

Most Popular and Most Viewed are what you really want for your video to land on the Videos home page; Youtube’s home page is even more rarified.

Going Viral Starts at 150,000 to 200,000 Views

This means you are going to be on the first page of all categories, hashtags, etc. for the platform, meaning that a lot of casual browsers of the platform will see you featured somewhere in their feed or home page and this is where “going viral” actually happens. If your thumbnail and title do their jobs, these casual browsers will click on it to watch. If they like it, they may like, share, comment or any combination of the three. This will have a snowball effect, making your video actually go viral. People will love you. Your coworkers will respect your work. Bravo.

After All That Hard Work

If people don’t like it, it will get downvoted and the 48th hour will pass with no appreciable benefit for all the work you put in. Think about why you did this in the first place. What was the point? Does your video HAVE to go viral to be a success? Did the right people see it? Did they contact you? Did you make a sale? Only then will you following the right metric that makes sense to any business in any industry.

Four Simple Options for Hacking Your Company’s Growth

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Growing your business can come through many forms. Some companies require individuals to secure leads, close deals and generate revenue for the firm. The number of people generating that revenue could be a benchmark that a company uses to identify growth. Other companies might measure number of clients. Some firms focus on market share, particularly in FMCG and other consumer-based industries. But most companies focus on top line revenue. Top line revenue is your gross profit before subtracting your overhead and expenses. Net profit (after subtracting your costs) can be manipulated in several ways, especially by cutting costs and streamlining processes to move more product within a specified timeframe, thereby improving efficiency.

If your organization has stalled or revenues are falling, you have a number of choices in how to face the future. You can simply not deal with it and either retire or find another job and let somebody else deal with it. But the best method is to get all of your A players into a room and start dealing with the issue. One methodology that allows companies to create potential growth strategies is the Product/Market Expansion Grid.

Product-Market Expansion Grid - ibuildcompanies.com by Jeanne Heydecker

This matrix clearly identifies the options available for growing your organization. NOTE: Clean your house first. This does not address any internal issues that may be causing your growth challenges such as out-of-date equipment, poor execution or quality, poor employee management or morale, etc. Those issues should be clearly identified and addressed prior to moving towards this process.

To get back to the Matrix, it will help your leaders create growth strategies and compare them to the risk involved. As you move from “Existing” quadrants to “New” quadrants your risk will be higher. The four strategies are:

Market Penetration

This quadrant focuses on selling more of your existing products or services to existing markets. To increase market share, you may have to cut pricing or add more features, improve distribution or customer service, or rejuvenate your brand and messaging to attract new clients or develop new sales channels. You may have to streamline your production process to build more products at a time at a lower cost. Upselling to existing customers other products you already produce/other services you offer can be an ideal way to minimize risk while increasing growth. This may require additional training for your sales team or creating new sales collateral that encompasses all of your offerings.

Market Development

This quadrant focuses on selling more of your existing products to new markets. This can be as simple as looking at who else you can sell to. For example, you may be a shoelace manufacturer and you typically sell to large retail companies and department stores. Diversify your market to include shoe manufacturers and standalone shoe retail outlets, thereby adding a more diverse revenue stream. Leaders should use their creativity to brainstorm where other markets may be.

Adding new sales channels requires new messaging, value propositions and collateral. For example, if a telecom company has been traditionally selling to companies that sell phone systems, they may want to create new collateral to attract network systems integrators that show how easily that potential customer base can integrate the telecom company’s products into their suite of services.

Market Development may also mean expansion into other locations, either going national or global. This has higher risk, but it can be minimized by acquiring companies already established in those areas or partnering with established companies that offer symbiotic products or services that could also sell your products and services to their existing customers. It’s a total win-win when negotiated and managed effectively.

Product Development

This quadrant focuses on identifying a new problem your existing clients have that you may be able to solve for them. This may require focus groups or surveys to have conversations with your customers about your current offerings and what they also need. One process that I found extremely powerful was having a feedback loop between sales, marketing and R&D so that whenever clients complained about an issue or wanted features we did not have, those calls were logged and every quarter we revisited all the feature requests and complaints as a team, prioritized them and selected the most critical issues to be worked on in the coming months. With a built-in feedback loop between marketing, sales and R&D, we were able to more quickly respond to our customers and offer new solutions more quickly than our competitors.

Diversification

This quadrant focuses on understanding your market, your company’s core competencies, and brainstorming new products and/or services that are related or completely unrelated to your current offering. There are many options when looking at diversification:

  • Related Diversification is entering a new market with a new product that is related to your current offering. For example, a milk producer may decide to produce flavored milk, like chocolate, banana, and strawberry to their product offering. The change is simple but expands their market by simply adding flavorings. Not much new equipment is required, a few labeling design changes, but same form factors, so the risk is fairly minimal. Consumers who trust your regular milk would be more willing to try your new flavored milks because there is not much of a change for the consumer.
  • Unrelated Diversification is entering a new market with a new product that is completely unrelated to your current offering. If the same milk producer decided to make yogurt or cheese, the risk would be higher. New machinery would be required. New staff would have to be trained to operate the new machinery. New packaging would have to be developed. Logistics may require different strategies to getting these new products on the shelves. Consumers used to your milk may not see the equity in the brand the same way you do and may be less willing to try your new products when they already trust another brand’s cheese or yogurt.
  • Vertical Diversification is swallowing up part of your supply chain and eliminating outside vendors. For this milk producer, they may look at the feed supply or perhaps the delivery process. They could start growing their own feed and selling it to new customers. They could decide to invest in drone or home delivery and e-commerce to bring milk to your door instead of relying on shelf space in retail stores.

I said earlier that you should get all of your A players in a room to discuss the situation. These employees should come from all levels and departments within your firm. Develop a formal process to quickly brainstorm a number of ideas in each of these quadrants and then prioritize them for further evaluation. Set up small teams to present on each idea and their recommendation on whether to move forward with it, scrap it, or reserve it for a later date. Select the best of the ideas and move forward by investing in a small prototype or Minimally Viable Product (MVP) to test with your customer base.

Generally speaking, all companies should do this on a regular basis and most don’t. They are typically surprised when they suddenly find themselves irrelevant. There’s a saying by Harry Emerson Fosdick who said,

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”

Don’t be the interrupted; be the disruptor.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

Suggestions for Working with Passive Aggressive Teams

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Working cross culturally can be both hilarious and incredibly frustrating. One of the best examples is the way those from Asia interact with each other and how they work with foreigners. I’m typically a hands off manager, empowering my people to do the best work they can while I remove obstacles to their great work. However, passive aggression can rear its ugly head due to many reasons, but more than anything else, I sincerely believe it is because people here are very polite and won’t say no or refuse to accept your business even if they don’t know what you need done.

There is a word for it in India: “juugaad”, which loosely translates to getting something done by any means necessary, and Indians in general are proud of this concept. I once worked at a company that had no products to sell. They had decent schematics of telecom equipment and we used their CAD drawings to build out a set of sales collateral for non-existent equipment, including all the features and attributes of the equipment specified by our tech team. When I asked about this, my boss said, “If we sell it, then we will figure out how to build it.”

Another tech team in a different firm was presented with a Marketing Requirements document that detailed the workings of an interactive widget we wanted to create. I met with the tech lead and discussed the project and asked him when it would be completed so that Marketing could begin to promote it and plan for its launch. He said, “Friday”. This was my first position here in India, so I expected a completed, tested project delivered, ready to launch that coming Friday. When Friday arrived, I contacted the lead to ask where the widget was, and he responded with, “We have a few questions before we start.” START? It was supposed to be done by then.

So here’s my tips for working with passive aggressive coworkers:

  1. Nail down EXACT dates and times for project milestones. When someone says Friday, I now know to ask, “Which Friday? This Friday? What time on Friday?” (This is now a joke to my coworkers who now expect this response from me.) You may need to send friendly reminder emails or visit them occasionally, gently reminding them of the deadlines and asking if they need any assistance or clarification in order to meet the date. You may want to see the work in progress to be sure they’re building to your specifications.
  2. Have team stakeholders sign each date/time they’ve agreed to. People are loathe to put a signature to any commitment and if you have several tasks that require dependencies on other departments delivering their portions of the work to be completed, you can be in project management hell very quickly as milestones slip due to the inaction or poor work delivered by other departments. You can refer to these signed documents when confronting them about missing commitments.
  3. Get Executive/Client buy-in to project milestones. If your reporting head/client does not support your program and and does not understand and agree to the amount of time you anticipate the project will take to execute, you will not have managed the expectations of senior management as best as you could. Ask for feedback on anything they consider unreasonable or if they have suggestions on how to shorten the cycle. The more they know and understand about the project and its complexities, along with your concerns where there may be delays, keeping a timely rhythm of communications with senior management will help escalate issues arising from other departments you are depending on to launch.
  4. Establish consequences for project delays. Make sure everyone understands the consequences. If there are no consequences for not meeting deadlines, and no recognition for actually doing so, what’s the point? I had a marketing assistant who was responsible for ensuring all equipment going to a show left Mumbai for Sao Paulo 120 days before the show dates. She didn’t. We had to pay $32,000 in fees to get our shipment out of customs and shipped to the show after the deadlines. Were there any consequences for losing $32,000 due to lack of planning properly? No. If there are no consequences for shoddy work sent at the last minute (what I call the “send and pray” method) or not completing it at all, this sends a very visible message that competency is not required.
  5. Ping team leaders regularly for status updates. Make them accountable. If people want to be promoted and actually get it, it should also come with more responsibility and accountability. Create a regular rhythm of communications with all team leaders to ensure all components of your project are coming together. Hold them accountable for the dates and milestones and be sure they are aware of the consequences of not working together to get the project completed. They become visible to others when they are held accountable. One thing I’ve found helpful is to ask to see the project so far, even if it’s still just a wire frame or an outline (this is a great way to see how far the project ACTUALLY is and not just what the team reports). The look on their faces, when you ask this question, is priceless when they haven’t accomplished a thing. It’s funny in the telling later, but not in the moment when you realize the project is off-track.
  6. If working across multiple shifts or time zones, meet regularly on all shift times so all involved staff are inconvenienced equally. It’s just fair. You shouldn’t be the only one to have to get up at 3 AM for a regularly scheduled conference call. When setting meetings, check everyone’s schedule to find to most convenient times for everyone involved.
  7. ENFORCE consequences and provide positive feedback for best performing staff. If people are allowed to do poor work or no work, there must be a visible consequence for this. If people have done great work, that needs to be made even more visible. When people come up to you congratulating you on the success, be sure to push it back to those on your team that made it happen. If you do this often, more people will love working with you.
  8. Celebrate all major project milestones and report back to team stakeholders, executives and clients. When this project finally launches, hopefully it will be a resounding success. During the process, especially a long process, keep encouraging your team as they make progress. A little pat on the back or a hand-written note can make all the difference to someone.

It’s probably the toughest aspect of management (and relationships!) — dealing with passive aggressive people. Finding the “bait” that makes a passive aggressive person or team produce takes experimentation, but once you find it, either fear, coercion, baked goods, kudos, whatever… you’ll be much more successful in getting your projects accomplished.

Do you have tips on dealing with passive aggression? Please share in the comments below.

Best Practices for Managing Workers Working from Home

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"How to Manage Remote Workers” - ibuildcompanies.com by Jeanne Heydecker

Since COVID-19 erupted across the world, the new normal has been work-from-home, which has not always gone well. Managing workers working from home can be quite challenging, especially for those employees who don’t have dedicated spaces in which to work uninterrupted, poor internet access, or don’t handle change well without significant support. Here are a few ways to successfully create a new normal where your employees feel smart, valued and important.

Provide Several Communication Options

There are plenty of software products available for video calls, from Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Zoom. If internet connections can’t handle video, any chat product will work. With some employees who don’t need a lot of oversight, they may be able to simply email you a daily or weekly report if that works for both of you. If your company doesn’t already have the software in place, there are free or cheap versions available that will do the job. Just check with IT if security is important before using these tools.

Regularly Scheduled Check-in Meetings

Because people working at home may have distractions (like children or pets), it may be advisable to conduct these meetings daily to follow up on what was accomplished yesterday and assist each worker on what they should focus on completing that day. Depending on the team size and cross functional interaction required, you may have several 1:1 meetings as well as two or three group meetings each day. Sounds like a lot, but these regularly scheduled calls provide a forum where employees can be heard and express their challenges.

Rules of Engagement

Managers should set expectations and agendas for most meetings so that employees can prepare. For example, for daily check-ins, the agenda would basically what did you complete yesterday, what are you doing today, plus what else do you need to discuss. For group meetings, limit the number of speakers to whomever leads each team with and additional line items for any other business, concerns, etc.

Also try to keep an hour open during your day when employees can contact you to discuss anything they need your advice on, and emphasize that you are always available for urgent issues by whatever tool works best for everyone, typically a chat/messaging program.

Maintain and Share Documents Online

Keep shared documents online where remote employees can access and contribute or update when they are available. You may want to allow all team members to announce when they’ve finished a task, or you may want to assign, approve, and update the formal task list yourself, while enabling all other team members to view where the stalls are, and when they’re up to begin work, keeping all shared documents organized in separate folders based on project or initiative. Adding upload capabilities for all or certain members of the team will also enable everyone to have the latest reported information at their fingertips.

Remote Social Interaction Opportunities

Providing opportunities for remote social interaction will facilitate better morale and communication, creating a more solid team that feels they can depend upon each other. Online games, such as team trivia, treasure hunts, and other online team-building activities can work wonders when people can feel isolated from their coworkers and experiencing a loss of informal interaction which often comes with working in an office together. Celebrate people’s birthdays and work anniversaries as well.

Celebrate holidays through a BYOB event, someone plays some mood music over the background and perhaps you play holiday-themed games. We once had an online “Secret Santa” amongst all the expats working globally for a telecom group. Everyone had to create a digital product, e.g., an applet, photograph, music, video, etc. to share with another employee.

Working remotely does not mean that you lose your “authentic self” in amongst the talking heads on a screen. It may mean opening up more and modeling positive and proactive behaviours. It may also be disclosing some fears which you may think others are dealing with. Ask for suggestions on how everyone is coping with “X”, be it partners, kids, parents, or being away from all those previously mentioned.

Once life goes back to the “New Normal”, there will still be offices and there will still be online teams. Experience in both settings will provide you with insight to create even more spectacular achievements and give you an upper edge when increasing your worth to your organization or exploring new opportunities.

How to Keep Your Company from Failing – Money

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Most people will say that money is typically the reason why a startup failed, but that doesn’t take into consideration all the reasons why companies fail. In this series, we have discussed inexperienced teams, lack of influential connections, weak execution, and lack of vision. All these may be the cause or a contributing factor as to why a startup failed.

Lack of money is a nightmare. I know the sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make the next payroll. I remember negotiating with vendors to give me another month to pay them. I’ve been there, and no one wants to be in that position.

Funders also capitalize on struggling startups. I recently overheard a Silicon Vally investor talking to a colleague telling him that he was interested in funding a certain startup. The gent responded, “I’m gonna wait six months until he runs out of runway to give him a term sheet.” In this way, he can get more from the startup because he may be the only one who’s willing to fund them at that time, when the owner is desperate to keep the lights on.

Practicing good financial planning from Day One is critical. You don’t need a fancy office. You don’t need Aeron chairs. I started up a company with just my co-founder and we had used furniture and the office was behind a newspaper company on the second floor of a furniture company. Each one of us handled separate parts of the business: I handled customer servicing, web design and development, and marketing. My partner handled finances and sales. When we finally started hiring, we moved to another space and people had plywood and saw horses for desks and they faced each other on both sides. They complained about splinters. We gave them sandpaper. We got the cheapest rent and had to deal with rats chewing our wires. Keeping costs down is critical.

Don’t hire until you absolutely have to. Use freelancers for specific short term projects, call in favors, barter services (free web site for setting up our network, free web site to handle a H1B visa, etc.), and if legal in your area, call colleges for unpaid interns you can mentor and do some of the grunt work. Masters programs are ideal since they can put their newly learned theory into practice. I’ve done all of these things to reduce costs.

Get credit cards for anyone doing sales/marketing and pay them off each month to establish a credit history. Establish a line of credit as soon as your company is showing revenues quarter-on-quarter (how many will depend on where you are). Then hustle. Get on the phone, cold call businesses in your target market and introduce yourself. Establish whether they need your solution. Find the decision maker in the company and get to work selling. The more revenue you make and the less money you spend, the longer your runway will be and will keep you from giving away more than you bargained for to a potential funder when you have no money left to keep it going.

Money will always be a problem in a small company, especially one with no recurring sales to existing customers or diversified business models with consistent revenue, where one may be strong during down cycles of another. Consider these options as you start evaluating your idea. You may come up with something that needs nothing more than seed money to get started and then revenue does all the rest.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

How to Keep Your Company from Failing – Lack of Connections

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Startup teams all too often underestimate the importance of building their own network of influential connections. Connections to influential users, influential industry groups, influential analysts, influential media, and influential business alliances. Or they hope to find investors and mentors that provide those connections once they think they are ready. In reality it’s just doesn’t work that way.

Networking is the best possible way to connect with other entrepreneurs and potential hires, along with media and investors. You should start as soon as you begin discussing your idea, not later. You may want to start networking while you’re still working for someone else. Be prepared with an elevator pitch that tells enough about you (what industry, what problem your solution solves) but not enough to give your idea away. That’s NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) territory. You may not have to recreate the wheel. There may be someone in the room whose been there, done that and would be happy to introduce you to some of the people they work with.

When connecting with people, invite them out for a coffee. Ask them for advice. Tell them your idea and ask them what they think about it. If they want more detail, ensure you have an NDA with you or tell them that you can’t discuss your intellectual property until an NDA is signed. Some unscrupulous people can steal your idea at this stage and since they have the connections, they can get to market very quickly compared to you.

Let’s say the guy (it’s usually a guy) is interested and can set up a few meetings for you. He may even accompany you, which is ideal. You may not have a pitch ready, but typically that is still okay at this time. What you’re looking for is expertise. An understanding of where the gaps are: in your team, your solution, your funding, your marketing, your sales forecast, how and when to launch, target audiences. You will probably need an advisory board or board of directors at some point. You don’t know how much you don’t know until you start talking to people who do.

Find a few of these types of people through your networking. Invite them for coffee at the event itself if you can. Get business cards and connect with them on Angelist and LinkedIn. Follow up with them regularly. They may not be the funders of your project, but they may know the people who will.

Effective networking is the way to make those connections in business that can create value for your company. They may not be traditional networking events: it may be at the golf course, or the gym. I know someone who pitched his idea to the CEO of a company in the mens toilet.

The price of a cup of coffee can yield immense results with the right connection. Keep doing it until you find the right set of people that helps you take your company to the next level.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.

How to Keep Your Company from Failing – Weak Execution

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I once worked for a company in the telecom industry whose Director of Sales was highly reactive to prospects and would promise them every feature possible. He would then meet with the CEO who had accepted a large investment from the Sales Director’s father to start the company. Whenever the Sales Director came in with new feature requests, he felt compelled to add them to the product requirements prior to launching our first product. We were selling integrated inboxes for small businesses, along with a suite of other modules you could add on, like IVR, Inbound Call Management, etc. We were ramping up a new sales channel – computer network installers – who could make more money selling these phone related services as well.

Every time a requirements document changes, we in the business call it “scope creep”. A simple project may need to be entirely re-written due to a new feature. There were several times, after the CTO was called in that shouting ensued, doors were slammed and I hoped against hope that the CTO wouldn’t quit. I had learned a lot from him and because he took a chance on me, he taught me everything I know about user interface experience and design.

This company had a small sales force and they weren’t making sales with our traditional offerings to trunkers who sold, installed and customized PBX switches and telephones. We were running out of money quickly. We were doing a few trade shows and I managed to get the CTO up speaking about our new technology, and also executed a press tour once we had our minimally viable integrated inbox for fax, emails and voicemails. It was very successful. So successful that even before we sold a single box, Nokia bought the company for USD $56MM, put the tech in a closet and took all of our tech staff with them. Everyone else was let go.

This case shows a failure to execute, and we were very lucky that Nokia showed up when they did. Most failed startups just can’t execute in a timely manner. Some show a huge lack of judgment. They work too hard on product features, and too little with the market. They build too many “nice to have” features into a product while other similar products are launching in their industry, so they did not launch in time and lost market share before they even had a chance. Maybe they did not work hard enough to build a user/customer base. Didn’t manage expenditures well enough. Failed to identify opportunities, failed to build strategic connections…

Good companies can be strong in their tech, but weak in their marketing. Good companies can be strong in their marketing, yet weak in their tech. Great companies are strong at both. We were lucky we were strong in the marketing department because without it, the company would have disappeared, not because of the CTO, but because the Sales Director was delaying the project over and over. He was a weak salesperson because he could not manage customer expectations. If it wasn’t for marketing opening new sales channels, getting out to speak at trade shows and doing that press tour with the first iteration of our basic product, Nokia never would have come knocking with a check in hand.

Do you want to outsource this type of work so that you can focus on higher level activities? Subscribe today to learn more about building your business and receive a free PDF “Process Plan for Creating Your Own Innovation Program”. Feel free to email us to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.