“So, what you’re telling me is, it’s brown and it’s round, right?”  That’s the question I asked the bank manager who was trying to explain to me why they could not provide the service I needed.  He was confused by the question, and wanted to know what I meant.  That is exactly what I hoped to hear because I wanted the opportunity to talk to him about the difference between a customer focused business and a product/service focused business.

No doubt, great businesses are built around a product or service that meets a specific need for some set of people or other businesses.  Focusing on that key product or service is a good thing so long as it meets the need of the market.  That focus can become a barrier, though, if the business does not have the ability to adapt and change in response to changes in the market.

Not many things are more irritating to me than hearing someone tell me they can’t help me because “that’s not the way we do it,” or “that is not our policy.”  It doesn’t really matter if we are talking about services or products in my view.  If the service is possible or the product is otherwise available and the company I am talking to can’t or won’t provide it because it doesn’t match their policy or practice, they have pretty much lost my business.

I asked the bank manager if this story sounds familiar.  You started your business making widgets.  Your widgets are brown and round and they are the best in the industry.  No one else makes brown and round widgets.  You have carved out a solid market share selling your widgets and you project future growth as well.  Everyone thinks this is great until some of your prospects and even some of your customers start to ask if they can have a different widget.  Brown and round is good, but they want a widget that is blue and square.  How will you respond to the request?

Often the response is, “sorry, we don’t do blue and square.  Our widgets are brown and round.”  That kind of focus may seem positive at the time, but it can be deadly to your company’s long term survival.  Don’t get me wrong, a clear mission and focus has real value, and I know a lot of business owners who have lost their way by trying to do too much to please every potential customer who comes along.   I am not recommending you take that approach.  I am suggesting that all too often we make our product or service decisions based on either what we started with or what we believe personally is the best option for our customers.  When we do that, we effectively stop listening to the customers and end up with a company that no longer serves the marketplace well.  That is the road to irrelevance and eventually, the end of your business.

History is filled with the stories of businesses both small and large that have lost their way because they were not prepared to adapt to the needs or demands of their market.  If you want to avoid that fate, here are four ideas to keep you headed in the right direction.

1. Develop a system to collect customer and prospect ideas about how to improve your product or service offerings.
2. Make and enforce a company policy to always challenge your own assumptions about what the company can and should do.
3. Regularly compare your vision and mission statements against the needs of your market.
4. Create tools and systems to identify and test new products and services.  Make sure that this system includes opportunities to repackage or reconfigure the options you already have.

Next time some asks you if you can do it differently, ask yourself, is doing it differently something that can make us better?  Can we serve our market more completely or be more responsive if we change what we offer or how we offer it?  Most important, ask if your systems are designed to be responsive to the market you serve even as that market changes over time.

Need some help developing the systems you need?  Want to know more about how to become the responsive and adaptive company I have been talking about here?  Join me for a my next “Just Results” workshop in Knoxville, TN.  For more information and to register click http://esfi.me/ADF4Nx .  Or, if you prefer, just give me a call at 865-804-1556.  Your success is my passion!

Small business marketing guru John Jantsch says that marketing is all about getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you so that they will choose you to provide the solution to their need.  I got to thinking about this and decided  not only is he right on, but he has identified one of the key barriers that keeps small business owners from achieving true marketing success. It’s all in the way you think about marketing.

Most of the time we approach marketing from the perspective of what we have to sell or offer to the market place.  The result is that we send out messages about our product or service that  focus on what it is, how it works, what makes it better, how our service sets us apart, and so on.   The problem with all of these messages is that they are focused on the product or on you, not on the buyer and his or her needs.

The one key marketing principle so often missed by small business owners is just this; people  buy benefits, not features.  Or,  as another marketing guru said it, you need to sell the sizzle, not the steak.  So, the question is, how does the buyer benefit from what you are selling?  What “pain” do you cure or what  problem do you solve that will be meaningful to them?

Imagine for a minute your relationship with your family doctor.  If you have been seeing that doctor for a while you will already have build a good relationship with him or her and will know that you can trust them to do what is best for you and your family.  Of course, you don’t go to the doctor every day.  You only go when you actually have a need, like when you get sick.  When that happens, you want to know that your visit to the doctor will focus on your illness, your personal health history, your current life circumstances, and so on.  In short, you want that visit to be all about you and how you can get healthy again.  If you don’t  trust your doctor to deliver  against that expectation, you will choose another doctor.

Marketing your small business is much the same thing.  People buy products and services that meet their needs or relieve their pain.  When they shop, they look for providers they know,  like and trust to keep the focus on them and on their needs.  When you learn to make your marketing focus on the prospect instead of the product, then you are on the right track.  When you add to that marketing that lets people get to know, like, and trust you; your results will go through the roof.

Of course, building a great small business marketing program based on these principles is easier said than done.  If you want to know how to get help with this or any small business question, send me a note or give me a call.  I am here to help you succeed.

OK, so you own or operate a small or medium sized business.  Every day you do your best to lead your company and your team to reach the highest levels of success.  Sometimes you hit the nail on the head, sometimes you miss the mark.  No matter what, you are the one who has to keep it all moving and keep it on track. Some owners seem to do this almost effortlessly while others have to work endless hours with Herculean effort to get it all done.  What’s the difference?  Probably lots of things, but at the core, the most successful owners are focused on five things that every business owners need for their business to perform at its peak.

1.  To be financially and operationally sound.   This is the foundation of all business.  If you have your finances in order and your operations systems are strong, your changes of success will be very high indeed.  Making sure that you are strong here means building great systems, creating processes for regular review and validation of your systems, and establishing means to monitor your actual activities and behaviors against those systems.

2.  To be market and relationship savvy.   The foundation of business growth is your ability to establish relationships with the people and/or businesses that make up your market.  To reach the peak of your success, you have to know who it is your are selling to and you have to be able to build those relationships.  That takes both solid systems and great skill.  Build those and you will always be able to grow the business and keep your customers.

3.  To be technologically aware.  Our world is changing at a pace we could not have even imagined 20 0r 30 years ago.  Leading that change is the revolution in communications technology, but technology today can impact every part of the business.  The company that wants to stay relevant and productive today and be prepared for the markets of tomorrow must have a solid system for keeping in touch with technology changes and adapting where needed to take advantage of them.

4.  To be personally and professionally prepared.  Its a life rule: you don’t know what you don’t know.  Business owners who want to reach and then stay at the top of the game understand that they have to have tools and systems to keep growing themselves.  They need learning systems, support systems, and accountability systems to help them grow, achieve, and focus.  Get into a peer group, hire a business coach, work with a mentor, attend workshops, do something to stay on top of your game so that you can lead your team to the top of theirs.

5.  To be community engaged.  Community here means the total community in which your business operates.  This includes your local community, your regional/state community, the national or international communities that you serve.  Engaged means that the business owner is aware of and able to respond to changing circumstances in the community.  It means you have systems to see such things as legislative or regulatory change that will impact your industry or business in either positive or negative ways.  It means that you are aware of needs and interests in the community that you or your company can meet or support to increase awareness and build good will.  It means you keep your head above the clutter and pay attention to what is happening so that you can adapt, adjust and make the right moves to succeed every time.

I first heard many of these ideas when talking with Mark Field from the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce.   Building on these ideas, the Knoxville Chamber was named ACCE Chamber of the Year for 2011. Mark and the team at the chamber spent a lot of time talking with business owners to develop this list and I am in their debt for the ideas.  More to the point here, the Chamber team is living out these very principles in the way they are building their own business and in the way they are serving their client businesses.  Their’s is a powerful example.

Which of these five areas do you need most to focus on for 2012?  What will you do to improve?  When will get it started?  Want to know more about how, contact me at Estrada Strategies or, give Mark Field a call at the Chamber of Commerce.  We share this passion – we want to help every business owner hit their peak in performance this year.

After 13 months in Tampa, Florida, I am happy to say that my family and I are returning full-time to Knoxville.  I went to Tampa to open a new Estrada Strategies business coaching office and to spend some time near family.  It was good to go and we had much success there, but I can’t wait to be home.  There is no place in America quite like East Tennessee.  I loved it when I first saw it in the early 1990s and I have been anxiously waiting for the opportunity to return.

Lord willing, my family and I will be in our new Knoxville home by March.  Until then, I will be working hard every day to meet and serve business owners and their teams.  If you or anyone you know is ready to talk about business coaching, team building, management skills development, or leadership development please let me know.

Thanks to so many of you who hung in there with me during the past year of travel and short schedules.  I appreciate you all more than you know.  Now, look out Knoxville, I am coming home!!

Grow your business, increase your time for yourself and your family, make a difference in your neighborhood or community.  Make 2012 the best year ever!

Create a Vision of 2012 that will lead you and the people around you to achieve great goals.

Vision starts with reality.  Before you define your vision for 2012, take a good, honest look at 2011.  What have you accomplished?  What still needs to be done?  What is best right now about your life, your business, your family?  What needs most to be changed?  Get a clear view of the here and now.  Now that you know where you are, create a vision for 2012 that makes you excited!  Here are three steps to get you going.

First, define your personal vision:

• Imagine yourself free from debt by the end of the year.
• Imagine yourself living in that new house or driving that new car, or both!
• Imagine how you will make a difference to the neighborhood, the community, the marketplace you serve, etc.
• Imagine yourself and your family on that dream vacation you have been thinking about for years.

Its your vision, dream big!

Second, imagine how your business will support the personal vision for the new year.  Set BIG sales and profit goals to challenge yourself and your team to reach higher than ever before. Create a vision in your mind and then on paper of how your personal vision fits in and is supported by your business.

Third, share your vision and your goals with the people who will help you succeed.  Get excited and tell the story with passion.  When you are emotionally invested in the vision the people around you will see and begin to share your passion.  The goals you achieve will be the ones you BELIEVE.  So start believing right now and make 2012 the best year ever!

From me and my family, best wishes for an incredible new year!  May this be the best year ever for each of you.

Kevin Kragenbrink

speaker, author, coach

Branding a small business is a real challenge.  In fact, it may be one of the most difficult and least understood elements of marketing your business, large or small.  In this week’s CEO Rule of the Week my partner, Ruben Estrada, wrote about branding and he prompted me to ask this question.

So, who has the best brand?  It’s an interesting question and I hope I can get some of you to help me find an answer.  If you have a brand “favorite” please share it with me and the other readers.  When you do, try to answer these questions:

1.  What is it about the brand that you really like?
2. What feeling or emotion does the brand create for you?
3. What are the things that make a brand good or bad in your mind?
4. How would you compare your own brand to the “best” brand you identified.

I am excited to read your responses to this question.  I have my own favorite brand and I will be glad to share the brand and my answers to the four questions after I have had the chance to read some of your responses.

By the way, you can check out Ruben’s post on branding at http://esfi.me/rp12hG.

I woke up this morning with this song in my head.  Don’t ask me why, it was just there.  Then it dawned on me.  December is only 2 days away and that means 2011 is rapidly coming to a close.  It seems that time moved faster this year than ever before.  As the year nears its end, I find myself looking back to consider what has happened and looking forward to plan my next steps.

This is part of my annual systems.  I always plan some time in December to review the year and plan for the new year.  Looking back on 2011 I see some great successes and some real struggles as well.  As a business owner I have felt the pain shared by so many as the economy continues a slow recovery.  As a business coach I have been blessed to share in the amazing success of many of my clients and honored to be a part of some incredible small business stories through the year.  With all of those successes and struggles in mind, I am ready to look  ahead and plan for 2012.

I don’t think in terms of New Year’s Resolutions, I do believe in setting goals and making strategic plans.  I just believe that entering the new year without solid plans is just like driving your car on the interstate at 90 miles an hour with your eyes closed.  You might get lucky and survive, but your odds are not good.  I would rather invest some time and effort in planning to make sure I am ready for the things that come my way.

Planning isn’t always easy, so here are three tips to get you started.

1. Set personal goals before you set business goals.  Ask yourself where you would like to be personally at the end of next year.  How much money would you like to have in your savings account?  Do you need to reduce debt?  Is it time to plan for a new car or new house?  Are you planning to have more children?  Do you have a child getting ready for college?  How is your plan for retirement looking?  Don’t forget to think about how much time you want to spend on family, personal and community activities.  Those need to be in the plan too. Put together your personal plan first so that when you plan for the business you will know why the business goals really matter.
2. Set specific business goals that will provide the resources you need to meet your personal goals by the end of the year.  You will want to set goals for gross sales and for net revenue and then make sure you have operational goals for each area of your business to support those goals.
3. Goals need plans to become successes.  Once you have your goals defined, create a 90 day action plan to make sure you are doing the right things to achieve those goals.  Look at each area of your business and ask yourself, what do we need to be doing in the first 3 months of 2012 to make sure that we are on track to meet our goals by end of year.  Then, make sure that you have assigned responsibility for those goals and plans to someone on your team.

I hope this sparks some ideas for you.  Time to get moving and get ready for the new year ahead.  As always, if there is any way we at Estrada Strategies can help you get there, just let me know.  And by the way, it would be great to hear from some of you about your plans for the new year.  Let’s encourage one another to achieve great things in 2012!

Cheers,

Kevin

Building your brand is critical to business success.  We all know it, and we all want to make it happen.  Business owners often spend thousands of dollars on logo design, printing, PR campaigns and other marketing activities to create and promote a brand.  All of this is vital and if you have not invested well in this, then you are missing some critical opportunities.  But is this enough?  I don’t think so.

Do you know this CEO Rule:  ”people have one ear listening to what you say and two eyes focused on what you do.”  Here’s the point – no matter how much time, money, and effort you spend on creating an image and promoting a brand, if your culture does not match up you are not going to be able to live up to the brand you created.  What you say is important, what you do is more important.

I had the opportunity to address this issue with the business owners of the America Outdoors Association at their annual convention last December.  This short video offers some ideas for business owners who want to make sure that their culture supports their brand.

I get stuck sometimes.  I come across obstacles in my business or something unexpected happens in my market and I just don’t know exactly what to do next.  Sound familiar to anyone?

Why do you get stuck?  It can happen to anyone at any time and for many different reasons but there are some common themes at the heart of the problem for most small business owners.  See if any of these are things you have experienced.

• I don’t know what to do.
• I don’t have the resources (time, money, tools, knowledge, staff . . .) to do it.
• I can’t figure out how to get started.
• I’m not sure I have the personal skills to be successful.
• I am afraid.

Getting stuck is something that happens to everyone at some point.  Staying stuck is not something you have to accept.  So the real question is, how do you get un-stuck?  My answer is simple: find someone to help.

I got to see this in action yesterday in a most amazing way.  I attended the CEO Exchange in Knoxville, TN.  CEO Exchange is a forum for business owners who are committed to working on their business and who recognize the value in having other business owners to talk with about business issues, concerns, struggles, and successes.  In other words, it is a small business board of advisors.  It is a fantastic program and the Knoxville group is simply awesome.

Every time we meet, one of the group’s members introduces a business challenge they are currently facing.  Yesterday’s challenge focused on a business owner’s need to increase sales.  This owner was facing a downturn in revenue compared to last year and was faced with several possible ways to change their sales process to increase sales both short term and long term.  He was having a difficult time choosing the right option.  He was stuck.

Once the business owner explained the problem and the solutions, the group brought several solutions to the discussion and I have to believe when we ended the meeting that business owner had some great ideas about how to get unstuck.  No question he still had to make the decision himself and then take action, but having that amazing group of other CEO’s to advise and offer ideas and support made a massive difference.

So who is helping you get unstuck?  Who is on your board of advisors?  If you are not part of a group yet, take action now to find one and get involved.  Want to know more about the CEO Exchange program?  Give me a call or send me an email and I will be glad to discuss it with you.  Better yet, join the CEO Exchange Linked in Group at  http://esfi.me/jatXCp  Join the conversation and let the group help you grow.

Seth Godin said this recently - ”Stuck is a state of mind, and it’s curable.”  What is your next move?

Cheers,

Kevin

This topic has come across my computer pages so many times in the past few weeks I just had to bring it to your attention. I have seen several very good, brief articles on the topic that you might want to read.  The first was written by my friend and business partner, Ruben Estrada.  Ruben asked “Can Your Business Run Without You?” His answer is yes, but only if you have done the work needed to prepare the business for your absence.  In the second article family business expert Jim Stewart explains “The Two Truths Every Business Owner Has to Face.” First, he writes, “you can’t sell a business that isn’t successful,” and second, “no one is immortal.”  Both authors hit the nail on the head.  I want to build on that just a little and offer a perspective that I hope will help many of you find greater success.

My core belief is that succession planning actually starts with success planning.  Jim Stewart’s first rule is the guiding principle.  You can’t sell what is not successful.  But there is more to this than meets the eye.  There are thousands of businesses that are hugely successful in the eyes of their owners, but are still not ready for sale or transfer.  Why?  Because the entire business and its success rests upon the personal production capacity of the owner.  As soon as the owner stops producing, the business stops working.  For most of these business owners, what they have to sell is not really a business, but a job, and few buyers and often even fewer second generation ownership prospects want the job.

I spoke recently with one business owner who faced just this problem.  Their business was strong and thriving, but their exit strategy was failing.  They wanted their daughter to take over the business, but she did not want to work the way her parents had worked day in and day out to keep the business alive.  Her view of business ownership looked more toward passive ownership that allowed her to pursue other interests.  Tragically, the business did not appeal to many potential buyers for much the same reasons.  When they did eventually sell, they had to settle for much less than they had planned because the only true assets they could transfer was the customer list.

What could this business owner have done differently?  What can you do to avoid this same fate?  Here are three tips that will help you turn your job into a business you can transfer or sell when the time is right.  And oh by the way, these same tips will lay a foundation for you to keep the business as passive income if you decide not to sell after all.

1.  Build systems to guide your team in every area of the business. Systems are the key to successfully engage other people in the conduct of your business.  Without them, people will often fall short of your expectations because they won’t know exactly what your expectations are or how to meet them in their work.  Remember this core rule of systems, “anything that resides above your shoulders in not a system.  This means if you have not yet written the system down in a way that you could hand it off to someone else, your not done making the system.

2.  Create team building systems and process to find and keep the right people in the right jobs. If I could collect a dime for every time a business owner has told me their biggest struggle was finding and keeping the right people, I am sure I could retire today.  It is one of the most common complaints business owners have.  At its hart, this complaint exposes two problems.  First, most small business owners don’t know how to put all the tools in place to make sure they are hiring well.  Second, most small business owners don’t know how to monitor and motivate their team for success.  If you want to have your business ready to hand off to the next owner/leader, you need to have people in place who know what to do, how to do it, and most important how to make sure the owner knows that it is getting done!

3.  Let go! This is the most important thing I can tell you about creating value in your business.  It is also the most difficult thing for most business owners to do.  I ask my clients all the time to consider three questions:  a.  What are you doing?  b.  Why are you doing it?  c.  Who else on your team should be doing this?  The point is to challenge our built in tendency to keep control of critical functions in the business because we are afraid that others will not live up to our expectations or that the business will fail if we are not personally doing that work.  I know from personal experience how hard it is to let go of that control.  I also know how important it is to make this happen.

Of course, the secret to letting go is finding success in the first two tips I offered.  If you have good systems in place for every function of the business, and if your systems include great tools and process for recruiting, training, motivating and monitoring the success of your team, then letting go is actually easy.  You learn to let go because you discover you can trust others to succeed if you have given them all the tools they need.

Why don’t most business owners have a succession plan or exit strategy in place?  Fear, over confidence, lack of awareness, and uncertainty probably all play some role.  At the center though is one simple consideration.  Most small business owners don’t know how to make the changes needed in themselves or in the business to make the exit strategy or succession work.  For this, you need to find and engage the services of someone who can guide you through the process.  A business coach, a mentor, an adviser, or even a board of directors can all be part of the process.  Whatever you do, don’t make the critical mistake of doing nothing and finding out too late that your opportunities are now gone.

If you have read through this far, I would love to hear from you about your plans for exit or succession.  Please join the conversation and let us know how you are getting it done or, what obstacles are keeping you from making it work.