At Crossroads Communications, LLC (the “official” name of my business, although you probably found me by searching my name; it’s just the way the Google search bounces) we essentially are a message company. We discover the stories of our clients and share them, whether through PR, marketing, advertising, social media, content-creation on blogs, videos, etc. The tools are less important than the focus on the messages. Before we can find and authentically help brands, businesses, and places tell their story, we have to really, and I mean really, get to know them. You can’t effectively market what you don’t understand.

I use a set of questions to help get that process started. They’ve evolved over the past several years, but not as much as some might think… because they are focused on the business goals and objectives rather than the tactics. I hear often that just going through the process of defining the business and its profit centers, challenges, goals and marketplace in the way that we do is valuable to business owners. I also hear that answering the questions we ask is hard work. Until we have a solid idea of where your business IS, why that’s true, and WHERE you want to go… how will we all agree we’ve reached “there?”

While I won’t share the whole set of questions here (I do have to feed my family, after all), I am going to share a few of them with you, and then share some additional thoughts in upcoming blog posts. I hope they’ll be valuable conversation starters for you and your business supporters, partners, or even that little voice in your head who pushes back whenever you want to go try something new.

Defining the Business

Current Challenges

1. What is the biggest obstacle, in your opinion, to purchasing one of your top profit-generating services for most of your potential customers? When you hear “No…” what is the “why?”
2. How much time must you typically invest face to face and behind the scenes to close a sale? Please list face to face separately from behind the scenes. How much of this time is spent explaining what you do, the benefits of using you or of having the service, and generally in educating your prospects?

Looking forward

1. Thinking about the future, what would you like to be different about your business in one year? In three years? What kinds of clients do you want to be serving? What services do you want to sell them?
2. Considering your profit-generating activities of today, what do you see changing, growing, fading over the next 1 to 3 years in those activities? Do you see an increasing demand for what currently drives your profit or a declining demand? Why?
3. If the demand for today’s profit-driving activities may decline or remain flat, what other activities or products are within or adjacent to your current expertise and offerings which might be increasing in demand over the next 3 years?

Did anything above make you stop and think for a minute about your business? How do you keep your business “on-track”?

Three Simple Things.

The question I get asked the most (after, “Can I just pick your brain?” anyway) isn’t about marketing or PR or economic development. It’s, “How do I get going? How do I know if this idea is a good one?” and its asked by people who want to launch a business. Usually, they’ve thought about it so much, and for so long, that they can’t see clearly anymore. Or at least, they’re afraid they aren’t seeing clearly and therefore can’t tell a solid business from a shaky one.

I’m not primarily a business coach, but I’ve worked with lots of start ups and routinely help businesses owners wrestle with these type of questions. My Twitter bio says,”Passionate about strategy before tactics,” and this process – this digging deep and knowing what drives a business’ profit, people, points of connection; where they are and where they need to be in the market; what their stories are – must be the bedrock of successful integrated marketing and PR strategy. Businesses who’ve been around a while can have a hard time with these questions, much less entrepreneurs. And the fear generated by not knowing the answers, but thinking you ought to know the answers, is what keeps many great business ideas just ideas.

Here’s the truth: Bigger businesses are usually already spending money in some way on marketing and sales. Sometimes lots of money, and often with disappointing results. We walk them through the hard questions before we ask them to spend any other dollars on any other marketing because throwing good money after bad makes no sense. And they have some data we can analyze, some history we can use. Startups don’t. Sometimes they have lots of data about the marketplace, or it can be found. Sometimes each individual member of the team has some history in the field… but there’s often not one day of history of the new business, being a business, doing its thing, to analyze.

And it’s OK. Here are the three questions I tell my start-up clients they need to ask and answer to help figure out whether the idea is solid:

1. What Are You Selling?
   List three (only three) actual products or services you can sell (not offer… sell means people will buy them). “PR services”is not an acceptable answer. “Helping business with less than 500 employees tell their story through public relations, using both traditional and new media channels” is much better. Be as specific as you can. You may have many more ideas than just three. Choose three… focusing is part of the process. In one recent meeting, a new client was sharing the preliminary plans for a business catering to the busiest of people, Moms. The laundry list of things the target market “might want” was long. All of the items were viable, but packaging and successfully marketing them all was not. By focusing on only three basic ideas to start, the picture of just which Moms would be most interested (and most likely to trade dollars for products) emerged. If you have trouble coming up with three specific products or services you can package and sell, perhaps you need to invest a more time in the thinking-about-a-business phase before you go forward.
2. Who Will Buy It?
   Not “who is your target market”…. again, the key word here is BUY. List three buyers. Be as specific here as you can, too. Rather than “Busy Moms,” try “Busy Moms with more than one child where the oldest is less than 7 years old and the household income is $40,000 or above.” And perhaps your second buyer is a busy Mom with only one child, but higher income, or a mom who works full time outside the home and has children who are middle school or younger at home. If you have trouble coming up with three specific buyers, revisit your What Are You Selling? list. Perhaps you need to rethink the products if the marketplace is limited.
3. How Can I Tell My Story?
   Now that you now what you’re selling and who needs it and has the money to buy it… this question is about how do you reach them. Where, exactly, do busy moms with two small children and at least $40,000 in income get their news? Information? Entertainment? Where do they hang out physically and online? What venues, events, channels, ideas are a good fit for your product? Come up with three (yes, three) ways you can reach your buyers. If you have trouble with this, you may need to refine your buyer specifics a bit and then try again. Yes, this is what we do for a living, and we can help. But most about-to-be-business-owners want to be a part of this process because they are passionate about their idea. Thinking about how to connect buyers and products is something they enjoy.

Working through these questions doesn’t mean you’ve got a business plan (but you’ve got a good many basics answered) or that you’ll have a successful business (we haven’t touched on the money needed to stake and launch, or market, or treating your business as a business, etc.) but it does mean you probably have a solid business idea. So what are you waiting for? Get on out there and do your thing!

(Photo credit)

Planning for Recovery?

Some economic indicators are finally showing movement in the positive direction. As I posted last week, I am seeing this in my business, as well. I don’t typically see it until clients (and potential clients) begin to see it in their businesses and respond by thinking about growth, expansion, driving new business, etc. I’m not an economist (and aren’t we all glad for that!) but I can definitively say the businesses I’m dealing with on a daily basis have new energy and purpose in their planning.

And that’s all good, right? Yes… unless you’re a business who spent the past two years curled up in a figurative fetal position, thinking only of short-term survival. If that’s the case, your recovery process is going to be much harder. Here are some issues I’m seeing:

1. Shrunken Customer Base > While most people engaged in less discretionary spending during the depression, they didn’t stop thinking about what they’d like to buy, have, or do during that time. But those businesses who stopped reminding their hiatus customers of their ability to fulfill those desires have lost significant top-of-mind ground as people begin to slowly open up their wallets again.

2. Reduced Ability to Serve > Layoffs and reductions have been part of the fabric of business for the past 18 months. Companies who’ve cut too deeply or dropped service or product lines may struggle as customers return. Training new quality people takes time, and training customers to love a different product or service does, too.

3. Bunker Mentality > Just as some of the shifts in consumer behavior are likely to be long-lasting, business owners are struggling with planning for growth again. Too long in the mind set of survival can limit big-picture thinking, visionary ideas and innovation. Some businesses are finding it hard to take risks again, and while understandable, this bunker mentality will stifle growth.

What to do?

Every business is different, but the key to starting a recovery plan is to, well… START. Don’t assume you can just go back to doing what you did before “all this” and prosperity will return. If you’re waiting for the right time to begin marketing to your customers, or planning for the next season’s offerings, or considering your hiring needs… you’re already behind.

Examine your business: How much of your previous customer base is still with you? At what level? What are they buying now and why? Do they have new needs/desires? Where is your profit? Where do you excel? Where can you grow? What challenges are you facing from a staffing, resource and marketing perspective?

The depth and breadth of the depression caught many businesses off guard, mine included. Don’t let the recovery surprise you, too.

flickr image credit juhansonin