Tag Archives: Category

How Do You Quantify Niche Market Potential? Five Suggestions

Situation: A CEO’s company focuses on a specialized niche market. One of his challenges is that there is little public or chamber of commerce information available on the size and characteristics of their market. How do you quantify niche market potential?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Define the product / service very specifically. To narrow and refine estimates of market size look for the low hanging fruit.
    • What are the high growth segments of the target market?
    • What are the high growth industries of the target market?
  • To determine whether the market opportunity is $100M or $500M:
    • Define the company’s market more clearly – particularly the initial beachhead market where there is the potential to gain the most traction.
    • Recognize that there may be two markets: a high end market – relatively low gross sales dollars but high margins, and a low end mass market – relatively high gross sales but low margins.
  • Contact the originators of available market data to get their assumptions, comparative data and any other findings that may not be published but are beneficial.
  • Work closely with customers to build category / industry revenue estimates.
    • Segment the most active customers and increase the company’s share of their purchases.
    • Develop web site transaction capabilities to offer the company’s line as an adjunct to customers’ web sales.
    • Establish a Customer Council or Round Table to better understand the market dynamics and to differentiate the company within the market.
  • Sell the product and services’ features and benefits to the C-level, not just to engineers.
    • Sell to the CEO / CFO focusing on increasing shareholder wealth.
    • Determine a return rate for conversion to the company’s technology.
    • Reach out to professional segments that will naturally see value in the company’s process.
    • Seek an exclusive relationship with an industry leader to quickly launch new products.

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How Do You Balance Scalable Growth with Quality Service? Five Thoughts

Situation: A CEO wants to determine whether and to what extent his company’s service model is scalable. He wants to determine whether it is possible to add additional clients by adjusting the ratio of clients to staff. The tricky part is determining whether the company can increase the client to staff ratio while minimizing the impact on client service. This is critical because client service is the company’s “secret sauce”. How do you balance scalable growth with quality service?

  • Start by profiling the current client base from high to low maintenance. For example, set up a grid with axes of sophistication and frequency of desired contact as follows:
    • A – unsophisticated and desire frequent contact
    • B – sophisticated and desire frequent contact
    • C – unsophisticated and desire infrequent contact
    • D – sophisticated and desire infrequent contact
  • Analyze the client base and assign each current or new client to category A, B, C or D.
  • Distribute client relationships so that no member of the team has too many A’s. This may make it possible to assign more clients to each staff member.
  • Also consider matching staff to client type. Some staff may be better working with unsophisticated clients, while others are more adept with sophisticated clients.
  • As this model is developed and built, try different alternatives for matching staff to clients. This can help to identify additional alternatives for achieving the company’s objective.

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How Do You Control Insurance Expense? Four Options

Situation: A CEO has seen the expense of employee benefits, particularly the cost of health insurance, grow higher than the inflation rate in recent years. There are no indications that this will be reduced. Employees appreciate their benefits, and in the current environment the CEO is hesitant to reduce them. What alternatives are available? How do you control insurance expense?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • To control rises in healthcare benefit costs, consider offering high deductible health insurance combined with company contributions to HSA Accounts. This combination can be less than current health coverage and may reduce the cost inflation of these benefits.
  • Another alternative is to raise the deductible on medical insurance provided but cover the deductible differential for employees.
  • Consider a benefits administrator to assist in putting together a benefits package to reduce costs. There are many alternatives available.
  • Another big expense is Workers’ Comp (WC). The group shared strategies to control WC expense. Investigate those that apply to the company’s business model.
    • Make sure that the company is coded in the proper category – if not the company may be paying a higher rate than required;
    • Develop a proactive company safety policy, with documentation – this can gain discounts from some insurers;
    • Industry or trade associations have developed ADR components for association members to help control costs;
    • Investigate eliminating the medical coverage component on auto insurance for company cars that employees use to drive home. This may already be covered by WC;
    • Shop insurance providers for WC coverage – some will quote more competitive rates to get the company’s business;
    • Challenge the amount of WC reserves that are required for outstanding WC cases – the insurers may be assuming an excessive reserve to cover contingencies and charging the company for this excess;
    • If the company’s insurer is maintaining an employee on the WC list pending resolution of the claim for an excessive period, push them to resolve the case quickly;
    • Eliminate optional employees (e.g., officers) from WC coverage.

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How Do You Generate High Quality Leads? Six Suggestions

Situation: A CEO wants the sales and marketing ream to generate higher quality leads. The company already uses referrals and networking. The CEO wants to know how other companies qualify leads before passing them on to sales. How do you generate high quality leads?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The first step in a good lead generation campaign is to have a clear idea of who your customers and prospects are. Who are the current customers? How do you categorize them? Can you divide them into distinct groups?
  • Once you have divided your customers into distinct groups, develop a detailed profile for each group, concentrating on the most promising groups first. The profile will include demographics, potential purchase value, buying behavior, social media usage and preferred social media channels. Envision each group. Create a picture that represents the buyer and their personality profile. This is an important exercise because it shifts your focus from customers as lists to customers as people, and will boost the effectiveness of both your marketing and sales efforts.
  • After you develop customer profiles, rank them in terms of revenue potential to the company. Pre-qualify the high end buyer, not the low end. Target the decision-makers who can make a significant purchase.
  • Within each profile group, establish your own criteria for a good customer. Create questions which will help you to identify this customer.
  • Through social media and email campaigns, develop brief questionnaires and simple contests to help you to identify potential customers based on the criteria which you have developed. Develop a more detailed questionnaire turn leads into prospects.
    • Once a lead responds to your social media or email outreach have a sales person go through the detailed questionnaire with the lead prior to scheduling or going out on a face-to-face call.
    • You want to have well-qualified people making these calls.

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How Do You Shift From Regional to National Operations? Three Foci

Situation: A company has a network of regional offices, operating under loose oversight from the home office. Increasingly, large customers are asking for national service agreements, but the company struggles to coordinate uniform national service delivery. How do you shift from independent regional to coordinated national operations?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you want to act like a national company, then organize like a national company. Create a national account office which will take the lead in negotiating national contracts. That office will then coordinate with the regional offices to assure that service delivery occurs according to contract.
    • As the national office is built, it will be important for them to understand how service delivery may vary between states because of differences in state regulations. This will require a manager who is experienced and knowledgeable in your field. This may be a promising current regional manager or an outside individual from your industry.
    • You will also want to define customer categories which will enable you to classify current and prospective customers as regional or national accounts. You may want to consider three customer categories, for example Regional, Emerging National and National Accounts.
  • The key to success will lie in your incentive and professional development structures.
    • If region managers receive their incentives and promotions primarily for developing regional business, then this is where they will focus.
    • If you want the region managers to shift their activity and priorities to creating and servicing national contracts, then bias both your incentives and professional development programs accordingly.
    • For region managers, continuity of business will be a top priority, as this enables them to maintain region performance. To come on-board with the new program, they must perceive a value for both themselves and their customers.
  • Once you have determined your structure, look for high profile wins that drive the structure. Reward and promote those who produce these wins.
    • These producers will become your champions for change.
    • The message will spread quickly across the organization.

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How Do You Fit In Time For Yourself? Three Suggestions

Situation: The CEO of a high tech company has been working long hours, and has had no time for himself, or even for much sleep during the past few months. As is typical in a small company, the CEO and everyone else wears many hats. What have you done to successfully fit in time for yourself?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Take a calendar, and mark all of your time for several weeks to a month. Then look at the ways that you spend time and prioritize them into categories:
    • Life – eating, sleeping, etc.
    • Must do – mission critical
    • Must do – could possibly delegate
    • Free Time
    • See how many of the “Must do” activities you can delegate or otherwise handle and recategorize this time into Life or Free Time. You may be amazed at how much more efficiently you can use your time. Ask all employees to do this every 90 days to assure that they are utilizing their work time effectively.
  • If you have long commutes or lots of travel time, get an extended battery for your laptop. This will allow you to make travel time more productive.
  • Or, if you have a long commute, hire a semi-retired driver to drive you to and from work. Turn your commute time into productive work time.
    • Semi-retired drivers are available for as little as $10 per hour. You can pay them $1,000 at a time in advance, and the driver keeps a log of the time spent driving the client.
    • Use your car, or the driver’s car and if the latter, reimburse the driver for mileage.
    • To make this work effectively set the rule that you are the client, and not looking for conversation. You want to accomplish as much work as possible during the trip.
    • Look for professional drivers, with the proper licensing. Do an MVR check on the driver’s history as part of your evaluation process.

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