Tag Archives: Focus

How Do You Evaluate A New Business Opportunity? Six Questions

Situation: A company has been presented with a new business opportunity. The opportunity is compatible with the company’s current business, but also involves skills and markets with which the company is not familiar. How do you evaluate a new business opportunity?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are at least four critical questions to assess as you evaluate any new businesses opportunity:
    • What is the total available market, and what is the immediately convertible market for the product or service?
    • Can you acquire expertise in the new markets that this will open to you?
    • Do you have a track record starting and nurturing new business within your company?
    • Is there sufficient seed money available – through company funds or outside investment – to keep the effort going for at least a couple of years as you develop the core team that will operate this business and gain traction?
  • If there is an offer of outside investment, consider how many months this funding will support the salaries of the team that will build this business, plus operating and overhead costs. You want to be sure to give yourself an adequate runway.
  • New business development opportunities typically require huge energy, creativity and focus for the first few years. Key management will have to devote all of their effort during the start-up period. Can the company afford to lose the services of key personnel for the time that you estimate this effort will take?
  • Before deciding to pursue this opportunity, take the time to investigate the market for this opportunity.
    • In particular, look for other companies that have tried to enter this market, and learn from their experience.
    • Develop a network of advisors who understand this market and can help you understand both the workings of the market and why companies may have struggled trying to enter the market.

[like]

How Do You Maintain Focus on Top Initiatives? Five Methods

Situation: A company is enjoying a good year both adding new business and serving current clients. When business is good the CEO finds it difficult to focus on all of his initiatives. This is frustrating. How do you maintain focus on your top initiatives when it gets really busy?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • When times are good, many new opportunities arise. If you have too many initiatives, you lose focus and have difficulty achieving them. Limit your initiatives to 2-3 at a time, focus on them, get them done and done right. Then pick your next 2-3 most important initiatives.
  • Schedule time for your initiatives on your calendar. Honor this time commitment just as you would an important customer appointment.
  • You might try a daily prioritized list of 4-5 small things and one big thing and focus on these for the day. Keep track of other priorities on a separate To-Do List.
  • Hire an assistant to whom you can delegate the small things – including the background research on your big initiatives. This gives you more time to focus on the big things, and the important decisions within the bigger projects.
  • Create a planning calendar for your initiatives. Assess each initiative for level of effort required, determine specific deliverables, and the amount of time that it will take to complete the initiative. Next, prioritize the list and take on a small number at any one time. This will help you both to complete the initiatives that you start, and to complete more of them in a given time period.

[like]

How Do You Transition from Product to Business Development? Three Thoughts

Interview with Trevor Shanski, Founder, eWORDofMOUTH, Inc.

Situation: A company with a new lead generation solution is ahead of the curve for their market segment, and ready to transition from a product development focus to a full-scale business development focus. This means developing new capabilities on a limited budget. How have you made the transition from product development to business development?

Advice from Trevor Shanski:

  • The reality of early stage companies is that they live on scarce resources. Founders and early executives have to be able to work for lean base salaries during the learning curve. They will be individuals who have selective characteristics.
    • They will be able to accept conservative salaries near-term, as well as during financial bumps in the road. Their focus will be growing the company’s value and their incentive will be having a material stake in the company.
    • They will have limited outside demands on their time and attention so that they can work long hours.
    • They will appreciate the challenge of heavily performance-based compensation, with the potential to win big if they can deliver.
    • They will have a network of connections and relationships upon whom they can call to gain early business traction.
  • Characteristics for successful early stage executives include the ability to work intimately with the founding team. Early stage companies are idea and capability incubators where things change quickly. Players must be able to get the job done with little support.
  • It is critical to have a clearly defined set of expectations for the first few months as you bring on new executives. Early foci will include:
    • Immersion in understanding the product capability and possibilities.
    • Sitting down with a white board and openly looking at fresh thoughts for how the market should be approached. Founders frequently suffer from tunnel vision after a long period of development and need a fresh outside perspective on the market and messaging. What partnerships could accelerate market development? What knowledgeable experts should be leveraged to build awareness? What potential is out there that the founders are not seeing?
    • After these factors are defined, the next step is to develop an action plan and milestones to guide plan execution, plus a budget and alternatives under different resource scenarios.
    • Once the plan is in place, the focus will be to gain early feedback on the company’s product and capabilities, and then iterate quickly to find the right message to target significant segments of the market.
  • The focus of early stage companies has to be on quickly developing plans, and then executing.

You can contact Trevor Shanski at tshanski@ewordofmouth.com

Key Words: Product, Business, Development, Limited, Budget, Transition, Resource, Scarce, Incentive, Focus, Compensation, Performance, Network, Expectations, Action Plan, Execution

[like]

How Can a Small Company Compete Against Bigs? Four Strategies

Interview with Sai Gundavelli, CEO, Solix Technologies

Situation: A company has top talent and a better technology solution. However their large competitors continue to compete by discrediting them – “nobody was every fired for choosing IBM!” How do you compete effectively against large incumbents?

Advice from Sai Gundavelli:

  • Invest in your product.
    • Work to attain best-of-breed status in your industry with a constant focus on and investment in building a great technology. Solix’s constant goal is to be the technology leader in information lifecycle management and Data Privacy.
    • Be organic and focus on integration, smooth operation and scalability. Build your system from the ground up. An organically designed solution where the pieces work seamlessly offers higher and more efficient performance.
  • Invest in alliances.
    • Solix continually invests in our partnerships, including our OEM relationship with Oracle Financial Services, and we have more such partnerships in the works that will help us expand our presence in the market. Partnerships increase your presence and visibility as you scale your own organization.
  • Focus your efforts.
    • We at Solix are 100% focused on our product, whereas our large competitors are juggling multiple priorities, like a juggler trying to keep a large number of balls in the air. While we are smaller, this allows us to more effectively focus our efforts without lots of conflicting priorities. We focus exclusively on information life cycle management and Data Privacy.
  •  Have others talk about you.
    • Solix’s answer to our competition is let our customers speak for us. We have many happy customers such as Honeywell, Duke Energy, American Tires, who are happy to participate in joint webinars and customer case studies. We work closely with them on the latest developments and direction and use their feedback to guide future product direction.

Key Words: Technology, Solution, SMB, Competition, Multinational, Incumbent, Product, Scalability, Flexibility, Alliance, Partnership, Focus, Specialize, Detail, Reference, Credibility

[like]

How Do You Find Time to Do All The Right Things? Four Options

Situation: In a contracted service company, activity gets very busy at predictable intervals due to contract renewals. During these busy periods, either positive or negative surprises can make it difficult to handle the work load. What techniques have you developed to make sure that you find time to do all the right things?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look at your renewal process and break it down. There may be some aspects of the process that require top staff attention and other aspects that are routine and can be handled without special training. For the latter tasks, cookbook the details so that you can use either your own or outside staff to complete them. This will start to open up more options.
  • You may want to stagger your renewal periods so that all of the renewals do not happen at the same time. If this is not possible, rank your current customers in terms of revenue volume and profitability. This enables you to shift focus from less profitable customers during crunch times.
  • As crunch periods are both periodic and predictable, bring in extra staff on a temporary or contractor basis during these times to help manage the load. You may even be able to work with a staffing agency to plan adding of additional personnel to help handle the load during crunch times.
  • In the current economy there are a number of highly talented individuals – retirees, spouses who work part time, individuals who are underemployed – who want or need to work but do not necessarily have to or want to work full time. During your slower periods offer training on your products and software to a group of people like this so that during the crunch times they can come in to assist the load.

Key Words: Service, Contract, Renewal, Process, Resources, Customer, Rank, Shift, Focus

[like]

How Does a B2B Company Learn B2C? Three Lessons

Interview with Ross Johnston, CEO, DiskCorp

Situation: A well-established B2B company is starting to work with B2C retailers. It is finding that both the internal and external perspectives of B2C companies are very different. How does a B2B company work differently with B2C companies?

Advice from Ross Johnston:

  • In the OEM market, manufacturers control all warranty obligations, have tightly controlled procedures for handling and tracking returned goods and are very focused on product quality and operational efficiency.
  • Leading B2C retailers have a very different perspective. Their focus is on the customer: on encouraging great customer experience and repeat customer visits. Products are sold to big box retailers without warranty, and the retailers provide their own warranty programs. This results in far more returns than for OEMs. Further, product is returned for a wide variety of reasons from failure to work as advertised to the customer simply changing their mind. There is also a wide range in how returned products are handled – from throwing them in the dumpster to returning undamaged items to stock, and few records are kept.
  • Our challenge is to help retailer and big box customers design, develop and implement recycling and cost recovery systems in our market. This means both developing procedures for the retailers and new channels to cost recovery markets.
    • First, they need processes to triage returned goods into broad categories: new or near new goods condition for resale; goods which require refurbishing or recycling; and goods for environmentally appropriate disposal.
    • Second, we have created a software tracking solution – a reverse logistics program – to track returned goods from receipt to their eventual disposition with full end-to-end P&L analysis. This can yield up to a 45% gross margin on returned goods which is shared with the retailer.
    • We develop additional processes that vary by retailer to help them handle the flow of returned goods.
    • We want to provide the retailer with an end-to-end operational platform that turns a cost center into a profit center and reduces long-term liability exposure that accompanies landfill disposal.

You can contact Ross Johnston at rjohnston@diskcorp.com

Key Words: B2B, B2C, OEM, Warranty, Procedures, Focus, Product, Customer, Return, Refurbish, Disposal, Process, Tracking

[like]

What Do You Do When A Strategic Partner Changes The Game? Two Options

Situation: A membership association’s revenue is largely tied to its annual conference. The primary sponsor of the conference has decided to host their own annual conference. This will disrupt the association’s access to both conference attendees and vendors. The sponsor has offered terms of collaboration; however, the conditions are unfavorable to the association. What are the best alternatives available to the association and how should they pursue them?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Are the association’s mission and vision are tied to or independent of the sponsor? If there is an ongoing reason for the association to continue without the sponsor then it is reasonable to pursue alternatives.
  • There are at least two options available to the association:
    • Accept the partner’s offer of collaboration, provided that this can be done under conditions that will allow the association to survive short-term. If the partner stumbles hosting its own conference this may allow the association to recover ownership of the annual conference. The danger is that this may lead to a slow death if the sponsor further cuts revenue to the association or a fast death if the sponsor decides to abandon the association.
    • Shift the focus of the conference and ancillary services under a new branding scheme. A survey of the membership indicates that the majority favor a mixed-platform solution, and may welcome a mixed-platform approach. You may need to rethink and rework your model but this may offer the best chance for ongoing survival.
  • What steps should be taken to pursue the second option?
    • Conduct a second survey of the membership to evaluate their preferences on platform focus, what they want to see in a multi-platform conference, and what platforms should be included.
    • Shift focus of the association to multi-platform as a response to members’ priorities and desires. Court the majority of the membership that favor a mixed-platform focus and de-emphasize those who favor the single platform solution.
    • Develop an alternate roster of sponsors including all competitive platforms. If this model succeeds, your current primary sponsor may find participation imperative.

Key Words: Association, Conference, Sponsor, Conflict, Conditions, Collaborate, Vision, Mission, Participation, Competitor, Single, Mixed, Platform, Survey, Focus

[like]

Why Do You Need Uberinfluencers? Four Factors

Interview with Skip Brand, CEO, Martini Media Network

Situation: Thanks to the rise of social media, the 10-20 million individuals who were the influencers with the most purchasing power have increased to 70 million. Within the influencer group, there is a sub group deemed “uberinfluencers” who have the most influence. How do marketers reach the uberinfluencers and why are they so important?

Advice from Skip Brand:

  • Uberinfluencers increasingly spend more time online, are twice as likely to make a purchase, and spend three times as much per acquisition when they do purchase. Also, they always share new product experiences with friends and family via different social media (Facebook, Twitter, Blog’s, etc). For the first time, consumers control a brand’s reputation and are able to set the brand’s tone and image. This is why marketers need to focus more dollars to get in front of this audience.
    • Uberinfluencers spend more time online than the general US population. They are brand savvy, digital savvy and socially networked.
    • They have diverse and specific interests and leverage the Internet extensively to connect with their passion areas. Niche sites appeal to this audience because of the specificity and existence of community. If you better understand where these people spend their time at work and play –you are better positioned to leverage their influence.
  • The company that wants to reach and leverage these uberinfluencers needs to be scalable, exciting and relevant.
    • For this audience, small is beautiful and also scalable. Let’s use the example of golf, a passion for many uberinfluencers. Your site should feature the highest quality courses and equipment if you want to reach 50% or more of this target audience. It must be easy to navigate, provide enough information to make them feel comfortable about product selection, and have a social component to help them broadcast your message.
    • Uberinfluencers spend time on sites that are exciting, engaging and which have a single share of voice. This means one focused ad per page instead of multiple ads.
    • Particularly in a recessionary market the site must work diligently to maintain relevance by continually enhancing site content to provide a fresh experience with every visit.
    • Marketers should put uberinfluencers at the center of their media buy and strategy.
  • To attract and leverage this audience you must maintain a maniacal focus. Reach out to them using social networking tools, which find uberinfluencers where they work and play on the web. Let’s illustrate this with an example.
    • Let’s say that your uberinfluencer is a digital media executive. You will find them on social networking sites because they are living what they are doing. Put the right message in front of them. If they buy they will spend more, but it’s even better if they tell 10 friends about you.
  • Once you start figuring out the keys that attract uberinfluencers, they will start telling each other about you and news of your product will spread across the web, in turn maximizing your revenue!

You can contact Skip Brand at skip.brand@martini-corp.com

Key Words: Strategy, Sales, Marketing, Uberinfluencer, Social, Network, Media, Purchase, Opinion, Influence, Online, Work, Play, Hobby, Niche, Scalable, Exciting, Relevant, Focus, Viral

[like]

How Do You Focus on Execution and Delivery? Three Observations

Interview with Doug Merritt, President & CEO, Baynote

Situation: A company has a proven technology and satisfied customers. To achieve their goals, they need delivery on sales and service to ramp revenue. At the same time, new opportunities arise daily. How do you keep the team focused on execution and delivery?

Advice from Doug Merritt:

  • The first thing to focus on is focus itself. Most of us don’t suffer from lack of opportunities, but from an inability to make hard choices and diligently pursue the few critical or high pay-off options. To tell the difference between gold nuggets and distracting bright shiny objects, you must have a clear strategy and priorities on customers and channels you want to develop. It is critical to choose the right opportunities that will optimize achievement of the strategic plan and to say not to those that don’t. This must be constantly reaffirmed through a simple set of metrics around your optimal customer set, revenue ramp, and quality of services delivered.
  • The second thing is attracting the right talent. A small and rapidly growing company has little time and resources to effectively train fresh talent. If scale is the issue, it’s important to identify and attract experienced individuals – those who have proven their ability to deliver and who bring along a high quality, proven, loyal following. Top talent that can open the purse strings of your target customers. This means hiring rock stars who do this better than you can! The challenge for the CEO is remembering that success almost always comes from hiring people who can do their jobs much better than you ever could. The CEO’s unique talent isn’t being the smartest person in the room – it’s your ability to build and guide an organization that will achieve more than you can alone.
  • Third is to keep the team focused on the most important priorities. The CEO needs to generate a crisp vision and to distribute information that maintains focus on that vision. Most “Type A” overachievers want to do lots of things well. The key is doing the right things well. You do this by measuring, and by creating transparency around the few key levers that drive the strategy.  It helps your cause to say no to a visible and enticing “bright shiny object” that, in the past, the team would have reluctantly accepted.  Finally, it also helps to create a few large and non-negotiable milestones that get the company to focus, as a unit, on achievement.   Ultimately, the CEO needs to coach and guide their team to do the right things right.

You can contact Doug Merritt at doug@baynote.com

Key Words: Delivery, Execution, Focus, Opportunity, Priorities, Customer, Channel, Plan, Metrics, Talent, Experience, Ego, Team, Vision, Information, Listen, Learn

[like]

How Do You Evaluate Tradeoffs Between Strategic Options? Six Suggestions

Situation:  A company’s primary objectives are to hone their business model and establish their first satellite office as a model for future expansion. An opportunity has arisen from a trusted source that could rapidly expand both business and opening of satellite offices by providing service to a single national client. How do you evaluate the tradeoffs between these options?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What is the impact of this new option on client diversity? One of Porter’s fundamentals of strategy is to not have too much of your business dependent on any one customer.
  • What is the impact of this opportunity on your personnel, time and resources?
  • Are there areas in which this opportunity will save time and resources, for example by consolidating some back-office functions like billing and accounting?
  • If this opportunity will take an inordinate amount of time and focus, consider starting a new entity to take advantage of this opportunity.
  • Use a decision-making grid to evaluate the new opportunity versus your present strategy:
    • Identify the most important factors of both your current strategy and the new opportunity.
    • Weight the importance of each factor as a percent of with the total adding up to 100%.
    • Rank each opportunity against each factor.
    • Multiply the factor ranking times the weight for each ranking.
    • Sum the weighted rankings.
    • See whether the summed rankings support of contradict your gut feeling, and further analyze depending on the result.
  • Once you have identified the risks in this proposition, determine contract provisions that will reduce risks to acceptable levels. If the potential client is unwilling to yield enough of these points in the contracting stage to acceptably mitigate your risks, then walk away from the deal.
  • Don’t risk your entire company for one opportunity. Financial rewards are only a scorecard.

Key Words: Expansion, Options, Satellite, Office, Time, Focus, Resources, Trade-offs, Client, Diversity, Consolidation, Function, Corporate Structure, Factor, Weight, Rank, Contract, Mitigate, Risk

[like]