Listen To Criticism

March 7th, 2010

We all want to have a great idea or a better mousetrap. Terrific. It takes careful and often painful evaluation to really take an idea to market.

Thoughtfully and thoroughly consider your business. Be realistic! Get outside opinions. Look at your competition thoroughly. Be candid and factual in your appraisal. You will always benefit from honest, accurate evaluation. At first, you may not like what you hear or see or discover. But you will eventually become more effective, more competitive and more precise in your business practice. Often, people who ask for “opinions” really want to hear the words “Fantastic” or “Great idea.” Don’t settle for praise (haha). Your goal isn’t to get your ego stroked, it’s to make your plan and idea BETTER! Why? So that you can be successful and PROFITABLE. That’s the goal, right (?): to succeed and profit in your success.

Go to your banker, accountant, and best friend and ask what they “think” of your plan or idea. What they honestly, REALLY think of your business concept.  Listen to their questions, remarks or doubts. Take notes. Don’t interrupt them with “Oh yeah, I meant to say that..” or comments to that effect. Just listen! Find the answers to their questions. Perfect your answers to those questions. Rehearse your answers over and over in your mind. The inventor of the Palm Pilot, Jeff Hawkins,  had several failures while trying to solve the PDA problem. With the “Pilot” he walked around his company’s offices with a  wooden block that was small enough to fit in his shirt pocket. He LIVED with his design. He asked questions, he pretended to use the “block,”  as if it were a functioning device, so that he could discover what would work and what would not work. The Palm Pilot was not designed in its perfect form the very first time Mr. Hawkins sat down at a desk and conceived the product.  It took hundreds of questions, different approaches to input and storage and many, many failures and persistence.

Learn from your weaknesses. Learn from your competition. Competition makes us stronger-if we so choose.  Choose to succeed. You must have the “never give up attitude” if you are to succeed in your enterprise. There are very few NEW things under the sun. Oh, there may be some very nice unusual products or services that seem wonderful and  imaginative. BUT, they are not necessarily new. They are just better mousetraps. Choosing to succeed and never give up doesn’t necessarily mean to stick with your idea no matter what. It may mean adapting the idea, changing the strategy, or both.

When conceiving your business plan, be patient, but be persistent. Ask questions and LISTEN to the answers. Don’t be offended by criticism; be inspired by it.

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VISION

September 17th, 2009

Your Vision, Your Plan

Your VISION! This is your idea. Express it boldly and positively. You want to start a business. Maybe you want to start a new division in your company, or embark into a new territory. Something wonderful and creative is ready to burst out. Be true to your vision as much as possible. You may have to compromise a little along the way, but start out clear and strong and be true to your vision.

There are probably a hundred things that you can do well to be successful and make money. But what can you do wonderfully well, be happy AND still make money. Hopefully that is part of your vision.

Vision – Clarity – Focus

Let’s face facts straight on. Businesses fail every single day. Thousands fail before they even get started. Every year hundreds of fledgling stores or services fail after a few short turbulent months. Some may last a little while longer, but they are destined to fail. Why? Because they didn’t bother to define their market AND their place in that market! Many, many businesses flourish, only to die later; a slow, unanticipated death. They never saw failure coming. They didn’t take the time to define their vision and goals effectively.

The Mission Statement defines the company’s business, its goals and objectives and the manner of reaching those objectives. A Vision Statement expresses the desired future position of the company. Mission and Vision Statements contain elements of each other and are often combined to provide a statement of the company’s purposes, goals and values. Sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably.

In any event, take the time to clarify your thoughts, your vision and the path you want to take to achieve that vision.

Next time…..

I’ll write a little about the “Focus” component of my little mantra.

Thanks for joining me on my blog. Tell friends!

Copyright, Scott Sanders 2009

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Target your audience

September 11th, 2009

Welcome to my blog; how nice of you to join me.

Last week was a little crazy (writing a business plan can be that way sometimes). My client  has this great idea and a terrific product, so we just needed to define goals and then target some dates. That’s always a good thing. In business, achieving goals is good, but achieving them in good time makes money. His business plan is sound, but needs some fine-tuning.

This little company is designed to personally  instruct people about how to use their nice digitial SLR cameras. There are a couple of instructors who are quite knowledgeable and very easy-going: a good balance of expertise and camera-side manner. So, how to take advantage of their market placement–expertise and friendliness at a very reasonable cost to the student. Hmmmm, well, read on.

My client’s company is called

Evalimi

and they have a nice niche in the greater Sacramento area. Goal (besides making more money): Be seen by more camera enthusiasts. This seems simple, but the goal within the goal is how to be seen by more camera enthusiasts while keeping control of the advertising and marketing budget.
In my business plan “How to” book, I make a simple point:
Use a Cost-Benefit Analysis worksheet to determine which of your ideas or products can yield the most revenue. Look at the  time spent on each product, as well as the cost of manufacturing and operations. The same can be done with a service or an idea.  Which yields the most revenue for the least cost?  Do quality issues outweigh quantity issues?
So, we spent some quality time identifying markets (people) and the means to reach those markets (advertising). Then we determined that a blog and some well-placed print ads would be a good start. When you’re trying to make a business work and succeed, it isn’t always easy to “wait and see” and hope that things work out. But in some cases, you need to be patient. And in this case, we did our homework and identified some pretty specific markets to pay attention to.
The adjustments were relatively minor, but well-targeted. Much success is due to the fact that Evalimi’s business plan is well-written and thought out properly. So, we had a good foundation on which to work.
Remember, the business plan should still serve as your guide. Your Mission Statement should still be relevant and continue to drive your company’s direction.
Thanks for stopping by.

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