Thinking Small VS Thinking Big in Business Development
In growing a brand, building a business or trying to acquire more market share, there is always a question of thinking small vs thinking big in business development. What do I mean by that phrase? A common occurrence I have witnessed in my own business and with clients I worked with, is the tendency to have the wrong approach at the wrong time.
To put it simply, small business think big when they should actually think small first and big businesses think small when they should really go big and invest in growth. Why do people go wrong with this all the time?
Well, I think the current media landscape with entrepreneurship advice and coaches being around every corner is partial to blame. There are some good, some great and some terrible coaches out there, and there is, in general, a strong tendency to overestimate success and underestimate costs when it comes to business building. It doesn’t help that our social media feeds are fueled by endless polished PR stories of effortless success and motivational quotes from famous entrepreneurs and gurus instead of real-world case studies that show failures and proper procedures.
Everybody just wants to appear great and powerful instead of admitting humanity and incompetence when it comes to certain business skills, all in the hope of blinding your potential customers into believing “He appears like he is doing so well, so he must be the right partner for me!”. That this leads to fake follower buys, bots on social media and unsatisfied customers with buyers remorse down the line is obvious. Not very smart or sustainable if you ask me! So as soon as business owners lose money on something or try things that don’t work, which is completely natural and a part of entrepreneurship, they become bitter and start looking for cheap hacks, ways to exploit free labour, become economic buyers instead of value-focused ones and adopt all kind of mindsets which torpede their success in the long run. In many ways, this is a negative cycle that can only be broken by working with and trusting, real professionals with integrity who care about results and measurable tests instead of their own bottom line and an ever-growing social media hype…
Let’s take a look at the pro and cons of each mindset and how a business, in my opinion, qualifies as small or big.
What I consider to be “small” business:
- Younger than 5 years
- Less than 10 people
- Less than 100 000 USD starting capital
- Anybody who bootstraps his idea
- Less than 500 000 USD in annual operating capital
What I consider to be a “big” business:
- Older than 5 years
- More than 10 people
- Between 250 000 – 1000 000 USD starting capital
- Brands and companies backed by angel investors and/or venture capital
- More than 1000 000+ USD in annual operating capital
Of course, you could also make another distinction between what is considered “big” and “enterprise”, but this only applies for international companies with multiple offices or branches that are well-known players in their respective market. This article focuses on start-ups and companies that are in a growth phase, the ones that want to consolidate market share and keep out the competition need another kind of advice.
What I mean with thinking “small” when it comes to business development:
If you are a B2C brand
- Focus on building a shopping experience (online or offline) which fits your price segment
- Invest in the key pillars of your business: design, manufacturing, packaging, logistics, copywriting and editorial
- Leverage as much free technology and open source software as you can
- Leverage organic SEO and social media to the max
- Invest time when you can’t invest money
- When you spend an advertising budget, invest it into channels that have worked for similar brands like yours in the past, but keep the factor scope in mind
- Add small but humble goals: your first sale, your first 100 sales, breaking even, making a small profit etc. Soon you will be swimming in sales!
- Whatever you think in terms of how fast you will be able to achieve those goals, double or triple the amount of time!
- Focus on building at least one or two good working sales channel, then add another one.
- Make sure you profile your customer well and know who they are, where they live etc.
- Do online courses and try to do as much as you can yourself, but don’t waste your time doing things other people can do better and faster!
- When you hire people and outsource, don’t go cheap. In Russia, there is a famous saying: The one who pays too little buys twice. Let that sink in.
- Be ready to experiment, test and fail fast. Make the learning curve short, calculate your budget accordingly and then move on. Don’t dwell endlessly on failures!
- Be aware of the difference between bad execution and bad strategy. Self-reflect if something doesn’t work, was it the channel, your approach or plain and simply you or your product?
If you are a b2b brand
- Prioritize classical outbound sales (prospecting via the phone, email and social media) over setting up a huge inbound strategy with a lot of content, automation, long email funnels and so on. We made this mistake in the past and have suffered dearly for it.
- Set achievable goals and do a lot of market and prospect research before you start.
- Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and just call people, be it a cold prospect, a warm lead or a hot one, you need to be able to communicate value and sell on the phone. Don’t trust the propaganda put out by inbound marketing software companies…
- Make sure to create at least some content as you go along, be it articles (hint: you are reading one), whitepapers, reports, infographics or videos and webinars.
- Be as consistent with your content creation as possible. How humble it might be.
- Have and grow an email list. Email is still king when it comes to b2b lead nurturing.
- And “I don’t know what to write or create” is not an excuse, hire people, work with creatives, stay on top of modern media and read online what is hot.
- As soon as you start winning, create case studies, not all clients will allow this but everytime you achieve outstanding success for someone try to document it.
- Make those case studies available online!
- Syndicate your content via organic social media and build links for better SEO as much as you can within your budget and timeframe.
- When you pay money use it for one of these two things: 1) to create more reach and visibility for the best content piece in your toolbox, 2) to use funnels in conjunction with media buys to create new subscribers, lead magnet downloads and phone calls.
- The funnels that work best are usually lead magnet funnels, application funnels, and case study funnels, but feel free to experiment.
- Last but not least, learn to qualify your prospects and don’t waste time on people who are just shopping around or want endless free advice. You will get those guys on the phone sooner or later, just make sure to spend more time on the leads that have a real need and real budgets that they want to spend. Your general happiness levels will thank me for this one.
- Don’t exploit interns…just don’t.
What you should do differently if you’re a “big” business:
In the case of a b2c brand
- Built brand awareness first, establish a reputation for being the best, the coolest, the most exclusive…whatever works best in your segment.
- Make sure you invest in the highest quality of design, graphics, and copywriting you can afford. Great design and strong visuals create fans.
- Be smart with your time, aim for professionals and outsource or hire right from the start to speed up the trial and error process of going to market as much as you can. Better to fail big and fast than to fail slow and painful.
- Invest time and energy into mapping all the possible channels and markets you could cover for your launch in advance, be aware of the competition and include forecasts into your calculations.
- Leverage the next big thing in tech or marketing, be it influencers, video marketing or apps.
- Invest heavy into a strong social media calendar and a large budget for syndication, if you cannot outspend your competitors then outcreate them. Be more daring!
- Make sure to spend some money on quality PR for your launch, first collection, or whatever else you have planned.
- Have a strong event or experiential strategy in place in combination with good PR.
- Cover multiple markets on entry if possible. If you have sales channels that already work, replicate them as much as you can in other countries but be culturally aware nonetheless.
- Start thinking a lot about how you can leverage scale, reduce time and labour overhead and automate up to a certain degree, but don’t sacrifice quality or customer service along the road!
- Scale goes together with analytics, list or database building and remarketing. Make these areas your top priority, deep dive and create assets that sell your product for you!
If you’re a b2b brand
- Go inbound. Now is the time to listen to all that Hubspot and Marketo propaganda (sorry guys, I still like you though). Try to go for the bigger and better clients, the big accounts, stop smashing the phones so much and start listening more.
- Create content, emphasize quality over quantity but leverage as many different formats as you can. Make sure to have a content calendar planned out for the whole year which feeds into your social media, email, blogging, video, podcasts and whatever else you have going on.
- Invest in setting up marketing automation, opt-in forms, email funnels, and strong inside sales follow up procedures.
- Syndicate your content and brand like crazy, be in all the professional outlets and stay relevant even beyond that. Frequency now is key. You want to be top-of-mind when people have a problem to solve.
- Get salespeople who are good at closing, you need good communication frameworks to process all those incoming leads.
- Don’t neglect your new business department, instead equip them with better CRMs, warm leads, research data, great sales materials and ongoing coaching.
- Be visible in the real world. Have people attend all the tradeshows, events and keynotes you can afford. Have a trade marketing strategy in place, build real-world connections and start levering your professionalism and track record of success to get referrals.
- Become even better at qualifying, don’t let the big corporate players fool you by pitching with 10 other companies for the account and don’t wast tons of money on foul deals and demos.
- Fire your bad customers and focus on the ones that bring in the most revenue. Treat them like kings. Try to have the best post-sale / account service in your industry.
- Look for better opportunities which lie outside the normal market boundaries, start thinking about partnerships, sponsorships and other indirect ways to leverage other peoples contacts and lists.
- Don’t be cheap and still look for hacks or free stuff. Get the best, work with the best and pay them a premium for results.
- Don’t exploit your employees and partners…pay above market rates and demand excellence instead.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, if after reading this endless list of bullet points you self-identify as a small b2c or b2b brand, then act accordingly and do all the things small players should do. The same thing goes for “big” brands, don’t be petty or small-minded. Learn from our example in our first 2 years as consultants, we tried a lot of the big business tactics when we were still way too small and just at the beginning. Now we finally see the light and so should you. Small and big should have nothing to do with ego but should be instead a learning mindset and an exercise in value creation for all participants. So let’s grow together and be smart about it from now on, ok?
The post Thinking Small VS Thinking Big in Business Development appeared first on Fashion Mythology.
from Fashion Mythology
0 Comments