Business relationships & startups
Entrepreneurs must build all types of relationships.
- Relationships with our suppliers and the value chain
- Relationships with our buyers & resellers
- Relationships with our staff and business partners / investors
- Relationships with our audience & evangelists
In fact, when we are small have little or no revenue, the only thing we can do is have conversations and build relationships. These will lead to action and revenue. While having dinner with a colleague the other night, John Colbert of Corporate Edge training he gave me his view on relationships.
He said:
There are two important factors in relationships – frequency & proximity.
How frequently are we engaging the other person? Where frequency, is any type of conversation, communication or interaction.
And what is our proximity to this person? Where proximity pertains to the physical closeness and real world interactions we have together. Do we meet in person? Are we getting to know each other without the use of technology? Simply meeting in the same location?
The more of the above two things we have the stronger our relationships come. If we for a moment think of who we have strong relationships with, we’ll see we have both Frequency and Proximity.
The reality is humans want to deal with people they like, trust and know. This is what relationships build.
So if one of our important business relationships (those listed above) is flagging, maybe we should have more frequent interactions, get closer or do both.
How to ‘Pitch’ workshop
Below is an elevator pitch ‘workshop’ I gave for the ‘Agents of change‘ entrepreneurs club of Melbourne University. The video below is the one of 6 x 10 minute videos. The first (the one below) includes an ‘example’ pitch I did for rentoid – then has ‘alot’ of questions and answers. The last of the videos, workshop 6 – all of which are here has some ideas on great pitcing practice.
It’s kind of long, but the largely due to the discussion afterwards!
How to grow – My latest project
Here’s a small entrepreneurial project I am currently undertaking. Yes, growing some herbs and veggies.
It’s something all of us should do for good reason. So please invest the 3 minutes it will take to read this link - which I wrote almost a year ago.
Grow your business.
Frequency vs Depth
In advertising parlance we talk about depth and frequency. Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.
It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our startup, we may be featured in the newspaper, on techcrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.
After the event here’s what happens: People cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. They have a life to live and they get on with it. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.
Consumer awareness goes something like this:
Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea / product / concept”
Exposure 2: “Oh, yeh, I must remember to check that out”
Exposure 3: “There it is again, might be worth having a look”
Exposure 4: “hmm, Ok – I’ll look when I’m shopping next / on line next”
Exposure 5: ….They finally act, and go look at, investigate, touch, feel, try….”
After many exposures we have “a chance’ of selling to them.
Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need reminded, over and over again. It doesn’t mean – go out and spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means this; “have frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care”.
It’s a lot like never noticing a car advertisement until we are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.
This is why Advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if our prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax – It’s unsustainable. Like an exercise regime- it’s far better to do an hour workout everyday, than to do a 5 hour gym session on a Saturday.
The good news is we don’t need the superbowl budget of a large conglomerate to have the frequency we need. We just need to start a conversation which continues indefinitely.
Long ‘to do’ list
Quite possibly the most whined about thing in business. The never ending to do list. We hear it from both corporate cubicle dwellers and entrepreneurs alike.
So before any of us choose to complain about all the things we have to get done we might consider the antithesis for a moment – An empty to do list.
Firstly, it’d mean we have no business ‘upside’. That we’ve run out of ideas on how to move forward. Or worse it’d mean we didn’t have any goals. By definition we would not be engaged in, or have action plans which will improve ourselves or our business. This is the worst possible scenario I can imagine.
In fact the longer the list – the happier we should be. It should be the most exciting time in business and startup land. A time when we can be prolific and achieve the most. The long list ensures we can win because we have so many ideas to test and options we can take. The trick is not to obsess with all the stuff we aren’t getting done, but promoting the game winning activities to the top of the list and implementing as quickly as possible.
In the end it’s what gets done which matters, the projects we finish. Not how many new and groovy ideas we have waiting.
What to celebrate
‘We ought celebrate effort, rather than success. When we focus on the former, we enjoy more of the latter.’
Success is a funny thing. Oft times we receive it when we were not so deserving. Hence the above statement.
By focusing on what we do and have done we can avoid the celebration of chance or luck. Which would trick us into a false sense of achievement and lead us to our ultimate decline.
More visual feasts – retail
Here’s some more retail ‘theatre at transaction ‘ – The first is of the Grocery Bar Cafe in Richmond, the second of Haus Frau Cafe in Yarraville. I simply want to eat my food and drink my coffee there. So I do.
Actually – I don’t need to say anything – the pitcures do that for me.
The questions for startup entrepreneurs is this: What visual feasts are we providing our prospective new customers? Are we giving them a visual they just ‘have to’ talk about?
Quote for Entrepreneurs
“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Brand Manners
Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.
In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:
Does your brand have good manners?
That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.
In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’
- Listen to others
- Have patience
- Wait your turn to talk
- Never interrupt
- Ask for permission
- Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
- Be honest, truthful and pure
- Be punctual
- Be tidy
- Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
- Keep out of bad company
- Be kind to those around you
- Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
- Don’t cheat
- Be polite at all times
Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy - a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.
You can download the PDF here: goodmanners
And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.
Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.
Brand hijack – chupa chups
So we’ve all heard about UGC and the virtues of having your brand hijacked by passionate users. The truth is most brands ‘just got lucky’ when it happens to them. The real trick is knowing what to do when it does happen. How to leverage it without destroying the organic evolution which allowed it in the first place.
Chupa chups is a recent example in Australia of a Brand Hijack. It’s been a bit of a darling within various youth culture subsets – including the rave and hip hop scenes. The cool thing here is that Chupa chups (which incidently is licensed to Cadbury in Australia) hasn’t stuffed it up. Instead they’ve had the wisdom to embrace it – create a canvas for the brand to further ensconce itself in ‘their world’. The brand has ‘got involved with’ the laneway art scene in Melbourne – by creating an event for ‘them’.
The event is being held AC DC lane (apropos) where all street artists can display their talents – free. The lane will have bands, drinks and food open for all and free Chupa chups! They’ve even minimised the awareness campaign one which requires a certain level of self discovery only using street posters and limited street press to communicate the event. They’ve kept it all relatively ‘low key’. In fact, even the art commissioned by Chupa Chups to start the festival doesn’t have any branding. Wow – a brand that gets it.
The visual has already hit the wall as seen below…
You’ll notice the lollipop parachutes and the small chupa chups logo (sans branding) – which incidently was orginally designed by Salvadore Dali . Nice.
If you’re in Melbourne this weekend it’d be worth checking out – I’ll be there.
Start up lesson - Cool brands do cool stuff.
