Good Guys, Smart Guys
♫ Come in and see the good, good good guys. Pay cash and we’ll slash the prices… ♫
If you live in Australia, you’ve seen the TV advertisement and heard the jingle. It’s a pretty simple proposition. It encourages customers to negotiate a price. I went to the Good Guys to buy a fridge and negotiate like everyone else does.
After we cut the deal and agreed on a price, I proceeded to pay in cash, when the sales guy said; ‘Credit card is fine. We are not that strict on cash payments these days.’ So I paid using my card.
It got me thinking about the truth of the Pay Cash and we’ll slash the prices tagline / tactic. It is a simple point of difference and traffic generator. The idea of the cash payment is really something that can only work on a micro level. A large retailer couldn’t dodge the tax man through taking cash payments and justify provide an unusually large discount. The supply chain has too many parties involved. Rather, it is used to appeal the the customer who thinks they are getting a better deal by paying cash. It’s perception marketing. The insight for startups is this: if this works for the customer, that’s all that really matters.
Nice idea, but what’s in it for us?
I took this photo while shopping at Australian supermarket giant Coles yesterday.
I’ll start by saying not returning supermarket trolleys, or worse stealing them is not cool. It probably adds some cost to our grocery bills, albeit small.
But when I saw this poster up in my local Coles, I tweeted it and made the comment that it was reasonably amusing. Then Cameron Reilly, made what I thought was an insightful comment from a marketing perspective:
then I responded with this….
and Cameron finished it off with this 140 characters…
Which to be honest is probably the sentiments of most of Coles’ customers.
I’ll say it again – ‘Incentives shape behaviour’ – on this occasion there is no incentive for customers to care. How hard would it be for Coles to offer a shopping voucher for lost trolley returns? Or some other small incentive? In fact, it’s an insult to their customers to ask for help in a such a one sided manner. It’s very 1970′s marketing.
Startup blog says: respect your customers and reward the right behaviour.
Overcoming fear
This is the fourth of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Lani Pauli. Lani wanted to get my thoughts on the following: How to overcome the fear to take the leap and do your own thing.
I’ve written about this a few times. And I’ll start by pointing out previous entries on De-gearing, Quit your job and The number 1 reason being an employee sucks. But to make things contemporaneous here’s my thoughts on the topic today, off the top of my head.
Two important words come to mind when I think about the fear of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.
Having & Doing.
And as far as I can tell these two words are what we worry about when it comes to finance. We want to do cool stuff (like build a startup and pursue dreams), but in the short term it can have a big impact on our lifestyle and consumption patterns – the having part.
But most people don’t realize this important fact until after they have made the leap:
“The having is in the doing”
In my view we often replace our dreams and goals with consumption. And society promotes this ideal. We use money and steady income as a means of consumption based happiness. When in reality, we’d be much happier if we just did what we wanted to and had greater fulfillment in the hours of our days.
We have to make a decision on what’s more important to us; having lots of stuff and security, or doing cool things. I believe the latter creates a more enjoyable existence, and often leads to a virtuous circle where you realize how little we really need.
The real bonus is this: it’s easier to be successful when you are really into what you spend your time on. And when success comes to entrepreneurs we get the best of both worlds.
Startup blog says: Dream chase now!
Customer empathy
My cousin recently purchased a new home. For most of us such a large financial commitment is quite overwhelming.
During the settlement process Chris had a discussion with his conveyancer about the impending transaction and the issues in his mind. His conveyancer said:
“Look, I know this isn’t the type of thing you do everyday, but I do. And I’ll make sure it runs smoothly and you get looked after.”
Such a simple statement showed terrific empathy. It built confidence in the service provider, and eased the mind of the customer. It’s this type of language which creates conversations and can set apart entrepreneurs.
Language matters. What language do you use?
Borderless Venture Capital
This is the third of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Aida_Lee. Aida wanted to get my thoughts on the following: In today’s cheap, quick and global market, what do you see as the blueprint for a border-less venture capital to work?
There is no doubt Venture Capital has been a bit of closed shop historically. And although we’ve seen some opening up of business funding in the USA with vehicles such as the techcrunch 50 and Paul Graham’s Y Combinator, other markets such as Australia are lagging behind quite significantly. My views are the opinion of someone who has raised venture and angel funding before for new ventures.
In my view a thing things need to happen for the traditional structure of Venture Capital to change:
- A startup community must evolve in a tight geographic region – this often facilitates events such as those mentioned above in Silicon Valley.
- Disruptive technology must become available which breaks down traditional access barriers to outsiders.
Number 1 has happened in only a few locations, namely S Valley, but number 2 has happened all over the world and this is where I see the major changes. The thing that new internet technology has done is brought entrepreneurial communities together. Now we can find each other without having to live near each other. But the funny thing about raising funds for what is considered risky investments, is that it isn’t nearly as much about the idea or revenue potential. It’s about the ability to the team raising to sell themselves. And all real selling requires lots of face time. It’s hard to do this on line, or across borders. So I think that large capital raising wont change a great deal in the future. But, I do see an important capital raising revolution coming:
Crowd funding.
It’s been done already in a few markets, and some entrepreneurs and start ups have already used this technique to raise money for their venture. The idea has been well documented, but a true revolution, such as social networking has yet to happen. The main thing holding it back has been government regulation from the likes of the SEC and ASIC in Australia. What I think the next iteration will be, is a web based business which takes micro payments / investments (a little bit like Kiva) from a large number of punters (for lack of a better word) to fund the new business. Method of which would be like an on-line float for startups. The investors who then would become digital evangelists for the new company. There would be a synchronized ‘investment beta’
The key service of such a site would be to overcome the legal vagaries for all participants and be able to take investments in multiple currencies from multiple markets. There is no doubt this would leverage the quickly building on line entrepreneurial communities. It would also have an important impact the venture capital industry structure the same way digital freelancing websites like elance have respectively.
I’d be interested if there are any sites already doing pure crowd sourcing, and to hear what your thoughts are.
New start up
My new start up was launched on Wednesday. A little girl called Laura.
Investing all my time and love into her. Back blogging shortly.
Steve.
Startup Idea Generation
This is the second of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Aj Kulatunga. Aj wanted some basic suggestions on how to develop an idea to start a business.
First of all I start by saying, the idea is not nearly as important as people think it is. The problem with a new idea is that we need to go the effort of education people, building a new supply chain and inventing demand. Sometimes ‘selling potatoes’ is a better option. That said, I’ve been asked to give inspiration for idea generation – so here are the Sammartino methods.
The law of the opposite:
Equal and opposite version of existing successful products / markets / services.
Not from here:
Bringing stuff from elsewhere to this market and positioning it as such. Usually imported or licensed version.
The Nth:
The more intense version of something. More power, ingredients, recognition. The Nth degree. For example red Bull is really an Nth version of coca cola. More intense energy hit. Hummer is also an Nth 4 wheel drive / SUV.
Idea Borrowing:
Local versions of overseas success. Quickly adapting successful ideas for overseas markets. Although these days you have to be very quick. That said, it is easier to find them out via websites such as springwise.
The unexpected version:
Eg Extreme Sour Lollies
Selling Potatoes:
Nothing new, existing idea, existing industry, with large existing demand. But must have low barriers to entry. But do it better, try harder, with amazing customer service levels.
Gourmet / Natural version
Has happened a lot in the grocery / supermarket categories. Entrepreneurs have taken advantage in categories like Juice and yogurt.
Extraction method
Take a tiny part of a successful and existing business and just do a micro niche of it. Twitter is this for Facebook. Just taking the status update part.
Danger of trophy Ideas – This link
Pro Bono marketing
This is the first of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Christopher Hewitt. Chris wanted to know whether providing services Pro Bono was a good idea for startups.
In a word Yes.
More important than the answer are the reasons. It says something about us as people or an organisation. It starts the brand personification process.
It says we give before we expect.
It says we have confidence in our knowledge and our skills.
It says we trust you not to take advantage of us.
It says we are prepared to a resource before we expect you to become one.
In all it creates an environment where reciprocity is likely. Reciprocity is part of the human condition. In addition, it’s the best way of providing a sample, when providing a small bottle of shampoo or a taste test isn’t possible.
Startup Blog says: Pro Bono is rad.
Crowd sourced blog entry ideas
I was wondering what to write about on today’s blog entry so I sent the following tweet:
Help needed: Blog Challenge: Give me any topic on marketing or startups and I’ll write and entry on it in 30 mins. #ideasneeded
The response was bigger than I thought it would be with 4 ideas in 5 mins (ideas list is still growing). So I decided to write an entry for all the suggestions I have received. I’ve attached the response tweets below and my subsequent blog entries will be on these crowd (well twitter friend) suggestions. Which is cool, because I have to respond to the ideas, feelings of others and just start writing. This should be fun!
Strategy review
In the new year we have new business goals and objectives. We plan to do better than last year. We plan to do more….. we must review our strategy…. But before we do we must ask this important question:
Did we execute the current strategy to its full potential?
Or did it just get a bit too hard and boring, and we decided it wasn’t easy enough?
Usually the strategy is fine, and we just haven’t worked hard enough to get through the dip.
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