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Making Money in Business is
Simple, It’s Just Not Easy
” The door to opportunity is labeled PUSH”.
– Anonymous
Leaning into the Dragon’s Fire
Most new small business owners don’t make it. Opening a business is fraught with risks most new entrepreneurs don’t anticipate before leaping, and last year alone, thousands of businesses in Canada went under with a loud thud. Why is this happening over and over, and why is the failure rate so high?
After a decade of working with new business start-ups, I believe that I’ve discovered an important piece of the puzzle: regardless of preparation, capital, or experience, almost all new business owners fail to understand that they are taking on three monumental challenges at once.
Not many entrepreneurs realize that the “business of the business,” (understanding your product or service thoroughly, and knowing what to do to meet customer demands) marketing, and people-management exercises all begin on day one, and continue for the life of the business. Simply put, starting a widget business involves starting a marketing business and a people-management business at the same time. Not recognizing this simple fact is causing massive entrepreneurial meltdowns, year after year.
Most would-be capitalists usually have a solid background in their chosen profession and if they’re lucky, they even find the right people to help them build their business. Unfortunately, few find simple step-by-step information that helps them put together the type of marketing strategy that works with today’s skeptical customer.
No Fail Marketing addresses the challenges of simultaneously pulling together these three crucial factions, regardless of the growth stage of the business or its profitability. Within these pages you will find the proven marketing- and business-development tools any organization needs for real success. Using straightforward ideas, you’ll develop templates for building your own fortress-like enterprise that can withstand full-out assault from your competitors, downturns in the economy, and the fickle tastes of consumers with too many choices.
You’ll also find out how to evaluate potential employees for key positions, help them turn into valuable income-generating assets and get them totally on your bandwagon. Although most business owners have some experience in their chosen fields, No Fail Marketing focuses on how to quickly measure a business’s potential for success, a competitor’s strengths and why customers frequent them as well.
As a marketing instructor for a government-supported new entrepreneur program, I’ve had the privilege of teaching over 1500 entrepreneurs how to market their way to success. I’m excited to tell you that after their first year—the most difficult for new businesses to survive—these new business students experienced a much higher success rate than the typical start-up. Their success stands in sharp contrast to the national average, which continues to decline year after year.
In fairness, part of the failure rate plaguing new businesses is caused by the endless changes being forced onto new entrepreneurs—in less than a generation, major changes have challenged the traditional methods used to sell and market products.
These rapid shifts keep everyone off kilter as they try to cope with the reams of new information being constantly hurled at them. Broadcast media firms are struggling to hold onto viewers and listeners. Narrowcast media and the internet are taking up the challenge. Competition is brutal, and only the most knowledgeable and best prepared will thrive. Together, we will explore the attitudes and tools entrepreneurs need to capitalize on these constantly-in-flux market dynamics.
A significant new trend in the marketplace is when customers part with their money, they want special extras that few are prepared to give. A purchase decision depends on their perceived status of the item, its ability to deliver both extreme value and ultra quality, and their need for new experiences. Astute business owners have learned that providing these extra benefits in a unique way are what creates line-ups, back orders, and busy telephones.
After reading this book, you will have plenty of special techniques to excite customers about your offers. When your marketing is right, you won’t have to sell products—people will want to buy them. By using these simple four techniques described above, I’ll show you how to create a business from scratch that is destined for success. I believe that there is only one thing more fundamental to starting a new business than money, and that’s the idea behind it. Some of your competitors will be larger, more experienced, and have more resources.
Some may even appear to be unsinkable. But even the smallest business can replicate the multi-million-dollar strategies and proven methods of some of the world’s largest companies to create their own stream of interested customers. Large or small, most businesses share many challenges, and thus, can often use common solutions. For example, no matter what line of business you are in, convincing families to part with their hard-earned dollars is no easy feat. The modern family comes in many shapes and forms and can be non-traditional, dynamic, quick to fold, and economically diverse.
Businesses must appeal to this changing dynamic while finding unique methods for persuading working women and the growing Millennial and Gen X market to buy their products – a challenge for even the most experienced entrepreneur! Using just four methods, you will discover how to grab a sudden lead over your competitor.
I have heard many business advisors recommend that struggling marketing departments start off by writing out a mission statement. This may sound like good advice on the surface, but in practice it is often a complete waste of time and can even lead to negative outcomes. Many mission statements create a wall between management and front-line workers and are littered with standard clichés. Like “the customer is king” and “customers are not an interruption, they are the reason for our business”.
While this is a true statement, does every member of the team embrace this viewpoint? Even worse, most are made up of promises no one ever intends to deliver which means that a company sets themselves up for disappointment, even if they are relatively successful.
I’m going to show you how to create an action statement that frames the real core values of your company and means a lot more than your competitor’s mission statement, photocopied from a marketing book. Employees learn the real values of the company at the water cooler and on the loading dock, so if all the management team’s prattle about “the customer being king” isn’t genuine, it falls on deaf ears.