Be Adaptable
I love to share my lessons learned through this venue. Regardless of who else sees it, it has helped me to understand where I am in my career by thinking about situations and what lessons I can learn from them.
A great lesson–which always seems like deja vu–of this quarter has been that when things don’t seem to be going the way they were expected to go, change. For instance, at the beginning of the year, I wrote of wanting to open a drop-in center. Since I do not own a bank, I decided to launch small, then grow. When that idea didn’t work, I changed the concept to provide the same service but in a different way, like having a drop-in center on location for special events. This concept catches the attention of anyone I have mentioned it to, but it’s still in startup mode. I have never been so excited about something in my career as I am with this. The vision I have for it is will create such an impact on my family and community… I’m so excited!
The moral of the story is – having to make a left turn when you really want to make a right isn’t the worst thing in the world. Adapting to the situation but retaining the essence of and goals for what you want to do can still be a freeing experience.
What are some situations in your business where you had to adapt and it changed your life?
Keeping In Touch
One area that I am seeking solutions for in my business is the art of staying in touch with potential and current clients. I say art because there really are no rules to satisfy everyone. Some people are online folks, some people would prefer a phone call, others really like the personal one-on-one chat, while others just want a handwritten note every once in a while. Some people want to hear from you on a regular basis while others would rather hear from you with major news only (which is not good for business). The worst thing business owners could do is to not contact their customers at all.
I actually have a good idea of how I want to keep in touch with my customer base and have been playing with solutions to do it well and efficiently. Of course, I consider this blog a tool. Since I’m currently working on multiple business ventures, I’m considering a blog for each of them. They are not only good for keeping in touch with customers, they also present a good way to journal this journey of business ownership and to keep up with new discoveries I
make for each business. I’m just at a crossroads with determining a regular schedule for posting to three blogs (in addition to all the other freelance writing I am now enjoying).
Social media-wise, YB Consulting’s Facebook fan page and my personal twitter have become my primary tools for keeping people up-to-date with different things going on in the business including new blog posts from Cardinal Rules, relevant articles written in other forums, and company promotions. I have also created a fan page and twitter account for my startup Fun Spaces. These will operate in similar fashion to YB Consulting. I’m still considering consolidating my consultancy into the Cardinal branding and let that be my entrepreneurship advocacy identity… we’ll see. Finally, my third venture will have a blog but that may be it. It is truly meant to be a part-time business for me yet something I am still excited about! Have to be excited about residual income…
Another marketing tool I am considering is iContact, an e-mail marketing solution. This company is based in my town (buy local!) and was co-founded by an alum from one of my alma maters UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. I have multiple marketing campaigns to conduct for relationships in my three+ ventures and I hear this solution is good for managing that type of feat. Plus it is reasonably priced, allows for space to grow, has autoresponders… I’m appreciating iContact already.
What tools are you using in your business to keep in touch with customers on a regular basis? Please leave a comment below to let the community know.
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Do You Know What Your Customers Want?
A few months ago, I developed a market research survey and shared it with a few organizations to see if I thought of an idea that would fill a market need. I had this grand idea to expand my business offerings in a way that would combine the talents of me and one of my neighbors, an event planner. I did not get many responses to that survey but the answers I received confirmed the need in a way that was greater than I expected. People would be willing to pay more for the service than I initially assumed and would put more time into it as well.
This type of market research simply justifies any ideas you may want to take to market. It is good to do to see if there are people in your target demographic who will pay for it, how much they will pay for it, and what they will expect out of it.
Although I decided to take on other pursuits, I want to share some lessons from this and previous experiences in market research:
- Take some time and make a plan for the research process. Decide what the goal is for the research including how the information will be used to benefit the mission of your company and each type of its stakeholders (i.e. shareholders/owners, customers, partners, employees).
- Choose multiple survey methods to capture some good randomness in the audience.This includes using surveys online AND in-person.
- Use in-person methods like interviews and focus groups to dig deeper in your findings from the surveys your initial group answered. It could be as simple as catching up with a colleague (that fits the target demographic) and throwing the business concept into the conversation to see what he or she thinks. Or, it could be in the format of a webinar and conference call with interactive polling..
- Include a large pool of people in your surveying to ensure a statistically valid result. Average response rate seems to be 10 – 30%. The blog marketing [m.o.] has a good, brief post on sampling size.
Business.gov has a good summary on how to conduct market research with several links for resources.
Leave a comment below to share innovative ideas for conducting market research and what it did for your company.
