Blog #5: Branding pays off on Your Bottom line

Your new business is growing and the future looks bright. You’re even beginning to make some money. This is not the time to hold back or stand pat. Continue investing in your business. Consider that a significant share of that investment should be dedicated to developing perhaps the most significant aspect and valuable fixed asset of your business, your BRAND!

Why? Because at this point you have recognized the value of building a strong emotional and intellectual connection to the unique name, term, design or logo that defines your business, product/service or mission.

There are a number of powerful reasons why successful businesses of all sizes have spent years and significant dollars investing in brand development.

•The stronger the brand, the more you, the brand owner, has control in pricing, margin and distribution. Brands like Apple, Ralph Lauren, The New York Yankees and Oreos control their own destinies and, while sensitive to competition, are not at its mercy.

•The stronger the brand, the lower your cost of sales and promotion, as the investment amortizes over time. Word of mouth increases exponentially. Amazon, Costco, Zappos, Trader Joes and Shake Shack have all reached brand utopia; they invest little in advertising while growing in awareness, recognition and value.

•The stronger the brand, the stronger and more polarizing the emotional signal, consequently generating more direct conversation and increased communication through social media

Consistent brand building also leads to increased awareness, stature and market share for your business as it enters the psyche and everyday language of distributors, resellers, consumers and clients. Think about how Walmart and Target have leveraged the emotional connections of their brands to eliminate or severely wound their competition?

And think about how Sears and J.C. Penney have failed to support and sustain that leverage. In the hyper competitive New York supermarket business, when Fairway enters a new neighborhood their brand equity makes it easy for them to gobble up market share and become profitable from Day One.

Building brand equity also creates a real potential for building category extensions, co- branding and licensing opportunities representing not only major potential sources of revenue but increased asset value of the brand. Think of the acceptance Apple earns with every new product entry or the synergy when Kinkos became home to Federal Express. For owners who plan to market a well-known and widely-accepted brand, the return on investment is incalculable.

Brands can survive, even while the companies which developed them may not. There are no better examples of the monetary power of brands as when they survive and outlive their owners. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Twinkies were recently purchased from their owners in bankruptcy court at valuations of $2 billion and $410 million, respectively, by new owners – and it is unlikely that very many people could name the new owners of these brands. The new owners recognized that without those product identifiers, their purchases would have lost most of their potential for success. Why? Because the long term investment in those brands had consistently showcased those elements that made those two businesses special – and had done it in a way that was distinctive, recognizable and relevant.

Burt Wallerstein, a mentor in the New York City chapter of SCORE, is also the founder and principal owner of a global sourcing, marketing and consulting agency. He has also written commentaries on improving higher education for the Washington Examiner and John William Pope Center.

Blog #4 YOU’RE NOT ALONE

In addition to dealing with all the business and financial challenges that are out there, many
entrepreneurs have discovered that starting and growing a small business can be emotionally and
psychologically challenging. Let’s imagine that you are a recent founder of a business, full of energy and enthusiasm. You have embarked on perhaps the most exhilarating emotional professional roller coaster of your life, the rewards to be endless: financial independence, controlling your destiny and self-esteem. What you may not have not anticipated are the emotional challenges. All the business planning, number crunching, contract signings did not prepare you for perhaps the most unanticipated obstacles and business killers you are now confronting: anxiety, pressure and isolation. Before going out on your own, you likely had a career in corporate America or worked in a small business. You were surrounded by superiors, peers and subordinates, interfacing daily on both professional and personal level. Many of these colleagues were business or perhaps personal friends.

Work was a center of your professional life, and as for many, your social universe. Nothing prepared
you nor had you likely anticipated, what starting and running a business alone meant on an emotional Now, regardless of what kind of team you have put together, you are feeling increasingly isolated, anxious and apprehensive, facing daytime setbacks and sleepless nights. You quickly realize that other than your creditors and family, nobody cares, and most strikingly, that may include the people in your previous professional life. Even for those with a partner, the relationship is tricky, as many partnerships have broken up through business disagreements. Your friends and family may not understand what  you are going through, you are spending a lot of time away from loved ones, and often when together, And the overriding issue of money is a constant worry. You have little, likely borrowed some, perhaps from friends and family, while possibly accessing personal lines of credit and credit cards. You find yourself on edge with every late receivable, knowing the due dates of every payable. The mind games never stop, and the fear of failure becomes etched into your psyche. Will the dynamics with these special people in your life change if the new enterprise does not succeed and you cannot repay the

Well, you are not alone. Almost everyone who has successfully founded his or her own business,
has faced these obstacles. And despite enduring the journey mostly alone and riding an emotional
roller coaster for a number of years, if you love and believe in what you are doing, it will be the most
rewarding job in the world. The sense of accomplishment in founding and growing a business will make .While the main psychological burdens of entrepreneurship fall on you alone, there are alliances and relationships at hand that can help you over your personal and business hurdles as you work to turn your idea into a profitable reality. Some of these should be developed and nurtured even before you go out on your own. Others will become open to you as you face the emotional and business challenges that you will inevitably confront in your day-to-day struggle to solve problems and maintain an even

• Make sure your close family and dearest friends, and especially your spouse or significant
other, are on board with you, understanding what you hope to accomplish and your reasons
for taking the plunge, and offering you support and encouragement. Without their emotional
involvement going for you, the road is going to be rougher, and maybe you should think hard
about whether the trade-offs really make sense for you.

• Build and maintain business relationships as you travel your career path. The co-workers you
had lunch with, the intern you trained and the boss whose advice helped you grow may still
value the relationship they once had with you and may still be able to offer you advice and
support. Even better, they may have grown into positions where they can but from you or
make meaningful referrals. (You can skip this one if you have mainly left a trail of bitterness and

• Seek out as mentors the professionals and other counselors who helped you start your
business. The attorney, banker, accountant insurance broker and yes, even the SCORE counselor
who worked with you as you put your enterprise together, may have insights and experience
from their own careers that have direct application to you situation. Moreover, these
individuals, having watched you developed, may have a rooting interest in your personal and
business success and may be willing to go the extra mile to support you.

• Search out and join networking and support groups, actual or online, preferably with others
who are facing or have faced similar emotional issues – or with others in your industry – where
can both receive and give emotional and psychological advice and counsel and search together
for solutions that may not be unique to you. Who knows, you may even find answers to your
business problems arising out of these interactions.

Add to these possible resources programs of physical activity or spending quality time with family and friends, to give you a break from your workday preoccupations, or sessions with a therapist or counselor designed to help you deal with your personal issues, and you have a menu of avenues to personal stability that can strengthen you as you fight the good fight to make your business succeed. I speak from experience, having founded a company like most of you with only an idea and belief. I personally found inspiration and solace during the darkest times from quotes by great writers.

One such quote; “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by  dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends  himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. – Theordore Roosevelt.

Burt Wallerstein, a volunteer counselor with the New York City chapter of SCORE, is also a principal and founder of a global sourcing, marketing, and consulting agency. He has also written commentaries on improving higher education for the Washington Examiner and the John William Pope Center.

Blog #3 You Can’t Do It All By Yourself – It Takes A Village!

Your new business has gotten off to a good start. You’ve proven a real demand for your product or service, and the future is promising. And then you suddenly realize, OMG, there are too few hours in the day, you’re having difficulty managing priorities and you’re not able to focus on your strengths. Too many details are falling by the wayside.

You’re not alone. It’s virtually impossible for any one or two people to manage all the processes of a growing business, regardless of industry experience, intelligence and skill sets. Think about all the activities and operations essential to a developing business and imagine that each is one leg of a three-legged stool: one leg cracks or collapses, and the entire structure is in danger.

Your acceptance of the basic truth that no one individual has the time, experience or skills to manage all the processes set out below is the first step towards finding a solution.

·         Product and/or service development, a continuing process of refining, adding and updating. Anything that’s not new can quickly become old. To stand pat may be to stagnate.

·         Marketing and public relations, crafting a strong message and using the right communications tools to grow your customer/client base and meet its ever-changing needs and expectations as well as identifying and satisfying your core following are constant priorities.

·         Branding and brand development, critical elements of your product/service and marketing/pr processes, and essential to building strong and enduring relationships with your target market(s).

·         Sales and Sales Revenues, your all-important road signs of growth and success; measured intelligently, they are your first reading of what you’re selling, how much and to whom, and they assist you in shaping your future direction.

·         Supply Chain Management (for those selling products, this may be a whole new and complex world) including sourcing, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and inventory management; managing this area requires experience, agility and logistical know-how that may have to be bought, hired or rented.

·         Customer Service, ever more critical in today’s uber-competitive business climate, it offers an effective channel for building customer satisfaction and  loyalty to your brand. Equally important, it is an effective tool for acquiring customer feedback on what’s working and what’s not, as well as offering you a reliable guide for meeting and beating competitor challenges.

·         Operations - Technology and Accounting, your primary resources for tracking, reporting, analyzing and managing operations, costs and profits (ROI) of the various areas enumerated above. Technical and time-consuming, these functions are the entrepreneur’s essential tools for maintaining and establishing control of his or her growing and increasingly complex enterprise.

To grow your business, you need to build a team, insourced or outsourced, of individuals or businesses with complementary skill sets and sufficient industry skills to manage the processes you entrust to them. The ideal scenario may be to establish strategic alliances with people and entities you can orient and supervise (but not micromanage.)

Should you lack the multi-processing skill or experience – or should you believe that you best serve the operation by focusing on the one or several areas in which you are particularly talented – you may need to find the right individual to bring in as a partner or key associate, someone you can rely on both for expertise and integrity. The downside of not doing so are the opportunity costs resulting from you not maximizing the time to do what you do best, inhibiting growth, efficiency and profitability At worst, and the more likely outcome, one or more of the legs of the 3-legged stool will collapse.

I speak from experience. In 1990, when I founded a sourcing, marketing and sales agency importing apparel and sundries from Asia, I formed a strategic alliance with a Taiwanese trading company. Their responsibility, which I supervised, included Supply Chain Management and Operations. I also hired independent contractors for sales, while managing the other processes myself. The ability to manage and create a synergy among all of these processes was critical for our success.

One of the best resources for planning an organization chart for your business is SCORE NYC, www.scorenyc.org., where you will find a mentor who will understand your particular requirements and offer unbiased advice and guidance on how best to structure your company. He or she will also recommend efficient and cost-effective methods for building your team.

Burt Wallerstein, a volunteer counselor with the New York City chapter of SCORE, is also the principal and founder of a global sourcing, marketing and consulting agency. He has also written commentaries on improving higher education for the Washington Examiner and the John William Pope Center.  

Blog #2: Grow With What You Know

Your business was born out of your urge to create a new or better mousetrap, the belief that you could do it as well or better than the next person. You brought your business to market, offered a persuasive value proposition and created demand at a price your target customers were willing to pay. You have satisfied your customers and created enough cash flow and profit to justify continuing to invest your resources.  And you have developed an underlying strategy and infrastructure that enable you to to maximize your effectiveness and efficiency in that one area, your unique niche, where you have a competitive edge.

Had you done otherwise, you would likely have struggled or, at worst, failed.

A “niche market”, as defined by Wikipedia, is the subset on which a particular product or service is focused. So your market niche can be defined in various ways; specific product/service features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, unique production and quality factors, and/or the specific target market characteristics your business aims to impact.

There are good reasons why most new businesses that have become successful have spent years learning how to do one thing right, exploiting their niche and growing organically and vertically in their singular area of knowledge and strength, rather than laterally into unfamiliar and uncharted fields. Many of the processes that must be developed and nurtured – product and service development, supply chain management (for products), brand building, marketing, sales and public relations – are challenging enough for just one item, category or service. In addition, developing, implementing, executing, supervising, and managing each of these processes is, more often than not, what separates success from failure. And in most cases, the business owners must not only focus on serving their market base, but must also oversee internal operations and be technologically proficient.

Should you need to outsource any of these processes, time management and quality control make a demanding job even more complex. Think of all these processes as a series of three-legged stools; one leg collapses, and the stool collapses.

Generally, most new and growing businesses are owned and managed by one or two people. So it is not difficult to visualize and understand that expanding into a new product or service area, even if viable and economically promising, is seen as overwhelming and almost impossible to manage. And the opportunity costs, the passed-over projected profits, are impossible to calculate.

So it is no accident then that almost all businesses start in a narrow niche. Starbucks first sold premium roasted coffee in one Seattle location; Ralph Lauren started with with a collection of men’s ties; hotel.com, initially The Hotel Reservations Network (HRN), originally provided hotel bookings via a toll-free phone number; Amazon was an online bookstore; ESPN began operations as a 24-hour network with satellite communications; Southwest Airlines was an intra-state service within Texas exclusively using Boeing’s 737- 200s; and the list goes on and on.

Every industry is littered with failures that did nor first solidify their foundations nor make a point of staying true to the core values of their brand before expanding and venturing into tangential categories or unrelated new businesses. At some point all these businesses were new and thriving but made some unfortunate choices.

The lesson for most small businesses is clear. Grow with what you know. Keep it simple, and less is best. The temptation to move into categories you‘re not comfortable with, even if you think the transition will help you grow faster or enable you to cover up past mistakes and flaws may lead to disaster. Rather, if you are operating a profitable and growing small business, build on that promising base to ensure long-lasting success.    

Blog #1 What Marketers Lack

Books, articles and blogs continue to offer rules, strategies and tips on how to sell in the new economy of the 2100’s, many of them very useful. But most overlook the fundamental communications know-how and language skills necessary for maximizing their and their companies’ sales potential.
Employers responding to the National Association of Colleges and Employees Outlook 2007 Survey put communications skills at the top of the skills most sought from college students These skills have headed the list for eight consecutive years, according to Mimi Collins, NACE Director of Communications.
“Many specifically cited writing skills being weak and noted lack of verbal, listening and presentation skills among new college graduates”. You are these grads, and face it, No question that the ROI from investing in continuing education, even after receiving a degree, is limitless. And here are some of the prerequisites to selling success:

• Writing. Learning to write well to a targeted audience in language that is comfortable for that audience, involves…

ß Storytelling. Narrative shapes everything we do, telling effective stories in pitches emails and memos

ßMechanics. Mastering the building blocks of all communications – sentences, paragraphs, word choices, grammar, punctuation and editing – is essential to persuasive and understandable storytelling.

• Conversation. Using the transactional nature of conversation as a tool for learning, understanding and persuading, emphasizes…

ß Listening. Listening hard to what your customer is saying, and
following up to broaden the conversation and uncover fruitful
information.
ß Responding. Responding to others’ ideas and building them into
your narrative creates rapport and and enables you to match your
customers’ concerns, expressions and body language, effective
tools for leading conversations and influencing discussions without
overwhelming your opposite numbers.
ß Concluding. Establishing and maintaining control of a
discussion by asking relevant questions, seeking clarification and
summarizing key points and arguments.

• Communication. Learning to understand and respond to the needs and values of the other in order to make persuasive arguments necessitates…

ß Gathering and formatting ideas. Using information and
insights to build your narrative and demonstrate a sympathetic
understanding of the other side’s issues, arguments and stakes.
ß Being aware of your customers. Learning their rules of the
game, what’s in it for them.
ß Understanding communications patterns. Learning to avoid
talking past each other and how to focus on communicating
clearly, effectively and directly in conversations, whether you’re
in or out of your own comfort zones.

Whether you’re selling traditionally or online, once you or your sales colleagues
have learned and integrated these skills and insights, how much more effectively andprofessionally will you be able to represent and sell your company’s products andservices. Using these communications tools, your sales team will more confidently beable to network, develop rapport with prospects, distill power and emotion in every pitch.Your power to project confidence, frame a discussion, present facts and ideasintelligently and close a sale will be enormously enhanced through your greater abilityto communicate with your customer. And at the same time, you will have developed anenduring relationship with that opposite number.Finally, consider how much this new and improved sales capability will improve theequity of your brand and reinforce your promise of professionalism and responsiveness inevery customer interaction.


Burt Wallerstein, A mentor in the New York City chapter of SCORE, is also the founder
and principal of a global sourcing, marketing and consulting agency. He has also written
commentaries for the Washington Examiner and the John William Pope Center on
improving higher education.