Primary market research could also mean going out and talking to consumers.  What are their likes and dislikes about a particular product or service?  This will help establish if there is a particular need in the market that is presently not being met.  It can also give you ideas for new features you can add to your product or service.   This type of research can be done through surveys, focus groups, random interviews, or even cold calling.

Whether it’s talking to industry participants or actual customers, a business owner always needs to stay connected on a grassroots level.  The business environment is constantly changing and you need to stay on top of the latest trends.  If your business is not constantly evolving, you are losing ground to those who are.

This week, I will summarize the point of view of another great author on the subject of personal productivity.  In his book, “The 4-hour Workweek”, Tim Ferris uses an interesting title for his chapter on time management: “The end of time management” (how can anyone resist after reading such a title?).  He makes an interesting distinction between ‘being effective’ and ‘being efficient’.  Most people are too focused on doing more with less (i.e. being efficient).  However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into effectiveness, which Tim defines as “doing things that gets you closer to your goals”.  He encourages to keep in mind two things:

1.  Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.

2.  Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

We should focus our time and effort on important, ‘mission critical’ activities, something he illustrates using ‘Pareto’s Law’.  Vilfredo Pareto was a famous economist / sociologist who made the bold statement that 80% of wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population (this holds true even today, and the ratio is often bigger).  Tim believes that this statement can also be applied outside of economics. For example, 80% of consequences flow from 20% of causes; 80% of results from 20% of effort and time; 80% of company profits come from 20% of products and customers; 80% of problems come from 20% of your customers. When coming up with a ‘to do’ list every day, we should focus on the 20% of activities that will really help us move forward.

The author also brings to light “Parkinson’s Law”, another important principle of time management. The law states that “a task will swell in importance (perceived) and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion”.  For example, if I gave you 1 week to complete a report, you will find ways to do it in a week.  You will probably procrastinate for a few days and then put something together in the last few days.  Interestingly, the same will happen if I gave you 24 hours to write the same report.  The time pressure will force you to execute and focus on the essentials).  The lesson here is simple: shorten your work time in order to be more productive.

To conclude, I would encourage you to use a combination of Covey and Ferriss’ approaches:

1.  Create a personal vision or mission statement and identify the different roles you have in life (Covey).

2.  Identify a few ‘mission critical’ or ‘Quadrant 2′ activities for each role that you would like to accomplish this week (Covey + Ferris).

3.  Plan out your week and schedule these critical activities (Covey).  When you schedule the time for these activities, limit the time on each activity in order to be more productive (Ferris).

That’s it for time management.  Plan well and move forward!

I was at a  networking event a few months back and while having dinner, I happened to be seated next to a bright young man who was completing his MBA.  We talked about many things, one of them being entrepreneurship.  He was interested in this topic since he planned one day to launch his own business.  Outside of school, he was very passionate about tennis.  In fact, he had been giving private lessons for several years and he was now interested in turning his hobby into a full fledged business.  So what was holding him back?  In order to launch his business, he needed several hundred thousand dollars in start-up cash.  His idea was to create a full fledged tennis school and training center.  The high cost of his venture prevented him from moving forward.

There is nothing wrong with thinking big.  However, that being said, we also have to be realistic and willing to start small.  The ‘big picture’, if too rigid, can get in the way of progress.  With the gentleman and his tennis school, there was nothing preventing him from starting his business.  In fact, one could argue that he was already ‘in business’ since he was generating revenues as a private instructor.  Instead of waiting around for a big infusion of cash, he could still move forward by growing incrementally.  He could think of ways to increase existing sales.  Eventually, he could hire another instructor or possibly outsource the teaching altogether.  With more time on his hands, he could then work on introducing new services, creating partnerships, etc.,  things that will take his small business to the next level.

Another problem with having an ‘all or nothing’ attitude is that it prevents us from developing our creativity.   A small business owner constantly needs to be creative in order to solve day to day problems.  They should never let obstacles get in the way of progress.  If they can’t get a loan for their business, they can  try bootstrap financing (raising the funds from friends, family, co-workers, former clients, etc.).  I once met an extremely successful real estate investor who raised his initial investment capital by writing personal letters to every doctor and lawyer he could find.  He figured people in these professions made a lot of money and some might be interested in being passive real estate investors.  What if you don’t have money to spend on marketing?  You can use low cost marketing techniques like direct mail, pay per click, or referral marketing.  What if you don’t have money to pay for a professional website?  Have you considered bartering with a small web design company who has an equal need for your services?   The point is:  there is a solution to every problem if we’re creative enough.

One final problem I see with the ‘all or nothing’ attitude is that we shouldn’t feel entitled to receiving large sums of money for a ‘great idea’.  Investors are not there to make charitable donations.  Why should I give someone $500k of my hard earned money just because he or she has a great idea?  Investors spend money to make money.  They want to see a great product, new markets, strong initial sales, an experienced management team or board of advisors, exclusive partnerships, etc., thing that will support the future growth of the start-up.  There is no problem with dreaming big.  But as the saying goes:  “A journey of a thousands miles begins with a single step.”

In the area of entrepreneurship, I often seek out advice from people with more experience than me.  Naturally, I give their opinions a lot of weight since being a new entrepreneur, I can’t really counter their advice with experiences of my own.  A dilemma arose when I found that I was receiving conflicting advice from my ‘circle of experts’.

The topic of controversy was sales strategies.  I wanted to know the best ways to generate sales for a new  business.  The first expert told me to use the direct mail and cold calling methods.  “Sales are a pretty much a numbers game”, I was told.  “You make X number of calls from which you can expect to book X number of appointments, leading to the final result: X number of contracts.  Typically the conversion rate is around 10%, which can vary depending on the industry, the quality of the leads, etc.”  I was eager to apply this new knowledge but doubts began to surface when I spoke to the next expert.  “Forget direct mail and cold calling”, I was told.  “They simply don’t work.  Most people will throw it out your expensive brochure without even looking at it.  The key is to develop relationships with your prospects, which takes time.  In the end, they don’t care about the product being sold. The most important thing is the person behind the product.”

By the time I met with the third expert, a marketing expert, I was outright confused.  “Think of something that sets your company apart.  Then, think of ways to communicate that.  If your company provides an ‘edge’ in language training, then you must find ways to communicate that (e.g. through seminars, newsletters, etc.).  Once you do that, sales will naturally increase.”  What I had on my plate was three different sets of advice from three equally qualified people.  Who do I listen to?

After several days of confusion, what I realized was this:  there’s no fixed formula for generating sales.  Each of these experts had their distinct likes and dislikes.  One could argue for hours whether one strategy is better than the next, but since each person was successful with their approach, nothing would be settled.  At the end of the day, we should do what gets us results.  We can experiment with different strategies and then pick and choose our favourites.  The key is to generate sales and to do it consistently.

A broader lesson in all this is that even as new entrepreneurs, we should think critically about the advice we receive.  What I’m realizing more and more is that in many cases, there is no right or wrong answer.  As a small business owner, one has to develop the ability to think critically about the problems and accept responsibility for the final decision.  If  we depend too much on the opinion of ‘experts’, we run the risk of confusion.  In a certain sense, we also no longer accept responsibility for the final decision.  If the consequences turn out to be negative, we can always blame the ‘experts’ and their ‘flawed advice’.

Consulting with ‘experts’ is always a good thing.  But take it for what it is:  a consultation.  Listen carefully to the advice being given but the final decision is for you and you alone to make.  If it ends up being the right decision, pat yourself on the back.  If not, learn from the experience and move on.  Often times, there’s no right or wrong answer.  It all depends…

There was a great article in the Financial Post a few months back about the importance of defining a target market when selling a product or service.  An entrepreneur will sometimes try to sell a mass audience because their product or service is so ‘revolutionary’.  There are several problems with this approach:

• You need a massive marketing budget to serve a massive market.  A common rule in marketing is that an ad must be viewed up to 7 times before it induces a prospect to take action.  Think of the costs involved in mailing a brochure to a million people….seven times.  You can have a company website but you would still need to spend on traditional marketing (direct mail, advertising, etc.) to attract people to your website.

• For many reasons, you can’t charge as much for a product when targeting a mass audience.  There is much more competition compared to a niche market (e.g. a regular garage compared to a specialty shop specializing in classic American cars).  It is also much more difficult to communicate with your market let alone customize the marketing message.  As a result, it is much easier to charge a premium when you are serving a niche market.

• The level of after-sale service is lower.  This is pretty self-evident.  When you are charging less and serving a big market, you can’t offer a very high level of service.  You would likely opt for an online Frequently Asked Questions page instead of 24 hour live customer service.

You can identify a particular niche in several ways.  It can be geographic in nature (e.g. high income families in the borough of Westmount).  It can also be a specific consumer sector (e.g. people over the age of 50 who, by the way, represent 44% of the Canadian population and are also the most prosperous and heaviest spending).  You can even target a particular sector of the business community (e.g. small businesses in the catering business with less than 10 employees).

With a fewer number of prospects, you can simplify your marketing message and better assess the needs of your customers.  You can also afford to market more frequently, reinforcing your message while creating the multiple exposures needed to turn a prospect into a client.

A survey is a great market research tool with many uses:  evaluating customer satisfaction, discovering areas for improvement, and even testing the level of interest for a new product.  It is an objective way to gather and analyze responses. Customer satisfaction is particularly important in this day and age.  Disgruntled customers no longer just share their frustrations with their close circle of friends.  Now, they also go on Twitter, Yelp.com, and YouTube and make their complaints public.

Last week, Tim Horton’s had to deal with an onslaught on Twitter when a franchise owner sponsored an event by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is opposed to same-sex marriage.  By the time they issued a statement revoking sponsorship for the event, thousands of responses, not to mention rumors and misconceptions had been posted online.  In July, Canadian artist Dave Carroll created a video about his experience with United Airlines after spending 9 unsuccessful months trying to get compensation for his broken guitar.  Within 3 days, his video was viewed 1.3 million times, embarrassing the airline and forcing them to pay the $1,200 repair cost.

There is a vast array of online choices when it comes to surveys.  With Survey Monkey, for example, you can create everything from simple customers polls to complex professional surveys.  With a free membership, you can conduct online surveys, albeit, with some restrictions (e.g. limit of 100 responses).  For a monthly rate of US$19.95, you can increase that number to 1,000.  Another alternative is Free Surveys Online, which allows you to run a survey for free for about two weeks.  Following that period, you have to pay $14.99 to access the results.  There is also QuestionPro, a site that offers limited free service as well as  paid upgrades.

Staying in touch with customers and evaluating their level of satisfaction on a regular basis is an important part of any marketing strategy.  Word of advice:  don’t wait for a song about your company to come out on YouTube before engaging in a conversation with your customers.

• Open Office:  A great software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases.  It is basically an alternative to Microsoft Office, but without the $500 price tag.  As the name suggests, it is open source, meaning it is free to download and use for any purpose.  It is also compatible with Microsoft Office so you can open all your old Word and Excel files.
• Google Apps:  Outsource your email management to Google.  The great thing about Google Apps is that you can apply it directly to your existing domain and it works in the backend without anyone knowing.  So you can create an email account related to your website (e.g. john@ilovedogs.com) and use Google to manage your inbox. The free version allows up to 50 users and 25 gigabytes of storage per user.   You can also use a third party client like Outlook or Thunderbird if you don’t want to use Google’s web interface.  Other Google Apps functions besides email include  Google Calendar, Google Sites (e.g. can use to create an internal website for  employees), Google Docs (think free online version of Microsoft Office), and Google Video.
• Sugar CRM:  Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allows you to capture all your customers’ information and store it centrally in one location.  You can also record any interactions and update customer files.  A commercial CRM system like Salesforce will cost you between $100 and $780 per user every year (standard or professional version).  Enter Sugar CRM, the open source (i.e. free) alternative.   Though there are different editions, the free or Community edition has about 85% of the functionality of the Professional and Enterprise editions.  You can integrate it directly into your website so it can be accessed anywhere where there is an Internet connection.
• Intelligent Office:  Dont’ want to commit to a 5 year lease for a commercial office?  How about a virtual office?  With Intelligent Office, you can rent commercial office space and conference rooms by the hour.  The company also provides  remote and on-site receptionist services and admin support services.
• Amazon S3:  I like the idea of an online backup since it is more secure than leaving an external hard drive lying around the house.  There are tons of companies out there that provide online backup of your data, but they usually want a monthly subscription.  There free versions offer a ridiculously small amount of storage space.  With Amazon S3, you only pay for what you use and for $0.15 per gigabyte, you don’t pay much.  Encryption is also top of the line from what I read.
• PowerFolder:  This one took me a while to find, but it was well worth the effort.  The problem I have with Windows FolderShare (which is free) is that every person you share a file with has to register first for the service.  This is very annoying if you don’t already have an id (e.g. hotmail address) and all you want to do is use the folder sharing function.  PowerFolder is the open source alternative.  There is no need to sign up.  Just download the program, install, and you’re ready to go.  You can can send out invitations by email or even save the invitation file on a USB and give access to computers of your choice.
• XMind:  I’m a big fan of mindmapping.   I use it for everything from brainstorming to summarizing key areas of my startup.  The problem is that mindmapping software can be very pricy (e.g. $350 for MindManager).  I recently discovered XMind and after using it for about 5 minutes, I was completely sold.  I find it a lot more user friendly than FreeMind, the other free alternative.  There is a professional version available for a low cost of $49 per year (subscription based).

About a month back, I attended a great workshop by Tina Serano, co-owner of Beavertails, the company behind the delicious pastry that goes by the same name (and no, it’s not actually a beaver’s tail…it’s just shaped like one).

Tina had some great quotes on the topic of branding and small business in general that I wanted to share with my readers.  Branding, as its name suggests, refers to a company’s brand in the marketplace.  How do customers view the company? Why do they choose to do business with them?  Is it because of their  low cost? Quality? Fast service?

Branding is sometimes confused as being synonymous with ‘company logo’.  The latter is part of the branding process, as is other marketing materials such as the website, brochures, business cards, etc.  However, branding also includes business processes, strategies, and even people.  It is the overall customer experience your company offers.

Here are some of the gems that Tina shared with the audience:

“What you do has to represent you.”

I liked this quote since it establishes that we must have an emotional connection with what we do.  One of the reasons why I think many professionals are unhappy with their work is that they lack this connection.  They are reduced to a company function or job description.    They don’t see how they, as individuals, connect to the big picture, and so they feel unfulfilled.

“If you don’t buy into it, you won’t believe it and so you can’t sell it.”

Similar to the first quote, it establishes again the need for a connection between the person and the product.  It’s what makes the difference between selling a product or commodity and  selling an experience.

“Choose one branding word.”

This exercise really forces a business owner to think about what he or she has to offer.  Some examples are “service”, “speed”, “quality” or in the case of Beavertails, “addictive”.  Personally, I would have preferred a short sentence (7 words or less), but the idea is the same.  Keep it simple.

“You can’t change people’s perception of you.”

Once you establish a perception among your customers, it is very difficult to change it.  In other words, get it right the first time around or suffer the consequences.  It’s much easier to brand than to “re-brand”.

“When you create a brand, you want loyal customers.”

A strong brand differentiates you from the competition.  It creates repeat customers since you are able to deliver a unique experience.

“Don’t pay for media advertising.”

Tina is not a fan of big expensive marketing campaigns.  They’re costly and the return on investment is difficult to measure.  Instead, she encouraged us to use low cost marketing strategies (e.g. business to business marketing or cross promotion, free offers) to generate buzz.  She also talked briefly about guerrilla marketing,  the idea that costly marketing can be replaced with low cost strategies that effectively use time, energy, and imagination.

At the end of her presentation, she also mentioned a few of her favorite books:

“The tipping point” by Seth Godin.

“What happy people know” by Dan Baker.

“The monk who sold his ferrari” by Robin Sharma.

She also mentioned two cool websites worth a peek:

99design.com:   Have a pool of designers create a logo for you at a price that you set.

trendwatching.com:  A site tracking consumer trends worldwide.

The two books I would personally recommend for removing the mystery surrounding marketing are:

“Duct Tape Marketing” by John Jantsch.

“Guerilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levison.

Both offers allow the financing of products between $5,000 and $150,000, and are available until April 30, 2009.  The minimum amount is a bit annoying, but it’s still a good deal.  As well, the promotion targets ‘established’ small businesses so start ups might not necessarily be eligible (though it doesn’t hurt to try).  For more information, check out their site.