I wrote recently about the businesses I can’t help, so I thought it was only fair to write about whom I can help.  It’s tempting to write this as a sales pitch, but I’ll resist temptation and try to be more objective instead. My strap line is that I help small businesses who want to be bigger businesses.  I specialise in businesses with less than 30 employees because the smaller businesses are the sexy exciting ones. The businesses where I can make the most difference are the ones where the owner is committed to growth, and knows that he or she needs some help and support to get there.  Where the owner wants to get to be a bigger business, but doesn’t really know how to go about it. Imagine a two-person design partnership.  They’ve developed some demand, and have some good clients, but they are uncertain how to move from doing all the work themselves to being able to manage other people doing the work.  If you’ve read any of Michael Gerber’s Emyth books then you’ll know that there’s a key growth stage in stopping doing the work yourself, and getting others to do the work, while you become responsible for developing and running the business.  The temptation for our design company is to carry on doing all the work themselves, getting more and more worn out by servicing clients, or by not spending any time on marketing, they risk running out of new business.  Or both. In this situation I can:

• Identify what sort of work the lovely designers need to go after
• See what how they need to price their work to remain competitive, but have enough to be able to afford to pay other people to do the production and improve their profits
• Help them work out what marketing activities are going to work best for them
• Refocus them on marketing, so they can attract new clients
• Make sure they do the marketing, by being there and reminding them of what they promised to do

Of course, my lovely designers could do all of this themselves, but what do they get extra by paying me to help them? I’d say they get:

• The courage to charge more money
• Some fantastic new ideas about marketing, which they maybe wouldn’t have been able to come up with themselves, because I spend all my time seeing what works and stealing other people’s tactics
• Someone to be accountable to – so they can’t just slip back to their old habits, but are reminded that now we’re doing business in a different way.
• Someone who gives a damn.  This sounds obvious, but how often do you have someone who actually really cares about whether you succeed or fail, and have that person be someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Let’s take another scenario, this time of a bigger business.  Here’s a company which has been running for a while.  They have 12 staff, so they’ve got over the delegation issue, and they’re nicely profitable.  But, the director knows that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life running this business – at the moment it’s still fun, but she wants to sell up in 3 years time.  And, she wants to have enough money to do something else after that, or to do nothing at all for a while.  In fact, she knows that she wants to sell for upwards of £1.5m. Why would she want to get the woman with the curly hair and glasses in? Our director (we’ll call her Alice) needs some help to achieve her target of a sale in 3 years with a price tag of £1.5m.  Where I can help is:

• Assessing how much turnover and profit she needs to bring in to make the business worth that million and a half, and make sure that the business is working in a way which will maximise the sale value.
• Working on a much bigger marketing strategy to build up the business
• Helping with the recruitment of a really hot sales director to bring in the big sales which are going to add up.
• Supporting Alice in all the little problems that come with growing a business, so she’s got someone to go through things with her.  Again, this is about giving a damn, and getting help from someone who has been through this themselves.

That should give you an idea of the sort of businesses I work with and how I make a difference.  If you would like to talk about how I can help, you know where I am.

This week I’ve been helping people with boring businesses. That is, the businesses themselves aren’t boring, nor are the people who run them, but the businesses look just the same as their competitors, and there’s nothing to make someone want to buy from them or even notice them.  Any differentiation has just been on the nebulous ideas that “we’re nice chaps” or “we’re really good at what we do.”  But of course, everyone thinks that they are a nice chap, or that they’re the best, but you don’t have any evidence of it.  I’m really lovely, and amazing at what I do, but how do I prove it to you?

Anyway, people don’t spend money with you because you’re nice.  Particularly at the moment, with the new rule that it’s bad to let any cash out of the door, people are only going to spend money if there’s an amazing reason for it.

To get people to buy from you, you have to get them to notice you first.  My friend Aida is this one that you want – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. She’s great Aida, a lovely girl.  And you won’t get even the first letter of Aida’s name if you’re boring – no one will even notice you.

Boring businesses include:

Many people set up a business as if they’ve been to see the careers advisor at school. I’m going to be a nurse, fireman, trainer.  They see what they’re good at, and there’s a category of business which they fit into.  No wonder they’re all the same – they’ve been designed to be the same as everyone else.  Does this sound familiar?

I’ve worked with lots of these businesses, and my first starting point is always how do we make this into something remarkable? We need something which makes people notice it, and even more importantly, talk about it, tell stories about it.  I’ve written elsewhere about the marketing advantages of running a remarkable business , and Seth Godin comes back to this point time and time again in his writing about marketing and business.

My technique when faced with a boring business is to dig deep into what’s really going on with the business.  Is there a niche of customers that the business is really good at servicing?  Concentrate on that seam, establish a reputation for excellence and that reputation will spill over into everything else you do.

Do the business owners have something that other people don’t have?  Jacky Misson at Nido Marketing has made telesales (a boring business if there ever was one) into something exciting, purely by force of her personality.  Because Jacky is so excited about her business, and the act of getting on the phone, she makes you want to engage Nido – her enthusiasm and sense of fun is infectious.

Is there an idea you can steal from somewhere else?  I recently told a café owner that I wouldn’t eat in her café – and she said she wouldn’t either!  No wonder she isn’t making any money.  I set her some homework to go to some great cafes and work out what makes them great – and then we can work on some ideas to steal, once we know what works somewhere else.

Have a look at your business and see what’s there under the surface, or what you can creatively swipe from other people.  Make it different, make it remarkable and then you can work out how to tell people about it.