When you’re trying to grow a business, it’s not really two paths that diverge is it? It’s more like ten. Or twenty. Or…what day is it today? It could be a hundred.

(By the way, this doesn’t have anything to do with the sheer number of hats – I hadn’t realised I’d be an accountant AND a therapist this year – you have to wear when you own a growing business.)

No. I’m talking about opportunities.

I remember when I first started my company. I was pretty new to business in general (ok, very new) and I saw opportunities everywhere. I ran around chasing most leads, qualifying very few of them, and generally wasting my time. I dabbled. I had a vague notion of growing a business – I knew I wanted more clients and more money – but if I look back in honesty, I was running around with no real sense of plan.

Does this sound familiar? How many businesses do you think dabble? I don’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. You probably do. But if you really want serious business growth, do you really think dabbling is the way forward? Do you really think that an unstructured approach is going to work? It may work sometimes. You can always get lucky and, if you’re a decent chat, you can probably get a number of people on your side. Lord knows I did. But real significant sustainable growth didn’t happen for me until I got a plan.

I’m lucky in a way. My company specialises in marketing strategy. We spend every waking minute of the day thinking about where to place our clients so that they can achieve significant growth. We understand the need for building a comprehensive structure around business development and we are locked into the notion of focus. I practically get in tattooed on new employees.

When it came to creating a structure and strategy for my business, I had all the tools I needed at my disposal. I had over six years of experience in building these strategies for other people, and in seeing how they needed to evolve and change over time as circumstances (internal and external) changed.

Every week I revisit my strategy to ensure that I’m doing the things I need to do to achieve the goals I have set out. And every year I take a look at where we need to get to over the next 12, 24 and 36 months and I readjust the strategy to suit.

What do I look at every year?

1. Business Focus
   This is critical. It’s too easy to get sucked into the idea that any business is good business. It’s simply not true. Anybody can start a business and anyone can lose money. Anyone can just scrape by. The reality of growing a profitable and long-term business is different. You need focus and, more importantly, you need to be focussing on the right things. Over the last three years I have been slowly refining our business model into the one that I want. I’ve also been narrowing our focus. We turn away a lot of business now if it doesn’t fall within our key focus areas. Focussing on the right business models and the right target markets are the most important thing you can do every year. You have to have the courage to do it, but it’s worth the pain.
2. Strategic Partners, Champions & Referrers
   Surrounding yourself and your business with the right people is one of the key parts of having a successful business. Having the right team is absolutely essential. Your team is more than your staff, it’s also about who you have surrounded around your business who can stand beside, behind and, sometimes, in front of you. Every year I look to create relationships with key influencers who I want associated with my business. Every year I look to solidify relationships I have already developed. The stronger these relationships become, the stronger my business becomes.
3. Networking Opportunities.
   You can’t throw a stick at the moment (at least in Edinburgh) without hitting another opportunity to do ‘networking’. I’m of several minds when it comes to networking. I used to do a lot of it, and now I do a very very small amount. I don’t actually believe that 90% of the networking most people do is effective. Certainly my old networking wasn’t. This, by the way, had nothing to do with the quality of the networking groups or the calibre of people I was meeting. I met a lot of great people. But networking has to be twinned with focus. I have to ask “why am I going here?” and “what am I trying to achieve?”. That isn’t about winning more work, but is about my business focus. You should be looking to network and build relationships with a direct link to your business focus. Your focus should drive your networking, not the other way around. Once you realise that, you can start to understand where you need to be and what relationships you should be trying to build.
4. Marketing & Profile
   Again this is a pretty obvious one for me, but every year I look at what I want to achieve with our own profile and marketing initiatives. One doesn’t drive the other. There is no point in thinking up clever marketing if it’s not driving the right business. For me, I start with the type of business I want to build that year and work backwards. I think about what activities can help me achieve those goals and where we may need some help.
5. Cost of Growth
   Finally, I look at what growth I’m trying to achieve in the next twelve months and what that may mean from a financial and capacity point of view. Case and point: we’ve just hired someone. That means wages, taxes, desk, computer, travel…the list goes on. I look at the growth I’m trying to achieve that year and I put different plans in place for what that will mean to the company in real financial, personnel and overhead terms.

There it is. A simple formula to look growth on an annual basis. Simple to say – much more difficult to do. But then, that’s why people hire us ;-)

-j

I asked him to list out where they spent their marketing budget. His answer:

• Creative Company
• Leaflets
• Posters
• Advertising
• PR
• SEO
• Website Development

The list was pretty good. I was impressed. They definitely were not shying away from spending money on marketing.

There was a problem, however. His franchisees were still complaining to him that they weren’t seeing return for their marketing levy. They weren’t happy, and they were letting him know about it.

He asked me the question: How can that be?

From my view it’s pretty simple. Just because you’re spending money doesn’t mean it’s money well spent. If you spend £70K on an advertising campaign that only generates £20K worth of business, do you really think people will be congratulating you on investing so much on your marketing? Like hell. They’ll be asking you why you wasted all that time and money with no reward to show for it.

You don’t get points for trying. You get points for results.

Back to my conversation. I more or laid out this same idea to him. The reason his franchisees were unhappy was that they weren’t seeing any benefit from the marketing spend. From their perspective, all they were seeing was money flying out the door. It never seemed to be coming back in.

Sure they got the leaflets delivered every month, and yes they were very pretty. But there was nobody helping them with what to do in their territory. Nobody really helping them get the most out of what they had to work with.

Now THAT is where local marketing comes in.

And the even better news?

It’s normally cheaper and more effective.

How? It’s a simple numbers game.

Let me give you an example. Say our franchisor decides to put on an offer and send it out to all of his network. He prints up 500,000 leaflets and gets them distributed to all 50 of his franchisees. It’s the same offer to everyone, with no recognition of the differences between the different local markets.

Now in this scenario, only about 15 of his network thinks that the offer will work in their territory. 15 out of 50. If we assume that they will only use about 30% of the printed leaflets, the numbers start to get scary:

500,000 Printed Leaflets: £5000

Distribution to 50 Franchisees: £500 (£10/franchisee)

Total Expenditure: £5500 (£110/franchisee)

Sure that’s not a lot of money. Only £110 per franchisee.

But hang on. Only 15 of the 50 are going to use the campaign, and they will only use 30% of the leaflets. If we look at those numbers we really only need to print up 45,000 Leaflets. That’s a much more targeted way of doing a marketing campaign – send out the most effective materials for those areas. The numbers look better:

45,000 printed Leaflets: £650
Distribution to 15 Franchisees: £150 (£10/franchisee)
Total Expenditure: £800 (£54/franchisee)

See any difference? We can make it even more brutal:

Total spent on mass campaign: £5500
Total spent on targeted campaign: £800
Wasted Marketing Spend: £4700

That’s 85% of the campaign budget being flushed away.

THAT is the importance of local marketing.

THAT is where franchises need to focus on.

And if you want to know more, give me a shout.

- Jordan

(This article was originally written at www.franchisemarketingsystem.co.uk – please contact Jordan directly if you’d like to learn more about Designate’s unique local marketing systems for franchises)

(Scratch that. October WAS a long month, and now we get to see how November pans out. Here’s hoping eh?)

So yeah, it’s been a long month. A long month of ups and downs. A lot of time spent reflecting. A lot of time spent searching. Even some time spent selling.

The past three months my company has been working on a new game plan. We’ve been refining a couple business models (and opportunities) over the past couple of years, and we’ve finally been in a position to execute. It was a tough slog. There were times when I had to really hold my nerve and go after what I knew to be true.

Sometimes everyone believed in me.

Sometimes nobody did.

But I believed, and I held my nerve and, well, here we are.

November. Almost the end of the year.

So how’s it going? Pretty well thanks.

It’s all down to focus.

I don’t know how many times I have seen businesses stagnant because they lack one key ingredient: focus.

Focus is everything.

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day. Their business is doing, well, what their business always does – they reel from crisis to crisis, from boom to bust, like a drunken sailor staggering from one end of the pub to another. It’s not a pretty site.

It also drives me nuts. He’s got a pretty good offering. He’s pretty good at what he does and his team is pretty good at executing. They have all the opportunity in the world to build a solid platform for their business.

The trouble is – he’s not interested in a solid platform. Solid platforms are boring aren’t they? He wants the win. He wants the whale. He wants the big ticket that makes him a star.

And he doesn’t want to wait.

Let me ask you a question. When did being Entrepreneurial become code for being stupid? When did being a risk-taker become synonymous with taking stupid risks? It doesn’t impress me when he does that. It doesn’t make me admire his spirit or willingness to fail.

It makes me think he’s an idiot chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

And so many businesses seem to be like that.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a risk-taker by nature. But I’m about calculated risks.

When I look at business, I look for good, stable strong profitable income streams. You can build those. You can build whole cities on those.

But he’s too busy looking for the big win that he doesn’t even realise the potential that he has. He has no focus. He has no structure.

If he ends up winning (and as a friend, I hope he does) it will be in spite of all of his efforts. It will be down to dumb luck and circumstance.

Let me put it in simple numbers.

By being focussed in his approach, and by being focussed on the right type of business to develop, I reckon he has a 75% chance of turning his business into a £1-2M business within 5 years.

By shooting for the whale, I reckon he has a 1-5% chance of having a £20M buy-out within the same amount of time.

Which would you rather have?

I’m going for option 1, thank you very much.

-Jordan

I’m very pleased to have finally launched our Franchise Marketing System to the world.

The Franchise Marketing System is unique in the industry. Honest:

1. Sector Input
   We’ve developed it with direct input from franchisors, franchisees and a whole host of franchise professionals. There has been a lot of expertise, experience and input from across the entire sector. We’ve spent a few years talking to everyone from lawyers and accountants to individual franchisees in order to get as wide a perspective as possible. We like being thorough in our work. It makes us feel a lot better.
2. Tried, Tested, Sorted
   Before we launched this system to the wider market, we wanted to shake down any niggling problems – you know, kick the tyres…that sort of thing. We’re pleased to say the system held up and did exactly what we said it would: bring a rigorously structured marketing approach to the entire franchise network – from head office right down to individual franchisee.
3. It’s Hands On
   We’ve been developing and implementing marketing strategies for companies for over five years. We’ve gathered a lot of experience in that time. One of the things we knew was crucial was our ability to work hands-on with each franchisee on a monthly basis. That’s right. We work with each franchisee directly. Every month. No exception. We visit each franchisee at their location on a regular basis, and our team is there to help them drive their local marketing forward.
4. The Price is Right
   Why spend a lot of money on hiring staff when you can bring it into your company in a much more cost-effective way? Our Franchise Marketing System has the answer – we charge you based on the number of franchisees you have. It’s as simple as that. For most sizes of franchise, the monthly investment per franchisee is only £250+VAT. £250 a month to get hands-on local marketing support. That’s not even a question.

So take a look at the new website (it’s new, so it may still need some work) and feel free to send us some feedback. If you’re a franchise owner, drop us a line and we can chat about how we can make a big impact to your franchise community.

- Jordan

Or not. Either way, really.

I was speaking to a group of franchisors the other day.

(For those of you who don’t know the term, a franchisor (person or group/company) sits at the head of a franchise. They are the people everyone else buys their franchise from. They own the brand, have developed the systems and processes, and take a monthly fee from each of their locations.)

So anyway. I was speaking to them. I was there to give them a bit of input and advice about local marketing. It’s a subject that is particularly relevant to most franchises out there. I can’t tell you how many franchisees (the people who buy the franchise) get upset about marketing. Seriously it’s a high percentage.

The thing that drives most of them mad is this – they keep getting given generic marketing strategies that have nothing to do with their area, their competition or their customers. It’s all generic. What kind of support is that?

My company has a bit of a speciality in this area. We developed a comprehensive franchise marketing system to do just that. It’s all about getting results at a local level.

It’s also about learning. Why don’t companies take the time to learn about their customers? Why don’t they take the time to really understand the competition?

This is particularly true when it comes to the franchise industry. Most franchises will boast about their ‘world-class’ marketing support and, to be honest, 98% of them are talking bollocks. Their idea of marketing support is to print up a bunch of generic leaflets and tell the locations to distribute them.

Where? To whom? Why? All good questions.

The thing is, most franchisors miss out on one of their greatest local marketing assets – their franchisees. For the most part, a franchisee buys a franchise within the area they live. They know the history. They know the people. They know who is there and why people prefer one thing to another.

So why don’t they get asked?

When I posed this question to the group of franchisors, how many do you think actually asked their franchisees about this?

Not one. Seriously.

That’s an awful lot of local knowledge they missed out on. It’s silly, and it winds up costing you money.

It’s not just about franchising either. We’re currently bringing two new software products to the market for two separate clients. In both cases we have been doing an awful lot of groundwork to identify and connect to the potential customers. You have to do this, or you’ll end up with a very shiny system with nobody to use (or pay for) it.

Talking to people is important. Listening is even more so. If you really want to practice sensible marketing, take the time to engage with your customers (or potential ones). Take the time to really understand who they are. Look at the real competition, not just the obvious ones.

In short – you need to do the ground work and understand that every area, every city, every group of people, are all different.

Or you can call my company, and we’ll do it for you ;-)

-j

That’s not meant to be negative. There are lots of great examples of recent companies that have brought new and innovative (or some combination of the two) products to the market successfully. There are some really good case studies of companies that have defied the odds and moved up from a start-up brand to a globally positioned one. It’s very possible.

But there are also graveyards littered with the corpses of dead and dying products. Lots of them. It sucks.

Now some of these deserved to die. They really did. They didn’t have a market, or they were badly designed…there are lots of reasons why your new product deserves to fail. I can’t find myself getting to weepy about any of them, to be honest.

But the ones that do get me down are the ones that have the potential but they squander it. The good ideas that fail because of how they are brought to market. That makes me sad because, for the most part, these projects could have been successful with a few minor changes to the plan.

So today, I’m performing a public service. My company specialises in bringing products to the market. We live and breathe it. And one of the things I normally find when I start talking to people about launching their products is that they really have drastically underestimated how difficult it is.

You see, launching something is easy. Getting to it to stick is the hard bit.

So here it is, then. Five ways I tend to see good strong products with potential to grow lose the plot, struggle, and die.

1. The Golden Ticket
   Willy Wonka aside, there is no such thing as a golden ticket. It doesn’t exist. But you’d be amazed at how many time I speak to people who are convinced that this one thing is going to be the thing that gets their product rolling. The dirty little secret is that ‘this one thing’ doesn’t exist. Getting a product to have a successful commercial lifespan involves so many things – The product, the price point, the market, the need, the economy…. and that’s just a start. ‘That one thing’ will never happen, and if your strategy relies on it you should take your money and go to Vegas. You’d be better off betting on the last card turning up….
2. Sure, they’ll do the work for you…
   This one makes me laugh. I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken to people who are convinced that getting in the door is enough. “I’m getting my product in Tesco next year” is the mantra I hear all the time. So what? What happens next? Do you honestly think Tesco gives a shit if your product lives or dies? They don’t. You are a product on a shelf. They only care if you are selling. They care about space, and if your product doesn’t sell, it’s off the shelf. I keep meeting people who are convinced that the big players (retail, banks etc.) will push their product off the ground for them. You want to guess how likely that is? Like I said, getting a product to market is easy…it’s making it stick that’s hard.
3. Who needs all that cash?
   You know, there is a big difference between launching a B2B product and launching a B2C product. It takes a lot more money to launch in B2C. A lot more. And I don’t mean frivolous money either. The simple fact is that a B2B product has a much easier time defining the right channels and the right incentives. If the product is genuinely good and has a genuinely good benefit…it’s actually pretty easy. After that it is down to the sales. 

   But with B2C it’s different. That’s harder and has a much more difficult distribution strategy. There are a lot of channels out there, and you have to make them all work for you when you start looking at B2C. I have seen so many B2C companies fail because they underestimated the cost and effort involved with getting a brand new product (and brand) out there. If it takes you £150K to get the product done and produced, why do you think it will cost you £15 to market it? Stupidity in itself.

4. Everyone needs it, I promise…
   Everyone has seen this one right? It goes along with the “my mummy thinks I’m handsome, therefore…” argument I love to make (and for the record, she does). It’s particularly true when you are dealing with the techie guys themselves, but almost everyone who tries to launch a product is convinced that the market will love it as much as they do. They are convinced that everyone will flock to the (e)stores to buy their product as soon as it’s released. 

   Well that’s not true is it? It’s a lot harder than that, and the timescales are a lot longer. What we think will take two months will almost always take four. It’s the nature of the beast. Nothing goes exactly to plan. And you need to find the momentum behind the product. That’s crucial. Every product I have been involved with has a certain momentum it needs to develop. Sometimes it’s quick and hard and sometime it’s long and soft (oh my…).

5. Social Media and Viral is all there is right?
   I was in a meeting the other day and the company could pretty much sum up their entire sales strategy as “viral stuff and the website”. Oh dear. Probably not mate. And yet I can’t tell you how often I see companies convinced that the key to victory will be to get an online campaign going. Why? I mean yes that can help, but it’s missing the point. You have to have a balanced approach. You have to see the right paths to walk down and make sure you’re walking in the right direction. It’s a bit of this and a lot of that. You push here and you pull there. It’s give and take.

And that last point brings us to the simple truth: launching a product is not simple. It’s a complicated web. You can’t focus on one thing, you have to push them all along. It takes skill and planning and, sometimes, a little luck. But the upshot is if you do it right you start to get that momentum. And when a new product gets momentum, watch out – it’s time to pounce.

-j

This came back into sharp relief for me over the past two months. Someone I know fairly well (and even odder, someone I actually like and rate as a business person) has had to close his doors.

I couldn’t help him. He asked me to. But I had to tell him no.

That’s not me being a prick, by the way. If I could have helped him, I would have done whatever I could have for free. It wasn’t about fees or money. It was down to a simple problem. The business was sunk. It needed to die. It didn’t have any life left in it.

All I could think of was this: why didn’t you come talk to me a year ago? We could have fixed this.

And that’s the sad moral of today’s story. It’s not nice, but it’s something I have seen time and time again. You can’t wait until the ship is sinking before you start to plug the holes….it’s too late at that point.

Back when my company did a lot more campaign-based work, I used to get approached by businesses all the time who were looking for quick wins. They needed cash in, so they wanted a cheap campaign (ie. they had no real budget to pay us) that would bring in some quick cash.

Now, I’ve never been interested in that sort of work, so I’d listen politely and send them away, normally with the best advice I could give about how they could create their own campaigns for free. They didn’t have the money, they didn’t have the opportunity and, even worse, they were spiraling down anyway. The ship was sinking….

What was that moral again? Oh yeah. You can’t wait wait until your business is at the brink before you take action to increase your marketing. You can’t wait until the water is lapping over the sides before you figure out where you need to focus you efforts. If you wait for that long, you’re probably not going to be able to get out of the hole in any meaningful way.

So for my friend’s benefit (who is doing OK and starting up again) and for all those others who have come to me in distress, I’m going to remind them of some fundamental marketing rules they should be stapling to their foreheads.

It’s Honest Assessment Time

What’s working? What isn’t? Do you know how many businesses I have seen that, somewhat pigheadedly, continue down the same bad paths they have gone down before? It’s insanity. You’ve got to have an honest assessment of where the best and most profitable income is coming from and focus on attaining that. Stop reaching for those projects that never come off, and stop doing the ones that don’t pay you any money. Why the hell are you in business if not to make a strong and sustainable profit? Look at where you are focussing on and make sure it’s the right direction.

Cover Your Home Bases First

Any time you talk to one of those cheesy ‘business coaches’ about marketing they normally spout a lot of drivel, but they do say one useful thing: it’s easier to sell to your existing customers. That’s very true. It’s also easier to leverage the contacts and connections (from customers to suppliers, families to neighbors) you already have than to go after people who don’t already know you. There is normally a ton of business on your doorstep (either literally or figuratively) and it drives me nuts when I see businesses ignore that.

Stay Active, Not Passive

Active marketing is a lot better than passive marketing. You want to be actually reaching out to people. That can happen in a lot of different ways, both directly and indirectly. Passive marketing is when you throw something out there and hope you get a response. Take that ad in the Chamber of Commerce calendar? Well why not? I’ll tell you why. It’s a waste of money. Spend that £400 on directly and actively reaching out and taking business.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Do you know how many good marketing ideas are basically just tweaks of existing campaigns? All the best ideas are copied, are changed, are tweaked and are improved. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel at every step. You don’t have to come up with something startling or brand new. You don’t even have to do something drastically different from your competitors. If something works, use it.

That’s it. Four simple things for my mate (you know who you are) to keep in mind.

And a simple request – don’t wait until you’re hurt before you ask for my help. You know where to find me (and what whisky I prefer).

;-)

- j

It will come to nobody’s real surprise that I don’t always see eye-to-eye with these people. I also have an annoying habit of saying whatever pops into my head. That is a trait that has, admittedly, brought me into trouble on the odd occasion.

But these meetings can also be fun! I learn things. We argue about ideas. It’s the way it should be.

A couple of my recent ones have focussed a lot more on one central topic. What, exactly, is marketing?

Of course it’s actually a bit of a trick question. Marketing means so many things it’s impossible to be 100% right or 100% wrong about it. Just because your definition of marketing is different to mine doesn’t necessarily mean one of us is wrong (although, to be fair, let’s just assume I’m right, ok?).

I get asked this question a lot, so I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and give some of my thoughts.

Marketing is not about brand

Marketing is not a pretty website

Marketing is not a Twitter account (or a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page etc)

Marketing isn’t about direct mail

Marketing isn’t sending an email campaign

Marketing isn’t about your database

Marketing isn’t about design

Marketing isn’t a quick fix or a quick win

Marketing isn’t about print

Marketing isn’t a brochure

That’s lot of negatives isn’t it? Don’t worry, this all has a positive ending :-)

Now before you send me a bitchy email. Of course all of these things can fall into your marketing. Of course they can (and some of them absolutely should). All of these bits and pieces can be combined to form a coherent and powerful marketing package for your company. There is only one problem.

First you need the plan.

This is the source of most of my arguments. Particularly, I have to say, when I talk to creative agencies (ahem, sorry, ‘marketing agencies’). The majority of them do what you’d expect them to do. They react to a brief from a company. They get asked to provide a new brochure – they do it really well. They get asked to design a website, it’s a thing of beauty. That’s all well and good.

But it’s not really marketing.

Those are just things.

Too many companies get fooled into thinking that it’s the tools that matter. It isn’t. You have to know what the job is before you start picking the tools.

So what is marketing?

Marketing is about linking what you do with how you do it and who you do it for. That’s a terrible way of putting it, but it’s true.

Marketing is about profit

Marketing is about focus

Marketing is about growth

Marketing is about your customers

Marketing is about your staff

Marketing is about your products and services

My company focuses on this side of marketing (the real side, right?). We don’t concentrate on building pretty pictures or making Facebook pages. We don’t concentrate on leaflets or brochures. We concentrate on where sustainable and profitable income streams can be found. We concentrate on business models. We look at opportunities. We figure out strategies to achieve all of these things. Only then do we pick the right tools for the job.

So my advice is pretty simple. Stop worrying about your website and your advertising. Stop thinking an email campaign will save the day and Twitter is the path to salvation. That’s all bollocks. Before anything you have to be on a firm strategic footing. You have to know where you are, where you want to go and how you are going to get there. You have to understand how you fit. You have to understand where you fit.

There are a lot of things that need to be thought of before you rush off to do the creative side of marketing. Don’t be one of those companies that misses the boat eh?

- j

Capacity. My old friend. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and not just because of our current, short-term, capacity loss. I think of it almost every day when I think about our clients.

Capacity. It’s such a strange word in so many ways. So few companies really think about their capacity. Most companies think getting more. They want more sales, more profit, more customers, more staff, more turnover, more expansion.

More, more, more, more….

And more is good! More is excellent.

But it has to be twinned with something else – the ability to deliver.

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the key problems any business faces when the look to expand – the ability to deliver at the same level of quality and expedience. It’s so often the last thing that business owners think about when they think about expansion. It’s so often the last piece to enter into the equation, often after the fact, when the problems are already there.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but when we’re developing a strategy for a company, we look at several key areas of their existing setup:

1. Sales – the way they interact with clients, their sales process, their client base, their sales tools, their sales teams.
2. People & Personalities – key people, personality dynamics, weak performers, hierarchies, behaviour types
3. Marketing & Profile – PR, advertising, target markets, databases, crm systems, collateral, social media
4. Financials – pricing structure, cash-flow, overheads, marketing budgets
5. Products & Services – competitors, key benefits, market analysis, opportunity analysis
6. Capacity – current capacity & roles, desired capacity & roles, required capacity

It’s the last one that most people are surprised by. “Hey, you’re a marketing company! What are your looking at that stuff for?”

Why wouldn’t we?

Let me tell you a little secret. You want to know what the number one reason companies fail to achieve the growth they want? It’s not because of the market – it’s because they don’t execute properly. It’s down to them. You already hold all the keys…the real question is always: what are you going to do with them?

Who’s going to manage the relationships? How is it going to work when you have doubled the client base? What about tripled? How long will it take to train up new people? Where are you going to find them? When do you need to start looking?

Capacity is so important. It’s also personal to me, at the present moment, because I’m dealing with it all over the block. First off in my own business, but also with a number of my clients.

I promise you it’s going to be a lot more important than you think…so think about it….sooner rather than later.

- jordan

Anyway, there was a bit of a sales pitch on his side of the table, but he was a nice guy and, at the very least, he was honest about it. I appreciate that. I liked him.

Of course what always happens in these meetings is that the two of us play a bit of ‘show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ footsy. Here’s what we do. Oh yeah? Here’s what we do! Repeat.

As I was talking to him a bit about what Designate does, I started to talk a lot more about what makes us different from most marketing companies. The short 3-second answer?

Sometimes it’s our job to tell you that you look fat in that dress.

I’ll elaborate.

Most marketing companies are really just glorified creative companies. That’s not a slight by the way. I admire them. I really do! I also use quite a lot of them on different projects. But let’s not confuse what they do with what real marketing is about. Real marketing is placement. Real marketing is the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ and then the ‘how’ and the ‘where’. The pretty skin on top is the last part of the equation. It’s a critical part, of course, but if it’s not grounded with a proper understanding of the fundamentals, it’s also a useless part. Most creative companies will act on what they are given. They don’t question…they execute on what they are asked.

Not us.

I gave him an example:

We’re working with an exciting software company right now. They have developed some very cool technology and they came to use to figure out a strategy for them. How could they turn their business from one that uses their technology to service clients into one that sells their technology and makes a lot of passive income. It’s a big question. It’s a huge change in business model but, if they could manage it, they could see the benefits. And they have been trying to figure out how to do it for years with no luck.

Well we took a look at the technology and, based on where they were, said forget it. You can’t play in that field, and going forward like that is suicide. You won’t make it. There isn’t enough of a market to make it worthwhile. Ouch eh?

Was that the end of it? Of course not. Our job isn’t to do what you tell us to do – it’s to come up with a strategy to accomplish what you want to do. If you knew how to do it, you wouldn’t need us.

Now we could have accepted the project on spec. They briefed us to do something, we execute the brief. Job done. Chance of success? hmmm..I’ll say about 5%?

Instead, we did what we always do. We worked out where the best opportunities existed and we made a case for a strategy to go after them. We got our hands dirty. And guess what? We have been helping them leverage their technology into specific niche markets. And it’s working. And they are happy.

That’s one of the things I love about what we do at Designate – it’s not our job to be reactive. It’s not our job to do as we’re told (of course we value our client’s opinions and experience and of course we put them first…don’t be stupid). It’s our job to question. It’s our job to poke holes. It’s our job to think of the better way. It’s our job to give the unvarnished truth.

And our clients appreciate it. They benefit from it. They profit with it.

So yes, my dear, you look fat in that dress. But the good news? I found a company willing to pay for it….you’re going to make a fortune as a plus-sized model….

- jordan

P.s. Please don’t send me email about using weight as an issue. It could have been anything. I’ve just used this analogy. Grow up.