Business On Moon

My first business school course was in marketing management. The professor told us that most marketing problems occurred because those in charge of marketing failed to do their homework about what customers wanted and needed.

We were curious about that observation and asked him why this was the case, and the professor said he had no certain answer. His best guess was that people became comfortable with what they were doing and didn't want to travel much or meet many new people.

Since then, I've counseled thousands of entrepreneurs about starting new businesses and even more business people about changing jobs. From what these people have told me, the marketing professor was too narrow in his observation that marketing problems are due to managers not doing the necessary homework. Entrepreneurs and those looking for jobs usually don't do their homework either, often leading to disastrous consequences.

Whenever I check on former students of my small-business classes, I am struck that their problems could have been avoided if the students had done homework that they skipped. As a result of operating in ignorance, the small business owners either find it too difficult to find customers, spend more money than they can afford to attract customers, or make expensive operating mistakes in providing what isn't wanted instead of what is desired.

Here's an example of useful homework that a small-business owner can use to avoid such problems. For most small businesses, there are only a few thousand potential customers. Starting with a random sample of those potential customers, those starting up small businesses can gain highly accurate perspectives of what they will face by first interviewing and observing 300 people.

Every problem identified during the interviews and observations will save those starting up small businesses thousands of dollars annually. As a result, the value of such investigations can be hundreds of thousands of dollars over just a few years. I carefully explain that point to every person I meet who is interested in establishing a new small business.

How often do these entrepreneurs conduct the necessary interviews and observations before starting their businesses? Less than one percent of small-business entrepreneurs I meet ever take this essential step.

Instead, I've seen entrepreneurs spend their last nickel (often wasting as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars) to develop products and services few people want . . . a lesson which could have been discovered at little cost through interviews and observations.

Job seekers often aren't any better about doing their homework before taking a job. Rarely does someone learn enough about a position that is being considered to know what the work is like, how to work smoothly with their potential boss, what knowledge and experience are required to succeed, and the personal benefits and costs of such work. Not surprisingly, many people don't like their jobs and start looking for new ones after only six months.

Consider, by contrast, what a trial lawyer does. One of the cardinal rules of courtroom effectiveness is never to ask a question for which the attorney doesn't know the answer. Just to meet that test often requires hundreds of hours asking questions of potential witnesses and reviewing documents. The trial lawyer may also employ investigators, experts, and jury consultants to fine-tune the information to gain more insight and to make it more useful for the client's benefit.

As you can imagine, a conscientious trial lawyer might learn from the importance of being thorough to do a lot more homework in developing a new business or looking into a new job than even conscientious business people do. My expectation on this point was validated recently when I met Professor Andrew Goodman of Rushmore University (an online school), a well-respected barrister (trial lawyer) in England.

Professor Goodman deeply impressed me with how much homework he is willing to do before starting a new job or business. After he approached Rushmore about teaching conflict management and dispute resolution on a part-time basis, he decided that he needed proper preparation to teach the courses and requested that the dean allow him to be the first student to earn an MBA degree in the program he had designed. Why did he make this decision? He felt that he should experience the program from the graduate business student's perspective before teaching it to anyone. The school's dean accepted that proposal and served as Professor Goodman's academic advisor and tutor.

From his MBA studies, Professor Goodman reports that he gained important skills in disciplining his time and being flexible in his study methods. More importantly, he gained a better ability to connect with and empathize with students studying for graduate business degrees while holding down full-time jobs. His students have appreciated that part of his learning the most.

The benefits for Professor Goodman didn't stop there. Developing the curriculum, earning an MBA degree, and beginning to teach business students were just the beginning of a major new business he later launched. Here's how he did it:

First, he reshaped the course material he had prepared into four books and approximately 20 published articles that explain his views on conflict management and dispute resolution.

Second, he revised the course material to make it appropriate for training non-lawyers outside of a university setting and began a new business offering training in conflict management and dispute resolution.

Third, earning an MBA helped him realize how lawyers could be more effective in managing their activities. As a result, he developed a training program to share that learning as another offering for his new training business.

Here is some essential homework you should prepare before starting a new business.

1. Interview a statistically significant, random sample of potential customers who don't know you to find out what they buy now, where they buy, what they like and don't like about what they buy, what needs they have that no one is serving, and what it would take to make them curious about your offerings.

2. Observe a substantial number of purchasers and users of these offerings to see what problems they have that weren't mentioned in the interviews. Ask the people who are observed about those problems and discuss how they would like the problems to be solved.

3. Read at least five books containing business plans that were written by people who have started reasonably similar businesses which describe the results they experienced.

4. Work in different kinds of positions at least three similar businesses for at least two weeks to find out how the businesses operate and what the key challenges are.

5. Learn about business model innovation and develop an improved business model that will attract and serve customers better than competitors.

Here are some job-related homework assignments to do before you take a new position.

1. Ask people with varying lengths of experience in this type of work how long most people stay in this position and why they leave it.

2. Find at least three people who used to do this kind of work and don't ever want to do it again. Ask them why they feel that way.

3. Locate the most successful three people you can who have done this job and find out what these persons' views are on how to be highly successful in the position and to gain satisfaction from the work.

4. Talk to as many people as you can who have been laid off or fired by your potential boss to find out how they view working for the boss.

5. Talk to as many people as you can who have received promotions after working for your potential boss to find out how they describe working for the boss.

Naturally, if you want to do even more homework, you can also add some relevant education to your preparations. If you do, study what you can use every day in the new business or job.

Be prepared to succeed!

About the Author

Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your success, visit

http://www.rushmore.edu

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I must admit that I dont watch the news often enough. It frustrates me and depresses me, all at the same time. But, I do walk by a television that is showing a news program often enough to see the constant predictions by the Chicken Littles of the world. They are all too ready to offer up the "news" that "the sky is falling."

Now, before you run off and start actually believing that - especially in the context of your business - just stop, take a deep breath and relax. Money is moving just as fast as it ever has, you just need to be conscious of the fact that it may be moving differently than it was in the real estate boom of yesterday.

Below, youll find three easy steps that will help you recession-proof your business:
1. Become the "Celebrity Expert" in your Business Niche
In any economy, especially in an economy where the buyers in your market have been trained to spend carefully, you have to compete for every last dollar that is being spent. Your buyers are likely distracted by their own issues that they are dealing with, so the last thing that you want is to lose a prospect or, worse yet, an existing customer due to factor you can control.

If you have taken the time to show that YOU, not the product or service that you offer, are the Celebrity Counselor-at-law, the Counselor, the Go-To provider in the marketplace, you will meet up with a much superior unpredictability of staying engaged - as soon as your challengers are floundering. The excuse for this is that some business strategies variation all the way through promote shifts, and if your buyers consider your ahead of strategies and offerings better than they consider your aptitude to class excessive decisions and opinion themselves in the correctly track, then you can anticipate to sit as regards to waiting for the cell phone to ring until the advertise enables.

If, on the esoteric hand, you undergo admitted the era to make obvious your proficiency, and experience promoted yourself moderately than your "different and greatest" style and service providing, your recipient will all the time come to you, their reliable cause, anytime they must get resolutions. They might slightly rely on a trusted advisor than on a variety or provision. Employees buy workers; Under no circumstances disregard this - particularly in a shifting market.

2. Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts
In a altering publicize where possibilities and projections are no longer the same to what they were in previous periods, the originally thing a couple of businesses do is estimate an overly-conservative commercial policy. The first mania a number of a CFO says is "lets lax losing our marketing efforts." BIG MISTAKE.

This may come into view to be a example in contrarian-sales promotion, and as that does always book, this move deeper than that. Were not certainly trying to say "Yes" every time those as regards to us are saying "No," but the same conclusion ensues.

In a altering marketplace you in reality knowledge to promote more faithfully and creatively to get clientele to burn up their dollars on your goods and services. They are adopting a spare fiscally conservative plan all as regards to based on what on earth they are coming across and hearing; so they know-how to be knocked in the defy along furthermore your advertisement lesson yet additional than typical in bid to in any case make the ballot that anything you are giving makes notice for one another. If you baggy behind your commercial efforts, the final "trace" your client is researching for beforehand they cross the column and buy may certainly not come. As they say, "whenever the student is geared up, the guru will become visible." If you dont become visible when the student is ready, youll leave out out on the unpredictability to variety the sale and move in the revenues you deserve.

3. Be Agile
We for all time get trapped up in offering the wareses and services that we demanded to present, relatively than researching for the missing factors in our emptors lives. Its an simple entrapment to dropped into, especially if youve been doing whatsoever youve been doing for a constant period of time.

If you get perplexed providing your wareses and services closely as you understanding in the past, you may hop over a excessive chance to fill a vacant. If there is a alteration in publicize conditions and your profitability level drops, and you begin again to give your products and services the equal way you were pre-variation, after that you are revolving a blind eye to the fact that your marketplace is no longer seeking or ready to pay for the way out of yesterday.

Oftentimes it basically eliminates a slight tweak of your example to relax the worry your prospects are sensation, but you do taste to stock a time to stop and familiar with that your "ointment" may no longer be packaged in a way that attracts clients, and that re-packaging may be the key to renewed profitability.

I appreciate that the daunting moral in the statistics is that "the sky is falling," but if youll hold the moment to trail these three straightforward steps, I gratify you that even as soon as your chances and buyers are striving to steer clear of the imminent doom, theyll come to your bunker to avoid getting smacked bringing up the rear.
About the Originator

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