Growing a Business
A blog for
businesses with 20 or fewer employees or for people planning on starting one.
There are two threads. One for Starting a Business and a second for Growing a
Business. Author: Henry McCabe.
Back to the Growing a
Business Thread
With this blog I am returning to the thread addressed to people who are running a small
business. In 7 previous blogs in the
running a business series (Nov. 29 '13 through Jan. 31 '14) I wrote about creating someday goals, also
known as a strategic plan. I hope some of my readers took a crack at that. This one is the first in a series of
dealing with marketing, or more specifically in re-examining and re-structuring
the marketing plan for a business whose growth has stalled or one that is doing well and wants to grow even faster.
Marketing Defined and
the Planning Process- Looking to the Future
Marketing
is a set of activities designed to bring about a mutually beneficial commercial
transaction between two parties. Simple in essence; I get cash, you get a need
met; but complicated in execution. That is where planning comes in. Creating a guide to the future. A marketing plan should cover these activities: products or services, customers, channels of distribution, sales
processes, prices, advertising
approaches and advertising budgets and plans. So, I will address each of these in a series
of posts.
The plan need not be written out so long as the planner
actually thinks about and makes a plan for each activity. In small businesses
owners can keep their plans in their head. However, writing one down fosters the thought
process and creates a record that can be referred to from time to time. Marketing plans, or for that matter strategic
plans and business plans, should not be written for others to read. They should
be written by the planner for himself. They are a method for systematically
examining an issue and creating a plan for dealing with it.
Products
Most
people starting a business begin with the first activity. I am going to start a business to sell product
X or service Y. If I do that, some customer
or another will buy it from me and life will be good. Three or five years later
they find that life is not so good. Sales may have been lower than needed to
produce a decent income or may have grown at first but have now plateaued.
There may be a lot of reasons that that happened. One reason may be that the chosen product or
service was not sale-able in sufficient quantities to make a business out of. Or,
its quality did not satisfy early users and word of that spread. Or, times have
changed and better products are now on offer elsewhere.
If you have inventory that is not moving, or provide a
service that nobody seems to want, it is
time to re-think your commitment to your original decision. Look for better
versions of what you sell or an entirely new direction to go. Making a dramatic
shift is not easy to do, but why soldier on year after year struggling to sell
the unsalable. Face up to the problem
and make the change.
Start your planning process by making a critical evaluation of what you are selling. If it sells well, stick with it. If not select new ones, and in your new or re-vamped plan spell out when and how you will make the shift to the new ones.
