Category: New Business Development

Recently, Jim Sinegal,
founder and CEO of Costco stepped down.

I’ve talked about Costco before
and there’s a reason why.

According to Jena McGregor…
“Despite the poor economy,
customers kept paying
the $50 to $100 annual fees
for the privilege of shopping at Costco:
87 percent renewed
their memberships in 2010.
He laid no one off during the recession,
other than short-term staff
for holidays and store openings.”

I renewed my Costco membership this year.
I didn’t renew my Sam’s Club membership.

Why?

Because I feel good shopping at Costco.
I know I’ll get a fair price
(Costco’s policy is to mark up products
less than 15% of the cost
– which is DARN low)
and I’m buying from a company
that treats its employees well.

Costco don’t have
any public relations people on staff
but then
when you treat people fairly,
you don’t need a big PR department.

There IS a benefit
to treating people fairly.

One of the banes of a
non-U.S. based author
is getting a blasted
ITIN (Individual Tax Identification Number).
The process appears easy
EXCEPT
that the odds of an application
being accepted
is low.

I’ve been rejected twice
and the IRS gave me different reasons
both times.

This is a number used to help track
the flow of money
out of the U.S.

Not having a number does not stop
the flow of money.
I’m still getting paid.
All it stops is the tracking.

So creating this hurdle
is only hurting the IRS.

Look at the hurdles you’ve created
for vendors, employees, customers.
If they refused to climb over these barriers,
who is hurt?
If the answer is you,
consider making these hurdles lower
or eliminate them completely.

“I would never work for XYZ.
They’re destroying the environment.”

But that’s EXACTLY why
you SHOULD work for XYZ.
It is easier to steer the ship
from inside the vessel.

Like the environmentally conscious folks
at Coca-Cola have done.
PET bottles have been a concern
for many employees
since they were first rolled out.

They’ve tried different things
to make PET bottles more environmentally friendly.
Their latest invention
is the plantbottle
which is up to 30% plant based
and is 100% recyclable.

Will it be the last environmentally conscious change
within the Coca-Cola company?
Nope.
The employees responsible for the plantbottle
are still working for Coca-Cola.

If you want to make a change,
it is easier to do
from INSIDE the company.

I recently sold a western romance.
Last year,
there wasn’t a market for western romances.
But a couple of months ago,
I saw publishers had added that category to their websites.
I wrote the story.
I sold the story.

Before Christmas,
I watch the toy aisles at Target.
When I see an entire section
set aside for a particular type of toy,
I know that toy will be popular.
It may not be the hot toy of the season
but sales will be respectable.
These are normally the toys
I purchase for the holiday toy drives.

The folks running
publishing houses, grocery stores,
department stores,
aren’t dumb people.
Shelf space is valuable.
Focus is valuable.

So when a new category is added,
we all should pay attention.

Jane Pitt has a great article
on historic entrepreneur
Martha Matilda Harper.

On of Harper’s lessons?

“Capitalize on your Assets
— Don’t assume your assets are money.
Women rarely have enough.
For Harper, it was her floor-length hair.
She hung a photograph of herself
in front of her pioneering hair and skincare salon
so that women might be attracted to come in.”

I often say that money
is the least important asset.
It is the output
of putting your other assets
to work.

If the only asset you have
is money,
odds are…
you don’t have much of a business.

I have an author buddy
who is a habitual trend follower.
She writes whatever folks are buying.
She does okay sales-wise,
usually catching the tail-end of a trend,
but after almost a decade in publishing
and a lot of time spent watching trends,
she doesn’t have her own readership.

It is really challenging to build
a business
by reacting.

As Jim Collins explains

“The leaders who built
enduring great companies
showed a creative inside-out approach
rather than a reactive outside-in approach.
In contrast,
the mediocre company leaders
displayed a pattern of lurching and thrashing,
running about in frantic reaction
to threats and opportunities.”

Focus on YOUR business first.

When I worked
with the big beverage company
in product development,
we had a focus group on packaging.

All of the participants we asked
liked a certain package better.
They couldn’t tell us why
but they did.

The only difference
between that package
and another one
was the package everyone liked
had a drop of juice on the slice of orange.
No one consciously knew
the drop was there,
but they all KNEW
it was a better package.

Under one of my pen names,
I write what seems like
very basic stories.
They aren’t.
I layer every story with symbolism
and deeper meanings.

No one picks up on
this symbolism consciously,
yet they talk about my stories
being “full” and “better.”

The little details you add
to your products
may be invisible to the consumer
but consumers WILL pick up
on them.

Add the invisible.

CNNMoney has a great article on
Jim Skinner, CEO of McDonald’s
(for product developers,
the info on product development time
is GOLD).

What is really interesting
is how FAST
is a key component
of the fast food industry.

“At one time the company floated
the idea of putting deli sandwiches
on the menu.
The deal killer?
The crew couldn’t get it done
in 55 to 60 seconds.

“We talk about hospitality,
we talk about friendly relationships,
but we live in a world of speed today,”
Skinner says.

McDonald’s customers
at the drive-through
don’t want to be chatted with,
and they don’t want to wait
two minutes for a turkey sandwich.”

Yeah, a minute is too long
to prepare a sandwich
at McDonald’s
so if you think your viewer
will wait a minute
for your website to load,
think again.

The need for speed
is very, very real.

The first story I ever wrote
was 150,000 words.
It was crap.
Just because it was longer
than most stories
didn’t make it
any less craptastic.

If I wrote that story today,
other writers would be pushing me
to self publish that big turd.
I’ve heard the arguments.
“It is long.
Some reader will get something out of it.”
Right.
Because 150,000 crappy words
is better than 1 crappy word.

A loved one brought me
a package of laundry detergent.
It was a ‘bargain’
he said
because it was bigger
than the other packages.
It was more.

This detergent left residue
on our clothes
so now I have more
of a crappy detergent.

Yes,
we, product developers,
hate admitting
to developing a stinker product.

It pained me to shelf
that 150,000 word story.

But offering the prospect
more
of that crappy product
isn’t the solution.

I’ve been hearing
a lot of bellyaching in the media
about how consumers aren’t spending,
how no one is buying anything.

That’s bullshit.

I was in a Target yesterday.
An entire corner of the store
was dedicated to school supplies.
It was picked cleaned,
and disappointed parents circled
the area with empty carts,
looking for the products their kids needed.

People are buying things.
They’re buying milk and eggs
and school supplies
and back to school clothes.
Kids are going off to college
with empty dorm rooms needing furnishings.

They may not, however, be buying
YOUR product.

Recessions happen.
They will continue to happen.
Great businesswomen plan for them
to happen.
They don’t use them as an excuse.