Category: New Business Development

Everyone I know removes
pricetags from gifts they give.
Everyone.

So why don’t gift box manufacturers
make the price tags easy to remove?

Most don’t.
Most require givers to scrape the label
off with their fingernails.

That creates opportunity.
I bought more of one gift item
this holiday season
because
it came with a tear away price tag.
(It was a great product too
but had serious competition.)
The permanent part of the ‘price tag’
was a gift enclosure card.

Make it easy for your customers
to give away your product.

Soul singer John Legend was born John Stephens.
Legend was a nickname friends gave him.

He told eTalk Daily that
he was nervous about
keeping the name Legend
until he uncovered the reason why

fear.

“The only reason I wouldn’t take it was
because
I couldn’t live up to it.”

John Legend gave himself
an aspirational name
and then pushed himself
to live up to it.

You can do the same.

There is a common saying on author loops
‘Anyone can write and publish a book,
very few people can sell a book.’

Studies done by
Will Page, Gary Eggleton, and Andrew Bud
find of 13 million music tracks available,
52,000 or 0.4 per cent
accounted for 80 per cent of downloads.

Yep, not even the expected 80/20 rule.
The blockbusters are bigger blockbusters,
the rest sell nothing.

Sociologist Duncan Watts
provides this explanation as to why
“Google can deliver 100 million songs to you –
but your brain hasn’t got any faster.”

We simply don’t have the time
or capacity
to evaluate unlimited choice
so we rely on the same social indicators
(like bestseller lists).

Lists, awards, other indications of popularity
still matter.

My cousin 
plans to lose weight in 2009.
Her goal,
as a self sacrificing mother
of 3 young children,
is to go to the gym solo
4 days a week.

Her odds of success?
Pretty much zero.

Why?
Because her tactic for accomplishing her goal
doesn’t fit in with her lifestyle
and her personality.

There are hundreds, even thousands,
of tactics for every goal.
When you decide upon yours,
ensure that they work with who YOU are.

Pain is one of the great motivators
and it is, I believe, the greatest motivator
for entrepreneurship,
more so than gain.

Before jumping off the corporate ladder,
I asked myself the question
Wanda at Creating Abundant Lifestyles
recently asked readers
‘Which would be the greatest pain,
The Pain of Risk or the Pain of Regret?’

My answer was clear.
I would always regret not taking the risk.

What is your answer?

‘It’s all been done’
is something a new business developer
hears again and again.
There are no new stories,
no new products,
no new.

Yet this is proven wrong daily.
New books hit the New York Times Bestseller list.
New toys become the hot hit
of the holiday season.
1,000 new species are found in a jungle
in Vietnam.

‘It’s all been done’
is an excuse
made by people not doing.
Ignore it.

I haven’t had a consulting contract
in two weeks.
I might not be on placement again
until I get back from
the Consumer Electronics Show
mid January.

That is normal.
That is expected.
That is one of the reasons
consulting billings
are higher than full time employee wages.

So how do I deal?

I’ve budgeted for slow periods
(with the writing schedule,
I assume
I’m only consulting 6 months out of the year)
and
I’ve planned work for this time.
The nice-to-do list
that somehow never manages to get done.
Training, admin work,
touching base with previous clients.

If your revenue is spotty,
arrange time flexible projects for the off periods.

In the Rich 100 issue
of Canadian Business,
Dollarama Founder Larry Rossy talks strategy.

“One of Rossy’s secrets is his penchant
for reverse engineering:
he will comb the malls,
looking for $10 items
he believes he can knock off
and source from Asia
to sell for $1.
He then gets his in-house design team
to develop sharp, customized packaging
to put around the products.
Dollarama has 70 house brands,
still a novel concept
in the dollar-store world.”

From $10 to $1,
if you plan to compete on price,
that is a ratio to keep in mind.

My local paper has a
‘Sorry, I missed you…’
daily column.

Every day, they feature 3 messages
(out of many submitted)
from people now having regrets
because
they didn’t get a fellow commuter’s name and number.
I read it as a daily reminder
to take action.

And right now is a great time
to take action.
It is a time of change,
yes, some of it painful,
but everyone is now forced
to think in different ways
and do new things.

That new thing could be
buying a new product,
YOUR new product.

My previous contract gig ended on Friday.
I started my new contract gig yesterday.

I wasn’t too enthused about
starting a new assignment so soon
but the opportunity is interesting
and I can see a slowdown
in contract gigs
hovering on the horizon.

So I decided to do
what my farming grandfather always advised
“Make hay while the sun shines.”

Yes, opportunities come regularly
but when you need that opportunity,
it is best to take it
when it is offered.

Just in case.