Dodo Loves Marketing

A great deal of interesting and useful information can be derived from close observation of potential competitors. In one sense they are doing today what you are planning to do tomorrow. They should have already refined their product or service and learned from their mistakes — knowledge from which you can benefit. Furthermore, as they will be your competitors, it is wise to know their strengths and weaknesses. As you follow various avenues of research, compile a dossier on each of your competitors and add new information as you go along. This will make it easier to conduct your final assessment. ..more

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These markets operate over weekends and public holidays and offer a wide and very general range of merchandise — in fact everything from clothes and curios, inexpensive goods from the East and India, food, jewellery and music – as well as hand made crafts. ..more

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Now to sell to a shop

Make a list of all the shops that would be likely to stock your product. Because you’ve done your market research, you should be able to accurately pin point who to go to. The range of areas you sell in can be quite wide. ..more

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If your product is easily and inexpensively produced, supplying a retail shop can be a very good option. ..more

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Test your range

No large manufacturer of consumer goods ever invests in a product without testing it first. You must do the same. Show it around. Compare it to products already available. Get feedback from people whose opinions you trust. ..more

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Just to whet your appetite here are a few of the vast number of craft choices and possibilities: ..more

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This differs from the weekend, outdoor, craft market in that it is an indoor shop that is basically a co-op for crafts and is open all week. These markets are becoming very popular. For crafters, it means that their work is constantly on display. Likewise, the consumer is delighted to have easy access to exclusive and unusual handmade articles. These markets are becoming increasingly popular particularly with tourists. ..more

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Focus on trivial issues

Sometimes the owner becomes so engrossed in tiny details or an irrelevant issue, that important issues are ignored or glossed-over. For example, the owner may spend days reading through computer magazines simply to choose a personal computer. The problem often occurs when the business is experiencing some kind of difficulty and the owner finds it uncomfortable to think about the difficult problems and resorts to solving a few easy ones. It is a way of escaping from troubling concerns while at the same time feeling that useful work is being done. ..more

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Ten major reasons why new businesses fail

Cash flow problems

This is the single most common cause of new business failure. Many businesses, even profitable ones, fail because they run out of cash — they go insolvent. Insolvency occurs when a firm is unable to meet its obligations such as salaries, creditors, interest payments and expenses. It is caused by cash flowing out of the business faster than it comes in. Although a firm can sometimes survive a period of insolvency by delaying the payment of its obligations, it is liable to be sued by its creditors or employees (or have its electricity or telephone cut off) at any time. ..more

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After taking out an estimate of the value of the property, how many years‘ purchase of the pre-tax profits does the balance of the price represent? Many small businesses sell on around one to one-and-a half years‘ purchase of the profits, though the figure tends to be higher in the south of England.

If you are paying £54,000 for a business which is earning pre-tax profits of £18,000, you are buying it on three years‘ purchase. This is equivalent to a return on your money of 33¹/₃ per cent before tax. If it costs you 17 per cent to borrow the money, a 33¹/₃ per cent return is as low as it is sensible to accept. Businesses often sell at, say, one-anda-half years‘ purchase, a return of 66²/₃ per cent, but because this ignores your salary it is not a true return. ..more

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One way to keep focused on finding things that really sell stuff is to make conversion rates one of the key measurements that you track. Retailers do this by counting how many of the people who come into the store actually buy something. The fast-food business measures incidence, or the number of high-profit side items such as fries and drinks, that it sells along with the low- profit burgers and chicken. ..more

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When a market is in turmoil, it’s particularly important to have good, clear profit and loss statements. That’s because you are going to have to decide at some point whether the market is suffering temporary problems or if it is going into a long-term decline and that you should get out. When a market, or an economy, goes into a tailspin, the first thing you should do is resist the temptation to cut spending. Not only should you keep spending in times of turmoil in order to keep from losing customers, but you should also realize that times of turmoil are great growth opportunities. ..more

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Sure, you have to have manufacturing, distribution, and a sales force. But in the end, it really doesn’t matter how well you distribute your product, how efficiently you manufacture it, or

“You can have the most modern fleet of airplanes properly outfitted with the latest seats, but you only make money if you put butts in those seats.”

Even how good your salespeople are at cutting deals if nobody wants to buy your product. A car company can be the most efficient manufacturer of automobiles, but it will only make money when the automobiles are sold. Think about it: where are the DeLorean cars these days? ..more

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Selling everything a company can make until you have reached the point where the marginal spending to produce and sell the product won’t yield the return you want.

The implications of that and how a company needs to include marketers in all of its decision-making processes. That’s because if you really want to maximize profits, you need to know how much you can sell before you decide how much to produce. For the moment, however, I will focus on current capacity and simply say that ..more

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How should we reach out to the people on the committee?

Your goal in dealing with the committee is not to walk in unprepared, but rather to do the necessary work up-front to reach out to all the members of the group before your meeting. This may mean a long series of phone calls, e-mails, and even face-to-face meetings before your committee presentation. Only you can determine whether this investment of time and effort is worth it. However, in deals that carry high price tags, it is quite common for a committee to deliver the final recommendation, and it may well be worth identifying the key players and discussing their priorities ahead of time. ..more

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It is quite common for our request for a Next Step to meet with the following response: “Let me bounce this off the so- and-so committee (or: such-and-such a work group) and see what they have to say about it.”

Or:

“I’ll have to run this past the committee—they make all the decisions in this area.”

Or:

“It looks good—we just need to get approval from the committee, but don’t worry, that’s just a formality.” ..more

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Why those terms?

An extremely important negotiating question. If you don’t ask it at least once, you are not doing your job well.

If you have an impasse on one of those three things, you can always step back and ask to look at one of the other three elements.

If an issue is only producing disagreement and frustration, there is no sin in asking that it be postponed in order to allow you and the prospect to discuss something that you do agree on. Emphasize commonalities, and you will eventually be able to build up enough trust to move forward to the most difficult issues. ..more

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I am a big believer in reshuffling and reconfiguring my offering during the negotiation phase. I will never simply discount my price, but I will, as suggested in the earlier question, throw out a different price to determine whether or not it will work for the prospect. Once I determine that it will, I will go back to the drawing board and redraw and rearrange my offering, taking elements out and putting new elements in, so that I can find a new and different mix that will work for this prospect in this situation. ..more

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Defensiveness, mistrust, and vengefulness lift like morning fog from the interpersonal battlefield, revealing possible routes around the rock in the road. Both you and your other are now emotionally ready to join efforts in mutually searching for the best route.

Why does the Breakthrough happen? Ironically, it does not result from logical persuasion, rational thinking, or reasonable problem-solving, although we may think so at the time. Instead, it springs automatically from several psychological forces that converge to produce this significant but often unnoticed event. ..more

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In a process-orientated company, many of these new performance indicators used in benchmarking and elsewhere are non-financial. That is, they will focus management’s attention upon the truly critical areas of performance — i.e. those that drive profitability and align the business unit with its strategic goals. In the case of marketing logistics, we might expect to see metrics that capture such things as customer satisfaction, flexibility and employee commitment. Management meetings should therefore begin their agenda not with the financial review — that will come later — but with a review of non-financial performance indicators. These will necessarily differ between organisations, but may include: ..more

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