How To Create A Great Sell Sheet

As an entrepreneur, you’ve created a product that you can be proud of. Unlike wannabe entrepreneurs, you took an idea from concept and executed it into a tangible item that you can sell. You’re already several steps ahead of entrepreneurs who managed to fail. Now that you’ve made a couple dollars selling your product, you might want to take that traction in another direction. Logically, the next steps you might be considering is getting your product into stores. And one factor in that equation is creating a sell sheet.

A sell sheet is a document that’s just a page or two and contains all the information about a product that a decision-maker needs. This powerful sales sheet can be delivered my mail or by hand, and they’re a great tool for getting your product into stores.

Before you begin approaching distributors and retailers, it’s important to think about what’s the right approach for you. For instance, as a small local company, you might use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the differences and similarities between separate vendors. You’ll use your diagram to hone in on companies you want to target with your sell sheet. Once you get started, here are a few tips for creating a great sell sheet:

Include All the Essentials.

There are several components to a great sell sheet, and it’s important that you cover all your bases. Any person who receives your sell sheet should have all the information they need to know about your product. Here’s a few things you should include:

• Multiple product illustrations and/or photos (if your product is still in prototype phase, be sure to hire a professional designer to create a high-quality rendering)
• A short, snappy description
• Information on where the product can be purchased
• Any documentation that could be highlight the benefits and the appeal of the product, such as any patents you might have
• Contact details
• A call to action that describes the next steps for interested recipients

Tailor It.

Every sell sheet you create should be customized to match the retailer or distributor you’re pitching. Sometimes, the tweaks you’ll need to make will be minor, but nevertheless, it goes a long way towards attracting potential retailers.

There are also several different purposes for a sell sheet. For instance, you can use it as marketing material (such as a handoff at a conference or event), and even send it off to publications for your PR strategy. Regardless of how you plan to use it, everything should be tailored to suit the publication you’re sending it to, the event you’re attending, or the retailers you’re interested in pitching. Model the layout of your one-sheeter to match the aesthetic of the company or magazine you’re trying to attract. This includes typography, color, and graphic style.

Keep It Simple.

Sell sheets aren’t meant to be overcomplicated; the simpler, the better. After all, these sheets are just an easy way of you showcasing the benefit of your product in a compelling way. If you have a sell sheet with a description that’s several paragraphs, the chances of capturing attention are slim to none. Use a standard 8×11 piece of paper, and communicate your intentions quickly and efficiently.

Take a Look at Other Sell Sheets.

One of the best things you can do to avoid some opportunity-losing mistakes is to take a look at how other sell sheets are being made—especially in your industry. How are similar brands marketing their products? What type of persuasive copy are they using? What colors? How is the product being portrayed? These are things you should be paying special attention to.

Once you start opening your eyes and paying attention, you’ll notice that sell sheets are all around you—and they exist in many different forms. For example, you’ll find them in magazines or on social media.  Take a look at this example of a sell sheet to give you a clear idea, but don’t forget to look at other sell sheets in your industry.

Highlight the Primary Benefit.

What is the biggest benefit of your product? You’ll need a one-line benefit statement that explains why your customers would want to purchase it. If the benefit isn’t compelling and straight-forward, people aren’t going to want to know more. According to Stephen Key, the cofounder of InventRight, “A good one-sentence benefit statement will do the selling for you. Don’t feel like you have to cram in as much information as possible. It’s not supposed to be thorough. In fact, it allows you to get to the point quickly. Everyone appreciates that.”

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2OAdUbd via website design phoenix

How Startups Build Credit-Worthiness For Business Growth Funding

When you first stepped into the world of entrepreneurship, you probably knew that sooner or later you would need to apply for financial credit. Whether it’s a laptop for freelance consulting or a warehouse full of inventory, credit is part and parcel of any business, and it plays an even larger part in your business growth plans.

Yet it pays to approach the process carefully. Truth is, anyone can apply for business credit, but getting accepted is a lot harder than you might think.

A 2015 survey by business credit advisor Nav found that 1 in 5 small business owners had been turned down for business credit between 2010-2015, and 43% had been rejected more than once.

Unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting worse. According to Fundera, the number of small business owners who have been rejected for a bank loan now stands at 80%.

That’s a staggering number.

On top of that, Fundera reports that over the past two decades, small business loans have fallen from about half to under 30% of total bank loans. As a result, it’s increasingly difficult for small businesses to find banks willing to lend to them.

So why is it so difficult to get approved for business credit? More importantly, what can small business owners do about it?

First it’s important to understand what banks and lenders look for in a business before they decide to offer credit.

Typically this boils down to three key elements:

1. Cash flow: Lenders will examine your business as part of their due diligence. One of the main things they look for is healthy cash flow, as this is a strong indicator that you will be able to repay the loan to the agreed timescales.

2. Collateral: Should they need to recoup their costs, lenders require some form of collateral or physical asset. This can include business inventory, property, or even unpaid invoices.

3. A good credit score: Lenders will assess the ‘credit worthiness’ of your business to decide whether you are a trustworthy borrower. They look at multiple factors, from your own personal credit rating, to your relationships with vendors and whether you pay your bills on time.

All of these elements come down to good business practices. The one we’re going to focus on is step three.

This is about your business credibility. In other words, are you a credible borrower?

It’s not a simple check in a box, but there are certain steps you can take to build business credit and boost your chances of funding success. Part of this is ensuring your business looks credible from the outside.

Put yourself in your creditors’ shoes. Which organization would you trust more: one that’s been trading for several years, with good supplier relationships and timely bill payments, or a new startup trading from a home address and a cell phone? That’s not to say startups can’t get credit, they certainly can, but you need to do everything possible to build your credibility and position your business as a thriving, trustworthy loan candidate.

Here are some of the fundamental steps you should consider in order to build your business credibility ahead of a funding application:

Ensure your documentation is in order.

Use your full legal business name on all documentation and ensure it matches across the board. Get a federal employer identification number (EIN) — you’ll need this number for all federal tax filings and to open a business bank account. Check and double check all the information you add to your application; strange as it seems, many rejections actually come down to simple administrative errors.

Incorporate your business.

According to Experian, registering your business as an LLC or a corporation not only provides a credit history for your business, but also protects your personal assets by legally separating your business and personal profile. It effectively proves that your business is a separate and thriving entity.

Use a corporate address and a business phone number.

For small businesses and those just starting out, it’s not always financially viable to get an independent office space. If you don’t have a full-time office space, you can use a virtual office address and a business phone number (we recommend using a registered agent to handle all SOP mail).

Open a business bank account.

Open an account in your business’s legal name and use it for all business transactions.

Work with creditors.

Build good relationships with suppliers that are relevant to your industry. It helps you to establish positive lines of credit and shows that you regularly pay your bills on time (ahem, make sure you do).

Remember that lenders will look at multiple factors when deciding whether to extend credit to your business. This will include a P&L statement, your business plan, and six or more months of business bank statements, among others.

It pays to do your groundwork first. It may take a little while to build up your business credibility, but it’s worth checking off all the necessary steps before you spend time and effort making a credit application. Do it right, and you could soon be well on your way to gaining the credit you need to take your business to the next level.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2HWFspK via website design phoenix

Meet The San Diego Watch Brand Championing Direct-To-Consumer

As traditional retail stores continue to close up shop across the nation, business en masse is moving online. Behemoths like Amazon and eBay are increasingly taking the place of Kmarts and Macy’s that we’re used to. Even large retailers like Walmart are ​investing heavily​ in their online presence to compete with the major shift. But large brands like this aren’t the only ones fueling retails’ digital frontier.

Direct-to-consumer brands are also a major part of the online retail market. Brands that handle most all aspects of production, all the way to delivery, are giving consumers a new retail experience, one that caters to both the expediency of online shopping and the personalization of in-store commerce. These brands are cutting out middlemen and selling directly to their customers to ensure that they determine the experience a customer is given.

One brand of interest is ​Vincero Watches​, a San Diego startup watch manufacturer that delivers luxury quality watches at an accessible price point. Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, their three founders — Tim Nybo, Sean Agatep, and Aaron Hallerman — spent four years in China after graduating from Gonzaga. They learned the ins and outs of manufacturing and brought that knowledge back to the states to build Vincero.

We had a chance to sit down with Tim and get his thoughts on how the direct-to-consumer business model is changing the retail game.

What does the term direct-to-consumer mean to Vincero?

Direct-to-consumer has been regrettably conflated with cost-cutting, removing the middleman, and a variety of other marketing buzzwords. Being a D2C brand means a lot more than that. We’re trying to find new ways to add value to our customers across all aspects of the business. That isn’t just about cutting out the middleman, it’s about how you look at the business. We look at our business with a customer-centric mindset.

D2C means finding out how we can incorporate the customer in every aspect of the business—that’s our why. We want them to feel that they’re a part of our brand, not just a consumer of it. That means crowdsourcing customer feedback to develop new designs, delivering direct to the end-user to provide added value, and an in-house customer service team that prevents problems instead of waiting for them to happen.

What value do you get to add to your customers as a direct to consumer brand?

The great part about being a D2C brand is that we get to incorporate the customer at every turn. Any aspect of the business that is traditionally siloed and removed from the customer experience is now directly involved in it. For us, that starts with production, incorporating customer feedback into our designs. We were built on a crowdsourced model and customer

feedback helped drive us forward, giving us guidance on what products to create. It helped us build our brand to where it’s at now.

Marketing is an equally important aspect of our brand, one that we want to make authentic and valuable for our customers and potential customers. We use channels to communicate with our audience where we believe we can show the personality of our brand. Traditional brands that sell through distributors have a much more difficult time of establishing communication with their end customers. Since that’s a benefit we have access to, we do what we can to foster the relationship. We want our following to be as authentic as the message we’re communicating since that’s where you grow.

For us, it doesn’t just stop there. Our customer service is where we try to go above and beyond. Customers have expectations and those are in large part set by the service they receive from other brands. We really believe that brands at large are trying to create the best customer service model possible, so instead of following along, we want to help set the path. Our customer support team is designed to identify problems before they happen. We have a quality assurance team checking products before they go out so we have fewer complaints coming back in.

How are D2C businesses reshaping the way consumers interact with brands?

I think a lot of this stems back to what I mentioned about customer service: expectations are rising because other companies are raising the bar. You can take Amazon as an example in comparison to other distributors. Department stores like Sears and Macy’s have no doubt been struggling as of late. Nothing changed about them which is inherently the problem.

Amazon took the customer experience a step further. They actually took it quite a few steps further. Operating on a digital platform, they obviously can’t offer the same in-person experience, so they made up for that with quick browsing across their entire product selection, product recommendations based on your other purchases, and lightning-fast shipping options for their Prime members. They provided customers with a vastly different experience which made them realize this is the new standard they should expect of distributors. That left others like Sears far behind because they hadn’t changed.

This is the same thing that’s happening with brands. A lot of D2C brands are setting expectations and other brands — even some D2C brands — are not fully catching on yet. We’re striving to be at the front of the pack. We’re constantly seeking feedback from our customers to help guide where we set the bar and what we do to make the experience better for them across all aspects of the business. At the end of the day, we should be one of the brands pushing D2C forward.

How do the D2C brands of today compare to larger traditional retailers?

This relates back quite a bit to the previous question. D2C brands are reinventing the consumer relationship as we speak. The only difference is the nature of the relationship. Calvin Klein, for example, sells through distributors like Macy’s and other department stores. They sold to those distributors, not to the end user, so the relationships they were building was with those distributors.

D2C brands have the ability to connect with their customers along every aspect of their business. This gives them a chance to reinvent the game and create a level of customer involvement that has never been seen before in growing a lifestyle brand. This is why the standards of D2C companies are so important. We want to share our brand with our customers and we do that by trying to include them in every aspect of our business. We’re doing our best to invent the standards that brands are held to in order to improve the end experience for consumers.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2Oxgi2k via website design phoenix

Raising Capital To Launch Your Small Business

With only 1 in 5 new businesses making it past the 5 year mark in the U.S., it’s vital to have the largest initial investment possible. As an entrepreneur, you already know that unexpected costs can come from any direction when least expected. You may have enough capital to set up your initial business model, but at any time you could need more funds.

For first time business owners, traditional bank loans can be like running the borrowing gauntlet; you never know if you will get the money that you are depending on. As a new owner, you have likely not established a long term credit record that can make traditional lenders not a viable source of funding.

If you are determined and dedicated to getting your enterprise off the ground, you have several funding options at your disposal. You can liquidate your assets, sell your property for fast cash or look into private investors. Only once you know the options that are out there can you make an executive decision for what is right for your new business.

Auctions & Savings.

Most new business owners end up investing everything they have into their new idea. It’s not unusual for entrepreneurs to drain their savings to finance their enterprise. In many cases, you will find that new business owners have gone as far as liquidating what they can to help raise capital to get their company off the ground. Sell your stuff and keep only what you need. That is the level of commitment and determination that makes for a successful business owner. Sell your possessions online or have a full auction of items that you are looking to sell. As a potential company leader, you will need to do what you can to pull in as much initial capital as possible to get a good start.

Private Investors & Angels.

There are platforms across the internet including Kickstarter that have helped to finance many new businesses and enterprises. If you have an interesting idea and are looking for an independent investor, you may want to post a plea for help on one of the commerce sites online. Private and angel investors are routinely looking for unique and promising new products and services to invest in.

Sell Home & Property.

If you have been left a property or house as an inheritance, you may be able to sell quickly to build capital for your business. Many business owners end up trying to scrape together money for the first and most expensive years of their operation by selling their homes for quick cash. There are several reputable dealers that can help you liquidate your property without the delay of using the traditional real estate process. In many cases, without having to do any repairs or updates, a real estate dealer can quote you a fair price on your property as-is.

Title Loans.

If you have larger assets like vehicles, boats, art or collectibles you may want to consider a title loan to get some fast cash. Title lenders can get your item appraised and cash in your hand in less than a day. If you need cash for unexpected start up expenses, title loans are a great alternative with low interest and reasonable payment options.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2WyQ4iQ via website design phoenix

A Digital Facelift: How To Improve A Website By Redesigning Its User Interface

Want more traffic to your business’s site? Give your visitors a better experience. Here’s how to improve a website by redesigning the user interface.

Your website is your right-hand man for boosting your online marketing efforts. When you have a bad user interface, it can cost you major blows.

So how do you improve user experience and make your customers happy? There are easy tactics you can use to improve your site’s interface without doing a redesign overhaul.

Don’t get stuck wondering how to improve a website and its user interface. Try these nine techniques to make your site more user-friendly today.

How to Improve a Website and Its User Interface.

Today’s marketing landscape moves so fast that it can be hard to keep up with the changes. When you have an outdated website, it can mean a serious drop in traffic. To prevent this from happening, try these tricks to get the website improvement you need.

1. Boost Your Site’s Security.

Most abandoned online carts are due to poor security. If you don’t have a security system in place, get one. Then be sure to display your security badges so that customers feel safe buying from you.

2. Use Fewer Pages.

Having too many pages that link to dozens of different topics on your website can be confusing. Simplify your site by removing pages you don’t need and organize your content into tabs that make sense.

3. Focus on Your Headlines.

Your headline is what first grabs your customer’s attention. Make your headings clear and include keywords.

4. Include Attractive CTAs.

Your CTA buttons and links should be visually attractive to your viewers and easy to see. Think about the color and design, and use them in a way that helps your visitors navigate your site easily.

5. Check for Errors.

You need to regularly check your site for errors so that you don’t lose visitors. Finding a 404 error page will annoy your visitor and stop them from coming back for more.

6. Make It Flow.

The best UX websites will give visitors a smooth online journey from beginning to end. When your viewers don’t know where to click next, they’re likely to give up and go to another site.

Boost your site’s flow by including clear messages that tell the customer where to click next. Not sure how to make this happen on your site? Professional web development services can work with you to get your site upgraded and flowing smoothly.

7. Use White Space.

When you want to design each space to pop, you’ll need the right amount of white space around your titles and images. Try one of these simple website ideas to find the style that’s right for you.

8. Increase Speed.

You have 10-20 seconds to capture your visitor, and a page that never loads will guarantee a quick exit. Optimize your site so that it loads faster and doesn’t frustrate potential customers.

9. Make It Mobile-Friendly.

Google will penalize your site if it isn’t mobile-friendly. Also, visitors scrolling their smartphones to shop will hate navigating your site. Editing your site so that it’s mobile-friendly is a simple process that will spare you headaches down the road.

Make Your Customers Love Your Site.

Your customers’ happiness should be your number one priority when designing your website. Knowing how to improve a website means knowing how to change the user interface to a simple and clean format.

These simple steps will give your website a facelift. When you’re ready for more, check out these user experience best practices for GDPR-compliance.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2I0pICk via website design phoenix

Five Things Every Young Startup Business Needs To Succeed

Starting a business is a dream for many. It is, however, difficult to do, with many start-ups failing in the first couple of years. What can you do, though, to have a better outcome for your future business?

To ensure you have the best chances possible, the following guide is highlighting the five elements you will need to make your business a success.

1. A Great Product or Service.

A key component to any business is a great product or service. Without either of these, your company has very little to work with. Sure, you might be able to make a big splash through media manipulation, but without a good product or service to back you up no one will be coming back. To ensure you have a good product, try investing in market research. Doing this will help in creating great marketing strategies, as you know exactly how your demographic relates to the product in question.

2. A Strong Business Plan.

Every new business needs a great business plan to succeed. Its goal is to help you stay on track with your plan and to help convince others (say, investors) of the validity of your business model. To create a great plan, you will need to invest in research, so you know how your company can stand out and succeed.

3. A Firm Grasp of Their Legal Requirements.

It is ideal to get a good overview of the legal requirements your company will be expected to comply with. Once you know these requirements, you will need to find a way to benefit from expert advice while still managing a healthy budget.

4. The Insight to Know When to Outsource.

Knowing when to outsource and how best to outsource like this is key to any successful start-up. Take the legal advice. Most companies won’t dare to try to handle a legal problem in house without lawyers present, but that doesn’t mean you need to pay extortionate fees by the hour. Instead, there are some law firms like HJ Solicitors which offer subscription packages, so you can benefit from their legal and financial advice and still manage your budget successfully.

5. A Great PR and Marketing Strategy.

To succeed you need to get your name out there, but knowing how to market is an art form. You need to find a way to be unique and get your name out there all at once, and a good way to start is using a multi-directional approach. See if you can get into news media, or if you can collaborate with other key figures on top of a traditional marketing scheme.

Success is never assured and never guaranteed, but with a strong foundation and a will to persevere no matter what can be the secret ingredients you need to make your dream into a reality. When faced with hardship, strategize, don’t give up.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2FC2mzZ via website design phoenix

5 Reasons Outsourced Staffing Makes Sense

Your business is doing well and expanding, making it possible for you to increase your output, and maybe even move to a larger location, and that’s great news: All of your hard work is paying off. But with all this growth, you might also run into some challenges. With the current low unemployment rate and hot job market, hiring hardworking employeeswho have the background and experience required for the job openings you need to fillcan be difficult, especially in industries such as retail and hospitality where there tends to be a lot of employee turnover.

For businesses in the retail and hospitality sector, outsourcinghospitality staffing can be one solution. Read on to discover five reasons why outsourcing your staff, rather than hiring your own employees, might make sense.

1. Staffing agencies already have qualified candidates on file, making the hiring process faster and easier.

Companies that specialize in staffing often have a large database of personnel eligible to work in different positions, making it easier for you if you need to fill jobs with diverse responsibilities, such as culinary professionals and cleaning staff, for example. This can also save you the time and hassle of posting multiple job ads, reading through piles of resumes and interviewingseveral candidates.

Once the staffing company finds eligible candidates for the job opening you have at your business, you will be able to choose from and interview one or two candidates whose experience and personalities seem like the best fit, and then choose the person you’d like have to come to work for you.

2. The staffing company handles all background checks on prospective employees, taking the pressure off of you.

When you use a staffing company to hire employees, the hard work of conducting background checks is done for you. You won’t have to spend valuable time calling or emailing a candidate’s past employers, educational institutions or references, a process that can take days or weeks depending on how quickly people get back to you. This will allow you to get your open positions filled faster and focus onother aspects of your business.

3. Using outsourced employees can save you money.

The costsassociated with using outsourced employees can be significantly lower than the expenses related to hiring and training new employees in-house. Though you will have to pay the outsourcing company a fee, it’s often less than what it costs to advertise job openings, find and interview candidates, conduct background checks and train new staff, especially when you consider that anyone new that you hire may only hold onto that position for a few weeks or months.

If an outsourced employee does turn out to be a bad fit for your company, you won’t have to worry about going through the hiring process again with someone else. The staffing agency will simply send you a new list of candidates to choose from.

And because staffing companies take care of payroll, human resourcesand compliance issues for their workers, you will also save money on administrative costs.

4. Outsourced staffing offers temporary to permanent hiring opportunities.

If you’ve ever made a bad hiring decision and wished you could have the opportunity to test out a new employee for a week or two before taking them on permanently, outsourcing staff to fill open positions can make that possible. When you work with an outsourcing agency, you can have new people come to work for you, give them an opportunity to do the job for a period of time that makes sense for you, and then decide it you want to hire them permanently or not.

5. You can get more flexibility out of your workforce.

If you run a business that depends on seasonal sales, such as a restaurant located in a popular beach resort area, or a company that does most of its business around the holidays, the number of employees you need to have on staff from month to month will vary.

If you hire your own staff, this means going through the expensive search and onboarding process one or two times a year, and then having to let go of employees who might be good workers when business slows down, without any guarantee that you’ll be able to rehire them when it picks up again.

When you hire outsourced workers, you can specify that amount of time you need them to work at your company at the outset, and if you find you need to hire workers sooner, or let them go later, than you anticipated the staffing agency can help you with that as well.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2Uk2YDI via website design phoenix

How To Keep Your Communications Systems Simple From The Very Start

Have you ever noticed that, in attempting to enhance the available means of communication for your employees, you seem to inadvertently weave an increasingly complex web that your workers are left to untangle? The “paradox of choice”, it seems, can beset even the workplace.

As you add more and more apps and services to your firm’s communications palette, you could leave your staff wondering which of them they should choose on what occasion. As a result, the in-house communications network can become segmented and so ironically hinder effective exchanges.

The trick here is to make sure that this network doesn’t become so complicated in the first place – especially as it could have an adverse knock-on effect on how well your staff can deal with customers or clients.

Here are tips for keeping simplicity at the core of office communications.

Carefully weigh up what you can afford.

While you shouldn’t assume that you can rectify an internal communications block by simply throwing money at it, you do need resources to solve the problem, Fast Company warns. For this reason, it’s worth carefully assessing how much you can actually spend.

In looking at your existing systems, you might recognise both benefits and drawbacks of continuing to use them in unaltered form. Factors you ought to think about here include your employees’ engagement and morale as well as the quality of the product or service your staff are offering.

Evaluate your communications systems.

It’s easy to say “evaluate your communications systems”, but how exactly should you do it? A few worthwhile procedures include analysing how your firm’s productivity, sales and profits have recently fared, as well as surveying employees on their happiness and job fulfilment.

You should also take the latest staff retention rates into account as you monitor your current communications systems or, for that matter, the early results of one you have recently implemented. If those results are promising, consider expanding and refining the system.

Consider implementing a unified communications system.

Recent research highlighted by Business News Daily has drawn attention to the amount of “app overload” which many workers experience. According to the study, the average number of communication apps which workers regularly use is four.

Daily, switching between those apps wastes almost 70% of those workers as much as sixty minutes. With two-thirds of surveyed workers having revealed their preference for a single platform on which they can communicate in depth, the case for a unified communications system becomes clearer.

A unified communications (UC) system is capable of working across a range of channels and devices, within one corporation or business. A cloud-based phone service like Gamma’s Horizon service can form a solid base for a comprehensive UC system.

Master the first impression.

With a UC system, your workers can get straight to serving customers in a more low-fuss manner. Even when they can’t answer a call, an automated answering service – called an “auto attendant” by Entrepreneur – of high quality could promptly route callers to a suitable extension.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2UiWwNc via website design phoenix

5 Ways To Raise Your Prices And Keep Your Customers

There will come a time in your business – and probably more than one time – when you will have to raise your prices. Increasing supplier costs, increased wages, and the need to make more profit generally will be behind your decision. You should never feel guilty for doing this; it’s your business, and if you want it to make more money then there is no reason why you shouldn’t.

It can be a worrying time, though. The fear is that by increasing your costs, you will lose customers. Sometimes that does happen; customers whose only thought is price will certainly look elsewhere. Yet this won’t be what all customers are thinking of, and therefore there are ways that you can raise your prices and keep your customers at the same time.

Here are some ways it can be done.

1. Be Honest.

Don’t try to hide the fact that your prices are going up; let your customers know in advance. This will give them time to get used to the idea in the first place, and to assess how much they enjoy buying from you. Although the initial announcement might be a shock, if they have time to digest the news many will determine that they are happy with your service and would be willing to pay more for it.

Those who are concerned with cost will have time to look elsewhere. It might be that they can’t find anywhere that can offer them what you can, even at the raised price, which is great news for your business. If they can, the fact that you are giving them the chance to negotiate and work out what they want to do won’t go unnoticed, and they won’t leave under a cloud meaning that they won’t be embarrassed to come back to you if they decide you are a better option after all.

2. Give Reasons.

Putting up your prices is something that all business owners will need to do once in a while, and the majority of them will do it and not give their loyal customers any information about why. This could be a big mistake, and it might be what drives those customers to another company or website.

Although you don’t have to let your customers know your reasons for increasing your prices, it can be a good strategy to do so. Give them the truth about rising energy costs, rents, production costs, the cost of living, the fact that you want to pay your staff more, or whatever other reason you might have (as long as it doesn’t sound greedy or self-centered which will put people off) and they will understand. They might even have had to deal with similar issues themselves. Although this won’t mean that you keep all of your customers, it will mean that those who value what you do will stay and will pay the new prices because they understand your reasons and agree with them.

3. Offer More.

If you simply put up your prices and don’t offer anything, in addition, it could be understandable, particularly if you have explained the reasons for the price rise as mentioned above. Yet even if it is understandable, it might not be well received.

If you can offer something more to your customers so that they agree to pay the new prices because they are receiving something in addition to what they were getting before (and therefore get the impression that they are getting more for their money), then this could be the sweetener you need to keep as many customers as possible.

The key to getting this strategy right is, of course, not to offer something that will wipe out any additional profit you might be making by raising your prices. Some ideas include starting a loyalty scheme that offers points for each purchase which add up to a free gift or some money off. You might invest in software design services that make your website more streamlined and easier to use – this certainly won’t be unnoticed. Or you could include delivery in your prices, for example.

Look at the ways you can give better value to your customers without spending much money, and you can increase your prices without worrying.

4. Add A Lower Cost Option.

If price really is a concern to some customers, then why not give them a lower cost option? This option will be of less value than the original, and they will be able to compare the two options and determine then what they think of the price. If they want to pay less, they will have to opt for the product that has less value. If they don’t mind paying more, they will opt for the option that is ‘better’. It is their choice, and you are giving them a clear decision to make.

For those who are price conscious, having a lower cost option can stop them from leaving your company altogether. Yet it could also do something else. When a customer is able to directly compare a good quality product with one of less value (in whichever way this is determined by you) they will be able to immediately understand what the extra money they could pay will get them. Some will then realize that paying more gives them a lot more, and they will be happy to pay the higher price. If not, they can still buy from you, and you will still make a sale albeit a lower profit one.

5. Over Deliver.

Before you raise your prices, make sure you are over delivering. Not only will this gain you a good reputation and increase your customer base, but it will also mean that when you do raise your prices people will not be surprised; the better a business you are and the more you do, the more people will understand when your prices go up (as long as they don’t go up substantially – incremental increases over time will be best).

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2FJ6rDV via website design phoenix

4 Ways Sales Can Help Your Company Offset Losses From Trump’s Trade Wars

by Ryan Moore, Director of Client Management, Peak Sales Recruiting

As we delve deeper into 2019, the international business environment has changed dramatically with paradigm shifts in trade. NAFTA was replaced with USMCA – a new trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. It remains to be seen which U.S. businesses will be positively or negatively affected.

Moreover, a trade war with China, the world’s second largest economy, has created volatility in the stock markets and upheaval for certain corporate sectors.  The U.S. tech industry, companies using steel, and manufacturers of engineered hardwood floors  are already feeling the pain. The situation could become even more tangled if the effects from China spill over into the rest of Asia (or beyond) due to intertwined supply chains.

Companies buying or selling products or parts across international boundaries are likely to see higher costs which, without effort, must be passed onto the customer. These paradigm shifts are very real and demand a proactive response.  While some organizations may attempt to save the bottom line with personnel cuts, maintaining a strong sales team is absolutely critical to sustaining relationships with existing customers.

At Peak Sales Recruiting, a big trend we see is that the sales leaders of today are tasked with managing long-term relationships, not just closing deals. They are now the vanguard in controlling the damage and identifying new streams of revenue.

Here are four ways your sales team can help when tariffs are putting pressure on profits:

1. Use sales leaders’ relationships to minimize damage.

The best sales leaders have developed strong relationships with their clients. If your business has been affected by changes in trade, it is time for your sales leaders to harvest the goodwill from those connections.  They must assure buyers that your company is working on new avenues in the supply chain to offset costs and that, hopefully, any increased costs will be temporary. Your sales team should also investigate alternate ways of bringing value to the customers. Above all, be honest, empathetic, and as open as possible.

2. Understand the holistic needs of your buyer.

Seeing higher prices, customers might delay new purchases and make existing items (like trucks and industrial water heaters) last longer, creating a new need for maintenance and repair. Or, in efforts to absorb rising costs, customers might make cutbacks in areas such as rented warehouse space. These changes may create opportunities where your company could offer assistance. By understanding the holistic and collective needs of the customer base, the sales team can identify openings to aid customers and preserve relationships in ways other than the sale of goods.

3. Share the pain with business partners.

If one of your suppliers is in China, Mexico, or Canada, the price of doing business with them may have significantly affected your customer offering.  It might be possible to renegotiate supply agreements such that the cross-border supplier lowers their cost, in effect absorbing part of the increased tariff. The sales team understands the end-point customers and what they can and cannot accept regarding price. If sales are going to drop as a result of rising costs, it is in the supplier’s best interest to entertain pricing that supports movement of the product.

4. Employ the sales team to expand globally.

If your supply chain partners simply cannot make their offering cost-effective due to their country of origin, it is essential to identify new markets in which to do business. If your trade partner is in China, it might be possible to find new options in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. It is crucial to understand potential cultural pitfalls when entering new global arenas. A strong sales team with the good regional knowledge and awareness will be needed to help bridge such gaps.

Blunting the effect of new tariffs may require creative thinking and diverse approaches. This might include moving into new territories or beyond existing lines of business. Throughout, the sales force should be kept front and center to capitalize on their relationships with, and their insights regarding, existing and potential customers and supply lines.

 

Ryan Moore serves as the Director of Client Management at Peak Sales Recruiting, the leading B2B sales recruiting company. He has more than 15 years of experience in sales and in recruiting high-performing salespeople. Prior to his career with Peak, Ryan spent more than seven years working with various sized businesses, helping them build and implement marketing programs, websites, and event sponsorship proposals.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2FIBeAu via website design phoenix

Know Your Audience: The Power Of Human-Centered Content

by Ronald Dod, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Visiture

Your customers are humans — right? You’re not trying to sell your products and services to Google’s web-crawler bots. That means you should be writing content aimed at humans, not algorithms.

At the same time, the algorithms control search results, and SEO ultimately can have huge effects on your bottom line. So as much as you might want to create beautiful content written for a human audience, it can seem that economics favors the robots.

The truth is that you can — and must — write for both. But it’s easier than you might expect. By following the principles of human-centered content, you can create the juicy content that boosts search engine rankings while simultaneously speaking clearly and directly to an audience of actual people.

Read on to learn how.

1. Remember who your audience is.

The most critical rule for almost any form of communication is to know your audience. Your product itself should already have given you an idea of your general audience, but it’s good to have an understanding that goes somewhat beyond that.

A robust knowledge of your target demographic will make it easier to convert sales. This is just old-fashioned marketing expertise—the art of demonstrating why your product’s specific features match up with the customer’s specific needs. Even in a semi-faceless online space, it’s important to remember that there’s a real person with their own unique interests, needs and wants behind that computer or smartphone. How well you address those interests, needs and wants can make or break your eCommerce business.

2. Spend some serious time with the data. 

Human-centered content doesn’t mean throwing data out the door. Quite the opposite, in fact. The data can tell you an awful lot about who you’re addressing.

If you haven’t been taking advantage of Google Analytics yet, it’s time to start. This powerful and free suite of tools is built right into Google, so there’s zero reason not to use it. It can give you great actionable insights such as what search terms people are using to find your site and where they are landing. Getting into the granular detail of these data points can give you a much better idea of your audience than simple raw numbers.

Once you’ve got a better handle on your traffic patterns, you can start deciding where to allocate resources. One good way to start is by optimizing the pages that visitors land on frequently from search engines and make sure it’s easy to get from those pages to the rest of your site.

3. Look at long-tail keywords. 

Some of the keywords that can really help your eCommerce site might not be immediately obvious. Long-tail keywords are just such a group, and they’re particularly useful because they offer more targeted opportunities for leads and conversions.

The keyword “cat food,” for example, has a wide variety of long-tail variations. “Cat food grain-free,” “cat food senior cat formula,” and “cat food for kittens” are all more likely to result in a conversion because these consumers are at a later stage in their journey and have a better idea of what they want. If these shoppers are coming to your site, you stand a good chance of converting a sale if you have what they’re looking to purchase.

4. Give your audience something new, useful and/or interesting. 

Your content will be much stronger if it has a definable use for the customer. A blog post extolling your product’s virtues can be great, but what about a post that gives your audience some unusual applications for the product as well? Try offering shoppers:

• How-to guides
• Comparisons of various product options
• Interviews with interesting people in the company
• Explanations of key concepts in your industry
• Industry news

Providing useful and interesting content like this is key to creating what the Google algorithm considers to be high-quality content. It can also provide benefits such as a lower bounce rate (the rate at which visitors leave the site after viewing only one page) if your content is more useful and more relevant.

5. When in doubt, focus on the funnel. 

Any time you’re unsure of what direction to take your content in, remember to ask what the sales purpose of that particular piece is. It should address customers at one or more stages of the sales funnel or path to purchase.

If you’re targeting customers at the beginning awareness stage, for example, you might focus on content that explains relevant concepts to help potential customers understand their decisions better. But if you’re targeting customers who have already reached the decision stage, you might focus on what your product has that competitors lack. Looking at your content within this framework can be helpful in determining how you want a piece to perform.

6. Reach out on multiple platforms.

Part of the human-centered content strategy is the practice of addressing the person as a whole. A Google search is only one small part of a person’s daily life. Building momentum is often easier when you talk to your audience on multiple platforms, allowing them to see and interact with your brand in ways that feel natural to them.

All of the following channels offer substantial opportunities to connect with your audience in the digital space:

• Blogging on your own website
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• Email
• eCommerce sites like Amazon

It’s up to you to figure out which ways of interacting feel most natural to you and to shoppers. One way to tell is to look at which platforms your customers use to seek you out and then meet them there. Hiring a specialist can be a wise move to help you coordinate your strategies between multiple channels.

As much as SEO can seem like a game played by, for and between software and algorithms, remembering the human element is key. Know your customers and cater to them by creating captivating content for all of your digital spaces.

 

Ronald Dod is the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Visiture, an end-to-end eCommerce marketing agency focused on helping online merchants acquire more customers through the use of search engines, social media platforms, marketplaces, and their online storefronts. His passion is helping leading brands use data to make more effective decisions in order to drive new traffic and conversions.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2U5HLOw via website design phoenix

Starting A Business? Use These 5 Hacks To Raise Sales

We are living in the entrepreneurship age where people are leaving their 9 to 5 jobs and pursuing their passion of becoming a business owner. Starting a business can be easy but running a business isn’t. The hardest part of running a business is generating sales.

Here are 5 growth hacks that every new business owner must use to raise sales:

1. Get Listed On Google Local’s 3 Pack.

If you are able to get your new business listed on the top 3 local search results a.k.a the local pack then you have good chances of generating a constant flow of leads. This is how a Google local 3 pack looks like:

However, getting your business listed on the local 3 pack is not easy as it might sound. You need to perfect your SEO, build links, generate a lot of positive reviews, keep the NAP constant, keep the business profile updated and use proper structured markup to start showing in the local search results.

The key to capitalize on the power of local packs is to start early. The sooner you list your business and start earning local links and positive reviews from your customers, the earlier you will notice improvements in your ranking.

2. Use The Power of Retargeting.

This has been proved that people visit a website 9 times before they make the decision to purchase so retargeting is a powerful strategy that can get you faster results.

You can combine the power of Google and Facebook retargeting to target people who have earlier visited your website. Your ad will get displayed to all those prospects who are browsing other websites but had visited your site in the past.

This hack works great for a travel agency or a shopping portal because you can entice the customers by displaying them the recently browsed products or offering a discount on their browsed travel deals. This is what Expedia does to lure customers.

3. Show The Benefits To Your Customers.

Unless you show the advantages to your customers as to why they must buy from you or register with you, you literally can’t generate much sales. People have the habit of comparing things to one another and it’s no shock that they would compare your business with your competitor. Hence, if you don’t list out your advantages they won’t be able to understand the advantages that your business offers and you will lose a sale.

Have a look at the below advantages listed by Mercato, the popular online grocery store. All the advantages for opening an account have been listed tactically making it easier for the people to join. People do not want to miss on offers and when you have so many advantages simply by opening an account, who will want to miss? 

4. Become a Brand Evangelist.

Nobody knows your business better than you. Digital marketing expert, Neil Patel presses on the fact that new businesses must focus on becoming an evangelist for their own brand because this is the best way to establish a connect with the people.

Customers always buy from companies they trust and follow. Hence, the first rule of marketing is to befriend your customer and make them follow your business values. You can also take the help of influencers to spread the word about your business. Here is a list of top influencer marketing platforms to get started.

This is how a brand like Toms created customers who have an exceptionally high lifetime value. Toms does this by creating a 1 for 1 model which means for every pair of shoes you buy from Tom, the brand will donate another pair of shoes to someone in need. Isn’t this great?

5. Leverage The Power of Content Marketing.

Over 89% of businesses use content marketing to grow their business. Content marketing remains one of the best ways to generate leads for your new company.

You need to start with a good content marketing strategy that helps the user. Understand your customers and create user personas. Define your goals and try to sync your goals with the ideal customer persona. Thereafter, conduct an audit of the existing communication channels your customers are using and try to publish content regularly on those channels. Don’t forget to test what’s working and constantly optimize your existing content pieces in order to achieve stronger and much better results.

Final Thoughts.

Starting a business is easy but running a business is difficult. Many startups fail within the first year of their launch. You certainly don’t want this to happen with your newly launched business! Hence, it is necessary to focus on growth right from the start. Generating new businesses should be your first priority and the above 5 hacks will certainly help you to raise your sales. Happy selling!

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2HZfTUV via website design phoenix

Most Important Strategies For Mobile Marketing

Nowadays, as we all know that the world is moving so fast and mobile devices are the most prominent object for increasing the interest of consumers to your product. As we get to know after some research that 95% of the people living in the United States have a mobile phone and 77% of them are a smartphone. Due to this reason, marketers are having a prime platform for connecting with their customers and gaining more customers.

Despite the contrary, now mobile phones are the most cherished and close channel for marketers. Buyers and consumers never want to get pounded with annoying marketing ads. That is the reason online businesses are needed to be cleverer with the strategies of mobile marketing.

Below we have mentioned some important details about the tactics and strategies of mobile marketing as it will be beneficial for your online business.

Marketing Via SMS.

When you will begin to count the different ways of marketing through mobile, the idea of SMS marketing will definitely come to your mind but you can think that its old and not much appealing but still, on the other hand, it is still the best option as it will be reasonable to your wallet and it is proven that it will Return On Investment (ROI).

The way of SMS marketing is proved accomplished in many different companies and corporations such as Coca Cola, Domino Pizza, and Walmart. SMS marketing is much beneficial too as customers will just have to send a short code or follow links instead of URL or copy paste links. SMS will match both the needs of the consumer as they just want rapid and easiest manner.

SMS marketing will also help in developing a better relationship with customers. It is much reasonable way for enhancing the program of customer service, it will boost up your brand, and it will deliver the information to your customers in the best possible means.

Location Based Marketing.

Location-based marketing is the direct strategy that needs the location of mobile devices to notify the owner of mobile about any offer of service or brand in the most near the place. Smartphones are the best devices for internet marketers. Through the intelligence of GPS location, consumers can determine your location from anywhere you are situated. Moreover, you can notify them with your recent ongoing offers by receiving a signal when your customers are in your area.  It is proven that 90% of messages get seen just within 15 minutes so integrating the location-based tracking to your market tactic will definitely help you to gear up.

Chat Room App Marketing.

The apps for messaging a time before was never used as the channel for marketing, but the network for social media is also included in it, in recent times the app companies like WhatsApp and WeChat have been begun to gear up their brand through it. Customers are still not much glad to avail it, but soon app marketing will become normal for everyone and customers will accept it, it is due to the messenger app is bombarded with ads.

Mobile Vouchers and QR Codes.

The big benefit of cell phones is that it provides the convenience of brands to their customers. Mobile vouchers and QR codes are now the most flexible means for being the great level for shopping, and this applies especially in the season of sales. When we integrate mobile wallets, stores should label their items with the QR code that the customers will easily scan from the rack. For the stores which are retail, QR codes can help them in eliminating the stress of queues and enhance their sales.

QR Codes are also being utilized for boosting the awareness of the brand. Customers can easily scan their QR code and post that on their social media account to show that where they are and what are they doing, this will definitely increase your brand awareness and sales will also get increased.

WAP Links to Click.

In some cases, marketers are required to speak more to increase selling; it is due to that online marketing bounded the marketers to a small position with little crowd. So in this regard, you have to find techniques for taking the customers towards your brands. For this, the best technique is to send pictures through SMS and add clickable WAP links that will automatically take your customers to the information you want to deliver them.

You can also do that in a way to increase their interest towards your brand and in clicking your added links.

The tactics of mobile marketing have the power to enhance your brand and business. It is much more effective way for marketing your brand. Click on the mentioned link:  Jooksms.com sms company for more information.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2JNsmxI via website design phoenix

How To Take Your Handyman Career To The Next Level

Being a handy-man offers a lot of mobility and freedom. You develop relationships with all your clients and become known in the neighborhood as someone trustworthy. Plus, you know how to fix everything in your own house. This is a huge benefit if you’re trying to do remodeling. No outside costs or discounted costs from co-workers who know parts of the craft that you don’t.

But, being a handy-man isn’t an end. There is farther to climb in the house building, fixing, and maintenance career field. Becoming a general contractor could be an amazing next step to having a great and independent career.

Handyman vs Contractor. 

Why should you try to get your general contractor’s license? Well, a handyman can only cover so much. They can work small jobs, quick repairs, or tasks that are valued under a certain dollar amount. There are also under the table jobs. However, these are risky and will give you no backing by the systems meant to support you.

A contractor, on the other hand, has all the support from the systems. They are legally able to take larger jobs. The license allows you to bid for commercial or residential contracting jobs. You can also expand your business and hire out more hands. Becoming a contractor allows you to expand your services and take more of a managerial role.

You can earn a lot more money as a contractor because you are able to take longer and more difficult jobs. Plus, you now have the paper credentials to back your talent. Having word of mouth is one thing. It is only made better by getting the license.

How Do I Get a Contractor’s License? 

It’s as simple as taking an exam. There is some studying involved, but rather than studying boring mental things, you’ll be studying practical skills. Basically, you need to know all the things that every general contractor should know about.

There are plenty of online resources for studying to pass the general contractor exams. Plus, using your experience as a handyman will help you a lot. If you have practical experience out in the field, your chances of passing the exam the first time increase a lot.

Benefits of Becoming a Contractor. 

Once you have the license, your reputation will sky rocket. You’ll be able to charge more money, and the clients will see you more readily. You’ll also be able to specialize. This means that you can choose what part of home renovation that you want to focus on. If you’ve always been interested in flooring, you can specialize in that. Finding that specialization also puts you in a better place compared to your competition.

People will seek out your business more often. This is because they know that you have been specially trained to give them the quality products and services that they desire.

There’s no drama because you are your own boss. You don’t have to work with others unless you choose to, or your client requires it. But, in the end, you can always refuse and choose what jobs you want to take.

Being a contractor is not for everyone. After all, it takes some time and dedication. However, if you are willing to study and put in the work, there are so many benefits. Contracting gives a freedom that not many people have, stuck in their stuffy office jobs. You also gain skills and knowledge that you can use in everyday situations.

So, if you are ready to take your handyman job to the next level and start a full-on general contractor career, start prepping for the license. Then get ready to see your business soar.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2uy8uEc via website design phoenix

Preventing Stupid: 3 Questions Every Business Owner Must Ask

by Matthew Neill Davis, Esq., author of “The Art of Preventing Stupid: How to Build a Stronger Business Strategy through Better Risk Management“

A recent Internet search for “problems in business” on Google produced 1.76 billion entries, often a list of the top 20 or 10. Rightly so, business leaders are obsessed with solving problems. But business problems really fall into just three essential categories: catastrophes, ignorance, and ineptitude — and the way to solve them starts long before they happen. While these three enemies of any business can rear their head in countless situations and endless forms, the key is spotting them even before they start.

The Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, said, “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles.”

That means spotting the weaknesses in your business by asking yourself three very basic questions. The sooner and the more frequently you ask, the better you’ll be able to address and solve these problems before they can intensify and do real damage. The more you do this, the steadier and surer you can lead:

First question: What foreseeable disasters can strike my business?

Catastrophes are the natural and man-made disasters that originate outside your business and hinder your goals. They may be forces of nature, such as a fire or hurricane, or market fluctuations. In western Oklahoma there are many companies depending on oil production for their livelihood. But in 2014, the oil price crashed — from $120 per barrel to down below $30. This was an absolutely disaster for those who did not see it coming. But my firm did see it coming, and helped our clients prepare for it, which meant it was not a catastrophe for them.

Look inside your business: A catastrophe could be caused by a disgruntled former employee, or a dissatisfied customer who decides to disparage you on the Internet. Or, it may come from the competition. The only catastrophe you do have control over is a health crisis, but the truth is, way too many business owners are entirely blind to their own vulnerability. For the disasters truly beyond your control, anticipate their likelihood, and prepare for them. The key is sound foresight, coupled with preparation and often insurance.

Second question: What particular skills or knowledge do my team and I need to run the business effectively?

Unlike catastrophes, ignorance is the fault of the business owner or potentially other managerial employees. The first step to take to overcome it is to recognize it. Failure due to ignorance regarding your business can strike either the management side or the operations side of a business. But it will apply to both you and your employees. Aim to fix this problem with education, such as an ongoing crash course in business management or the technical aspects of the work. Don’t let it go.

Whatever your business — whether you are a skilled tradesman running a service company or a merchant running the corner quick shop — your business requires a whole host of skills that you likely do not possess. Not everyone can know everything, to put it simply. you can learn them, or hire someone who has them. As your company grows or changes, there will be new things to learn

and new skills to master. This is where outside firms — such as legal, consulting, accounting, human resources, or marketing — can advise, assist, and help you rigorously address the ignorance in your company’s personnel. There is no shame in ignorance for your employees: an MBA may not understand the practical skillset that’s the backbone of your business. But the converse is true for you: You devoted your life to becoming a pro at what you do rather than the intricacies of business management. It’s time to take that crash course. 

What systems and procedures do we need in order to ensure that the work is executed efficiently, safely, and correctly the first time?

Ineptitude is not the same as ignorance. It covers things that you and your employees actually know yet still screw up. The fixes in this case entail tasks like systems, checklists, and routines. Your goal is to minimize or, more ideally, prevent the element of human error — using sound management. This may be the most tedious part of a business owner’s job, but it is also the most liberating when done correctly. Once you get your systems, checklists, and routines in place for your employees, you’ve just made their job, and yours, much easier.

A business is a complex human system that you oversee — and you are the answer to the “why” and “how” of problem development. You started the business, set it in motion and created the goals. There are often elements that arise that can make it a challenge to establish and maintain your business’s systems. But it’s far more effective to be able to foresee them than be caught in reactive mode. Keep your focus on these three basic areas of business failures, and you’ll be able to deal with them in an organized, efficient manner. And running your business will become that much easier.

 

Matthew Neill Davis is an author, speaker and attorney. He owns and manages Davis Law, PLLC, a firm dedicated to helping business owners make smart business decisions. The firm finds solutions to pressing problems and issues that business owners encounter, and runs custom legal departments for businesses and nonprofits. His new book is “The Art of Preventing Stupid: How to Build a Stronger Business Strategy through Better Risk Management“.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2FwyzJ6 via website design phoenix

Sustaining Innovation vs. Disruptive Innovation

“Innovation is widely regarded as the single most important ingredient in today’s economy,” according to entrepreneur Faisal Hoque at Fast Company.

Innovation not only impacts global economies and business models, but the quality of life of people. Innovation has changed the way people live, work and do business.

Businesses can focus on two types of innovation: sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation.

Sustaining Innovation Defined.

A sustaining innovation improves existing products. It does not create new markets or value markets, but develops existing ones with better value, allowing companies to compete against each other’s sustaining improvements. Scholar and innovation expert Clayton Christensen explains it this way.

A sustaining innovation targets demanding, high-end customers with better performance than what was previously available. Some sustaining innovations are the incremental year-by-year improvements that all good companies grind out. Other sustaining innovations are breakthrough, leapfrog-beyond-the-competition products. It doesn’t matter how technologically difficult the innovation is, however: The established competitors almost always win the battles of sustaining technology. Because this strategy entails making a better product that they can sell for higher profit margins to their best customers, the established competitors have powerful motivations to fight sustaining battles. And they have the resources to win.

An example of sustaining innovation is Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company by revenues. Hoque notes the company’s ongoing success with blockbuster medicines and vaccines with household names, such as Zithromax, Lipitor and Viagra. The company was founded in 1849 as a manufacturer of fine chemicals, and a year later, it discovered Terramycin (oxytetracylcine), launching the company’s successful and ongoing expansion into a research-based pharmaceutical company. It augmented its research by building its brands, pipeline and profile through major acquisitions.

Disruptive Innovation Defined.

A disruptive innovation helps create a new market and value network. The innovation eventually disrupts an existing market and value network. An important note is that while the concept of disruptive technology is widely used, “disruptive innovation” is a more useful concept because few technologies are intrinsically disruptive. It is the business model and not the technology that enables and creates the disruptive effect.

A key to disruptive innovation is that, opposed to sustaining innovation, it does not take place with established competitors, as Christensen explains in Harvard Business Review.

“Disruption” describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their products and services for their most demanding (and usually most profitable) customers, they exceed the needs of some segments and ignore the needs of others. Entrants that prove disruptive begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower price. Incumbents, chasing higher profitability in more-demanding segments, tend not to respond vigorously. Entrants then move upmarket, delivering the performance that incumbents’ mainstream customers require, while preserving the advantages that drove their early success. When mainstream customers start adopting the entrants’ offerings in volume, disruption has occurred.

An example of disruptive innovation is how when Apple introduced the iPod, the company brought together a strong technology with a groundbreaking business model. Customers flocked to Apple, and the company had record-breaking profits with its hardware, software and service. But the real innovation was making downloading digital music easy. The business model paired integrated hardware, software and service with low-profit iTunes music and the high-profit iPod.

There are different types of disruptive innovations, according to Christensen:

Low-end disruptions involve a new operating and/or financial approach with some combination of lower gross profit margins and higher asset utilization. Attractive returns are possible at the discounted prices needed to win business at the low end of the market. Instead of creating new markets, companies use low-cost business models that pick off the least attractive customers of established companies. Examples include how Korean automakers entered the European and North American markets or how Amazon disrupted traditional bookstores early on.

New-market disruptions involve products that are much more affordable to own and simpler to use — they allow a new population to own and use the product. New markets were created with the smartwatch, which instead of focusing on the Swiss watch industry, targeted the 60 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds who get the time from their phones. The personal computer also tapped into a non-existent market before receiving sales from higher-end professional computers.

Hybrid disruptions involve both new-market and low-end approaches. Southwest Airlines and Virgin America reflected this by targeting people who weren’t flying as well as customers who were at the low end of major airlines’ value network.

Sustaining Innovation vs. Disruptive Innovation.

Choosing between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation is not simple. There are practical problems with neglecting either form of innovation.

Incumbent businesses often neglect disrupters because the process can take time. Netflix launched in 1997 and its service wasn’t appealing to most of Blockbuster’s customers, who rented movies on impulse. But when Netflix went from movie deliveries through the mail to streaming services over the internet, it was then targeting Blockbuster’s core market. Blockbuster failed to respond appropriately because the initial threat didn’t appear too disruptive; the two companies were serving different audiences.

A disruptive business model can generate attractive profits, but organizations shouldn’t neglect sustaining innovation in favor of disruption. Sustaining innovation can help a new business grow through better technologies and products; it can help an established business “build a better mousetrap.” But once the viability of the superior product is established, businesses will need to turn to disruption for “new” growth (in other areas of business).

What wins in sustaining innovation vs. disruptive innovation? According to Deloitte, businesses should pursue both forms of innovation.

The “innovator’s dilemma” is the tough choice any company faces when it has to choose between holding onto an existing market by doing the same, yet slightly better (sustaining innovation), or capturing new markets by embracing new technologies and adopting new business models (disruptive innovation). In order to achieve cutting-edge innovation within a company while creating a long-lasting business advantage, the latter should aspire to achieve both revolution and evolution. In other words, disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation do not necessarily need to be alternative to one another, but rather complementary measures.

Advancing Your Business Knowledge.

Campbellsville University offers an online bachelor’s in business administration and an online MBA that prepare you for leadership positions. Both programs give you the ability to specialize in a particular area to help you achieve your career goals. These fully online programs allow you to earn the credential you need in a flexible environment, on a schedule that works for your busy life.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2uy4eoa via website design phoenix