By Kathy-Ann Fletcher

Who do your customers consult before they make a purchase decision? Do they ask friends or associates, or seek the opinion of industry analysts, consultants and researchers for advice or reviews and rankings? Whoever they turn to or whose advice they follow, these are the key influencers. They are the opinion leaders that you need to be in regular contact with and who you need to influence. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your customer base.

1.       Know who they are – Each industry or sector has different people or entities that are the key opinion leaders of that market. Investigate who these are relative to your industry/ies and learn as much as you can as far as who they are what it takes to influence them and what influences them. This will help you influence people in your market that are influential in your circles. Additionally, it will determine the content that you send their way. For instance, you won’t share with the press in the same way that you would share with and analyst.

2.       Follow them – Become their friend on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, subscribe to their blog. This will help you gain a deeper understanding of them and the content that they distribute and those who they influence and the influence they have on their followers.

3.       Develop a relationship with them – Just sending an email with a pitch or calling up an influencer will get you nowhere fast. Take time to cultivate a relationship with them. You should posts comments on their blogs, retweet their tweets and like their statuses on Facebook. These actions will help you gain their attention, so that when you do contact them, there is already a level of familiarity with you and what you have to offer.

4.       Develop a strong pitch – don’t go the way of the generic pitch. Develop something that is personal to each influencer you are approaching so they see the direct benefits they get from introducing you to their followers. You may want to make this pitch a soft sell rather than a hard approach. Ask for the party’s opinion on your product/service so that you could offer the best possible solution to their followers. This is where you can give them a compelling story that they may feel is interested enough to share with their fans.

To our readers do you know any additional steps that can be used to influence the influencers? Chime in as this list is by no means exhaustive.

By Corey Graham 2.0

The truth is that we are all the president of our own personal services corporation. We have 100% controlling interest in our personal services corporation. We can do what we want, make whatever decisions we want. Some of us have been becoming so attached to the idea of a job that, we don’t understand this simple fact.

A job is really just one type of contract under which you provide your personal services. It’s simply an understood way of doing business. Now free your mind and imagine other ways that you can render your personal services and get paid from it. I am sure you have come up with things like freelancer, sub-contractor, self-employed and entrepreneur.

In this case we are looking at entrepreneurship as a way of life and let’s take a moment to define “entrepreneur”:

An innovator of business enterprise who recognizes opportunities to introduce a new product, a new process or an improved organization, and who raises the necessary money, assembles the factors for production and organizes an operation to exploit the opportunity.

Now doesn’t this sound like a job description? It has certain requirements that go along with that job. It’s similar to what you might have to look at if you are being considered for a post in any business whether it be Marketing Manager, Customer Service Representative, Chief Financial Officer or security guard. Once you can appreciate this you are well on your way to making entrepreneurship a way of life.

Yes, Yes, Yes I know what you are saying, “The risk is just not for me”. Let’s talk about that. Entrepreneurship differs from other arrangements for use of your personal services primarily because you have to take on the risk of the venture. There are two key points with respect to this you might need to appreciate. Firstly a job in itself is still a function of how well the business is running. We have seen lots of job disappearing with just one sentence to explain why. This current economic crisis has taught us alot about that. A job does have a bit of risk involved, it’s just a different type of risk. Secondly the risk involved in entrepreneurship simply requires an honest day’s work. It’s not ok to pass the buck and get out of a situation by blaming a colleague. Results matter and they can have an immediate impact. 

Choosing entrepreneurship as a way of life entails you focusing on doing the job well. You have got to be willing to be flexible and ready to make the smart play. It’s also going to be filled with consistent learning and lots of on the job training. It’s scary until you get around other people who are committed to that way of life. That’s the real secret. Associate with other people who are facing the same challenges as you. 

Many companies do it. Whether it is for one brand, to add an additional line or to change the corporate image, there is a long history of rebranding. However, for one reason or another, people equate this change with a failure of the previous brand strategy. However, I choose not to view that each product or corporation rebrand has been due to failure. I see some instances of rebrand including the ones below as being quite strategic.

1.       Change of corporate direction. – A business that has changed direction either as a function of corporate initiative or customer demand may change the brand to reflect the new image. For example a soup maker may change direction to provide only healthy ingredients in the soup and feels that the brand needs to reflect that shift.

2.       Wider focus – A company may widen the scope of its offerings and feel that their brand is too restrictive considering their new aspects. Take the case of a communications company who may widen their product offering to include entertainment and therefore uses a brand change to help make the market aware of the additional service.

3.       Change to target market/niche – While some brand changes may be corporate driven, others are customer lead. The product may have the chance to appeal to a wider audience and therefore in response to the change in customer demand the brand may adjust itself or transform altogether to reflect this new customer base. For instance, a clothing company may be working with a religious niche, however, there is the chance to have an impact on a wider scale and change the name to one that can appeal to non-religious segments of the market who may not have understood the brand name and message.

4.       To reflect operational changes – The company may become increasingly efficient or change the capabilities in some areas of its operations and feels the brand needs to match these adjustments. For example, a company may move from producing handmade accessories to machine operated manufacturing. Therefore, this company would no longer carry the handmade stamp in their brands.

I believe that a rebranding strategy is simply an attempt to appeal to a wider audience or change the view of your company in your current market. This change is by no means an indication of failure but simply a shift of priority and as your priority changes so does your image. 

Building a corporate brand is like building a reputation. Your company must prove itself over and over again to gain the trust of the market. You are developing loyalty among your customers and while this may seem daunting a process, if you take the steps you took to build your reputation in your circle that may make it a bit easier to undertake.

Know your Brand – Be clear on your what your brand stands for. This helps you communicate the brand message clearly and precisely. For example to say that your brand is innovative is not only cliché, it is too broad to clearly state what customers would be getting from using your brand.

Know your competition – Keep an eye on your competitors and what they are doing. This is not to copy them but to know where your company fits into the market. Studying the competition shows where there are gaps in the market that can be serviced by your company. It also helps to know what the competition may be doing wrong so that you can avoid those pitfalls.

Separate yourself – Once you know what the competition stands for and what they are doing and the space that is available then you can clearly determine and communicate how your brand is better, different and value that you are bringing to the market that your competitors are not. Again don’t be cliché or vague saying things like “we give great service” or “are the most qualified”. Be clear and specific about how your brand differs from the others in your sector.

Draw attention – Find ways to package your product and company that will attract the attention of your target. Plaster your brand’s look everywhere you can: on your car, on Facebook, Twitter, blog, even ask your friends to plaster their cars with your brand, the more the merrier. Keep your brand and a consistent image in your target’s vision at all times.

Stay committed – Building a brand is a lot of work and it’s easy to give up when you may not be seeing any results. That’s why it is important to embrace the fact that it is a lot of work to build a brand and remain dedicated to doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get that brand established.

Monitor your progress – It would be a shame to spend time, money and effort on building your brand in channels that are not working the best way to avoid this is to continually monitor the progress of each avenue you use to build your brand. Once you have your results don’t be afraid to change from what is not working to a course of action that is working. If you have to scrap everything and start fresh then work with a clean slate. 

By Kathy-Ann Fletcher 

Do you take all the new opportunities that come your way as a new business or do you focus on doing a good job with a few at first to establish a solid reputation? This is the dilemma that many entrepreneurs face in the early stages of their businesses.

Will you be sacrificing the quality of the product/service you provide by expanding or taking on too much too soon? This is a very important question to ask yourself when faced with new opportunities. The fear of opportunities drying up so to speak usually drives entrepreneurs to grab at every new opportunity. However, in the process some quality is sacrificed if the company is not properly prepared for expansion leaving the business vulnerable to failure.

So how do you handle this choice? I have two simple suggestions.

1. Pre-set the priorities of your company and do your best to stick to them. You have to establish very early what your company’s objectives are and match the priorities to suit. As you set up targets and earmarks for the growth, stick to these unless your company has grown at the pace to accommodate the new opportunities. For example, accepting an order for 50,000 new pieces before you have the capabilities or are able to outsource it will not secure your future, regardless of how great the opportunity seems. What it will do is run your business into the ground before its name can be established.

2. Determine the image of your company – Do you want to be known as a jack of all trades but a master of none? No. You want to be known for great products and dependable service. Therefore at the early stage, in fact at any stage, it is best to focus on quality rather than quantity. You don’t want to damage the reputation of your company and the trust within the market for your product and service. This would be a sure fire way to damage future opportunities.

We face the dilemma all the time. These new opportunities seem once in a lifetime and exciting. We say if we get this account then we will be set. We sit and imagine how good it will be but then forget to consider our capabilities.

So in business, it is best to choose quality over quantity if you can’t achieve them both. 

By Corey Graham 2.0

While our society is currently pushing our young people to consider entrepreneurship, I want to us to remember that entrepreneurship can be pursued whether you are 15 or 55. It is not something you pursue when you are younger with the hope that if it does not work out someone else will hire you.

Entrepreneurship is always billed as an intense process that is best for young people. However, I agree with Napoleon Hill author of ‘Think and Grow Rich’ who believes that building a business can happen at any time at your life. He goes on to say “I have discovered, from analysis of over 25 000 people that men who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before age 40, and more often they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of fifty.”

Making your discovery between the ages of 40-50 or even later is not too late to start working on an enterprise that could end up becoming your legacy.

The reality is that many persons at this age pick up a hobby or choose to play an active role in non-profit organizations. In that case, it’s really not that far-fetched to take the step of starting your own business.

Now please note I am not saying that starting a business is a piece of cake. The process is going to provide you with its fair share of unique challenges. The key is really to pace yourself and stick within your means.

They say that experience is the best teacher which is one thing you will have going for you as an older entrepreneur. It’s a collection of life experiences which can offer you priceless insights into many areas of the business, from human resources to operations to marketing to customer service, you take your pick. Bring all your experience to bear in the creation of your business.

An added benefit as you grow older is that many of your peers have disposable income. It means that some of your first customers can and probably will be your peers. It’s a lot less scary when you have customers lining up and ready before opening day.

If you feel like this is making sense but you are still sceptical let me leave you with the link to Colonel Harland Sanders, the man who founded the world famous Kentucky Fried Chicken at 65 years old! Enjoy and remember you can never wait too late to start a business!

By Kathy-Ann Fletcher 

The saying ‘there is strength in numbers’ is no fallacy especially in business. To scoff at the thought of a strategic partnership is a misguided approach to business, as there are several things that may be harder to achieve as a single entity that would be accomplished through a collaboration of like-minded companies. I have heard the argument against partnerships due to the bounty having to spread further. However, using an arbitrary number, 1/5 of something is better than 5/5 of nothing if it gives you a profit on your investment.

There are some benefits to be had by joining a purpose-driven strategic partnership:

Becoming a key player – when you are a small player in an established field a sub-contract with a larger company or any partnership with an enterprise that is already well-known for quality is a great way to align your business with industry leaders and glean some of their reputation from them.

Market penetration in new areas – Similarly, aligning yourself with an established company is a great way to avoid some of the insecurity that accompanies your entrance into a new market. 

Further penetration in current markets - You can also see benefits from partnering with companies that cater to your same market. For instance, a high-end art gallery partnering with architects or interior decorators would benefit both parties by exposing them to new clients in their desirable target.

Get contracts you may not have landed alone – Due to your company’s size or some other consideration, you may not be able to land a major account. However, if you come together with one or more partners you could propose jointly to work towards the development of the account.  Each company could be assigned a different aspect of the project and everyone would profit from the high profile that would accompany such a large account.

A common goal – A strategic partnership of companies either by location, industry, or size will have a stronger voice for the issues within their area that they want to see changed. They may be able to advocate, for example, for more tax relief as a united voice than a group of individual voices.

While it may be easy to think of the risk to your competitive advantage of a strategic partnership, I believe that the above benefits can have a stronger play on whether you enter these agreements.

The list is not exhaustive. What other reasons for entering such arrangements that you can think of? What would discourage you from entering a strategic partnership?

By Marita Greenidge

Sitting in an entrepreneurship class at Simon I was told that by the professor that I should not be afraid of telling other people about my ideas. I could get insightful feedback and I could also solidify the concept as I talked about it more and more.

“Was he serious?” Suppose someone stole my idea! But something else came out in that class that had also arisen in one of my strategy classes and remains one of my mantras – “Ideas are easy; execution is the hard part”. So I could in fact tell my idea to several people and perhaps they could try to copy it but there was no guarantee that they could pull it off like I could.

This brings me to my point – how do we balance creativity and execution? How many times have you sat in strategy sessions while a team of brilliant people come up with fabulous ideas that get shoved in a drawer never to be heard from again?

That’s probably because it’s so great to allow your mind to roam free and spout ever interesting idea that bypasses. It makes you sound really smart! And who doesn’t want to sound really smart? But it’s an entirely different animal to try to execute that idea. It requires a strong leader who can appropriately allocate human and capital resources and motivate those human resources to do a good job.

I’ll give you an example of how we do it at Bimventures. We hold strategic visioning retreats to gather ideas for improvement of our system or processes. We involve everyone in the Bimventures family because you never know where good ideas lie. At the retreat we host sessions that are designed to answer specific questions about areas we want to improve.

For example, we may ask the question of what do we need to do to heighten the probability that entrepreneurs accepted to the fund develop successful enterprises. We could get a flood of ideas about improving our selection process and what characteristics we should look for in an entrepreneur or a shepherd.

All great stuff! But then someone has to be charged with ensuring recommended changes are actually implemented. Someone has to formally change the selection criteria and also ensure that the new criteria are followed.

So how do you really achieve the balancing act? Gather a bunch of ideas; choose those that are realistic and help achieve your desires in a cost effective manner; work on an action plan and timeline for implementing and put someone in charge of executing the process. Creativity is great but on its own it never made anything happen until someone used it to make a difference.

By Corey Graham 2.0

People become entrepreneurs for different reasons. Some of the reasons we hear include: “I wanted to be my own boss?”, “I wanted to spend more time with my children”, or “I can make more money now than when I had a job”. 

Now let’s talk about what motivates you to be an entrepreneur. If you are not an entrepreneur but plan to become one, your motivation may be a little different from most of the other entrepreneurial minded persons reading this post, however there might be some common ground here.

An entrepreneur sells the solution to a problem. Usually this problem is one which they have faced personally and quite often they have found out the solution. In some cases they have figured it out themselves and in others they have gotten the solution from other persons. They then built an organization to provide this solution to persons willing to pay for it.

Quite often a large part of any entrepreneur’s motivation is to share their solution/invention with as many people as possible. It’s this quest that motivates entrepreneurs to challenge themselves to build new things.

Money is a motivation to become an entrepreneur as it is the tool that we all use to improve our standard of living.

Are you thinking yet? Do you remember the real reasons you are doing what you are doing? Not the reasons lost in the hustle of the day to day business operations, but that big picture idea that got you to take the risk of building your own enterprise.

While listening to motivational speakers I find it interesting that they agree on very few things. But one thing they do agree on is motivating yourself to grow your business.

In a nutshell, they say to be of service to persons and the money will follow. It sounds like a simple lesson but it is a quite powerful lesson. Once you are adding value to persons’ lives with your products and services they will be ready and willing to pay you for it.

As a social media marketer, I think this principle will be critical for entrepreneurs. We live in a more connected and informed world. Social Media makes the world more transparent as anyone can express their views on your products or services or you as an individual.It also places a greater emphasis on trust and if your motivation is less than pure it will spread throughout the social media community and have a potentially negative effect on your success.

So the question I will pose to you once again my dear friend - What motivates you to be an entrepreneur?

By Kathy-Ann Fletcher

Profit is important. Business must generate revenue otherwise you are just treading water and will drown eventually. In light of this it is surprising that many of our businesses are not enduring profit making ventures.

The way we have been handling business is not sustainable and will cause us to lose our hats and shirts.

We can all name at least one company that went from big and full of promise to the brink of folding. Several of these falls from grace may have been due to a slowdown in the economy or market, but many were due to unsustainable practices that were harsh on company finances causing the implosion.

I believe in learning the lessons taught from others’ mistakes. This way we can grow without the pain that those who went before had to endure.  

What was the error of their actions? I think it can be boiled down to one word – excess. We do too much. We think more better but sometimes our growth handicaps our capacity to successfully adapt to changes in the external environment such as an economic downturn.

We take on more projects and force growth faster than our company is able to handle financially. Therefore, even a positive cash flow can be turned negative at the snap of a finger.

As we expand the business, our costs rise. This is great while there is a positive cash flow. However, a decrease in income is not automatically met with a decline in costs leaving you with a mountain of expenses with less capability to meet these responsibilities. 

But how can we develop more sustainable businesses?

Organic Growth – A smart way to expand your company is to match the persistent demand for your products and services. Therefore your growth will match sales and profits as you use the revenue generated from these sources to expand the operations of your business. While this may mean that growth is slower, the company is not to big too handle changes in the internal and external environment.

Prudent use of resources – This speaks for itself I think. For many years even here in Barbados companies were quite wasteful of their resources and when the hard times come, then it shows how this lavish living ate into profits than can be used to develop the company further or provide insurance for future downturns.

These are two steps we can take to make our businesses more sustainable but this list is not exhaustive. I am sure you can suggest even more. Ultimately, if one by one business developed a greater environment of sustainability, that would extend to the economy and allow it to be more enduring even in a recession.