Our businesses are run by people (often accountants) who have a huge problem with the future. Number counters make businesses data driven. They base the future of the small business on the past, on things that have already happened. Often people who can’t focus on the future struggle because they don’t like things they can’t ‘hang their hat on.’ This limits thinking, stifles growth and stunts creativity.

In fact, many people manage out the unexpected, new ideas and innovate change with deliberate and clinical effect. But it’s often more about what you can’t see thats important rather than what you can. We’ve known for years small businesses fail to grow because they focus too much on the now rather than on those things on the horizon. Anyway, the point is someone should be looking!

It’s fundamental we think about the future and it’s implications rather than not at all!

There is too much overhead, too much ego, too many promises, too much indifference, too much fake, too much neatness, too much control, too many being lofty, too much distance. And not enough creativity, not enough differentiation, not enough honesty, not enough sincerity, not enough imagination, not enough compassion and not enough questions!

The words we use are changing in business or they should be! They describe what we value, what we do, how we think, what we relate to and how we connect. They are important to not only ourselves but our people and our customers. However, they are shifting:

Words of the past; everywhere, promise, safe, timeless, large, distant, normal, complicated, transactional, steady, conformance, communication, faceless, caring, short term, sophisticated, managers, serious, control, big, frustrating, groups.

Words of the future; provocative, curious, surprise, risky, delivery, partner, conversation, intimate, real, authentic, trust, challenging, thinking, leaders, niche, influential, refreshing, weird, fun, intelligent, long term, simple, individuals.

Being loud, being comfortable, being essential  doesn’t necessarily mean you stand out nowadays! 

Perhaps I’m looking at things too simply but a small dose of reality and less irrelevant analysis is what is required. Why are businesses dropping like dead flies? Why are so many household brands failing? Why are a lot of us not feeling any sympathy for all those heading down a cul de sac with no turning circle at the end?

Common factors for the problems that, WOW, us small business people learn from:

1. Many businesses have borrowed too much to acquire their competitors or grow…..ego!

2. Many businesses have too much overhead, way too much….simple greed!

3. Too many businesses have failed to move with the times…..poor strategy, bad management and lack of foresight!

4. Too many businesses have not differentiated themselves in the market place and are still following a mass marketing route….plain stupid!

5. Far too many businesses have stunted their development by treating their people like any other resources….dumb!

If you are not different you need to be cheaper and if you are not the cheapest or not the most expensive what are you? You are in the middle, average and vulnerable because I, the customer, don’t see the value you offer. Failing to move with the times is unforgivable and unforgiving. Businesses are quick to try and get rid of ‘dead wood,’ now it’s the marketplace’s turn to naturally filter those with that have stood still for too long.

In some ways times like these are good. Those businesses with strong business models well positioned for adapting to the future will survive. Those that have been struggling for a while or those with excess and ‘macho’ driven cultures will die…is that a bad thing? From a customer/consumers point of view, it’s certainly a good thing. From a surviving businesses perspective it’s a huge opportunity. Tom Peters said way back in 1994 “There are only two types of businesses in the future, the quick and the dead.” Perhaps what he meant is coming to fruition.

So what to do and quick. Existing customers are the place to start. They know you, you have a relationship, they are ‘warm.’ They’ll talk to you when others won’t. Here’s three things to do this week:

1. Grade your customers A, B, C, D. A’s are great customers who you can do more business with. D’s you shouldn’t even have on your customer list.

2. Get rid of the D’s, yep get shot, don’t do anything pro active with them. Schedule meetings with all, yep all, your A customers over the next month. But call one now and set up a meeting this week.

3. Before you meet those A customers. Create a new story about your company. Pull something together that will make your A customer intrigued, curious and interested in what you are doing and I don’t mean you’ve reduce your prices or you’ve invented a loyalty card. You are going to have to be more creative than that.

But and it’s a big BUT, also ensure that you use the meeting to understand what you are doing right, what you could do better. It’s an amazing opportunity to make the relationship with your most important customers (the ones that help you through difficult times) more intense, more profitable and more sustaining.

It’s a big ask, it’s time consuming, you may never have done something like this before and it may take you out of your comfort zone. That’s my point, by being uncomfortable you learn a hell of a lot!!

Go do it

I’ve just read “Enough” by John C Bogle, it’s a must for your reading matter in the next couple of months. Interesting, challenging and so very right, it’s a look at how we have become obsessed with excess rather than having ‘enough.’ It’s an attempt to stop us in our tracks and understand what’s important in business, what impact we have and to start living by strong values that support humanity rather than driving towards the short term which brings about inevitable disaster.

It’s a book that has been published with great timing!

It’s more important in these times than ever to be tuned in to what’s happening out there. Today is a good place to start considering how you are going to take advantage of these interesting events! And it’s a great time to know these five things:

1. Out of site, out of mind…..marketing on a consistent basis is essential not only for survival but growth. Customers forget very quickly what you do. Marketing gives you your profile, it builds your reputation and it reinforces that you are still there to existing customers. To stop marketing is a quick walk to the the edge of the cliff!

2. Your competitors won’t go away. If they are switched on they will be deciding on their next amazing strategy that’s going to attempt to woo your customers away from you. They’ll be thinking about how they can be more creative than you, offer a better customer experience than you and communicate far more clearly what they do than you are doing at present. They are never far away cooking up something that will blow customers socks off!

3. With existing customers you have to maintain their state of mind, with potential customers you have to change their mind. Existing and potential customers are different, so develop a strategy that reflects that!

4. Marketing is not a one off event, it’s a series of events over a sustained period of time. That means it rarely brings results immediately. Commitment to the long haul is required, investment of realistic time and money essential and an understanding that it will be at least three months before results start to show is a hard dose of reality. Stop moaning your marketing is not working and give it a reasonable chance! 

5. Keep ahead of the game. If you want to know how to market, ensure you have a sound understanding of what is working and what is ‘old school.’ Read, read and read…yep for some that’s boring but get attuned to the latest trends. Get signed up to Seth Godin’s blog, buy the latest leading edge thinking in marketing books and subscribe to at least one magazine that pushes your thinking such as Fast Company!

If you are not keeping up, you are almost always falling behind.

If we don’t know much about something we tend to conform to the ordinary, the average, or to put it another way….what everyone else is doing. If you don’t know much about fashion, you follow the trend of the moment relying on what everyone else is saying you should be doing and who are very often in the same position as you…they don’t know much about it!

And lots of us small business owners do the same with our companies. When we don’t know much about marketing we tend to do what our competitors are doing, in the false sense that this is actually what’s working or it’s because we are too frightened to move from the beaten path and forge our own route, direction or way of marketing. 

If it’s to do with the people that work for us, we follow the management practices of yesteryear using control (cos’ we are frightened), applying incentives (cos’ we don’t know how to engage with people) and exercising positional authority (cos’ some days it’s the only management tool we feel we have.)

The truth is that by getting up to speed and gaining leading edge skills in marketing and leadership you can find a sure way of preventing that conformance and really start the process of showing how you are different and not ordinary!

Think into the future (there is one I promise) three years from now. Look back and identify what are the big decisions you have implemented that have made all the difference to performance/growth/survival. You now know what to do next….!!! 

An employer pays his/her employee money in exchange for time. For that time an employee traditionally gets told what to do when to do it and within what parameters (job descriptions). There is a degree of control. It’s been a one sided affair for many decades/hundreds of years….perhaps I’m being a little unfair? But on the whole an employee is at the beck and call of us employers….why?

An employer may be giving a salary or a wage but the employee is giving up their time. It’s just as tangible, just as important as money and of equal weight, yet the relationship in many, if not most businesses, is lopsided. In the past that’s because employees had little choice. The employers factory was the only one in town and there were only a few people at the top who provided all of the employment in the surrounding area.

As this real life scenario rapidly dissolves it’s changing the ‘power’, things are becoming a lot more balanced. Employees have more choice. Employment is not provided by two or three heavy weights. Business is changing, we are selling intellect and less materials, we are managing our employees imagination not production lines and the business world around is changing very fast, small businesses themselves are changing but not as fast and the leaders of those small businesses, on the whole, are hardly changing at all.

We still see the employee as ‘ours,’ that they belong to us and that we say what goes. I’m not advocating breaking company rules or values but there is a shift. Employees really can choose where they work. They will increasingly make choices, understand where they fit and will leave quickly when they don’t fit.

Increasingly, small business owners will need to learn how to lead these changes and provide a working environment that is less centred on one person making the decisions. They must stop managing people and start leading, understanding that the employee has more choice than ever before. They can stop working and go travelling, they can stop working and do a degree, they can stop working and have a break from work and worse of all, they can stop working for you and go and work for the competition.

The balance has to be restored. As employers we must recognise that our employees can do a hundred things instead of being where they are with you right now. The relationship must not be lopsided and less based on control, order, authority and more on change, emotion, trust, influence and motivation.