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Category: Blog Post
Why Business Stories Drive Success
Why Business Stories Drive Success
Why don’t more entrepreneurs use stories to explain their business?
The reasons may be they don’t understand how powerful stories are and defining, and crafting a story takes time.
Another misconception is that stories are what the marketing department does. True.
But your story needs to start long before there is a marketing department.
If it doesn’t, you could be trying to wordsmith your sales communications later for short-term tactical gains because you don’t have a competitive advantage. Why?
Most companies have competitors and everyone is selling the same product at the same price with the same service.
Here is what Ben Horowitz, venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz says:
“The mistake people make is thinking the story is just about marketing, No. The story is the strategy. If you make your story better, you make your strategy better.”
The story is the engine that drives successful companies.
And with today’s technology, you can tell your story, many times for free, to individuals anywhere in the world.
That makes stories more important than ever.
Benefits Of A Story-Based Strategy
Business stories drive success and will help you build and grow your company and your brand.
According to Kevin Smith the world’s most valuable, innovative, and fastest-growing companies,
regardless of age, industry, or size – know the story behind the brand. (Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, etc.) delivers success.
Simon Sinek, author of the book “Start With Why” described the value of your story another way.
He stated that “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it, And what you do simply proves what you believe”.
The following are some benefits you will get from a well-crafted story
Stories help you develop and sell your idea
1. Stories simplify big ideas in a way that sticks in one’s mind.
2. Data can persuade people, but data doesn’t inspire them to act.
3. Stories help you attract and keep talent
4. Stories help you transfer your beliefs to your audience
5. Stories help you keep all employees on the same page and focused on the same mission
6. Stories give your company a short- and long-term advantage over competitors
7. Facts are important, but stories connect and motivate people
8. People remember stories but not many facts.
Stories help you build a brand
1. Stories will build a foundation of trust, but a customers’ personal experience will cement that trust into something that lasts,
2. Buyers often look to the story to justify the purchase 3.
3. Stories can raise the value and therefore the price you are able to charge. If you can’t get a higher price for your brand, you need a better story.
Stories help you market your brand to potential customers
1. Stories when done right can significantly boost lead generation by many times normal.
2. Stories grow your sales pipeline
3. Stories shorten your sales cycle and increase your sales ratio
4. Stories make it easier for your ideal customer to recognize your value
5. Stories Improve the quality of your sales forecast because they attract better-qualified prospects.
Conclusion
If you are looking to use business stories to drive success and take your company to the next level, stories are a great way to accomplish that objective.
More information on stories is available on our advisor platform.
Also, see our blog,” Five Quick, Effective Ways To Tell Your Business Story”
Jim Zitek/ Harbor Capital Group
We empower entrepreneurs with the information, insights, and conviction they need to turn their ideas into a successful business.
How Do You Know When It’s The Right Time To Scale?
Is It The Right Time To Scale?
The goal of every executive is that moment when you have product-market fit and you are ready to scale the business,
But understanding when that moment has arrived is difficult.
May companies jump the gun and begin to scale the product or the company too quickly and end up just burning cash.
Net; getting the timing right is critical.
If you have discovered a pathway to repeatable revenues, and you are beginning to get or have organic revenues (proving product-market fit), or have revenues
and are convinced you are ready to scale.
In general, you are correct about product-market fit, But these early sales are most likely from innovators and early adopters.
These early adopters represent about 16 percent of your targeted market.
And, are the easiest market to reach. They are looking for and want to be first with new products.
Introducing a new product in a new market
You still have one or two obstacles to get over before you are ready to scale.
If you are introducing a new product in a new market, according to Steve Blank, professor, author, and entrepreneur, www.steveblank.com
you do not have a ready market. You have to create this new market. So, as you run out of early adopters, you will have to educate buyers who are unfamiliar with you,
your product, and its benefits. That will take time, effort, and money to accomplish.
Therefore, after that early revenue peak, you will get new revenues, but revenues will likely begin slowing down rather than speeding up
until you have the mainstream market educated. You have to cross the chasm, the gap between the early adopters and the early mainstream market.
This chasm is well documented in the book by Geoffrey Moore, “Crossing The Chasm”, author and consultant.
How long this “education phase” takes depends on the product or service type and how technical or complex the product is.
So timing is critical because marketing costs from scaling up are rising, and revenues are not.
A lot of companies have been caught in this trap.
Introducing a new product into an existing market
If you are introducing a new product into an existing market, your goal is to take sales away from your competitors.
Therefore, the market exists. Therefore, you should be able to keep revenues growing incrementally with your better value proposition or lower cost.
However, you still have to cross the chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers,
and they are more skeptical of your product or service and you than the early adopters.
It still takes time to educate and convince current users of a competitive product or service and switch over to your solution.
Therefore, you need to keep your revenue scaling more in sync with your revenue growth. Unless, of course, money is no object.
Scaling operations is also very difficult. We will tackle that problem/opportunity in another blog post.
Conclusion
Timing for a new product in a new market or an existing product in an existing market is a sensitive issue.
It depends on your development stage, type of market, and resources.
If you know someone with a timing issue, pass this on.
You might also be interested in our blog post, Transform Your Competitive Market Into An Uncontested Market.
You might also be interested in checking our website Harbor Capital Group, The Proven Secrets Of Successful Startups.
Jim Zitek
Innovation Strategies That Create More Profits
How To Break Free From A Competitive Market
How To Break Free From A Competitive Market
Many companies today face a very competitive market and are looking for a way to break out.
When every competitor focuses on short-term tactics (i.e., special sales, drawing for a prize, etc.),
the solution only lasts until one of the competitors comes up with a new tactic. Then, you have to dream up another short-term tactic.
This kind of competition is self-destructive. Each competitor is destroying their margins.
This kind of self-destructive competition is one of the problems W. Chen Kim and Ranee Mauborgo take on with their book, “Blue Ocean Strategy.”
Their strategy is to create new demand by eliminating costs for features customers don’t value
and using that money to add features and benefits they do value. This allows you to add value at no additional cost.
Stop Benchmarketing The Competition
Too many companies focus their strategic thinking on the competition, which puts the competition, not the customer, at the core of their strategy.
Stop benchmarking the competition and responding to their strategic moves because it means you look more like the competition.
Instead, put your strategic focus on the buyer and innovate new ways to deliver more value.
Note: just because a competitor is doing something, doesn’t mean it’s of value to buyers.
For example, if your company is experiencing:
1. Margins shrinking
2. Competition is growing more intense
3. Competition driving commoditization
4. Rising costs
One way to reimagine your market is to take the features each competitor competes on for the X-axis,
and the value the customer puts on that feature on the Y-axis.
Then draw a horizontal line for each competitor, and you will see the differences between competitors.
You should be able to add value at no additional cost.
A quick example would be Cirque du Soleil.
They combined traditional circus acts with modern acrobatics and then put then the performance in a theatre,
which increased value, the price of the tickets, and significantly improved margins.
Focus On The Buyer
Put your strategic focus on the buyer and innovate new ways to deliver more value.
Note: just because a competitor is doing something, doesn’t mean it is of value to buyers.
In summary, you have to re-think or re-frame how you approach the market.
Then compare and contrast your offering with what competitors are offering (your x- and y-axis analysis).
Then introduce the first product to a market with lots of pain -they will be more eager to buy.
Then, finally, you expand your product offering to the bigger market and build revenues.
Think about these questions:
1. Which features of your product or service could you eliminate because the buyer does not value them?
2. How much would this reduce your costs?
3. What products or services could you add with those savings that would have value to the customer?
4. Which market segment can you enter to establish your base?
Conclusion
If you are looking for ways to break free from competitors, examine what your competitors are doing.
Which elements (features, functions, benefits) of their offer due the customers find of value
and which elements contribute little value. Each of the elements has a cost.
If you eliminate the elements that have little value, you can use those funds to add to or create new benefits that customers want.
Again think of what Cirque du Soleil was able to do.
If you know someone struggling in an overly competitive market, tell them about this post. Maybe it will help.
You might also be interested in our blog post, How Do You Know When It’s The Right Time To Scale?
You might also be interested in checking our website Harbor Capital Group, The Proven Secrets Of Successful Startups.
Jim Zitek
15 Benefits Of Storytelling In Businesses
Why don’t more entrepreneurs use stories to explain their business? The reason maybe they don’t understand the important benefits of storytelling in business or how compelling stories are. But, defining, and crafting a story takes time, Another misconception is that stories are what the marketing department does. True.
But your story needs to start long before there is a marketing department. If it doesn’t, you could be trying to wordsmith your sales communications later for short-term tactical gains because you don’t have a competitive advantage. Why? Most companies have competitors, and everyone is selling the same product at the same price with the same service.
Here is what Ben Horowitz, venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz says: “The mistake people make is thinking the story is just about marketing, No. The story is the strategy. If you make your story better, you make your strategy better.”
The story is the engine that drives successful companies. And with today’s technology, you can tell your story, many times for free, to individuals anywhere in the world. That makes stories more important than ever.
Benefits Of A Storytelling Strategy
Stories will help you build and grow your company and your brand. According to Kevin Smith, the world’s most valuable, innovative, and fastest-growing companies, regardless of age, industry, or size – know the story behind the brand. (Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, etc.) delivers success.
Or Simon Sinek, author of “Start With Why” put it another way, “Remember, people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it, And what you do simply proves what you believe.” Simon Sinek, author.
The following are some of the benefits you will get from a well-crafted story.
Stories help you develop and sell your idea.
-
Stories simplify big ideas in a way that sticks in one’s mind.
-
Data can persuade people, but data doesn’t inspire them to act.
-
Stories help you attract and keep talent and then improve efficiency by keeping everyone on the same page.
-
Stories help you transfer your beliefs to your audience.
-
Stories help you keep all employees on the same page and focused on the same mission.
-
Stories give your company a short- and long-term advantage over competitors.
-
Facts are essential, but sories connect and motivate people.
-
People remember stories but not many facts.
Stories help you build a brand.
-
Stories will build a foundation of trust, but a customers’ personal experience will cement that trust into something that lasts,
-
Buyers often look to the story to justify the purchase.
-
Stories can raise the value and, therefore, the price you can charge. If you can’t get a higher price for your brand, you need a better story.
Stories help you market your brand to potential customers.
-
Stories, when done right, can significantly boost lead generation by many times normal.
-
Stories grow your sales pipeline — stories make it easier for your ideal customer to recognize your value
-
Stories shorten your sales cycle and increase sale ratio
-
stories build your sales pipeline — stories make it easier for your ideal customer to understand your value
-
Stories Improve the quality of your sales forecast because they attract better-qualified prospects
If you are looking to take your startup to the next level, stories are a great way to accomplish that.
Also, see our blog,” Five Quick, Effective Ways To Tell Your Business Story.”
Jim Zitek/ Harbor Capital Group
We empower entrepreneurs with information, insights, and the conviction they need to find, develop, and embed their stories throughout the development process to build successful companies.
Why Start Developing A Company Before Having Product-Market Fit?
People have product ideas all the time. Many of them are probably not winners. The number one reason they fail is achieving product-market fit. Yes, not enough money is also a big reason for failure, But money alone cannot make a startup successful. Remember Pets.com. They started with several hundred million dollars, blew it all in two years trying to find product-market fit, and went bankrupt.
So why would an entrepreneur want to start spending money developing a product before having a product-market fit? No matter how good you think, the idea is, you may be the only one in any zip code that thinks so.
So, how do you get a product-market fit? Don’t you need a product to show potential customers to see if it solves their problem and the problem is serious enough that they would spend money to buy it?
No, you don’t. However, you must have a product or service idea that solves a high priority problem, and a solution that makes sense to the buyer, and at a price, the buyer is willing to pay.
OK. What do you do? You start doing your homework. Mostly, your homework is a time requirement, not a cost problem. Be frugal and resourceful. Frugal people are generally more resourceful and, therefore, more creative than people with lots of money to spend.
Start by defining the problem, What is the problem you are trying to solve? That is not easy to answer because there isn’t a large market with a common problem. Geographic and demographic markets are filled with people who will interpret the issue in many different ways. Seth Godin, author, and entrepreneur, wrote in his book “Tribes” about how markets consist of people with a certain mindset in any zip code. Which mindset in which zip codes are you going to select?
Then, what is the solution? The solution is your story (which is also your strategy) about the problem, solution, results, and why prospects should buy from you. If you define, create, and prepare a story to explain what you offer — your value proposition, you are ready to begin talking to prospects and getting their feedback before you spend development money.
You could prepare to present your story in many different ways. For example, you could do it with a slideshow, a white piece of typing paper with hand-drawn illustrations showing key elements ( I have done that, and it works perfectly) of your story. You could produce an animated whiteboard video that would allow you to show a five-minute presentation in less than two minutes. You could use an easel with paper and make key points as you tell your story. As I said before, be resourceful. A good story packed with facts and emotion plus a visual will enable you to tell a compelling story.
No matter how technical or complicated your product is, select a story format that allows you to tell the story without jargon, and without technical terms, the audience will not understand. An excellent simple story and some illustrations will enable you to tell a compelling story,
These simple presentations will get you the information you need to find out if your value proposition could be a winner. Also, the questions you ask, and they ask you will offer insights into how you can keep revising your product until they say, “you can do that?”
Once you get to a point where you think you have a product-market fit for this specific product design and this specific audience, you will have the confidence to begin the development process.
Also, see our blog,” Five Quick, Effective Ways To Tell Your Business Story.“
Jim Zitek/ Harbor Capital Group
We empower entrepreneurs with information, insights, and the conviction they need to find, develop, and embed their stories throughout the development process to build successful companies.
Five Quick, Effective Ways To Tell Your Business Story?
Some people find it hard to come up with an excellent way to get their story started. In the business world, you usually you would frame your story using the three steps of problem, solution, and results or outcomes.
Here is another quick way to get you started. Nick Morgan author, and coach tells people to use the story formats of famous and well-known stories as your framework, adapt the story to your business. Then explain your story within that framework,
You need to tell a story if you want to get someone’s attention and hold their attention until you get to your Call To Action (or as Jerry Weissman would say, to get them from point A to Point B).
You can do that with stories because stories work the way your mind works, Memory depends on attaching emotion to facts, Too many people try to use lists (3 of these, 6 of those) which do get people’s attention. Still, people have a difficult time remembering those lists. Stories do a much better job.
But if you are having a hard time creating a story, use one of the traditional story frames that have proved themselves over the years, Here are five frames you can use.
Quest is the most fundamental frame. In this scenario, the hero goes off to achieve a positive goal, but runs into a problem(s), generally finds a mentor, and then throughout the story reaches the goal.
The Stranger in a Strange Land is a much different story, The hero finds himself in a strange place where he is unsure of what to do (e.g., maybe a research task without any defined criteria), what the rules are, or even the path forward. But he runs into a mentor and finds a solution to something he didn’t know he was looking for in the beginning.
Rags To Riches is the classic story of stating out with nothing, and through hard work and some luck, you end up with fame and fortune.
Revenge is simply about a wrong done to the hero who, through no fault of his own, loses everything/. Then he prepares a plan and sets out to get revenge for the wrong done to him.
Love stories are about both love found and love lost. For example, a new great partnership or a partnership that is being dissolved,
The main point here is that you can use the frame of a classic, well-known story to help you create your own story without having to create a new structure. Also, these are frames that people know and understand from the beginning, which makes your job and their ability to follow your story more manageable.
Do you have a situation in which one of these frames would make sense as a starting point to create your unique business story?
You might also like 15 Benefits Of Storytelling In Businesses
Would you like more tips on how to build a successful startup, check out our free, weekly blog
or sign up for our startup success program HERE
Jim Zitek, Harbor Capital Group
The strategy, development, and marketing
of successful startups begin with their story
How do you restart a stalled early-stage company
Often startups are launched before the founder(s) have determined the viability of their business idea, and eventually, for many reasons, the startup runs into trouble. Other times, there are Initial revenues, but they are irregular, don’t last, or they don’t grow as expected. How can you fix this?
In either case, you need to start diagnosing the problem by using the same analysis you would use to determine the viability of your business idea initially. If you haven’t launched yet, you need to assess the feasibility of your business idea before you launch. However, if you have begun, this same analysis would be the fastest way to diagnose the problem and see where you might be able to change, modify, or pivot to restart the pathway to success.
First Look At The Market
1 What is the market size or demand? If you don’t know, you can get some idea from Google Keyword Learning Tool (number of people searching for a keyword) https://ads.google.com/home/resources/using-google-ads-keyword-planner/
Also, Buzzsumo ( https://buzzsumo.com/ (number of people each day talking about your product).
2 Who are your competitors?
The more you know, the fewer surprises. This analysis also gives you an enormous amount of information about products, pricing, various business models, etc
3 Is this market trending, and in which direction?
Which direction is market headed. Google Trends, https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US can help you learn if a trend is growing or not.
4 Who are your target customers?
Who is a buyer, influencer, disrupter, etc.? You can use websites like Quantcast https://www.quantcast.com/ and Alexa https://www.alexa.com to find out more about demographic information of the potential market.
You can also learn about people in your target audience from Twitter. Who follows your interest, demographics, age, sex, etc.? Hashtag your keywords.
5 What does it cost to acquire customers?
Acquisition costs are critical. How will you acquire customers, and what will it cost to get them? One way is to find out how to use Landing Pages.
Using social media, AdWords, etc., test for people searching for your product and your messaging, and drive them to a landing page. Make sure you have a strong Call For Action based on your value proposition aimed at getting the information you want, email information, or potential sales. From these click-through rates, you can begin to estimate conversion rates and costs. Plus, you can continue to correspond with them for more information.
6 Challenge your assumptions
You likely will get some information with which you will disagree. You don’t want to accept everything at face value (in discussions with prospects also), but you have to challenge your strong held biases, You are looking for something different. Something that will lead you to a better way to position or operate your company.
It may take many trials and evaluations to get all the information you need, so keep at it until you are confident you have insights that will lead you forward.
Has your market assessment changed?
This blog is the first of three blogs on this subject I plan to write in the future. The next one will deal with product viability.
You might also like 15 Benefits Of Storytelling In Businesses
Jim Zitek, Harblor Capital Group Inc
We empower entrepreneurs with information, insights, and the conviction they need to find, develop, and embed their stories throughout the development process to build successful companies.
Would You Like To Know The Answer Ahead Of Time?
Will your startup be viable? Will customers want to buy your new product? What is the optimal price point for your new product? These and many other questions can be answered in a matter of days for only a few hundred dollars, and you can even do the research yourself.
Entrepreneurs usually have to make decisions with little data no history. Think of all the angst you could get rid of and replace it with some real data. Here is a Landing Page research program can give you the answers you need, And you can even do it without a website if you want,
MailChimp has the tools you need (email capture and database, analytics, and templets for the Landing pages) for about $15 per month. You write the copy. If you have a social media following, you can use them or you can buy pay-per-click ads from Google or others with a defined budget of $100 per month. And one month will certainly give you some information.
The amazing thing about this program is that it is easy to do, provides lots of data for your analysis and decision making… and it is extremely inexpensive to implement.
Also, you can continue testing one question after another to get the information you need or to optimize a program. Plus, with these low costs and quick turnarounds, you can make a lot of progress in a very short time.
Here is How It Works
1 Open a MailChimp account. Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. They have a free account but you will need the $9.99 per month account and the Landing Page module at $4.99 month.
2 Once you have your account, you have an option to use your URL (@company.com) or you can use a URL from MailChimp or you can buy a URL to use for your research.
3 You can then create landing pages which you will use to do your testing. Landing pages are a single web page that appears when someone clicks on your “advertisement” (from Google AdWords, Facebook. Twitter. Or from your content marketing program, or other social media).
4 MailChimp hs several landing page templets you can use. These templates are easy to use. No coding. Just drag and drop.
5 When someone comes to the Landing Page and sees your “offer” which could be anything from information, discounts or even get on a waiting list or to purchase something, Obviously, the more compelling the offer, the more sign-ups.
6 When prospects sign up, the information (name and email address) goes into your “audience file” at MailChimp. You will get data and analytics also which you can use for evaluation.
7 Also, you can set up an automatic response page welcoming everyone. You decide what to say on the response page,
And finally, in today’s market, you need to continuously improve your product or service so your company and its product stay viable over the long term.
There you have it. Get answers to specific questions in a matter of days and at a cost of only a few hundred dollars.
What answers would you like to get in the next 30 days?
Want To Make Better Decisions? Here’s How To Start
We all make some decisions. Some we celebrate and some we would like to redo. Estimates are that CEOs from established companies make the right decision 57% of the time. However, If you are the leader of a startup company, you will have to make more decisions, more quickly, and with uncertain information or little information at all.
Our culture says that leaders are strong, confident, have conviction and remain consistent. But what if they are wrong? It actually happens quite often. For example, Blockbuster, Blackberry, Xerox, and Sears to name a few. Ninty-five percent of startups are started and closed every year in the U.S. Most of us could do better. Here’s how.
The key to better decisions, according to Al Pittampali in his book “Persuadable,” is the willingness and the ability to change your mind in the face of new information. To do this, you have to reject absolute certainty and treat your beliefs as temporary. Plus, understand that no matter how confident you are in your view, you could be wrong,
This kind of thinking requires you to seek out counter-arguments against even your most long-standing trusted beliefs.
Therefore, exceptional decision-makers, are people who are first, “Persuadable” and have the mental flexibility to change their opinion. If they are persuadable, they need to evaluate critical information or arguments as objectively as possible and update their beliefs accordingly. This analysis starts with a good knowledge of critical thinking skills. We will have information on critical thinking skills at a later time.
Here is another way to think about it, Maybe rather than you trying to persuade someone else of your opinion, maybe you may need someone else to persuade you.
Do you consistently question yourself about your opinions and biases? And let others know you are willing to listen to their arguments and views?
At Harbor Capital Group, we help entrepreneurs turn ideas into businesses.
