Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

How To Gain Insulation From Competition: Foster A Tribe

Web2.0 Business Model Check (for dummies ;-)
Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr

Not sure what the hardest thing is in business is because so much of it is challenging.  But one of the hardest things to achieve has to be “insulation from competition”.  Even if you are great at doing whatever you do, someone can always come along and replicate it. Seth Godin, marketing guru, makes the point in Seth’s Blog: Thinking about business models

that building a “tribe”, insulates you from competition.  I can think of some examples of this.  Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. After all it’s only ice cream.  Volkswagon, when it brought out the Beetle.  After all it was only a car.  Apple when it introduced everything from the Mac to the Iphone.  After all, there were competing products, but for those who fell in love with the meticulous design, ease of use and the sheer enjoyment of using the product, there was only Apple.  Here’s how Seth makes that point when thinking about business models”

“A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements:

  1. What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
  2. How do you acquire what you’re selling for less than it costs to sell it?
  3. What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
  4. How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

The internet 1.0 was a fascinating place because business models were in flux. Suddenly, it was possible to have costless transactions, which meant that doing something at a huge scale was very cheap. That means that #2 was really cheap, so #1 didn’t have to be very big at all.

Some people got way out of hand and decided that costs were so low, they didn’t have to worry about revenue at all. There are still some internet hotshot companies that are operating under this scenario, which means that it’s fair to say that they don’t actually have a business model.

The idea of connecting people, of building tribes, of the natural monopoly provided by online communities means that the internet is the best friend of people focusing on the third element, insulation from competition. Once you build a network, it’s extremely difficult for someone else to disrupt it.

As the internet has spread into all aspects of our culture, it is affecting business models offline as well. Your t-shirt shop or consulting firm or political campaign has a different business model than it did ten years ago, largely because viral marketing and the growth of cash-free marketing means that you can spread an idea farther and faster than ever before. It also makes it far cheaper for a competitor to enter the market (#3) putting existing players under significant pressure from newcomers.

This business model revolution is just getting started. It’s’ not too late to invent a better one.”

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The Delegation Or Outsourcing Imperative

Outsourced
Image via Wikipedia

I’ve written before on the critical importance of delegating or outsourcing to give you time to focus on the big picture and develop the right strategic direction so your business can grow.

It’s not easy.  Some people have an extraordinarily difficult time doing it.  I have a friend who’s a very successful but rather harried and definitely overworked leader of a national organization.  She often says:  “I can do it myself in the time it takes to show someone else how to do it.”  I respond: “Yes.  When I teach someone how to do something it takes about as much time as it would take for me to do it myself.  Maybe a bit longer. But that person is now able to do it forever.” Do the math. It’s an investment of time that will bring you a great return on your investment.

To succeed, without working yourself to death, we all must learn to delegate or outsource.  Finding and training people to delegate or outsource to will give you a support system which will facilitate your success:

First – decide what to delegate: the point of delegating is to free yourself, first, from routine, low level or mechanical tasks which someone else can do, perhaps better and more efficiently than you.

Delegate anything low priority or which doesn’t require your personal attention to achieve your primary goals.

Select the most capable person for the task: you may not like to file, but there’s someone, somewhere, who does.  Let them do it.

Give clear direction and reach an agreement on expected results: You should be willing to take the time, up front, to review your expectations and reach an agreement on what the end result should be. Communication is a key component of this process.

Be available for questions and mid course decisions

Set a clear deadline with accomplishment milestones along the way

Finally, give credit to your assistant, volunteer or support staff

The only way to develop a support system for yourself is to let the people you delegate to have the responsibility to do what you’ve asked of them; let them do it their own way; let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Praise them when they complete their assignment. Point out that the completed task contributes to the success of the company as a whole. Give them credit within the company.

Here’s an example from Chaitanya Sagar on how learning to delegate: ,Delegate or Outsource – If You Want Your Business To Grow

“…In the initial days of my company, I did everything myself. I spoke to customers; I interacted with investors; and wrote business plans. At the same time, I cleaned my office and went long distances just to deliver legal documents somewhere. I spent a lot of time on those tasks which were not strategic or something that contributed to my customers. I did everything because I had nothing better to do. If I hired someone else, I would pay them and I’d have to sit idle!

As a small business grows, and as the scale at which a task is done increases, you have to find ways to get the time to focus on the bigger picture. If you don’t, you will get caught up in myriad routine activities, and can’t progress on strategic areas of your business. You have to make time to steer your business in the right direction. And you can do that by delegating work to others, by outsourcing, and at times, it’s as simple as asking the other party to visit your office instead of you visiting them!

My startup has been growing gradually. And some of the rules I had learned in the initial days are obsolete already. Though I saved precious dollars in the initial days doing all the routine work, time and again, I found myself asking myself, “Why am I doing this? How does my customer benefit from it? Should I not be working on something that enhances value to my customer?”

So now I do what is strategic and outsource many activities like coding for my website, marketing material work, accounting, graphic design, etc. In areas I do outsource, I am glad I do because it led to a lot of progress. Inn hindsight, the decision to outsource my work to others has greatly paid off in the following ways:

1. Where it was not my core competency, I rode on other’s competency and made wonderful progress.

2. When the project (such as product development) was over, I had the ability to scale down the activity reducing the “burn rate” without having to fire employees (had I hired them).

3. I was able to save time and could focus on the strategic aspects of the business.”

What about you?  Do you have any delegating or outsourcing examples or experiences to share?  We would like to hear from you.

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Hiring Tip #1 – It Starts Before the Interview

When we’ve talked about developing your personal brand, we’ve noted that everything matters.  How you talk, how you answer your emails, how you connect with people.  Tina Forsyth has much the same thought when it comes to landing a job.  According to Tina:

When it comes to hiring I’m reminded of the philosophy:

How you do anything is how you do everything

As an Online Business Manager I’ve done my fair share of hiring virtual professionals over the years, and i’ve found that you can learn ALOT about someone from the very first moment you connect with them (which is usually by email).

How people respond to you from day one can be a good reflection of how they would actually be on a project.

There are a few things you can pay attention to that may help filter out some potentially unsuitable people along the way:

How quickly do they respond to your emails?
I expect a 24 hour turnaround time when I send someone an email (except on weekends/holidays of course). If I send someone an email saying ‘hey, i’m interested in hiring you’ and I don’t hear from them for 3 days I will most likely not consider them further. Most of our projects require a 24 hour turnaround in communication, and if I don’t see that right away it is a red flag.

Did they provide what you asked them for?
If you asked them for specific information, did they provide it in full detail? I’m actually surprised how often I will get a response from a potential hire and they didn’t include half of the information I requested. If they have a lack of attention to details in these early stages it makes me wonder how much would be missed on the job.

What is the tone of their response?
Are they casual or do they take a more professional approach in their writing? (depending on your needs you may prefer either one). How is their spelling & grammar? The actual tone of their response can be very telling – for example if you are hiring someone to response to customer service emails and their spelling/grammar is poor that may not be a good fit.

Do they follow up with you?
If you haven’t responded to someone in a day or so, do they follow up with you? I’ll admit that I sometimes do this on purpose – not respond to an email for a couple of days just to see if the person will follow up with me to check in. If someone is eager/excited about the opportunity they should send a follow up email to check in with you (even just to ensure that you received their last message)
There are of course many things that come into play in the hiring process, but it is sometimes these little things that can make all the difference in the long run. And if you don’t pay attention to them now they could turn into big issues and annoyances down the road.

–

Tina Forsyth is the author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with Your Clients and Yourself. She writes and consults in advanced online marketing and business systems for business owners and their support teams. www.OnlineBusinessManager.com

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What Is An Online Business Manager And Why Do I Need One?

What the heck is an online business manager?  If you’re like me, you may have never heard the term before.  It appears to be a relatively new job description…..at least formal job description.

The reason  you should be interested is because you might be one, without realizing it.  You might already have the skills to be one, or on the path to be one. Or you might need one.

If you’re Net savvy, this could be a job for you.  If you don’t think you’re ready to be an online business manager yet, you could start out as a virtual assistant ( we’ll describe the difference later), or work on an online business manager’s team.

The flip side of the coin is, if you run an online business, organization or association, you might need an online business manager to handle the day to day tasks and free up your time for your core skills or to grow your business. Perhaps you just never knew such a position existed or  put together all the elements you need to have for an online business and realized you could get all that implemented for you by a single person, who knows the right tools or manages the right team.

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Tina Forsyth is the person who really crystalized this concept in her new book, Becoming an Online Business Manager.

Tina describes a situation in which business owners “already have teams of virtual assistants, webmasters, designers and other contractors, but what they really need is someone to manage all of this; to play a bigger role in their business so that they can grow to the next level.”
Now, as online businesses have grown and increased in complexity, with more sophisticated online tools available, Tina says she is “seeing more business owners who are ready to hire at the management level.”

When I started reading Tina’s writing, it was with a mild shock of recognition I realized I had been doing what she described for a number of clients for some time. Since I had operated a major website since 1996, I had ample experience on the web, so a number of businesses and organizations I had come into the same orbit with had asked for me to help them set up shop online.  What happened, in every case, was that I was not just setting up or overseeing the set up of a website and collaborative and marketing tools, but helping them think through the business processes they would need to succeed and grow their businesses. It was a collaboration where I implemented their vision, more like a doctor collaborating with a patient, to diagnose the state of his or her health, determine the level he or she really aspired to reach, then prescribing a regimen for increased fitness to ultimately reach that goal.  The actual construction of the website was more like being the pharmacist dispensing the medicine.

Why Aren’t More People Hiring Online Business Managers?

First of all, they don’t know such people exist.  I didn’t.  And I was one.  I just hadn’t realized it. Tina says:

“For business owners, it is a matter of not knowing who or what they are really looking for. They may have a faint idea they could benefit from hiring someone to help them manage and grow their business online, but they often have no clue what that role looks like. They aren’t clear themselves on what it is they need, which of course makes it quite hard to find someone! Quite often, when we describe the role of an oBM to the business owners we speak to, we hear, “yes! that’s exactly who I need on my team … now where do I find someone?” and that leads us to the other side of the gap, that there just aren’t a lot of people out there who are actively working as oBMs, consciously or unconsciously. So when these clients start looking to fill that role, they are having a tough time finding the person they need.”

Let’s start with a job description so we can learn a little more about what the job looks like.

A sample oBM job description from the book reads like this:
The Online Business Manager will:

Have 5+ years experience in one or more of:

  • the fields of marketing, ecommerce, programming, coaching, business management, human resources, project management, personal development or other related area of study, or equivalent.
  • Work with the very energetic CEO/Owner of the business to create new passive revenue streams, taking them from idea to sale
  • Manage administration, logistics, human resources and infrastructure of a growing online business
  • Recruit additional team members and train/manage them into their respective functions
  • Be familiar with and/or practically experienced in all facets of Internet marketing including:
    • Product planning and research
    • Copywriting
    • Website design and creation
    • Creation of graphics and user interface
    • Product packaging
    • Traffic generation
    • Conversion and
    • The overall strategic marketing plan that creates a cohesive whole out of these elements
  • Have experience creating and implementing a business plan in a competitive environment
  • Be a relationship builder, client service oriented and a team player
  • Understand advertising, affiliate programs and joint ventures; be able to hold and cultivate key relationships
  • Diligently maintain and create a standard operating procedure or business training manual for the business
  • Be fiscally responsible

So why isn’t it easy to find these people? Tina says:
“I believe that there are .. professionals out there who have the skills to be working as an oBM; they just haven’t realized that this opportunity exists… This way of working is still quite new to most people and because of that there is a gap between the business owners who are looking to hire oBMs and the people who could potentially be working for them in this role.”

In fact, I believe there are two levels of workers an online business owner can turn to. A good virtual assistant, or VA, with substantial experience could oversee the technical tools and processes and probably has some tricks up her sleeve about marketing tools which could help expand your business.  An online business manager would be a step up from that: someone who could analyze your business and its processes and collaborate with you to design the elements which would create more value and help you reach your goals.

So, if you’re Net savvy, there could be a job in here for you. Most small business owners, or growing organizations will definitely reach a point where they are either unable to handle all the tasks before them, or don’t have sufficient background and experience online to know how to proceed.  When that point comes, don’t hesitate, look for an online business manager.

Author: Gretchen Glasscock, AdvancingWomen.com

View Gretchen Glasscock's profile on LinkedIn

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