Small business owners are sometimes unsure of yourselves.
That’s not unnatural, after all sometimes you feel like you’re too small, or perhaps you’re not sure what’s on-trend and wonder if you’re keeping up. However it’s well researched that confident people are found to be more attractive than hesitant people or people who lack confidence. Confidence breeds confidence in you.
So small business owners need to believe in themselves and project confidence in order to win business. Sure, over-confidence can not only be a turn off, it may set you up to fail if you can’t meet the expectations that you set up.
The secret is to find that balance of showing confidence in a measured way. How do you do this?
From time to time we all have to make a presentation or a proposal in front of someone. It may be a proposal for a sale or a new contract, it may be a proposal to your bank or to interested investors – some time or other, formally or informally, you will need to present to someone and convince them of something.
So how can you punch out a great proposal in 20 minutes – the average amount of time someone has available (or before their attention wanders)?
It’s late January – are you still keeping track of your New Year’s Resolutions?
Making resolutions is great. Making resolution sets goals, and if you are clear about your goals they become possible. But in order to make those goals real, you need plans. Once you have plans, you need to work on them – every day!
It’s the same for your business. Set your goals, make your plans – then, how do you keep them front of mind before you get lost in all the little things you have to do?
We all have our guilty pleasures! We all harbour secret desires that we don’t always voice out loud because they’re too embarrassing or perhaps seem unrealistic.
Well your customers have them too, and they form the real deep-down basis of why they buy things. They want to be rich, famous, acknowledged, happy, sexy, buffed, clever, thin – so they buy products that will make them feel that way and outwardly say logical things like “I love that brand of dress because they are so well made.” What they really mean is “that dress hugs my curves and makes me feel great!”
What are your customers’ guilty pleasures?
Remember, people don’t buy because of what your product is made of – they buy because of the way they feel about it. So
Understand what they want and how else they get to feel that emotion?
How does your product give them that experience?
Clarify your message to tell them exactly how to get that feeling
Place those messages and the product exactly where they go to get that feeling.
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It’s a tough world for small business out there right now. When you see global interest rates at record lows, you know the world economy ain’t exactly “booming”!
So if you own a small business and you see customers saving money and choosing wisely about how, where and when they spend their money, what can you do?
Well luckily we have three lessons we can learn from previous tough times.
The first lesson is how to cope with disruption. We know that whenever political, economic social, technological, legislative and environmental changes take place, old business models get disrupted. Take the old manufacturers of camera films – their business was being disrupted, so what did they do…or not do?
Then there’s the lesson about how people talking about you can carve a niche for your business. Early Apple computers became beloved by early-adopters because they “heard” so much about them.
Finally, what about the lesson from being able to provide customers with certainty. How many remember Coca Cola’s foray into “new” taste?
In a tough business world you have to innovate, stay relevant, and make sure people remember you – and you have to do it over and over again.
In a disrupted competitive market, small players can win if they offer a better customer experience.
Social media, depending on your small business, can be multiple times more effective than traditional advertising.
Find the right balance between flexibility and having established processes so that customers experience certainty, but also have a tailored experience.
Why don’t you go over to teikoh.com to check out more tips, tools, and resources to create powerful strategies, show leadership, and grow your business? Sign up by giving me your name and email and I’ll send these free ideas to your inbox every week. And trust me – I hate spam so I will never trade your details to anyone else!
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