WHY SOME COMPANIES THRIVE AND OTHER WITHER
By Rod Alan Richardson
The single most prominent problem we see over and over again are companies that are at the end of their resources and are far from the finish line of excitingly profitable revenues. In fact, we’ve calculated that as many as 85 out of 100 businesses have completely failed after five years and 11 out of the remaining 15 have failed to thrive, or dramatically under perform the way the founder had anticipated. The fall out is most likely financial ruin, stress, strained relationships, and most importantly lost time and invested savings leaving many with a sour experience in free enterprise.
On the brighter side there are the remaining 4 companies that did something different, possessed some secret formula, and had access to sufficient resources. What is the secret? We’ve determined that business failure is a result of one, or more of the following: lack of knowledge, lack of skills, insufficient capital, or failure to take appropriate action. All successful, thriving companies have assembled around them all four of the elements of success: knowledge, skills, capital, and accountability.
Two Critical Components to Becoming a Thriving Company
Nobody goes into an entrepreneurial spasm thinking, “How can I lose my money, family, and friends through this new venture.” You love to waste your time and lose money… right? …of course not. We all develop a new enterprise believing we’re going to be sitting atop the next Microsoft. To become a Microsoft, or even a modestly thriving company for that matter, you must adhere to two critical, foundational components: The first is, “Be in Business on Purpose,” and the second is, “Be Market Driven.” (see more Anchor Wisdoms here)
Being in business on purpose is a far-reaching concept. It means that you know what you want out of your business and that everything you do in your business has a purpose. It means understanding how your business fits in your plan to achieve what you really want. Defining the purpose for being in business is difficult for most people. Sometimes it’s financial quests and sometimes it’s just plain necessity (for the psychologically unemployable). In all instances however, it boils down to a desire for freedom.
Most business owners get lost in the busyness of business and get so mired in the muck that they fail to see the barriers that are so easily removed. Often times, an entrepreneur’s attachment to the idea is stronger than the intended purposes. Attachment to “my baby,” can become your largest hang up. If you ever hope to make it to the top tier of revenue generating behemoths, you must be, first and foremost, a market driven company. Being market driven means you are responding to the needs and demands of a targeted marketplace and not foisting your products on an uninterested market.
Be Market Driven™ and Watch Your Revenues Skyrocket
Shifting your existing company to a “market driven” company is no small undertaking. It’s a shift in thinking as well as a shift in strategy. Sometimes the transition involves a name change, new product offerings, and even a whole new identity. It’s all subject to what your target audience wants. Hitting the mark correctly means dramatically improved revenue. Missing the mark means missed opportunity costs.
Designing a "market driven" strategy for your company begins at the core. Good marketing… effective marketing, if it's not just luck, is a result of your whole organization, right down to the heart of the founder, functioning as a market intelligent… market driven machine. You've heard of the 4 "Ps" of marketing.
Do you notice anything? That's right. Marketing is not just an ad in the newspaper, or a number in the phone book. Marketing is the process of "doing" business.
The Anchor Models of ESS™ center around three critical areas of business: Product, Operation, and Promotion, or your “POP.” The view from your POP Dashboard is a clearer, more secure way to plan and monitor your progress than the 4 Ps of marketing.
Your POP is Critical to the Security and Longevity of Your Business
If you fail to plan and budget across all three areas, your chance of going out of business is highly likely. We see many new ventures that dump all available resources into the development of products alone. On the flip side, if you sink all your resources into promotion, and you can't deliver, you will lose all the new customers you've attracted and your investment. At the same time, if your product is problematic and isn't correctly positioned to your market, it doesn't matter what kind of branding miracle you pull off, your customer base will be extremely limited and your business life expectancy will be in question. Good products, products that communicate to and satisfy identifiable needs in the marketplace, that can be delivered efficiently, are in line to be a market phenomenon.
At Edge Success, we have crafted a systematic approach for developing your market driven company and its cash accelerating promotional strategy. Our desire is to help you fully develop, implement and manage your business and marketing strategy through programs that are both time-efficient and economical.
After years of analyzing success attributes of thriving companies, and testing and retesting business theories and their practical application, we've released ESS™ (Entrepreneurial Success System), a business training and consulting program.
You can learn ESS™ through audio programs, games, seminars, and consulting programs. By learning the Anchor Models of ESS™, you'll know where you are, where you're going and how you're going to get there. You will define why you are in business and what your business will do for you to achieve your objectives in life.
ESS™ is ideal for new start up businesses and for early stage companies that are between $100 thousand and $1 million in annual revenue.
The program addresses the key issues about how companies increase their ability to make money, streamline time efficiencies, properly expand without forcing yourself out of business, and how to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your marketing.
The following list of benefits is just a small taste of what you can expect by learning ESS™ and the outcome it can have on your business.
Benefits:
- Pinpoint the reason you are in business and what your business needs to do for you
- Learn how to run your business as an investor and business builder
- Understand what your business is realistically from an outside perspective and what it is capable of producing
- Define your areas of critical focus to build long-term value into your business
- Develop a strategic, step-by-step battle plan to arrive at the goals you really want
- Adopt a critical, philosophical paradigm on money that clearly illuminates how customer behavior functions and how to use that knowledge to influence and motivate people to buy your products
- Analyze the competition and exploit their weaknesses to make your offering stand out Identify who really buys your products and why
- Position your company correctly to the markets that are identified
- Apply a framework for wildly successful, 21st century marketing and adopt it to your new strategy and campaigns you'll create in the future
- Identify marketing tools you'll need to communicate effectively to your specific market space from a budgetary and strategic perspective
- Write your sales communication scripts, perfect your internal sales management process and hone your skills for dramatically improving your lead acquisition rate and your closing ratio.
- Draft your organizational communications flow chart, job descriptions, and policies and procedures for maximum optimization and systemization of your business
- Determine the exit strategy for your company and what it's going to take to get there
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