Marketing and Marketing my business

My latest update on my $100.00 business challenge is that I now have a second client that wants me to build them a website.  It is a friend of mine from church who owns an Assisted Living facility.  This week I know that I've been struggling with having enough time to get everything done!  It’s been a challenge to meet with the owner of the Nursery to get his input on how he wants his website to look.  The other challenge with this is the fact that the business isn’t up and running yet.  It will probably be running by next spring but still, it’s a challenge to get all of the pictures that I was hoping for.  The good thing about the Assisted Living Company, is the fact that they are an established business.  I can run up there anytime and snap some pictures!  My challenge isn’t selling, it is in following up and getting the job(s) done in a timely manner.  I also think that perhaps I’m selling a website for too cheap.  Maybe I need to delineate more clearly what a basic $100.00 website consists of and that if they want something more detailed, then it would cost more. 

This week’s Harvard reading about marketing was very interesting.  In my 13+ years as a professional sales person and account manager, a lot of people co-mingle the title of marketing and sales.  They are very different beasts!  The do go hand in hand but one does not equal the other.  In a sense, sales professionals execute marketing plans.  Sales professionals should also be a vital part in forming them, so that they have a buy in.  Again, they are not mutually exclusive.

Week 4 update

Things are going well with my $100 business challenge.  I even got a new customer this week!  An Assisted Living Facility here in town.  While I'm still waiting to meet up with the Landscaping / Nursery owner to go over creative directions that he would like me to take, we are making a lot of progress.  We have planned for a time to meet next week to go over those things and so I'm excited to report back next week.  Since he also owns a landscaping company, I'm hoping that there will be a chance to build an additional website just for that one, though, he may want to incorporate the two together.  Again, I will try and talk him out of that.

This week we learned in Harvard Manage Mentor about budgeting and forecasting.  It made me really open my eyes to how easy, yet how difficult this can be.  It also made me reflect at how I struggle to enact a budget in my personal life and realize that this is also why I struggle to do so in my business life.  At this point in my business career, even as a Regional Sales Manager, I've never had to submit a budget.  But I can tell you that in my calling as a Ward Clerk, I've been learning more about the budgeting functions of the MLS program.  My whole first year we didn't have a budget and the clerk before me said he never did one either.  So this year I've been making changed and working closely with the Bishop to put in budgets for all of the different auxilleries and keeping them apprised as to where they are at on a regular basis.  This has cut down a lot on the amount of times that auxillary leaders are making requests to me about how much of their budget they have left.  It kind of goes hand in hand with templated standardized reports.  They don't need to guess where they are at with their budget because I give them regular updates!

Brainstorm business ideas and when you settle on one or maybe a couple of them that you really like and then write up a business plan.  My first thought was a one page business plan would be a piece of cake.  WRONG!  I felt really passionate about an idea and it's a challenge for me to be concise.  After all, I am a sales guy and I make a living off of gabbing!  The key is to make it simple.

Gathering, enhancing, and marketing was quite the information, dare I say, gem this week.  By taking this approach and looking at my big business idea I'm able to sharpen my ideas and goals.  The gathering part is already simplified by the way in which I would "gather" the patient demographic information though there will definitely need to be some extra customization in certain areas where CMS has specific requirements.  Enhancing the system is that the process is simplified so much that the referral sources would rather send patients to my clients company as compared to anyone else's because it takes less time to get information out.  The other part of enhancement would be how the client actually receives the data.  It would be formatted to a PDF file.  After all, if the marketing rep goes out and makes a bunch of copies, when they get back to the office, those hard copies need to be scanned in and made part of the Electronic Medical Record of the newly referred patient.  The marketing part is the piece that I personally feel most comfortable with as this is my forte an I've had experience with this my whole professional career.  One great outlet is LinkedIn.  There are tens of thousands of decision makers and influencers that can be reached via this platform.

$100 business progress and Intellectual Diversity in the creative process

I’ve made pretty good progress on my $100 business challenge.  After narrowing my 20 ideas to my top 5 I’ve decided to build and design simple websites.  My first customer is one of my older brothers who is just now starting Shoshone Nursery and Landscape Supply in my hometown of Pinehurst Idaho.  He also has a successful landscaping company so there might be an opportunity of building a website for him there too.  My next steps will be to have a meeting with him at my home office to sketch the design layout of the site.  There will also be a number of pictures that I can envision placing throughout the site.  One piece of the design that I’ve already put together is a built in map that shows where the nursery is, or where it will be once he is open for business. 

This coming week I plan on getting access to company logos and pictures of staff members.  They are in the process of putting in a garage on the property, so I think some progress of the building of the garage would be a nice touch too.  Come to think of it, I bet I could get him to buy me lunch and we could go over these details on my laptop.  There, game plan is set for next week!

I also wanted to include the following that I wrote about intellectual diversity.  I really loved reading and learning about this important principle this week.

Intellectual diversity is having members in a group who have different ways of thinking and different levels / areas of expertise.  An example could be that a wholesale toy company is wanting to expand its product line.  The team that would be assembled to propose new ideas could be made up of engineers, designers, sales professionals, and operations people.  If it was just engineers, then the new toy could be pretty functional and the sales team might not be able to sell it.  If it was just engineers and sales people the product might be pretty awesome, but it doesn’t have a very good profit margin.  There could be other problems that would include coming up with a packaging design that makes it easy for the operation people in the warehouse to store and ship the product. 

The ideal thing isn’t that we get a group of people who would agree on everything, but to get a group of people that will have different thoughts and insights.  Intellectual diversity will help in the creative process.  The group leader has to be very aware of the types of thinkers in his or her group and how to control the innovation or creativity process.  The different thinking styles will challenge the individual group members and encourage thinking outside of the box.  I’ve been in organizations before where the leadership only really wanted “yes men”.  When this is the case, it thwarts creativity and breeds an atmosphere of marginalization and fear from doing or saying anything that the boss or one’s peers would likely disagree with.

Well here I am starting my first post for my Business 283 class here at BYU-Idaho, Small Business Creation for my Entrepreneurial cluster.  So far I love it!  I'm a little overwhelmed by how much there is to do but guess what?  That's the life of an entrepreneur too!  There's always going to be more than I can handle and I just have to push forward and do the best that I can.

I really enjoyed getting to read different business blogs this week.  There are so many out there!  Duct tape marketing was my favorite as the article I read about closely aligned to what I’m really interested in right now, internet marketing and search engine optimization. 

I’ve also been reading Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to win friends and influence people”.  I’m naturally inclined to try and see the good in others.  One of the things that Mr. Carnegie talks about is how every human being has a desire, or a craving to be or feel important.  We ought to treat others kindly.  Being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean one has to be cold hearted and calculated.  It doesn’t mean that we have to force others to do our bidding.  The premise is that we can show servant leadership, as did Christ, and then others will want to do things to help.  I’d much rather have people surrounding me and my endeavors who genuinely want to be there and desire to accomplish great things rather than have individuals surround me who just want to get a paycheck.  This book is replete with examples and tips of how to treat and interact with those around us.  It isn’t a checklist of how to fool people with tricks.

Lastly I really appreciated the brainstorming activities.  This is so very important.  It feels like I have a new idea every day of a business that I can do.  Dreaming about it and putting them down on paper are two very different things.  So far this class is teaching me great lessons.  It is so important to write down our aha moments and ideas.  When we do this we are transferring our thoughts into actions.  Even though the action is small, it is a step in the right direction.