Right audience, always a wonderful motivation for Entrepreneurs

After every struggle, the only biggest need for any entrepreneur is “motivation”.  This word would mean a lot for any entrepreneur. In my experience, I have seen two kinds of situation with every entrepreneur 1) Before success and 2) After Success

Before Success is a period, where every entrepreneur feels really great about his idea. He wants to share his idea with every person he meets and gain confidence about his idea but most of the times he may not be aware of the fact that this is the toughest period of his entrepreneurship because in most cases the situation will offer them only a playground with a great story teller and bored listener. 

Before Success is just not a period of time, it is also a time frame that decides the fate of any business. It demands enormous motivation for an entrepreneur to still feel his idea is fresh, innovative and gives him confidence that his idea will win over the market. The most important thing in this period is to find the right audience (or) right listener. The right audience (or) a listener here need not be a customer but can just be a well-wisher, who gives good guidance, different perspective of thoughts, healthy argument and finally some recognition for his ideas and thoughts

Some of such great brilliant ideas never come to light simply because they were rejected by a bored listener (or) simply they were demotivated. So the most important step for any successful entrepreneurship journey is to find the right audience to share the story. But the big question is where to find people who listen to the story. We must thank the internet, social media and the networking platforms. Start-ups and entrepreneurs should make use of such platforms. Professional networking sites like LinkedIn offers Groups and Community to create and start any discussion. Don’t get surprised even if Bill Gates likes your discussion. Similarly, successful entrepreneurs clearly understand this problem and they are creating multiple networking platforms like TIE, Women Entrepreneurs and etc. The specialty of such platforms is, it just not only get you to the right audience but also it gives an exposure to investors. They are highly managed, monitored and motivated by a good crowd of investors, what more an entrepreneur wants if his story listener is an investor?

Do I need to mention about After Success period? After success is a period, where successful entrepreneur summarizes his successful journey for 1000^th time to a group of curious listenersJ

Best practices, a unique selling point

Becoming a monopoly in any business has become near impossible in today’s competitive environment. To stay sustain and to win over competition, there is a need for Unique Selling Point. Cost to product not just carries the cost of manufacturing but also a lot of other things including, HR, operations, procurement, profitability and etc. So, each and every unit inside every organization is inter connected and they will have direct impact on pricing and profitability. Even a single employee’s salary could affect the pricing and profitability.

So, it is always important to understand what kind of best practices could be implemented and what best practices are being adapted by your competition. The best practices can be in anything; they can be something operations, applications, hardware, storage, security, network, infrastructure, mobility, social media, cloud, process& methodologies and etc. It is not mandatory to follow the same but it is important to stay updated and adapt the best things that could suit your organization

For example, PMP, ITIL are followed by thousands of organizations. Because, they follow, they were able to save millions of dollars, increased productivity and sales which in turn mean better quality, increased quantity, higher profitability and finally less cost to customers. Lesser cost to customers is always an increased customer satisfaction.

QQBP - Competition Analysis

Most innovative solutions born never reached the needy customers successfully due to ignorance on how to overcome various forms of competition. A decade ago competition was found only between organizations, they had to mostly compete with quality and quantity but the route to customer was always unique, it was always unanimously through distributors and retailers. But today’s online world created competition even on the route to customers through online retails. This revolutionary change brings lot of changes in the traditional way of selling.  To add to it, innovation and technology is itself becoming competition to any business. For example Smart phones, Tablets, Social Media, Cloud were all trend setting innovations but if you closely watch they are becoming a tool for competition, making them a compelling business strategy to adapt to stay relevant in business. No businesses ever thought online or mobile or cloud will become a separate industry but the reality is they left no choice but to adapt them for survival.

So the competition here can be divided into two

•  Business to business competition
• Competition created by adapting to innovation

Business to business competition:

Mostly business that offer similar products or service become competition to each other. This competition can be easily overcome by creating a "unique value proposition" to customers. Unique Value Proposition can be in any of the following Quality, Quantity, Benefits and Price.

Quality: Most Technology companies use quality as a value proposition to customers. Use of Quality materials, expertise skills and advanced  futuristic technology in production.

Example: Apple v/s Samsung

Quantity: Retail companies use quantity as a value proposition to customers. Two products at the cost of one (One + One offer)

For Example: Target v/s Walmart

Benefits: Mobile companies use benefits as a value proposition to customers.  Google store (or) Microsoft Market place for applications

For Example:Microsoft play store v/s Google play store

Price:  Most online companies use Price as a value proposition to customers.

For Example: Online retails v/s Retails

It is very critical for any company to understand the competition. Scoring and realizing your own organization with competition will prepare yourself to overcome competition.

Sales person in every organization should be made aware the above. One who has the knowledge on the QQBP analysis win over the competition easily

This exercise will not only help you to realize your competition but also gives the luxury to choose your competition

	Customer Reviews and Market
Company Name	Quality (/5)	Quantity	Benefits (/5)	Price
Apple i-phone	5	1	4	100$
Competitor-1 Samsung	4	1	4	70$
Competitor-2 Micromax	3	1	4	30$

Positioning your ideas towards customer pain points

No idea (or) business can become successful unless you know what your customer pain points are. Once you start visualizing your idea as business, you must prepare a road map on how to start a business. This will help you build strong confidence about you own your idea and how to position it as a business. The biggest challenge is always, it doesn’t matter how strong your idea/solution is, it only matters how good you are at positioning it to your customers.

The art of positioning is the most creative art in selling and this is exactly the kind of skill you should look at any sales person. Now, as an owner of your idea/solution/business, the responsibility lies with you. Positioning needs to create a strong impact unless it creates impact, you are least known or accepted by your customers. Here is where the pain points play a main role.

The easiest way to get any customers attention is to talk about their problem and then position your solution against their problem. If you are able to successfully do this well, then you have covered most part of the sales negotiations. If you could define their pain points into bullet points and if you could keep your solution short and precise, you are almost done with successful selling. This needs an enormous amount of research. Understanding of your own business well will help to ease this research.

Most business fails because the business owners were not able to create faith in customer towards a clear understanding about their problems. When you have a clear understanding about your business, you will be able to easily chart down the benefits, and how can it address the pain points and when the same solution qualify to address many customers pain points, then it becomes a successful business

Let me quote one of the most revolutionary examples, the Amazon Kindle, and idea which then turned into one of the most successful business solving the pain points of million customers

• What is your idea (or) business? 

Answer: The idea is a digital book (or) digital paper which saves paper made of trees

• What are the benefits of your idea?

Answer: Easy to carry, easy to handle and easy access to huge number of news, papers, books, blogs and articles available in the internet, anytime and anywhere access and E-library

• How does it help your customers?

Answer: Kindle is a paper feel digital device. Customers get access to millions of e-books, through e-library, so accessing and maintain your e-books become so easy and you can choose your likes from millions of choices.

I know there are still lots of benefits but let me focus on examples of arriving at pain points. When your idea has benefits then it is easy to list out the pain points. There is no solution without pain. For the given example, the few of the pain points that I can easily think of are:

1.      Accessing and maintaining library becomes time consuming and non-affordable, huge investment required for space, furniture, and maintenance
2.      Too difficult to find the choices of likes and interest, very limited book retail outlets available
3.      Stock management and cost is additional risk and headache

If one could articulate the below three questions well, then the chances of winning any deal become very easy.

1.      What is your idea?
2.      What are the customer pain points that your solution addresses?
3.      How does it help your customers?

But if you think this is it, then you are wrong. When you think your ideas as an individual solution, then may be yes, but when you visualize your idea as a business to address multiple customers, then you have expand your understanding from market and competition perspective.

It is the duty of every successful business person to know, if there are similar solutions available in the market, are you a pioneer? Are there any competitors? And if yes, how are you different from your competitions. SWOT Analysis and QQBPI - Competition Analysis will help you to identify your Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats and to win over the competition

IVGVI Analysis

I-V-G-V-I Analysis:

The I-V-G-V-I Analysis will help you to understand and position your business well. This analysis will help any business to build a sound business strategy. This analysis will help businesses to understand how to relate the idea or the business into market standards

This analysis is usually performed by owner of the idea (or) entrepreneurs (or) the head of sales, business development and business strategy

Industry: The term Industry refers to the line of business or categorization of business. For example: Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, High-Tech, Information Technology and etc are the different industry categories. It is very much important to understand to which Industry does your business belongs to, this is very critical exercise.

Vertical: The term Vertical here refers to the Industry sub-set. Most businesses share the shadow of other industries, it is very important to clearly understand what their parent industry and their subset. For example: Med Plus is a medical retail outlet, it is very important to understand the parent industry and the subset here. Since the business is retail, the parent industry is Retail and the subset is Healthcare because of its nature.

Again understanding your own business is very important at-least to communicate others what your business is

Geography: The term Geography here refers to the location of business. The manufacturing location has lot of strategic reasons. Multiple factors should be kept under consideration before identifying the right geographic location that includes resources, skills, infrastructure and etc. For example: Most car manufacturers manufacture cars in India and supply it to other Asian countries.

Vision: The above three analysis would give you enough idea on what and where to start your business. Now it is time to articulate to yourself on the vision of your idea. The term vision here refers to the difference between your current situation and your future. How would you like your business to grow in the next one year? The growth can be either qualitative (or) Quantitative. It can be anything like size, revenue, goodwill, infrastructure and etc. For example: Facebook had a vision on X number of users before they got into revenue model. Most start-ups would prefer to have short term vision; it can be either Half-yearly (or) Yearly.  The vision statement would help you to evaluate on the right investment figures.

Investment: The term Investment here refers to investment for manufacturing or production or to start the business. With the above 4 analysis, you will be able to evaluate the cost of investment considering the industry, vertical, geography and vision

This exercise is very important because this helps you to

1. Deeper understanding of your own business
2. Creates the ability to confidently communicate others about your business
3. Helps you to easily relate your business to the market standards
4. Helps everybody to map what you do
5. And very importantly helps you to identify your customers

You may easily find more references on SWOT analysis in Google, I will cover the SWOT Analysis for business in my next blog.

How to convert an Idea into Business

If an idea that helps to solve your problem and if you have confidence that the same idea can qualify to solve others problem then it has enough reasons to become a successful business. Most successful businesses were once an idea that helped to solve one’s problem then it became a successful organization helping solve other problems. The idea can be anything, a product, process or even a service but it should create a need for its quality.

Even a very small idea has a capacity to grow as a mountain. The elevation is depended on the vision of the owner who had the idea. For example: a toffee in retail is a very small business but Cadburys as a company is a living example where an idea of toffee can elevate. Once the idea is turned into business, then they are like a flowing river; they will flow according to the needs and demands of the customer. They may sometimes digress from what they are to meet the customer demands.  For example: Cadburys also sell Chocolates to meet the customer demand. So the most important responsibility is to identify the core strength (or) an expertise area to establish a brand. Once the brand is established, then the most of the rest will be taken care by business and customer demand by itself.

So, if you find potential in your idea, then develop the confidence to grow it as a business. To do that, you have to understand idea as a business and that becomes foremost important role for any idea to grow bigger as a business.

1. Develop the ability to understand idea as a business
2. Develop the ability to communicate your idea as a business
3. Develop the ability create confidence in customers

 There are several techniques like IVGR Analysis and SWOT Analysis to develop the ability to see your idea as business and QQBP (Quality, Quantity, Benefits and Price) to develop the ability to communicate and create confidence in customers

I will cover the IVGR analysis, SWOT Analysis and QQBP Analysis in my next blogs