You are definitely not alone if you sometimes have the feeling that you are called for something bigger than what you are doing right now, for a place higher than where you are right now, to do greater than you are doing right now. You know, that feeling of “yeah…people think I’m great but I see something greater in the eyes of my mind”, that feeling of “I’m trying to understand what is holding me back, because I know I am made for much more than I am doing right now”. I actually usually feel the same way too. For me, I want to reach out to more people, help more businesses succeed, spread my impact to the ends of the earth, spread my wings and fly to very high places. I know I am made to help businesses thrive, and founders to do greater, but in spite of some recognition here and there, the commendations, press interviews, and so on, my heart yearns for more.
Your heart’s desire is that your business does better and for you to play big in your sector/industry. As a matter of fact, you are reading this publication for that same reason. You will find answers here. Yes, you will. I do not know exactly what business you do, but understanding and applying these same basic principles which were used by Canvas, Fiverr, Bet9ja, Nestio, Shecluded, Wilson’s Juice Co, SLOT Systems Limited, LifeBank, PiggyVest, Spikeball, Crib-X and all the big winners of 2019, 2020 will be your own year.
I’ll get on with sharing with you what needs be done for you to be a big player in year 2020:
1. Identify and Understand Your Market
Identifying your market is critical to your business success. Your market is the specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message. These are the people who are most likely to buy your products or services, and they are united by some common characteristics, like demographics and behaviors. It is also important to understand your market. The banks and big corporations take this very seriously. They know so much as the earnings, family size, to the tiniest details that influence their choices to buy or use their products/services. In understanding his market, Seyi Abolaji of Wilson’s Juice Co had to take his lemonades to the market by himself, to get people to taste and give immediate feedback. He was basically trying to understand what they want. Identifying and understanding your market is that serious and important.
2. Create Your Strategy
You’ll be tempted to think that execution trumps cerebration, until you realize that you have been executing nonsense all the while. In 2020, smart work will be; great strategy, great execution. Strategy is basically a road-map/framework to achieve the overall goal. It requires cerebration, and establishes what your priorities, decisions and actions for business success should be. Without a strategy, your business will run in too many directions and very little will be accomplished. The three important strategies you need to know about are: business, operational and transformational.
Business strategy basically concerns how you intend to enter the market- where you plan to play, and how you intend to win. It is about how you want to relate with the market you have identified and understand.
Operational strategy makes the whole business strategy more cohesive and brings clarity for the purpose of execution. Here, the people, processes and technologies required to win are identified. It answers questions such as: who do I need to bring on board, what channels should I use to communicate my message, how do I go about marketing, sales, value delivery. It also answers when everything should be done. You already know as a business person that time is a critical factor, right?
Transformational strategy is that one strategy you need for the radical change you want to experience in your business in 2020. It is disruptive and only few businesses willingly go down this lane. I want to blow my trumpet here a bit, but…
In creating your strategy, you must understand that knowledge is at the very center of it all. Acquire enough information. Engage the services of a consultant. Ask questions- lots of them, that’s how answers are found, you know?
3. Tell Your Story, Big Time
It’s a very noisy world right now, and there’s more noise coming in 2020. Someone who’s not reading this article right now probably believes that what his or her business needs is more noise- to be more in the faces of people, spend more on advertising. Well, for you, you’ll need to be more strategic. You’ll need to tell stories, and here is a tip: show you audience, don’t just tell. Let them see where your product has worked, who it has worked for, how it was used. Share stories that are really interesting. Humans relate to stories and use them to make sense of the world. As a matter of fact, the human mind is wired for stories, so use them to make emotional connections. Now, don’t stop there, leverage big channels. Let those stories be featured in widely-read blogs, newspapers, magazines and microblogs where your target audience usually are. Truth is, with a well-crafted story, where there is a HERO (I’ll prefer that your customer is the hero, instead of you), paid adverts could really be a good investment.
4. Collaborate and Innovate
In my second year in Crawford University, I learnt one key way small players can work together to compete or play big in business. You see I learnt from a particular situation that big fishes will eat up only the small fishes that cannot collaborate. You can collaborate with competing small businesses to increase your buying power. For instance, you can collaborate with them to buy directly from the manufacturer of a product you all sell, so you can get it cheaper. You can also collaborate with small businesses who deal in complementary products or offer services that complements yours, for the purpose of referrals. For instance, if you sell clothe materials, you can collaborate with a tailor or fashion designers.
On innovation. One of the advantages that you have being a small business is the flexibility and the ease of building innovation into your business routines. You must first cultivate the innovation mindset- actively and consciously looking for creative ways to do things better in your business. You must also ensure everyone who works with you on your team develops that innovation mindset. With innovation, the money which the big players have as an advantage over you right now, you will also make. You will then have to worry about how to stay innovative when you have become big.
5. Create Customer Loyalty
Loyal customers are the most valuable ambassadors of your business. You may already know that until you have returning customers, you are not yet in business; until you have loyal customers, your business success is not exactly sustainable yet. Your Customer Lifetime Value, CLV will even sometimes count when you need funding for expansion of your business. You know why investors take it that it serious? It shows if that business will be around for a long time or not. The Pareto principle states that 80% of your revenue will come from the top 20% of your loyalest customer. So, in year 2020, you can design a loyalty programme or not, but you must make sure you recognize your loyal customers and find a way to reward them, and then improve on your customer relationship, generally. You must recognize that what your customer says about your business will matter more than what you say, in 2020. Make sure that your customers have good things to say about your business.
All of these is not very easy in practice, but hey, you want to play big, don’t you? Then, you must be willing to pay the price. You would either give up on playing big, or you start from now to get things done. Happy new year in advance.