Creating a product or a service that stands out in the marketplace is a huge part of the way the disruptive economy works. Customer and market research often favors a disruptive, innovative, or shocking marketing or delivery strategy.

But on the road to recognition, don’t lose site of the goal.

Your business must make money (not to be confused with profit).

Your market research may indicate that you get a ton of positive brand credibility for your new edgy approach, but does it turn into money? One of the questions that needs to be asked beyond “How much would you pay for this?” is “Will you cut a check right now for that price?”

A big hole in the novelty problem is that we socially reward attention getting behavior or products, but it is unsustainable. The X-ray shoe machine of today is the cancer lawsuit of tomorrow. Even as a best case, can your product be disruptive forever? Patents do run out. Marketing moves quickly and even the disruptive stuff soon becomes commonplace.

Too often, on the way to be different, we end up with a business that is disruptive for disruptions sake. If we don’t have a way to monetize such a strategy; what happens after the disruption stops working?

If marketplace disruption is central to your product strategy, you are destined to fail once that disruption normalizes. Once you’re run of the mill, you’ll have to go back the old standbys speed, quality, or price.

The world needs trailblazers to be sure; but don’t forget to pickup the check on your way to the next big thing. If you do, you might find there’s no one there at your destination to pay the bill.

This up and down relationship between Sales, Marketing, and Delivery functions creates a problem when trying to scale your business to meet market demands. It is why most freelancers never make the jump into ownership of a business, and instead stay stagnant in their size and scale. 

Enter the solution: Functional Outsourcing. 

Functional outsourcing is an approach to scaling your business that helps an owner make the transition to management. It’s a lower cost, lower impact way to begin the process than directly hiring a new employee. Hiring is expensive both in time and money and the success rate for newer business owners is very low. 

So what is functional outsourcing and how can I get some?

Functional outsourcing is, simply put, taking a function in your business and having it performed by a third party. The narrower the function the better. By example, a function in the marketing department might be content generation. Here at RentASmartGuy.com we outsource that function to a delightfully skilled content team. We set the tone and topic and they turn it into the marketing poetry you are currently reading (hehe).

The functional outsourcing concept is nothing new. People have been buying professional services for years. In this case; however, functional outsourcing is used to free up resources and time from the owner in a space that they traditionally have done on their own. Often times in a space that the freelancer/business owner had never considered getting help for. 

Progressively moving across the functions of the business until no more outsourcing candidates are left then lets the owner start the insourcing process – hiring employees on the delivery or sales side of the business. As the business grows further, you can then hire employees for your previously outsourced work. 

Functional outsourcing isn’t the best answer for everyone, but for most people looking to make the leap from freelancer to business owner it’s the best first step.

The good news is that much of what you need to be a successful communicator you have been practicing for a long time. Assignments that you received in primary school have prepared you (perhaps against your will) for business communication success. When trying to improve your communication skills it might be helpful to tie back into this learning from school and bring it to a contemporary parallel.

Broadly it helps to look at communication from two contexts: people who know you, and people who don’t.

On the “people that know you” side: Consider messaging as a means to prevent issues or minimize the impact of situations that go badly.

An informational message is similar to a book summary you wrote back in primary school. You capture the important points, highlight how they are relevant, and describe the overall outcome of the narrative. This translates into status reports, project proposals and all manner of status communications.

On the “people that don’t know you” side: Consider marketing.

A marketing message is very similar in spirit to the persuasive letter many of us were tasked to write in grade school. A persuasive letter contained a series of concepts designed to help the reader: establish rapport and credibility; write simple statements outlining the request; and create a call to action. These fundamentals easily translate into marketing concepts and can help improve its effect.

Underpinning all good messages are a few important philosophies.

1. Emotional content compels personal action. Rational content compels organizational decisions. Use emotions in your marketing – not your status updates.
2. Simple messages remove the chance for misinterpretation. Simplicity is often hard to achieve. Take the time to make things simple if you want a better outcome.
3. More communication is better than less. The severity of an issue or problem is a good indicator of how often you should connect.
4. Never surprise the person you are communicating with with bad news. Alert people to the possibility of a negative outcome when it remains a possibility and is not yet a fact.

Taking these philosophies into account can make the difference between a browser and a buyer, or a furious or delighted customer. Communication is a skill and as such it takes time to develop. Invest in developing the skill and it will pay huge dividends for yourself and your business.

Packaging is something different. Think of packaging as the box you put ideas into. Ideas in this case can be, services, products, training programs, etc. How you package ideas should be influenced by your brand. For example, if your brand has a rustic feel, you packaging should be equally rustic. If your packaging is hyper glossy and sleek, so should your brand be sleek and modern.

Additionally, when packaging ideas or services, they should be easy to understand. If you paint houses, for example, you might list the cost per square foot of wall space with instructions on how to figure out your square footage so that the customer can price out the job (to a degree) on their own. Services such as design or consulting can be bundled together to create a complete product or outcome. Training concepts can be packaged in a series of supporting concepts that create an overall understanding.

Packaging is an integral part of providing services or delivering products. Companies that do this well are wildly more successful as they have made it easy to do business with them. Time spent bundling and packaging products and services will increase your close rate on sales and minimize your returns and refunds.

When you make it easy to do business with you, you get more customers.

A recent customer of mine in the trades worked with me to re-define how they sell their services. What was once a 2, 3, or four WEEK process now happens in a quick phone conversation. His close rate increased to over 80% as a result up from 20%.

If you make it hard to buy with long complex intake forms or other such nuisances, your customers will not be able to quickly make the financial commitment to working with you. Your business may require a significant amount of background information to help deliver a product or service – put that data gathering after the purchase and you will find that your sales increase significantly.

You should always endeavor to make working with you as easy and straightforward as possible. Think about your product or service packaging as well. Does getting involved with your product or service require a significant special industry knowledge? Does it need to?

Even the most involved and complex business models can be simplified to the benefit of your customer (and your employees). Consider this if you find your sales flagging or your prospect pipeline not converting. As always, if you need it, the folks here at RentASmartGuy.com can help – Sales Process Reviews starting at $750.

If you made a site that was supposed to generate 10 sales a week, and it doesn’t – your website sucks.

If you made a website to collect contact information and it doesn’t – your website sucks.

If you made a website to Build awareness – your purpose for building a website sucks.

The problem many people have when building their website is that they don’t have a good sense of what they are building and why. The purpose of your website is the outcomes you expect your site to achieve.

People often ask me to build them a website that will “increase awareness” or “create sales” but without digging deeper, you can’t really expect these things to happen. You see, everyone thinks that they know what “drive sales” or “create a buzz” means, but all of those things are really quite meaningless. They are imprecise concepts and they can’t effectively be measured.

What we need when we start asking for a website, or any business project for that matter, is a clear statement of objective outcomes. This objective outcome is usually a number of somethings happening: 10 sales, 4 new contacts, 7 whitepaper downloads; in a specified period of time: an hour, a week, a day etcetera. These objective bits of data are the test for your website.

A concrete business objective can be measured. A measured objective can be improved upon. Without measurement, the only improvement left is emotional – “it feels better.” Sadly, emotions are not directly transferable for cash at the bank – so leave the feelings at home and build a website that accomplishes your business objective.

Here are a list of common complaints:

“But they’re my competition?!”

Everyone has an ideal client mix for sure. Referring clients that don’t fit your ideal business plan should be a common practice. By sending your least favored clients to another provider, you are doing both a service. You will grow in two ways from this. You’ll spend less time with a customer that you don’t want to talk to and you will build a more amicable relationship with your competitor who may have clients that don’t fit their mix and get sent to you. This is particularly helpful in captive insurance agencies or law firms.

“It seems like a lot of time with little payout”

One of the hardest things to do in any business is put an exact figure on Return on Investment (ROI). This is extremely tough in relationship driven marketing activities since referrals and leads don’t often clarify where they came from and you may even have business development teams overlapping regionally. In the long term, however, investing in relationships does pay off. The investment in building relationships yields industry credibility and reputation. These elements are priceless to grow your business.

“I Don’t know who to partner with or how to partner”

This is perhaps the most legitimate argument and most honest. The instinct in our society is to grab more for your self so “giving it away” seems counter intuitive. Further, with many untrustworthy people in the marketplace, who do you go to to find your next great partner? There are a few easy answers. Try your local chamber of commerce – this is a great starting point for people looking to build a strong business community. Other places to look include your local BNI chapter or industry specific groups like the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) or  the Society of American Florists (SAF).

Either way, building a strategic partnership does require a commitment of time and effort. Check our Resources section for what to say to start building a great strategic relationship and begin building the relationship that could catapult your business growth.

1. If you knew how – you might be able to, but you don’t. So you sit in a ” holding pattern.”
2. You don’t have the motivation to get out of the “holding pattern.”

QR codes are a type of two-dimensional barcode used to share information. You can see a sample here.

Most people use them in conjunction with a “smart” cell phone. They make certain things easier. Consider typing in an email address or website address. It’s much easier to scan a barcode than it is to type even the shortest website address.

There’s quite a few “out of the box uses” for these things but here’s some Do’s and Don’ts for you to consider if you are going to start using them in your business.

Do:

• Create the barcodes using a “clean” free resource

Lots of websites out there will create a QR code for you but they will link to their site and then bounce a user to your website. You can tell when you scan the barcode if it doesn’t list your site as the URL; consider switching who creates your codes for you.

• Create a barcode for each of your marketing campaigns.

By creating a separate code for each of your marketing campaigns, you get to track which campaigns and media types are more effective in promoting your business.

• Make them BIG

A small barcode will just frustrate your potential customer. A barcode on a vehicle should be at least 3 feet square (depending on the complexity) if you want passers by to scan it from their car or the sidewalk. More complex codes require more space.

• Use them to save time

A code that contains contact information to be added to a phone is a great addition to a business card. A QR code that can hold your place in line or generate a return phone call is great too!

• Use them to create “special” content or offers

The technology savvy crowd loves to be treated well. Create promotions or special offers that cater to the crowd and watch them share your codes.

Don’t:

• Put them everywhere:

Don’t over-saturate your potential clients with QR codes. Sure you can create all sorts of novelty QR codes that do lots of things, but if it doesn’t help your customer, you are confusing them unnecessarily.

• Make them “The only way”

Using them is great, but they can’t replace printing your phone number on your business cards, for example. Don’t rely on everyone to have a smart phone or to understand what QR codes are, or how to use them. Technology is not natural for everyone.

• Make them too small to be scan-able:

Yes this sounds a lot like Make them Big. Test your QR code before you send it out into the field. It may take a little extra time but it’s better than looking foolish with an unreadable code.

• Count on them to “fix everything”

Like any marketing tool, it has a potential to be effective. It will not turn 6 months of inactivity into overnight success, nor will it be viable as “the only way” you market your business.

Hopefully these Do’s and Don’ts have helped you evaluate QR codes as an option to market your business. As always – you can rent a smart guy to get help building a marketing program that suits your needs.

The best way to get follow up is to be specific. You need to be specific on what you need, and when you need it by. It sounds simple, but most people don’t go far enough when being specific. Think about this email example:

“Joe – we need to talk. When are you available to meet next week?”

A question like this requires the other person to do the following:

1. Locate or open their calendar
2. Evaluate all appointments and open spots for next week
3. Determine if there is a fit, and when
4. Determine how long you may need to meet
5. Open their email and draft a response that lists several options for meeting times
6. Communicate several times back and forth about selecting a good date/time to meet