The only problem they had was that they felt they were inventors and didn’t have the skills to set up the business to take this concept to market. That was fairly refreshing to hear, because the inventors of a concept can often be determined to be the business brains behind it, without realising that it takes an entirely different skill set.

I met them first at Mentor Magic on the Wednesday, and on the Saturday we met again for me to carry out an entire tyre kicking exercise. I needed to satisfy myself if these guys were the real deal and whether their product was the real thing. Was it saleable? I.e. was the price they’d charge realistic and was there sufficient profit margin? The next questions were over patents and the quality of installation, i.e. does it look right. They passed that test, and I arranged to meet them the following morning, Sunday, to view an installation.

It looked pretty good and I was even more impressed to find out that, as well as solving the problem of rainfall, their product solves the problem of overheating from sunlight. The roof covering looks neat, and barely diminishes light transmission.

So, that made it a green light and, as I travelled overseas the next day, I was able to draft an outline business plan to move this forward. Priority was to create the team to take the business forward, second was to seek the investment the business needs and third, start thinking about how to market the product.

Really, it’s the latter that is my prime expertise and the bit I enjoy most. Their website is www.silentroofsystems.com, and that will be what I attend to first. Watch this space and I’ll take you through the steps we go down to get this exciting product to market.

Tags: Business Opportunity, Business, Mentoring

I’ll expand on each of these in coming weeks and months, because they give me an opportunity to actually put into practice what I preach about marketing and business management.

Almost two years ago, after being invited to speak to students at a local college, I met with the lecturer who was coordinating the talks, a delightful lady called Helen Hoyle.

I met Helen on a few other occasions, as I spoke on a few occasions upon her invitation. She also brought students to some of the relevant events I was chairing at the local branch of the Institute of Directors. As I spoke to Helen more, I began to realise what a different and remarkable person she was.

This is a single mother who was bringing up two teenagers and was preparing to undertake the Polar Challenge where, with two other team mates, she was going to cross the Arctic circle to the magnetic north pole. Helen successfully completed that challenge over Easter 2006.

During these times, Helen would discuss doing something more with her life and mentioned setting up her own business. This would be another challenge for her and, when successful, would help her fund similar expeditions to the one she’d just competed in the Arctic.

Between us, we hatched a concept to help people lose weight. Helen is an expert on nutrition and fitness and was appalled at the many dieting regimes and schemes where people lose pounds, mostly from their wallet, in a fruitless quest to lose weight. She felt there was room for something that was reliable and really delivered lasting weight loss.

We created Lighter Steps which creates diets for people (after a proper consultation), and delivers the food, twice-weekly, in ready prepared meals and snacks. Helen also introduces the client to simple exercise.

The results with the first clients have been very good. The weight that has been lost has not been regained and we’re learning more each day about the reasons why people gain weight and find it difficult to shed.

The interesting thing for me personally, apart from participating in this interesting start up business, has been creating the marketing behind it.

I’ll explain more in my next entry.

Tags: Dieting, Weight Loss, Business, Business Opportunity

I created it in November 2005 based upon my business experiences (which you can read earlier in my blog) and my idea to help other businesses avoid all the problems I encountered (or, more like, created for myself).

There is a big concept, and one that is beginning to unfold, as I create the team and resources to take it further. But, for the last 18 months I have been running, in conjunction with the Hampshire and IoW Branch of the Institute of Directors, Mentor Magic events.

We hire a theatre and invite four businesses to come along and present their pressing business problem to a panel of entrepreneurial experts. All in front of an audience of over 100 people.

On Wednesday, March 21, we held our latest event and it was just fantastic. None of the businesses were presenting the panel with some difficult cashflow situation; perhaps no-one is brave enough to expose themselves in this way. As in previous events, the four businesses all had a common issue, ‘How do I grow or how do I take my business to new markets?’

This is a common theme from previous events, and highlights one of the key factors which separates the highly successful businesses from the also rans. Marketing.

Good marketing, or rather the lack of it, is something I usually encounter when I come to write a sales proposal structure for a Proposal Genie client.

The first thing I do is look at the company’s website and ask myself two questions. Do I get it? Why would I buy from these people?

In most cases, is hard to ascertain what it is they actually do in moments. Secondly, the website rarely tells me the benefit that would come my way from dealing with them.

Now these are two fundamental aspects of good marketing i.e. what do you do and why it would benefit customers.

There’s more to marketing, of course. Such as who you are targeting, segmenting markets etc , but getting your message clear and stating the benefits would be a good start for most companies.

Each of the four businesses got great advice from the experts. It main seem obvious but it was missed by the candidates. Define your target market, work out why they would buy from you ie what’s in it for them and work on ways to reach them and add value to them and your business.

Tags: Mentoring, Business, Entrepeneur, Dragons Den, Marketing

I can’t think of a single proposal that I’ve read yet that I think that a reader will find easy to read. In the main, the sales proposal has been used as an information dump about anything and everything to do with the supplier and their products. The policy seems to be, if in doubt, put it in. And, boy, do they.

If you put yourself in the place of the readers of your proposal, what do you think they want to see?

They want to know that you really do understand their problem. And they want to know that you have a clear picture of the outcome they want to achieve.

They want to know that you have a solution that fixes the problem and delivers on their desired outcomes.

They want to know what kind of return that they’re going to get on their investment, that you can deliver on time and that you have the ability to deliver.

Now that’s no more than seven or eight sections, at the most. A maximum of about 12 pages.

It’s got to appeal to a wide audience many of whom won’t be technically minded, nor who will wish to read a technically based document.

Tags: Copywriting

I’d been helped in this by reading Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think. And, I really felt that we were making it too hard for the visitor.

I felt that this was the reason why, although we were getting plenty of hits to the site, too small a proportion was making it’s way through to firm enquiries.

So, adopting the attitude that if it’s broke – fix it, we got on and changed the site. Nothing so much about the look, more the content. I wanted visitors to Get It - instantly.

So, we say straight up, in a couple of lines, what we do. Then we invite visitors to view animations of what it’s all about. As simple as that.

We invited some experts to preview the site, before it went live, and offer their comments. Generally, the view was that we told too much, and didn’t leave anything to talk to the visitor about once they’d viewed our site. We stuck to our instincts and went ahead with what we thought was right.

The results have been astounding. There has been an upsurge in the conversion rate from viewing to follow up. Visitors say they find it simple to understand and, by the time they’ve viewed the animations, they are certain that what we offer is for them.

The virtues of keeping it simple.

Tags: Keeping it Simple, Website Usability

That’s over half of your sales activity leading nowhere.

For so many people, it’s the fear of making a decision that causes them to do nothing. You present compelling reasons and still they make no decision. Your proposition just sits in no mans land.

Is there anything you can do about this problem? Research says that there is something you can do. Presenting a compelling business case gives the client more reason to act and takes the fear out of the decision.

This needs to be more than highlighting a few features and benefits. It needs to be a detailed Return on Investment, which clearly shows there are compelling financial reasons for taking action.

This is where ProposalGENie can help. We work with our clients to build a Return on Your Investment module within their proposal system.  This is an easy to use module which any sales person can complete with their customer.

The RoI module sits within the complete proposal which covers all the other aspects which creates a compelling proposal for your client. The beauty of ProposalGENie is that it takes minutes to create, anyone in your organisation has access to the system wherever they are based, and clients act upon the finished presentation.

I talk to others and they same the same thing.

How refreshing it is to meet a company like Shark Finesse who understand how important it is to make sure their product and proposition is understood. Shark provide sales people with Return on Investment (RoI) calculation software, which enables the sales person to sit with the client and create a financial justification to buy their product or service. Shark’s product is outstanding and so is their tool to explain why you would benefit from RoI calculation software.

Shark have created a superb, professional DVD which, in three separate scenes, shows how you can use and benefit from their software. Everyone gets it.

Guess what? Their sales have taken off as a result.

Shark’s solution is, in theory, a no-brainer. But it’s a mistake to take that for granted. They didn’t and their simple, easy to understand, professionally acted DVD makes sure their customers ‘get it’.

I see much the same with Cotoco’s solution for companies. Cotoco’s expertise comes from creating educational software for children. They saw an opportunity in extending their expertise into creating sales toolkits for companies. They take the habits of the most successful sales people in an organisation and break it down into simple animations. We all love animated shows, and we learn and understand easily from them.

With cotoco’s help, any sales person can easily make sure that their concept, solution or service is fully understood.

And, amazingly, these solutions come along in threes. A couple of weeks ago, I met with Daryl Stickley of The Rich Partnership. Sharing Cotoco’s and Shark’s philosophy of making sure customers get it, Rich Partnership have built a modular presentation tool, which allows companies to build explanatory videos, presentations, animations, which help their customers to ‘get it’ and to sell more.

I’m a great fan of these tools. I use them. I learn from people like Martin Southern of Shark, Don Fuller of Cotoco and Daryl Stickley of The Rich Partnership, and employ their techniques into sales proposal design and structuring.

Tags: Understanding

The answer often is ‘our customer service’. When I press further, there is not much forthcoming. Nothing that I can feature, because there is nothing significant or unique about the customer service, other than they try hard to please.

I try to explain that service is usually something you can only experience and, unless you can bottle it, and describe something special and unique, then it carries no weight with the customer. After all, how many times have they heard ‘our service is outstanding’ only to experience something really not that good. No-one says ‘our service is lousy’.

But when service is the core product, and it is exceptional, then you really can write it up. You really do, though, have to have something different and exceptional. The following is a good example.

Yesterday, I revisited Alexandra Sports with my wife for her to purchase a new pair of tennis shoes. These people specialise in sports footwear and they do it in a very unique way.

Sports footwear is very important. Get it wrong and you suffer pain and injuries elsewhere. Knees, hips, back etc. Alexandra Sports know this and they make sure that you always walk out with the right footwear for you. They are only a small outlet but they have many consultants all busy giving individual, specialist attention to customers.

Each customer walks up and down a special walkway, barefoot, under the watchful eye of the consultant. Then they’ll be asked to walk faster. Then they’ll be asked to jog. Until the consultant is satisfied that they have seen the customers gait and established their requirement. Then they fetch the shoes.

You try them on until you feel real comfortable, and then you are invited to repeat the walking / running exercise on the walkway. When you and the consultant are sure that you’ve got a comfortable pair of the right shoes, you’re invited to run up and down the road outside.

Time and again they‘ll put you in another pair of shoes until you are absolutely certain that you’ve got it spot on. Then they’ll box up your shoes and you’ll pay for them.

The cost of the specialist consultancy. Nothing. You just pay for the shoes.

What’s in it for Alexandra Sports? The shop is always busy, and satisfied customers spread the word.

Now that’s what I call service, and it’s the kind of service you can write about because it really means something and carries value for the customer.

Tags: Customer Service

So much easier to remember than ‘keep focused’ or ‘get rid of all the clutter’ etc.

I encourage people, when writing sales proposals, to do just that. Focus on the main thing and nothing else. I see too many proposals which include stuff such as ‘our other products’.

Firstly, this takes up valuable space. Secondly, it doesn’t add to what you are proposing. Thirdly, it distracts from what you are trying to propose and dilutes your message.

I try to work from the principle that people don’t like to read much and the less you give them to read, so much the better. If you can say the main thing in five pages, then say it in five. I never suggest padding it out with other information. If you desperately want to include extra, superfluous information, put it in the appendix. It’s there if the client really wants to read it and can be ignored if she doesn’t.

Your customers will recognise your focus and professionalism. They’ll thank you for not taking up their time unnecessarily or making if difficult for them.

By keeping the main thing the main thing, you will be focused and keep your client focused. It really works.

Tags: Focus, Proposal Writing