You could argue that the subject of this post could be a motto for life, not just for business writing. After all, it’s better to effect things than be affected by them. It gives you more control over your destiny, more flexibility in your choices.
In business writing, it’s also better to be active than passive, especially if you are writing ‘persuasive’ documents like business cases or sales proposals. As an example, look at the previous paragraph. The active ‘voice’ is more powerful at effecting something, whereas the passive voice governs being affected by something.
Try and avoid phrases like ‘the ROI calculation can be found below.’ It sounds stuffy and conservative, but also weak and, well, passive. You’re writing this document, you’re in charge of it, so take control. Better to say ‘The ROI calculation below shows the value of our service to your business.’
The active voice is to do with action, and when it comes to your business writing, it’s action you want your reader to take, otherwise why take the time to write at all?
There’s an old adage that nothing happens in a company until somebody sells something. In fact, it’s also true of you, when you’re trying to sell yourself or your idea.
I do a bit of work as a mentor in the technology sector and so I come into contact with quite a few very early stage companies. In the tech sector in Ireland there is plenty of support, guidance and funding for building your software product. Once you’ve built your product, and you have to start selling it, in other words commercialising your idea, the funding is not so forthcoming.
This is a problem, because many of the people who have the idea for and develop their software product also have a lack of knowledge and confidence when it comes to selling it. Start-up companies can avail of a few meetings with sales and marketing mentors like me, but that’s nowhere near enough. They either need to start full-time selling themselves or else find the funds to get someone with the expertise to do their business development. They don’t have the money to do that, and the business development specialist is probably not going to work for free, or even equity, if they can’t see the promise of steady sales. Which brings it back to the fledgling business owners, who have to do the work themselves.
Start-ups have to start, but if they’re not capable of starting, then the money already invested in them, by them or others, is wasted. We need to train our entrepreneurs to sell, or else fund the sales expansion efforts and increase their chances of turning their idea into a functioning, growing business.
There is a term in sales remuneration called OTE. It’s a three-letter acronym – aka TLA 🙂 – naturally. OTE stands for On Target Earnings or On Track Earnings, though I prefer Opportunity to Earn myself. In sales jobs you can have a base salary element and a commission element that together give you your OTE if you hit your sales quota.
In a previous post I talked about the importance of having a product/market fit. Once you have that, then you need to scale your business so that you can capitalise on your potential. Your ‘opportunity to earn’, therefore, is to be found quite literally in the word ‘promote.’ To attract the right customers in the right numbers, you need to effectively promote your business.
If you’re a business owner/manager with a successful product, you want to take your business to the next level and you think the key is something to do with this marketing lark, here are some things to think about.
– Do you know your market? Can you profile it, describe it, and define it, tightly?
– What slices or segments make up your market? Remember that you can slice the market ‘pie’ according to things like region, industry, size etc, but also according to what is important or needed by customers. How you segment your market is crucial.
– Which segments of the market do you want to sell to? Even though you want to grow, you can’t be all things to all people. Well, you can, but not for long.
– What are these buyers like? What are the buyer ‘personas’? How do they prefer to buy?
– How will you position yourself to these segments? Positioning is the third leg of the segment-target-position stool on which will sit much of your go to market plan. By ‘position’ I mean your messaging, or how you describe your value to customers.
– Does your brand truly reflect where you’re going, not where you are or where you’ve been?
If any of this is alien to you, invest in someone to help you figure it out. It’s the key to unlocking the OTE at the end of promote.
The one thing you need for a successful business is this (no drum roll necessary) …
Product/Market Fit.
You’d be surprised – actually you might not be surprised at all – how many product-based companies don’t have it, or can’t get it.
Product/Market Fit is this, put simply: people want your stuff. A lot of people. In fact, they don’t simply want your stuff, they need your stuff, and a good number of them would be up the creek without a paddle if you took it away from them.
You need Product/Market Fit for your business to grow, and people won’t invest in your business unless you can demonstrate you have it. Conversely, if you’re looking to join a successful company, and this is perhaps the most obvious thing you’ll read this month, join the one that you’re sure is shifting product.
If there’s no market for what you sell, or plan to sell, there’s no business for you. Too many companies find this out too late, usually after they’ve built their product. “Now, who can I sell this to?” In other words, do the marketing first, not afterwards.
The first law of retail in the pre-Internet era – so it’s still valid for over two-thirds of global retail trade – is location, location, location.
The first law of communication, leadership and business relationships, is, to this writer’s mind, consistency. If you are consistent in your dealings with people, then it’s easier for them to be aligned with you in terms of expectations. They know what they’re getting from you and this helps them save time and money in the long run. Your consistency makes them more productive.
If you’re inconsistent, they don’t know where they stand, they can’t plan properly and they can’t make progress smoothly. No-one finds the maverick or the loose cannon that easy to work with when there’s so much at stake.
You should be predictable and constant for all the right reasons with the people that are important to you. They will appreciate you for it and come back for more.
My late Dad, who oozed insight, guidance and modesty in equally Herculean proportions, was fond of aphorisms. One of his favourites was: pressure is good, stress is bad.
How right he was! We thrive on pressure, it helps us meet deadlines and increases our productivity. If we don’t apply pressure to ourselves, or we don’t get it from an external force, we’re get nowhere near as much done. It galvanises us, energises us, catalyses us. Just ask any journalist, writer or sports person.
Stress, on the other hand, is what happens when pressure overspills, or we don’t handle the pressure appropriately. Stress reduces our productivity, affects our equilibrium and harms our health, sometimes dramatically so.
The difference between the two is our relative ability to channel the inputs correctly into the desired outputs. And if we can’t do it, we should call for help – and call early.
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