What is the most important question in business?
What is the ONE question that, if answered appropriately, can completely change the course of your business from struggling to succeeding?
Even before I’d earned my Business Admin – Marketing diploma, I’d started a business consulting with small businesses owners about their marketing strategies. A lot of my clients and prospects came to me looking for assistance in developing materials and implementing systems to grab the attention of potential customers and make them aware of what they had to offer. Pretty standard stuff. You need to be noticed in the marketplace, and in order to be noticed you have to do things that will get you noticed.
I quickly began to see a pattern that surprised me, though.
Perhaps only about 25% of the business owners I spoke with wanted to talk to me about their need to further develop a marketing strategy. I always thought that beginning a marketing consultation at the strategic level made far more sense as a place to start than simply looking at the various tactics to apply and marketing materials required to carry them out. However, despite discussing this a number of times with prospects and clients, I was surprised by the significant number of small business owners who weren’t interested in stepping back from the “doing” to make sure they were focusing on doing the right things in the first place.
I think I probably lost a number of potential clients by not simply fulfilling their requests for routine marketing materials by talking to them about how a website, sales brochure, or direct mail piece weren’t going to achieve what they were setting out without more of a strategic approach to marketing. If you’re cooking, you follow a recipe that will help you achieve a desired flavour in your culinary creation… you don’t just throw random foods into a pot and hope for the best.
It seemed to me that many small business owners were mistaking “making a louder noise” for a legitimate way to bring in new business. If you ask me, making noise is only a small part of marketing… a VERY small part. (In fact, the best kind of marketing is the kind where you don’t make any noise at all… you just shut up, get out of the way, and let your customers make all the noise for you.)
So what’s the one question that so many small business owners I’ve spoken with were missing… or at least not asking themselves on a regular basis. It’s the most important question I can think of when it comes to business, and it’s this:
“What is the best and highest value that I can deliver to the marketplace?”
This question is the very essence of “business” at any level.
Without an understanding of the best and highest value that you can deliver to the marketplace, how can you begin to deliver it? The sad pattern that I was seeing over and over again was that small business owners tended to go into business with an inward focus. “I’ve always wanted to do X, so I decided to start a business around it.” I love hearing those words, because I believe people should be doing what they love, but when it comes to answering the Universal Question of Business, this is about as far from the answer you should be seeking as you can get.
The marketplace doesn’t really care very much what you love to do, particularly when it hasn’t heard of you yet. The market only cares how it can fulfill its desires and needs at the most satisfying level, whether satisfaction is determined on the basis of a certain mix of price, quality, service, or some other basis of value measure.
Loving what you do is a GREAT place to start, but it must be paired up with a powerful and resonant answer to the question “What is the best and highest value that I can deliver to the marketplace?”. When you love what you do and you’ve identified a high-value opportunity through which to deliver it, you’re far more likely to be among the small percentage of small businesses and start ups that survive and thrive.
This week’s Small Biz Gym exercises:
1. Brainstorm.
Ask yourself and your managers, employees, friends, spouse, and even your kids “What is the best and highest value that I can deliver to the marketplace?”. Have a brainstorming session if that helps.
2. Go to the source.
Is there any way you can increase the value you deliver to your current customers? Ask them what they think! Get it all down in writing!
3. Take all the feedback onboard from all sources and points of view.
Assess it, discuss it, and decide how you can begin to implement the most common suggestions that are feasible and appropriate. Do it strategically; run the numbers and what-if scenarios, get legal and accounting advice if appropriate, ask a few of your better customers what they would think if you implemented these value enhancement plans in your business. Ask your customers what would it mean to them? Ask your customers what they might find appealing and frustrating about your competitors. Be aware of any negative feedback that might indicate that your value enhancement plans wouldn’t land the way you intend them to with your customers. (Recall the “New Coke” bungle for an example of changing something that shouldn’t be touched!)
4. Implement.
If you get the green light from most of your best customers, begin to carefully and thoughtfully implement your value enhancement strategy! Stick with it, and be consistent.
5. Do more sets.
Regularly go through this process and your value offering will continue to grow stronger than ever, as step by step you begin to out-pace your competitors.