Making Your First Million.pdf - Association of Net Entrepreneurs and ...

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Making Your First Million Chapter 9 - How Do I Move On From Here? Okay, you've made up your mind what you're going to do. Where do you start? At this point most proud new venturers look for premises, plant and stock. Stop! Don't do it. You're way too far ahead of yourself. Come back to earth. The prime, and essentially only consideration for your new business is making sales. You know what you're going to sell, be it goods or services, but have you identified who's going to buy? Most novices at this point shrug their shoulders and offer vague optimistic blustering. "Of course people will buy. The product is so fantastic it'll sell itself. All I need to do is advertise and customers will fall over themselves to push cash into my hand." Maybe. But you might do worse than test the market first. Ten years ago at the peak of my business infallibility, Howard Rose offered me a job lot of computer security alarms he'd acquired in a contra deal with Brad Cooper. These were movement sensors that alarmed if the computer was moved and the power turned off. After a little casual negotiation in $10,000 increments (rather than decrements) I bought a truckload of 7000 units for $50,000. I was convinced these would sell like Mars Bars over the back fence of a fat farm and devised a full-page ad touting the benefits at $59 each. I sold 3. Notwithstanding, figuring I was making nearly 90% profit I repeated the $1000 ad. I sold 4. Something was drastically wrong. No matter what I tried, price reductions, heavy advertising, buy one get one free, 70% off sale, buy 2 get 10 free, I couldn't shift them. After 7 years of hard slog I finally shifted the last of them back to one of Brad's original customers. The mistake cost me dearly. Not only was I stuck with a painfully unsaleable item (There was nothing wrong with the product. It was a great alarm. It's just that nobody wanted it.), but I was also stuck with the effort and expense of shifting it, to the detriment of my other stock lines. Look before you leap. If I have learnt anything in 20 years it's "Test everything". Just because I like something doesn't mean my customers will. Bullying and blustering, riding over the top of their sensibilities and insisting this is the greatest thing since skateboards with trainer wheels won't work. (Now there's an idea. Add a small sail and some brakes . . .) I know. I've been guilty of it often enough. I've had to learn the humility to be teachable and turn my whole business focus around from what I want, to what my customers want. And if you want to avoid the expense of making big mistakes, my advice to you is test the water first. Take the product or service you want to sell, and before you launch yourself body and soul into it, take the time to test market it. This is such an elementary thing to do that most business owners make the elementary mistake of not doing it. The day that Jurassic SiteSelling.com 52
Making Your First Million Park was released, and perhaps this was an omen, we talked ourselves into launching a multi-level referral system. I intuitively disliked multi-level marketing but felt that if we were the originators who controlled it, it would be okay. We hyped ourselves up, spent $25,000 in research and promotion and with vast confidence and gusto launched our Business Referral Program on an unsuspecting customer base. And nothing happened. With great aplomb we cast our bread upon the waters and it sank like a stone. Disappeared, taking 15% of our sales with it. Not only did it not perform, it did untold damage to our company which, in spite of our hasty retraction permanently lost us some very good customers. A very painful lesson, but one we've learnt well now. Today we do nothing till we test it. And that doesn't mean running it past Mum to see what she thinks. Each new concept is trial marketed with a small advertising run. All ads are coded and the response is carefully vetted. Customer purchase response is our sole criteria. Not subjective 'like it or don't like it' surveys, but hard factual 'who purchased what' data. If it works we run it. If it doesn't we can it. You have to be disciplined from the beginning. When the cash starts rolling in you'll start feeling 8 foot tall and bullet proof. Move over Gordon Gekko. Make way for a successful business owner. If you enjoy early success, and with your low costs as a shoestring startup you probably will, there is a real temptation to regard yourself as infallible and lash out on a BMW 840i. That worked. Now let's double it. Come back to earth. You don't have a mortgage on your continued turnover. Turnover is not income and income is not available for your discretionary spending. You must reinvest your profits to ensure continuing growth in sales. Many start-up entrepreneurs confuse turnover with spending money and crash and burn almost immediately. The easiest way to set up a fool in a small business is to give him a big business. You've got a long way to go before you're safe to fly this business solo. You'll learn by your mistakes more than your successes, so work to ensure your mistakes are little and your successes big. SiteSelling.com 53
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