Category: Telling the Story

An Idea for a New Business

M4T Proposal
New Business Proposal

This is a document that I created back in 2015 to introduce a new business. Instead, we ended up moving to the Florida Panhandle area and the business didn’t happen. I still like the idea, and frankly, have incorporated much of it into my current business thinking. I’ve merely broadened out the subject matter and still intend to contact the same sorts of businesses contemplated in this document.

I am posting it here because it illustrates some of my reasoning about the promotion of a business and how images and narrative can make an idea come to life. If you were a potential customer and received this PDF document by email, perhaps from a website, or as part of a presentation on a thumb drive, how would you view it? Isn’t it better than a verbal presentation, in that it’s tangible and creates a more concrete understanding of what the sales person is trying to convey? It works hand-in-hand with that person-to-person sales effort, in my opinion. Take a look.

M4TLLCProjectIntro

Simple Ideas Repeated -Tell the Story!

toolsBusiness owners and managers often make the mistake of seeking an ideal marketing or advertisement plan that is unrealistic for their business because of cost or complexity.

Sometimes simple ideas, simple repetition of basic principled efforts work best.

So what foundation does your business have? Usually there are certain things about the business that are known and appreciated; dependability for example.

What do potential customers think of your business? Do they even know that you exist at the moment? Do they have a sense of what you stand for? Your principles and your intentions? What have you told them? What can they see?

What can be changed to create a better image, more visibility, and a better understanding of the positive attributes of the products and services you offer?

Think about it. Make notes and discuss the ideas with your associates. What you think is basic and well understood about your business may not register with the customers. They need to be told about it and then told again another time and in a different manner. It’s your job to make these concepts, ideas, and principles clear.

One Business and Its Images

guest-rm-entryRecently I have been contemplating the use of a few of my proposals and the various images that I captured and used to promote additional sales. I hesitate only because what I was promoting was slightly different from what many small business owners are selling. My business was in commercial contracting, and I specialized in decorative stone, granite, terrazzo, and ceramic tile. Our promotions were directed at large scale developers, owners agents for government agencies, and construction managers on a regional scale (multi-state).

I will try to post a couple of these and see if I can walk through the thinking and also why I think that there are lessons within those efforts that scale to smaller businesses and businesses that are vastly different then this.

It seemed important to create this post as a prequel to what’s to come. I’d like to emphasis that we should be looking at how to take ideas from these proposals, rather than over-think the particulars of that singular business model.

Let’s see how this goes…

The picture depicts tile work we installed with a granite threshold at each of the 1,000 plus typical rooms in this luxuary hotel. Here is a link if you would like to see more about the hotel itself.

Why The Indifference?

low-cost-greenI confess that I am surprised that so few businesses feel a need to reach out to their customers in a friendly and warm way. There are so many people today who are disappointed with the way that business is conducted, it seems to me that a business that’s personally satisfying, that speaks to the customers values, and their aspirations, is far ahead of its competition for that customers attention, and their wishes to support the business and to buy its products.

It’s especially perplexing because steps to create this positive emotion aren’t all that big a deal economically. It doesn’t need to cost much.

About Selling High Quality Services

We need to get past the low bid mentality.

The message ought to remind people that a professional installation is important. That great quality will enhance the overall project with improved appearance and the apparent attention to details. We should drive home the idea that not all installations are equal, and that low price, while desirable for cost control, does not fulfill the client’s requirement for appearance, and for the image that they were initially wishing to convey. A marginal installation nullifies some of that message. Therefore the outcome is a compromise. The client does not achieve their intended goals. Often they give up thinking that it wasn’t possible.

We need to get past the low bid mentality. We need to address the unfulfilled goal mentioned. Our attention should be upon reaching the end user and also the designer. Both are intent upon the outcome and less upon the cost. Cost must be continually addressed, but it ought to maintain its appropriate place in the transaction. Achievement of the design and conceptual goals that first launched the project must supersede that. Only after we have determined that the process will achieve the intended aspirations of the owner can we focus upon the costs. If a cost does not achieve its intended goal, then why bother to expend it?