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A Scathing Report on Grant Writer’s Institute
Ok, this is not something I want to do. I like to believe in the good intentions of people. And I rarely feel the need to write an article solely for the purpose of exposing a business that acts in a way that I can only consider to be highly unethical.
Grant Writer’s Institute, which goes under several other names as well, has been promoting our grant to the people whom they are charging hundreds of dollars for something that is quite a bit less than they are encouraging people to believe that it is. They provide an information packet that supposedly contains information on grants that business owners can get to fund business expansion or startup. They have added us to their list, and we are being contacted regularly now by people who have been taken by this company. We have been contacted directly by three people, and have had applications submitted by others. The three people we were contacted by all reported how useless the information was that they were given, and that it was misleading and incomplete about the reality of actually GETTING a grant.
They operate on the fine edge of legality. They word their information carefully, so the eager applicant will THINK they are getting something they are not. They are not picky about the “grants” they recommend – some are actually contests, not grants (and there is a huge difference). Some require fees to apply. Ours is not money, and they represent it as such – it is clear they have never even read our site beyond the word “grant”.
We received an application, which some guy apparently paid them to prepare.
- Now, in the first place, our application can be prepared by ANY qualified candidate – if you can’t prepare your own grant application for our program, you are not qualified to operate a business!
- In the second place, the job this company did on preparing it was appalling.
It was obviously prepared by someone who did not speak English natively. To their credit, they did conceal it well, but there were inconsistent phrases which gave it away. This is something a professional company would have paid more attention to.
They did NOTHING to help this person to actually appear qualified. It was patently obvious that they just wrote down whatever he said – even the things that were redundant, and a bit rambling. They did not help him actually present his information in a way that would help him qualify for the grant. The information presented is in fact completely unsuitable, because there is nothing in it which even outlines a viable business concept. It is completely unoriginal, and the business, as outlined, would have no chance of succeeding.
This company is NOT a professional grant writing company! They lack the most basic skills in presenting grant application information in a way that will help an applicant actually GET an award. They take money while representing themselves as such, but the kind of work they did on this grant application suggests that they are not concerned about whether you actually get the grant. They do not appear to be concerned about learning what the requirements of the grant are – no one from their company has so much as ASKED us for any of the judging criteria (and a good grant writer would do that), and they clearly did NOT read the available information about our grant requirements, or they would have done a better job.
A real grant writer looks at many factors – the grant requirements, the likely judging criteria, the competition level for the grant, and the best way to present the information given so that it meets those requirements. They will recommend wording things in a way that presents them in their best light. They will outline the value and feasibility of a proposed project, and they will detail the greater good of the project.
There was no effort whatever in this application toward actually helping this person GET the grant. The job they did could have been done better by a high school student.
The information I am presenting here is documented, and can be legally proven in a court of law. I am not committing libel – I can prove what I say. We have the applications, we have the witnesses.
- Avoid this company, and all of their affiliations.
- Do not EVER pay more than the cost of an average priced book for ANY kind of grant listings. And be careful even with those!
- If you can afford to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for grant information, you can afford to bootstrap a business. It does not take much to do so, as long as you are willing to work and be creative.
I am sorry to have to write this. I’m sick of having to explain to people the reality of grants – and seeing a company like this just makes me ill. It will eventually catch up with them – you can’t do this much harm over and over without it eventually coming back at you.
Right now I’m torn – I can seek legal help in making these people stop using our grant in their listings. But if we do that, we lose the ability to build a potential case against them. We also lose our ability to advise the people they are harming on what possible redress they might seek. So I haven’t yet decided exactly what to do, other than publishing what I know, and sounding warnings far and near.
If any legal entity or reporter wishes to pursue this, we will cooperate fully, but we will not release applications, or contact names without permission of the applicants, or a court order, pursuant to our privacy terms.
Can You Do it for $20?
A prospective client asked me that yesterday. I said no… Our price is $25.
Sometimes I say yes. This time I didn’t.
He then said, “Some other companies say they can do maintenance and hosting for $20.”
I replied, “They cannot do for $20 what we do for $25, and we cannot do this for $20.”
Sometimes I come down in price – we sometimes have a little wiggle room, we sometimes are able to negotiate with a client to reduce services that they do not need as much, or we sometimes can see that a particular job will be worth doing and will pay us back if we come down on one price.
But this time I could not. This particular service is already stretched to be able to offer it at $25 per month. And it offers a ton of value. To come down would mean running into problems as we overstretched ourselves.
I have always had the confidence to say no when I knew I could not come down on a price. But this is one of the first times I have been able to boldly say that the value made it worth it – and it honestly does make it worth it. That felt good. I recommend trying it!
If you have thought out your prices, and there is wiggle room, there is nothing wrong with negotiating. If there isn’t though, sometimes you just can’t do it. When you can’t, it is easier to be bold when you know your prices are worth the value.
If you are destitute and have more time than money, you have nothing to lose by coming down even when you know it is worth more (and sometimes we do so for reasons of kindness – when we choose to help someone out). But if you are in a position where doing so will cost you over time, it isn’t wise to do so, especially in situations where the client can probably afford it if they understand the value.
Why Would ANYONE Judge VALUE Based on Hourly Pricing Alone?
About a week ago an overseas outsourcing company contacted me through a venue that I frequent. Since I was looking for a coder for a specific database conversion project, I asked them for a quote – they had told me that it could be done for $10 per hour. I send them the two databases, along with instructions about what needed to be done. I knew it would take me about 5-6 hours to do it. It was not work I liked doing, so I was interested in outsourcing it.
Their quote came back for 24 hours of work, at $360. Hmmm. That isn’t $10 per hour…. And it is more than triple the maximum amount of time that I’d allote to the project.
I then contacted a regional coder – she charges $85 per hour. Ouch! That is a LOT compared to $10 per hour! Or even $15!
But, she could do the work in 2-3 hours. Hmmm…. $170 to $255, instead of $360! Which one is the real bargain? Especially when you consider language, cultural, time zone, and legal recourse limitations.
Even when you are comparing local with local, hourly rates are just NOT a reasonable basis of comparison. The best way to judge, is to ask for a list of included services, and a flat rate, or at least a firm estimate. Any experienced professional can give that, and a newbie can still offer reasonable guarantees that it won’t go over a certain amount.
Often, higher hourly rates pay for the following:
1. Reduced legal recourse risk. It is easier to recover from people who are within the same country as you, or who are in a country that has reciprocal agreements with your country.
2. Easier communication – time zones, language and cultural differences, or inexperience on the part of the technician in communicating with clients can all cause communication barriers, which equate to lost time or poorly done work.
3. Better tools – Better tools mean better quality output, and faster work speeds. The right tools can shave hours off many kinds of tasks, so hourly rates become meaningless when you are trying to compare the cost of one service that is done manually, and one that is done with better tools to do it more efficiently.
4. More experience – this means both faster output speeds, AND better quality. But it also means that an experienced professional has knowledge of “gotchas” that might bite you if you work with someone who is less experienced. For example, in our industry, there are certain things that municipalities or non-profits of certain types have to do with their sites, or which they cannot do on their sites, which are different than the standards required by small businesses. Experience protects those entities from potential lawsuits.
5. More Accurate Applicable Charges – One company may charge for research time, if they lack experience in a certain area, another may not. One company may charge for negotiation time, another may not.
6. Less Lost Time – Higher quality and accuracy can be worth paying a higher hourly rate for, because it saves you in the long run. If a lower hourly rate means work has to be redone, it costs you even if you don’t have to pay for it directly.
7. Attention to Different Kinds of Details – Often higher hourly rates are charged for higher risk projects because there are more details to attend to. Simple projects do not require this, but complex ones may. Often, as a business grows, so do their risks, so a service level that was appropriate for a startup may not be appropriate for a larger faster growing business. Higher risks almost always mean higher hourly rates, but they also result in more protection for the client.
There are MANY good companies who charge low rates. There are MANY new businseses and service providers who can do a very good job at a fair price. This is not in any way a condemnation of lower priced companies.
Rather, it is an encouragement to actually compare the REAL price, and the REAL VALUE rather than making a knee-jerk reaction based on the appearance of price, by using a number which is actually meaningless.
It would be like saying “A car that gets 35 MPG is better than a car that gets 12 MPG” without comparing anything else, like the reliability of the car, the size, the intended purpose, or even the side the steering wheel was located on!
Judge price and value based on factors that really matter, and you’ll find that what appears to be the lower price, often isn’t!
A Rant About Grants
Who spends $3000 to get information on getting grants, but will not invest that much into their business instead?
We’ve been getting grant applications lately from people who are TOTALLY unprepared to operate a business, and completely uncommitted to their business! How do we know? Because they have NOT done what is OBVIOUS to even TRY to start their business!
Instead, they have come to our website, filled out our grant application, and tried to persuade us that they are deserving of a business grant, when they have not done anything to even start their business. Not all of our applicants, but many of them.
Here is the reason I am so frustrated over this:
They are not even READING what the grant IS!
We are getting people who are asking for MONEY, even though our site clearly says, in many places, NO MONEY IS AWARDED.
Most of them do NOT need a website! Don’t even WANT a website, but since they did not read the grant information, they are clueless about what they are even applying for!
So these people, who want an offline business, which they could bootstrap if they were smart about it, are sitting there talking about their dream, applying for grants so someone else will give them their business. Most of them could get started if they’d just start doing something. Start small. Start bit by bit and work toward it. Do SOMETHING productive other than just running around looking for someone to fund it for you.
The great irony is that some of them have PAID MONEY (often a GREAT DEAL of money) for information on getting grants. In some cases, it was enough money that they could have started their business if they had been smart about what they spent it on.
It is peculiar to me that they will spend money on a supposed shortcut, but they will not spend the same amount of money on a more sure way of doing it.
So I’m puzzled at human nature today. If you just stick your hand out and expect it to be filled, no one will ever consider you to be deserving. You’ve gotta do what you are capable of doing. I am going to have to find a polite way of communicating to these people that they got taken on the grant information, and help them to understand what it takes to REALLY have a business.
‘Cause I ain’t going to hand you money. And I’m only gonna hand you a website if you’ve worked hard already and can indicate to me that you will actually do something worthwhile with it.
What it REALLY Means to Think Outside the Box
There is some misunderstanding of this concept. Recently I have heard two people condemn the phrase, one calling it “silly”, another calling it “dangerous”. These people will never be innovators or true entrepreneurs, because they have completely missed the point, and changed the meaning from what it really is.
When you think outside the box, it does not mean you do not apply common sense, or that you do not abide by necessary limitations that affect safety or legality.
It simply means that you do not let preconceived ideas, or the “rules” imposed by other people, which do NOT apply, constrain you from thinking creatively.
We do that… We assume that because 90% of people in the US send their kids to public school, and because we have done it that way for generations, that somehow it must be better. We assume that if the SBA teaches people to start a business and tells them that they have to have heaps of money to do it, and that they must have a business plan that conforms to bank requirements in order to get that funding, that this is how it must be done. We think that if we have been taught to do things a certain way, that we must do it that way, even when that way may not make sense for our particular situation.
Innovators and true entrepreneurs are not held back by limitations that do NOT affect safety or legality. They are able to see beyond the preconceived ideas and methods that others are constrained by.
In the web world, things are done on an enterprise scale, and taught for that scale, and nobody ever really stops to think that they simply do not scale well for small business, or how different the needs might be. They assume that you must do this, you must do that, and if you do not, that your website won’t perform. They do not stop to think that on a micro-scale, the things they require won’t make ANY difference at all, but will increase costs, and that perhaps they should be done at a later time when it WILL matter. Our “out of the box” thinking was to simply analyze those factors, and make decisions based on reality instead of assumption or dogma.
That is all it means to Think Outside the Box. To approach things from a new direction, and to consider new ideas in a productive way.
If you intend to go somewhere new, you can’t do it by following other people. You take the wisdom of others and learn from it, then you formulate a new plan that still fits the wisdom, but which does not incorporate the ideas that do not apply just because everyone else does it that way. If you want to LEAD, you have to get out ahead and try something nobody else is doing. If you want to succeed at it, you cannot compromise known safety or legality factors, the things you risk are just yourself.
It isn’t silly, and it isn’t dangerous. It is bold, and the path to true success.
A Tiny Choice, An Immeasurable Result
It didn’t seem like that big of a choice at the time. I mean, it was sort of a scary choice to make, and I knew that it was one of those “letting go of the security blanket” type choices. I thought I knew what it meant at the time. I didn’t. And when I realized what the choice ACTUALLY meant, I was astonished at how it contributed to the defining aspects of our business, and even our identity as business owners and service providers.
This has happened to me over and over. It hasn’t been a single choice, but many, which have shown this pattern. A small choice, which seemed a little against logic, but which we made because in spite of the fear attached, it felt right. And then the impact unfolding into an eye opening concept. I’ll tell about three of those choices:
1. Years ago. I chose to do flat rate pricing instead of hourly rates. Scary… what if I underestimated? But I did it because it felt right. It has been more than a defining aspect of our business. It has been totally empowering. I didn’t have to track hours while balancing children and business. I saved that time I’d have put into tracking hours. I no longer had an earning ceiling. The faster I worked, the more I made. WOW! That has been huge also.
2. Making the choice to train my own competition, without holding back any trade secrets or empowering information. Scary at first. But the impact on our business even in the last two months since making that choice, has been huge. It is like a whole new world of potentials and possibilities have opened, and the things that are coming back to us are just incredible. I never could have predicted how good this one choice would be.
3. Making the choice to drop HTML sites and focus on dynamic sites. Since that choice was made, new opportunities have opened up. Not only that, but we feel more capable of pursuing certain things that we felt inadequate to do before. Our focus on making our dynamic site services better, has sharpened. Our vision of what we need to do next, has become more clear.
Each of those decisions seemed at the time like a small one, even though the philosophy we had to overcome was a major limiting one. How easy it would have been to say, “Nope, I’ll just do it the way everyone else does.”, and dismiss the idea to change. How easy it would have been to be caught in the rut that would have limited our potentials.
Those decisions that we make, which go against conventional wisdom, and which our mind tries to minimize into insignificance when we fear taking the leap, are often the most important ones. The ones that define us as unique, and which give exponential power to our growth potentials.
Where we are today, compared to where we were even two months ago, is astronomically different! Better, bigger, more exciting! And I can see, that if I had failed to make the choice for flat rate pricing 10 years ago, and then reaffirm it each time we grew or offered a new service, we would not have grown this much, and we would not have as much potential to grow further. I can see that the choice to train my competition is a fundamental aspect of where we are going now. I can see that the choice to abandon HTML websites and focus on dynamic sites is opening doors and potentials that I was little aware of at the time.
Fear will stop us. Dismissing choices and making them insignificant can in fact make US insignificant. Considering those possibilities, and being willing to take the risk, face the fears and go forward in new directions, can explode our potentials and make us a force to be reckoned with!
Which would you rather be?
Green Tomato Relish – Another Garden Metaphor
Yesterday, I enjoyed a nice chicken salad on crackers, made especially tasty by stirring in a healthy amount of green tomato relish. The day before, I savored nachos, topped with zingy green tomato salsa. Tonight, I’ll slice and fry the last green tomato to serve beside dinner.
Sometime about the end of August, our abundant tomato crop was hit with the first freeze. We weren’t sure then whether we’d get any mature tomatoes or not. In the best Frugal Yankee tradition, I began looking for recipes for green tomatoes.
Relish, Salsa, Fried Green Tomatoes, Pickles, Casseroles, etc. Who knew there were so many uses for unripe garden fruits?
Every single one required two things from me:
1. Additional ingredients. Sometimes they were things I did not have on hand – I had to get them specifically if I wanted to utillize the abundant crop of green tomatoes.
2. Effort and specific types of work. What I did with them made all the difference.
You can see where I’m going with this…
We didn’t plant the garden and say, “Oh! I hope we get a LOT of green tomatoes, I’m just so looking forward to having to make-do!” We had big dreams when we planted 40 tomato plants. We wanted sauced, diced, and ketchuped tomatoes!
That first freeze didn’t kill our hopes. In fact, after that first freeze, which only killed the tops of the tomatoes, we gathered a small amount of red tomatoes – enough to make a weeny batch of ketchup. A few more tomatoes ripened indoors after a hard killing frost in September.
But we had more greens than reds, and we had to do something with them. In order to use them, we had to add the right ingredients, and if we didn’t have them, we had to go buy them. One or two were things I’d not need for anything else – I had to get them specifically to make use of those green tomatoes. And I had to do the right things with them, to make them into something good, otherwise they’d just be yucky green tomatoes.
Life, family, and business all do that to us. We plan our plans, and start to carry them out, and along comes a disaster that blights our hopes and kills the plans. What do we do then?
Do we cry that we didn’t get our juicy red tomatoes? Do we look at the distruction of our plants and at all those sad green tomatoes and see nothing but disaster? Or do we go seek out recipes for green tomatoes, and then add the necessary additional elements to turn them into something unexpected, but every bit as tasty and useful as what we had originally planned?
Sure, I still wish I had been able to harvest a bounty of red, ripe tomatoes. But since life handed me green tomatoes, I’m just thankful that there was something good I could do with them to turn it into a blessing of a different kind.
Recession Survival Tactics – Outsourcing
Part 6 of a 6 Part Series on Recession Survival
Outsourcing has a couple of applications within recession survival. It can help to manage growth more fluidly if you manage to continue to grow, or it can help you in downsizing if that is what you need to do.
Now, first, I have to make one thing clear. You hear all the time that it makes more sense to hire someone to do something if they can do it faster and more efficiently. The example is given that if you bill at $45 per hour, then you can save if you pay an outsourced subcontractor $25 per hour to do the job instead.
That ONLY works IF you have MORE profitable things to do in the same time! If you do not have enough work, outsourcing only saves money if it saves you from costly errors, or helps you make a leap forward in your business that you could not make without the service or which simply yield a higher result when done professionally (marketing, website services, printing services, etc). Otherwise, you really have no choice but to do it yourself, even if it does take you more time.
Outsourcing can help you find automation solutions (you can hire a professional to help you devise them, or to create or install them for you), it can help you create templates that you may not know how to create yourself, and it can help you handle work overflow (so you do not lose clients), without having to hire an employee.
If your business is scaling back, you can either offer a work at home option to your employee, and keep them on part time, or you can move to outsourcing to at least keep the services and preserve as much of the business as possible.
When you have a chance at something that you cannot otherwise handle yourself, or which you lack the expertise to do completely, you can find skilled subcontractors to help you with parts of the job.
If your services need to change in ways that offer different combinations of tasks than you previously offered, and you are not skilled in all of them, you can collaborate with other professionals to be able to offer something more. It is better to get $400 from a $500 contract than it is to not be able to GET the contract. In this way, outsourcing can help you be more flexible, to meet a wider variety of needs in changing circumstances.
Usually, outsourcing is built on a backbone of networking relationships. When you work with subcontractors, you develop a mutually beneficial business relationship. It often ends up being one where you refer other work to them, and they refer work back to you. It helps you build a network of people who know you, who know your work standards, and who are happy to refer others to you. Since they know you, they can speak with conviction when giving the referral, and that goes further than referrals from people who have not actually worked with you.
It won’t be a solution for everyone, but it can be a valuable tool in managing work loads, and in being able to supplement your skills with other specialized skills when needed.
Recession Survival Tactics – Automation and Systemization
Part 5 of a 6 Part Series on Recession Survival
One key to saving money, and giving your customers higher value in a recession, is to systemize and automate where possible.There is NO BUSINESS which cannot benefit at some point from systemization or automation.
It may be as simple as creating a routine to do repetitive tasks faster. It may involve creating a template to start with each time you write a contract or proposal, or for producing products, documents, or other items. If you do something once a week, or more, you can usually find a way to make it faster.
Automation is something that can be implemented in a website, or through online services, or through use of the right tools in the office. It is one of the keys to breaking through to new levels of profit and getting past some of your time barriers, but it can also be a key to retaining high value while containing costs for your customers or clients.
For small businesses though, it is important that you automate the right things, and in the right way. There are three basic keys to good automation:
1. It should save you more time than it costs you. Done at the wrong time (too soon), or with the wrong tools, you’ll spend more time setting up and maintaining the automation than you’ll save. So think about the long term tasks involved before you jump in, or you’ll just bury yourself.
2. It should NEVER negatively affect your unique selling proposition, and it should not harm your customer relations. Good automation preserves what is unique about your business. It allows you to automate the IMPERSONAL parts of the business, while retaining the essential elements of personal contact or custom service that may define your business. This is especially critical for small businesses, because this is often what allows you to compete with larger companies that are fully automated.
3. It should save you time, while simultaneously enhancing your ability to deliver consistent and high quality service or products to your customers. The point here is that it should make business better for THEM, too. Done right, it makes your business better, and is not something that lessens quality or availability.
Some of this can be done through a website, and often it can save you money over other options.
Some can be done with free software – either on your desktop, or installed into your hosting space.
Some can be done through purchase of hardware or equipment in your office.
Some can be done with templates or other tools that you make, which eliminate the repetitive steps in a process.
Time can be saved simply by devising routines, or systems, for getting tasks done, that shave off time. Not “automation” per-se, but more of an assembly line procedure where you work from templates, start with the same base each time, or work out the fastest way to do something, then do it that way every time. Often, this lays the groundwork for automation, because it helps us spot the repetitive tasks that CAN be automated without harming quality.
Automation and systemization are one of the things that help you achieve extraordinary results, either in growth, uniqueness in your business, or in offering higher value for less money. In a recession, all of these aspects can be part of defining the success potentials and making you an exception in the sea of losses.
Recession Survival Tactics – Economizing
Part 4 of a 6 Part Recession Survival Series
I live in a double wide mobile home. I do not plan to move any time soon. Why? Because in 9 months, it will be paid for. The house payment even now is low. The house meets our needs, houses our business, and does not interfere with our ability to succeed. Since our business is conducted on the phone, by email, or in person in other locations, it does not harm our business success. It allows us to reduce our operating expenses considerably.
When looking at where to economize, you want to make sure that the economies do not harm your ability to effectively conduct business. If we held appointments in our home, we’d have to have a better house. The point being, use what works for your business.
Here are some ideas, in no particular order:
1. Refill ink cartridges. This works great for color ink, for some printers. It does NOT work well for black ink, the refill ink tends to bleed and feather.
2. Buy in bulk where you can. Share purchases with another business owner if you need to.
3. Recycle shipping boxes and materials. Make it a badge of honor by creating a 3X4 label that says, “This box proudly recycled by (company name.”
4. Use flat rate long distance. Try Qwest for Small Business. Only use internet phone service if it is good quality with your connection.
5. Make sure your website is functioning in all the ways it can to save you money.
6. Review all of your utilities and see if there are ways to cut them. A little caulk or weatherstripping can save on energy bills.
7. Consolidate business travel. Keep trips to a minimum. Tell clients that you are combining appointments to conserve energy. They’ll get it.
8. Stock up on closeouts and sales of items you regularly need.
9. Look for alternatives for your most expensive supplies.
10. Buy more RAM for a slow computer, instead of getting a new computer. Get a pro to help you clean up the hard drive, trim down unneeded programs, or scan for malware.
11. Postpone haircuts for 1-2 weeks longer. Wear just a little less makeup. Use a dollop less shampoo. Wear pants an extra day before washing. All of these things reflect on business, even though they aren’t precisely business expenses, but they can often be nudged a bit without causing negative effects.
12. Go paperless as often as possible. You’ll save on paper and ink.
13. Look for Free and Open Source software first – There is a ton of really good free stuff out there, for basic business purposes, and specialized purposes. Try Open Office, NotesBrowser, Serif PagePlus, The GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Audacity, CamStudio, and much more.
14. Look for bootstrap options instead of debt. Debt places a burden on you each month, bootstrapping gets you profiting faster, by work and workarounds. As business grows, you can move from bootstrapping to a healthier cash flow based on revenues instead of debt.
15. Invest in things with reasonable assurances of returns. Don’t gamble, and throw away money in the hopes that it will yield a high return. This goes for marketing, buying more computer or web services than you need, and other business purchases.
16. Set up a support forum – you can reduce support costs this way, because even though you have to answer a lot of questions there, the answers benefit more than one person. Other users will come in and help you also.
17. Review your internet connection. Too slow a connection can cost some businesses more than the price of an upgrade. Faster speed for others mean only minimal compromises that do not harm productivity. Analyze your needs, and adjust your plan accordingly.
18. Save money in your home. If you can live on less, you can survive tough times better in your business. Our best advice for saving on groceries? Use your crock pot. Soups, casseroles, and roasted meals are easy to prepare, just a few minutes tossing ingredients in the pot, and you’ll have dinner 8 hours later. Combined with a bread machine, a crock pot can be a means of avoiding fast food and quick fix purchases. Since dinner can cook while you work, you save time, and avoid impulse purchases.
Look at your business with new eyes. Where can you find alternatives, cut waste, save pennies, and compromise without killing the essence?
Keep what truly matters. Take the cuts where they are less important.
Recession Survival Tactics – Products and Services
Part 3 of a 6 Part Recession Survival Series
Sometimes you are going to have to change more than marketing messages to survive great changes in the attitudes and priorities of your target market. Sometimes you have to change your very product and service line.
At its most obvious, it means offering lower cost options. That is sometimes possible by offering less. But sometimes “less” guts it of value. So to offer a lower price, you have to find a way to do it that is new – that preserves the value while lowering the price.
But it can also mean simply finding ways to change your product from a non-essential product to an essential one, or making your luxury a more affordable one, finding ways to enhance the value of the product or service, or changing the offering to make it more fitting to people who are struggling.
And sometimes you have to completely abandon a product line, and move to something else. Some product lines just won’t survive. If there is a high chance that your target market is going to dry up, don’t delay! Explore alternatives NOW, and get them lined up, ready to roll. Start selling them alongside, and have your fallback product or service line working as soon as possible.
When looking for ways to offer more, for less, start with office economies first. We’ll have an entire article on that, but basically, look for ways to save first.
Then look for ways to produce faster. This may mean starting with templates, creating package deals instead of custom deals, investing in intelligent automation for selective areas, or developing systems for speeding up your work.
If you can’t do that without removing some value, then look over your product or service carefully – what is the MOST ESSENTIAL value point? What are the least essential value points? Can you drop a few of the less essential ones, while keeping the most essential, and lower the price that way?
When you are looking at new product lines, consider things related to what you already offer if at all practical. Then you don’t have to completely change your business. The key is though, that you want to either pick up your existing target market as they drift (to a different pricepoint or value emphasis), or you want to pick a newly emerging target market early on. Look at where your customers are going when they leave you, or look at what they are retaining while they let go of your product or service. Go into that, because it is more likely to last through the crunch.
Self-sufficiency and affordability are on the rise – those markets are booming. But they are also becoming much more competitive. People are looking HARD for the best deal, and you’ll have to work harder to persuade people that YOU are the best deal, in more than just price.
For 90% of the businesses out there, change will be required. And some of it will be dramatic, painful change. But without it, you sink. With it, you grow in new ways, and become a better business person.
Recession Survival Tactics – Marketing Messages
Part 2 of a 6 Part Recession Survival Series
So things are changing. That means you have to change. Only a very fortunate few are going to survive it without changing, and then only if their business is already providing rock bottom value. Everything else is going to require change on the part of business owners to be able to keep business coming in.
There are several facets to this, which we’ll cover in separate articles.
The principal thing that happens in a recession, is that people reprioritize. If you were on their list of affordable choices yesterday, you may be struck from it today – or they may decide that they can only justify half the expense that they could justify the day before. And it literally happens that fast. It doesn’t stop there either, because one day they’ll decide on half. The next day their hours at work may be cut, and you may be stricken entirely.
How are you going to keep people coming to you as a viable option? Maybe your marketing message has always emphasized quality, indulgence, service, the extras. People still want that, but when money is tight, they see dollar signs in front of those words! So somehow, you have to get words in there that emphasize value, affordability, low cost, better results for the expense, etc. Concepts that now take precedence.
People will be concerned primarily with two concepts:
1. How to save money on essentials or reduce the cost of their favorite indulgences to the point that they can still justify them.
2. How to make money, in a lower risk environment.
If you can demonstrate an ability to help them with either of those goals, in a way that helps them feel that you have sympathy for their situation, you have a good chance of keeping business. Maybe you can do that just by pointing out things you didn’t emphasize as much before. Maybe you’ll have to completely revisit your target market – will you shift from a mainstream item to a luxury item, or will you rescale to adapt with your existing target market as they change?
Find out what your customers most want and need. Then find ways of communicating the ways that your product or services supply those needs and wants.
Be willing to change your slogan. Be willing to change your primary marketing messages, and indeed, the very identity of your business if necessary. We are heading into something that will affect our nation strongly for a decade or more. You won’t be wasting your time on a temporary change. This kind of action is necessary, or you’ll be too late.
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