4 Principles We Use In Business Development

You’ve heard of the startup curve yes? If not, it basically describes the various emotions and realities that describe the entrepreneurial journey.

The one thing we don’t have control of is time, meaning the faster we define our product market fit, the better. Time also is our friend in that, the more time we entrepreneurs spend on our craft and our business, the better we become the caveat being that we have to be deliberate, hungry and willing to learn.

One thing many start-ups and small businesses struggle to figure out is who their ideal customer is. At the onset, the drive is to go broad with the thinking that our product is great so everyone should experience and buy it. That is wrong. I too struggled with this and in the process our digital marketing agency got burnt, manipulated, conned and got disillusioned. What I discovered is that if I didn’t understand and target our ideal customer, I’d forever be disgruntled and unhappy.

Right now for any clients I approach, this is the 4-fold framework applied during research and discovery:

1. Aligned values

We have distinct principles that we stand for, the first being collaboration. Many companies throw around the word partnership which is basically lip service. There were many times we felt railroaded, disrespected and lied to. Partnership is similar to a healthy human relationship based on trust. Yes you can have miscommunication — but as someone said, peace is not the absence of war; it’s the presence of justice. At the end of the day collaboration means creating a win-win scenario based on mutual respect.

2. An opportunity to do great work

This is critical. We want to leave a legacy and the work we do is a testament of that. We pride ourselves as being cutting edge by benchmarking with New York based agencies - not the WPPs or Omnicoms or the Dentsus - but by the smaller, hungrier guys and girls whose only way up is by grit and the quality of their work.

Additionally we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves so the client’s vision and mission has to be huge or at least on par with ours. We want to be inspired.

3. Fair/good pay

If they’re not willing to pay either I haven’t shown our value and/or it is not a big problem. The key for us is to do greater and greater work, provide more and more value so as to bill more. Our pay-for-performance model guarantees we only get paid by revenue made.

Increasing the size of the cake allows us to have a bigger piece which in turn enables us to invest more in our service and increase the quality of our output.

It’s a virtuous cycle.

4. Integrity

No kickbacks, no corruption, no gifts above KES 5,000. Why is this critical? Because kickbacks are a shortcut. And we all know there’re no shortcuts in life - if it’s too good to be true, it usually is.

More importantly, lack of integrity hampers the quality of our work and is antagonistic to Kaizen (continuous improvement) which is one of our core values. After all, why become better, why compete, why strive for excellence if the client doesn’t care because there’s extra-curricular activity?

Have we lost contracts because of this? Absolutely. But it’s worth the cost. If we are winning, we want to win because of our hard work not backroom shenanigans.

Have you found your ideal customer?

#digitalmarketing #internetmarketing #onlinemarketing #smallbusiness

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