small business adviser
by j. chris snedeker

The daily challenge for owners of small, growing businesses is balancing boldness with prudence to achieve the “impossible” and avoid the pitfalls. Urgent daily tasks compete with important initiatives, consuming precious time. The starting assumption for any business that aspires to grow must be one of “strategy.”

Whether you acknowledge it or not, you have a strategy and you are following it. A strategic plan, however, must be written down. It starts with the “why” you are in business and leads you through who, what, when, where and how. By writing down the elements of your thinking—even in bullet-point form—you bring clarity to your thoughts. It also provides the platform to undertake specific actions that will promote long-term success.

In implementing your strategy, the challenge is to balance optimism and prudence. Optimism refers to the bold initiatives you use to capture your market niche. Prudence means keeping a firm hand on cash outflows, managing competitive threats and maintaining quality control and reputation.

Bold initiatives should be designed to get your products or services sold. To do this you must know your market. Therefore, do your research. In addition to traditional methods of evaluating your market, the Web can be an invaluable tool. Analyze carefully the Web sites of the distribution channels for your products or services, the media and competitors. Determine where you can capture “shelf space” and who else is angling for it. Armed with this knowledge, take an aggressive approach to promoting your products or services:

• Call the buyers for the major distributors of your products or services and request a personal meeting. They may have a specific time of year when they address your category. Get on their calendar and present your goods with gentle but firm confidence. Buyers are always on the lookout for new, interesting items and relationships with up-and-coming companies.
• Find out which media outlets reach your target market. Write press releases about your products or services and fax or e-mail them to the appropriate media personnel locally, regionally and nationally. If you have samples, send them with press releases. Follow up two days later with a call to the same people to inquire if they received your communication and if you can answer any questions. Persist. The media—if it’s the right media—is hungry for content and can give you extraordinary coverage. Who knows, “The Today Show” may want to feature your products or services—you won’t know if you don’t ask.
• Call your competitors and ask if they will send you product information, catalogs and or samples. Be honest and assertive, many will give you information that will help you.

While showing boldness in promoting your products, be prudent with those things that can hamper your business growth. Cash outflow, poor presentations and early release of information can hurt your prospects.
• Before you advertise, do your homework. Again, know if the distribution of your media will reach your target market. Call companies that have advertised in past issues and get their view on the merits of advertising in this venue.
• If you create a Web site, make it a marketing tool. Buyers, media and competitors look at your Web site for different reasons; an unsophisticated or cheap-looking Web site can hurt you in more ways than you can know.
• Don’t reveal products or services on your Web site before they have been launched and have reached their intended market. This just feeds your competitors with information and frustrates your buyers and the media.

A small-growth business must balance the opportunities for accelerating growth with the prudence of careful management of your assets. You should employ bold initiatives to analyze and attack your market. This can lead to low-cost product and service placements with media support to pull demand to the “store shelf,” while avoiding relinquishing advantages to competitors.

J. Chris Snedeker is an executive vice president with Weary & Associates and a managing director of Plaza Equity Partners (PEP). He can be reached by phone at 816.531.8885 or by e-mail at csnedeker@wearyaa.com.