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Marketing Enterprise December 5th – Follow Up

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Our Marketing Enterprise day on December 5th held at LearningTree International in Euston was very well received.

Feedback from participants suggested that the highlights were:

  • examples of good and bad (mainly bad!) enterprise marketing collateral
  • ideas on choosing and using ‘gatekeepers’ to get the message of enterprise into ‘hard to reach’ groups
  • Prochaska and DiClemente (leading one delegate to coin the phrase – ‘Prochaska – Yay!’)
  • market segmentation models were seen as very powerful
  • a reminder of the power and simplicity of youtube for getting over enterprise stories was very welcome (why do we still spend tens of thousands of pounds on getting professionally shot video?)
  • the situational enterprise model that helps us to think about both the psychological and the technical readiness of the would be entrepreneur was very popular as was the whole concept of social networking (thanks to Stuart Holmes for that insight)
  • the power of asking for introductions and training enterprise professionals to use them effectively
  • managing referrals professionally – not only to develop the clients potential but also to develop the quality of the suppliers

Delegates also suggested that improve the event we should:

  • get more marketing and PR people onto the event
  • provide more examples of good enterprise marketing collateral (if you have any please do pass it along)
  • develop it into a 2 day programme to allow ideas on pursuing additional funding sources and engagemene tof LSPs to be further explored.

We will be repeating the day in the New Year – with further development of some of the most powerful ideas – or you are welcome to drop me a line about bringing the workshop to your organisation.  Otherwise keep watching www.enterprisegrowth.co.uk for new dates.

Wants and Needs

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It is all too easy for enterprise professionals (especially the planners and strategists) to see what a comunity ‘needs’ if it is to become more enterprising.  More incubators, more managed work-spaces, more training, better supply chains and so on.

However it is much harder to establish what a community ‘wants’.  Those things that its members will choose to engage with and use.  The wants are often more psychological than material – we want hope, someone to believe in us, someone who can help to make things happen, someone we can believe in.

And as every economic development professional knows – if you give a community what you think it needs – but not what the people who live there want you are heading for trouble.

Marketing Enterprise 5th December, London

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A one day workshop looking at strategies and techniques for marketing enterprise projects.

Using both the Change Cycle of Prochaska and DiClemente and the Enterprise Coaching Model this one day workshop will help you to develop ways of marketing enterprise programmes.

The day will focus on marketing enterprise in communities with lower than usual levels of enterprise.

  • Developing Collateral (that might just work)
  • Working with Gatekeepers
  • Building Word of Mouth Strategies

Workshop costs £299 plus VAT.

Super output areas and other ‘deprived’ communities are dominated by a psychology of poverty.

  • Poverty of aspiration
  • Poverty of belief and
  • Poverty of opportunity.

Only by understanding the psychology of the groups and individuals with whom we want to work and by developing focused social marketing strategies are we likely to receive an invitation to do our work.

Marketing in poor communities is different.

It needs a different approach.

You Will Learn:

  • What is Social Marketing and Why it Matters to Enterprise Professionals
  • Developing Marketing Collateral that Might Just Work
  • Learning from Current Practice
  • Developing Market Segments that Work
  • Strangers, Prospects and Customers
  • How to Build a Word of Mouth Strategy
  • Using Gatekeepers to Reach the Market

Who Should Attend?

  • Enterprise coaches, advisers and other enterprise professionals seeking to work with ‘hard to reach’ communities
  • Marketeers and PR professionals charged with promoting enterprise services and project
  • Anyone who is seeking to ‘engage’ a community in enterprise

Segmenting the Enterprise Market

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I am often horrified at just how poor many enterprise professionals are at segmenting the market for their services.  It is as if they believe that the ‘enterprise’ segment is already sufficiently well defined to enable them to engage efficiently and effectively.

In my experience there are great returnsto be had from spending some time in developing more effective ways of segmenting the  market. 

One of my favourites, and one of the most powerful models, segments the market place according to ‘Technical Competence’ and ‘Psychological Competence’.  Technical Competence refers to the degree to which the client has the technical skills that they need to develop their enterprise idea.  Psychological Competence refers to the degree of commitment, motivation, self confidence and self belief of the client.

In this segmentation clients may have a high or low degree of Technical Competence and a high or low degree of Psychological Competence.  This gives us four different market segments for our services:

  1. Low Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E1
  2. Low Technical Competence – High Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E2
  3. High Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E3
  4. High Technical Competence – High Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E4

The E1 client lacks both the psychological and the technical skills to realise their enterprise ideas.   Engaging E1 clients takes care and patience as it can be hard for them to take the risk of trying to make progress.  They need a lot of support with the technical aspects of developing their enterprise ideas and the work needs to be broken down into achievable steps.

The E2 client may be madly enthusiastic and quick to act – but lacking technical skills are prone to making all sorts of mistakes.  They need lots of technical assistance and a lot of emotional support too if the mistakes are not to undermine their commitment and motivation transforming them into an E1 client.  The E2 client may have been motivated to consider enterprise through clever marketing (my guess is that Enterprise Week will have flushed out a good few E2ers), they love the ‘Dragons Den’ type competitions. E2 clients require a lot of careful support over a long time period if they are to succeed.  They are likely to require frequent (if short) meetings with enterprise professionalsto keep them on track and to support them while they go on a very steep and sometimes challenging learning curve.  Their ideal enterprise professional will have both good technical skills and a good grasp of human growth psychology and its application.

The E3 client is a frequently overlooked market segment. They have good technical skills in enterprise – but they are not particularly motivated or committed. They may have been in business for decades, having started off as E2 or even E4, but never making much money in return for hours of hard work they no longer believe that enterprise is going to help them realise their dreams.  It has become just another piece of drudgery.  These clients are everywhere – but they don’t respond well to the ‘Have you got a brilliant business idea’ or ‘Dragon’s Den’ type marketing stunts so beloved of enterprise organisations and policy makers.  I believe this market segment could make a significant contribution to economic development in most communities – if only we could find a way to engage them and help them to get back in touch with their inspiration.  Community based enterprise projects that build a reputation over a number of years can start to engagethis kind of E3 client and produce remarkable results.

E4 clients are in some ways the holy grail.  Much of the effective enterprise professionals work is about helping clients move towards this E4 position.  Although high in both technical and psychological competence these clients still require help and support. They maybe ideal for referral to a good mentor or may benefit from access to a business support service on an ‘on demand’ basis.

Using this type of market segmentation can really help you to think through both your marketing/engagement strategy, the way you design your services and how you train your enterprise professionals.

A Truth About Enterprise and Entrepreneurship?

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So here is my contribution to Enterprise Week.

DO NOT START UP YOUR OWN BUSINESS – UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Not the message that is usually put out, especially by national, regional and local government, but after 25 years of running and supporting small businesses, that is my best advice.  Don’t do it – unless you have to. Unless of course you have money to burn.

Because the truth is that small business is a really hard game.  You have to provide a great product or service – and one miscalculation, or one bad debt, can put you out of the game and into the bankruptcy courts. Few people succeed in business the first time they try.

It takes resilience, persistence, self confidence and courage.

The chances of success are slim and the levels of commitment and hard work required are, in most cases, enormous.

Your business will almost certainly steal you away from friends and family at least for the first few years, and many successful entrepreneurs talk about how much their business has cost them in terms of their relationships and health, as well as cash.

This is the reality of entrepreneurship that needs to be taught.  (Policy makers please take note.  If we were this honest about the nature of entrepreneurship we might not get as many people involved in enterprise week – but a far higher percentage that did get involved would go on to be successful entrepreneurs.)

Those that ‘have to’ start a business fall into two very different camps.  The first ‘have to’ because they have no other economic option for survival.  Enterprise is their ONLY option.  It is the only way they can make a living.  For those whom enterprise is a forced choice the outcome is rarely great.

The second group ‘have to’ because it is the only way that they can have the freedom to do what they have to do, to be the person that they have to be and provide the products and services that they really have to provide.  Enterprise provides them with a way of becoming the person that they feel they have to be.  It is about their own identity as a human being.

So the rallying call for enterprise week should be,

‘DO NOT DO IT- UNLESS YOU HAVE TO!

Unless it is the only way for you to become the person that you really want to be’.

And if we invested our energy into helping people to really understand who or what they want to become we might find that all of a sudden ‘enterprise’ starts to look after itself.

Of course for those that ‘have to’ enterprise can be a wonderfully powerful vehicle to achieve remarkable results.  I am not anti enterprise – quite the opposite.  I just wish we could present it honestly as the double edged sword that it truly is.