| Enterprise Evangelist | Enterprise Coach |
| Entrepreneurship is a good thing – you should try it. | Entrepreneurship is neither good not bad. For some people it is a wonderful life affirming experience. For others an unmitigated disaster. |
| We can turn your ideas and dreams into reality. | You can make progress in getting the kind of life that you want. My sole purpose is to offer you the help and support that you need on your journey. |
| We need to increase the start up rate if we are to change the enterprise culture in this community. | We need to help more people believe that they can take action to make things better -in whatever ways matter to them. |
| We encourage people to start business quickly. That helps us to keep up with our contract outputs – and anyway you don’t really learn about business until you are in it – do you? | We help clients start business slowly, if at all. We make sure that they have done as much planning, research and training as possible before they start and got a strong management team in place to reduce the risks of failure. If they have an alternative to starting a small business we encourage them to consider it – SERIOUSLY! We understand just how hard small business can be. |
| We spend a lot of money on publicity and events to attract large numbers (we wish!) to use the service. | We spend almost nothing on publicity. Instead we focus on building a great reputation (we know how to do this) and then encourage word of mouth strategies, referrals and clients telling their stories to gradually build interest. |
| We usually start with a bang – but numbers quickly tail off – unless we keep the marketing spend up. We refer clients into mainstream business support or other sources of support as soon as we can. Our job is just to get them engaged. | We start slowly and build exponentially as our reputation spreads. Within 12 months we would expect top be seeing 200 people a year with about 10% of them going on to start a new business. Because of our reputation we also get some existing business wanting to talk with us – but that is ok because we know how to help them too! |
| We do all we can to keep people engaged with our service. We pay bus fares, pick them up in our cars, provide child care and food to make it easy. | We do little to keep people using the service – other than help them build their confidence and self belief in what they can achieve when they work with us. |
| We don’t mention business failure rates. If we start enough – surely some of them will survive? | We monitor survival rates more closely than start up rates. We understand that it is business failures that establish a fear of enterprise and do most to damage an enterprise culture. |
| We design and deliver our services and interventions to deliver policy goals for number of interventions and start-ups | We design and deliver our services with the client needs at the centre of things. Our service is free of charge, competent, compassionate and easy to access. |
| We believe that primarily our clients need help to develop their ideas from a technical point of view. It is all about the business plan. The sooner we can refer them onto a technical expert – such as a business adviser the better. | We believe that the idea and the business plan is one small aspect of our work. More important is helping the client to develop their skills and their passion and commitment towards making real progress in their lives. Understanding psychology is just as important as understanding business. We develop the people – so that if they want they can develop their business ideas. |
| I don’t need to build a strong relationship – I just need to find people and refer them to mainstream business advisers. | It is the quality of my relationship with you that dictates how useful it is. |
Marketing Enterprise December 5th – Follow Up
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.
Marketing Enterprise 5th December, London
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
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:
- Low Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E1
- Low Technical Competence – High Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E2
- High Technical Competence – Low Psychological Competence – Lets call this Type E3
- 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.
How To Successfully Market Enterprise
- Struggling to Fill Your Enterprise Workshops?
- Your Latest Enterprise Marketing Campaign Didn’t Deliver the Goods?
- Not Enough Entrepreneurs Renting Your Space?
- Always Getting the Usual Suspects Showing Up?
- Your Networks not Filling as Quickly as You Would Like?
- Marketing Costs per Prospect Way Too High?
Then perhaps you should join us at a one day workshop – Enterprise and Social Marketing – where you will learn practical ideas and strategies to get your marketing working.
October 16th – Leeds