I want to thank everyone again for all of your kind wishes regarding last week’s column. Election Day was incredibly inspiring for my daughter and me. When the people in line at the polling station learned it was our first vote, they were gushing with excitement for us.
For a few days after the election, I found myself thinking quite a bit about the long battle between the candidates and two conclusions were evident from Obama’s win. First, he did a masterful job out-marketing the other candidates. And second, it is clear that his win reinforced the message that anything is possible.
On the former point, I have always found that people in business, or those looking to become business owners, typically over-engineer the concept of marketing when in fact, it is really quite simple.
Marketing is not a mystery. Just find out who your customers are, determine what they want, and then make it easy for them to get it.
Look at any great business and you will soon discover that they understand marketing, and usually do a stellar job of it.
In Obama’s case, he simply marketed a concept, a hope, and a desire and reduced it to one word – “change”. How simple. How effective!
His campaign strategists made no attempt to convert prospects he had no chance of selling. He knew his target audience, and ran hard and fast at everyone. He stayed on message throughout his campaign using every available medium to reach them.
The Obama campaign did such a flawless job of marketing their message that they did not even have to tell their customers/prospects what they planned on changing to. A change from the old was exactly what their prospects wanted to buy, and that is precisely what they were selling - end of story!
There is a great lesson here if you are planning to buy a business. Take a good look at the marketing initiatives of any company you consider purchasing. Ask the seller pointed questions about who their target customer is and how do they reach them. Do they really know what their prospective customers want? Similarly, do not fool yourself thinking you are going to walk into a business and start making brilliant changes from the beginning. That is a mistake that too many prospective buyers make. You first need to understand the guts of the business, and then, you can consider new marketing initiatives.
The second thought I had when doing my mini post-mortem is more philosophical. From the time we are infants, we are constantly told we can be anything we want, and achieve whatever we set our minds to do. The entire self-help industry is based upon that simple notion. The pioneer of the industry was Napolean Hill whose book – “Think and Grow Rich” was published in 1937 at the end of the Great Depression. His concept – “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve” has been repackaged countless times by every self-proclaimed self-help “guru”. Although the words may change, the message never does, because it works.
In these uncertain times, we need reinforcements about what we can do; rather than reminders of what we can’t. Yes indeed it would be easy right now for you to sit and commiserate about how bad things are, and list out all the reasons why you cannot buy a business in this market.
The current economy is a perfect excuse for anyone to sabotage their alleged plans of owning a business. I actually laugh when I hear someon list all the reasons why they are going to take a “wait and see" approach to buying a business and how now is "definitely" not a good time to be an entrepreneur (to that I say "NONSENSE!") . Nobody ever became successful sitting on the sidelines. If you really want to be your own boss, you can compile a lengthy list of all the compelling reasons why right now is not the ideal time to do so.
If you went to see a movie and the storyline was a depiction of Barack Obama’s life to this point, you would likely determine it is an entertaining story, but simply not believable. You would probably think that that nobody with his ancestry and upbringing could grow up to become the President of the United States of America.
Now that you know it is reality, use it to your advantage. This may be the most inspirational event of our lifetime. Given what we have just witnessed, then surely you can find it in yourself to overcome any hurdles and successfully complete the journey to buying a business.
Have a great week and be sure to visit my website to read all the articles and ask the expert questions we have on buying a business.
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