While at Derby Day Races in Melbourne on Saturday, I met a person named Fran who’s brother had created a new essential and innovative building tool that is soon to be released. I cannot tell you too much about it because that would be breaching a confidence, but I can share with you exactly what I told her when she enquired about what they must do to make their business idea work for them.  Here’s the ten points I made to her:

Protect Your Intellectual Property

1. The innovation is unique and must be patented to boost your business valuation and protect the uniqueness of the product from being copied.  Anything really good will undoubtedly be copied even with a patent in place.  The trouble is, intellectual property thieves know exactly how much they can modify a new idea to legally re-produce a modified version and move in on your market share.  You have only a short space of time to gain enough market share before competitors move in on your territory.

Start With The End In Mind

2. You’ll want to understand your target audience (who wants to buy your product) and co-ordinate your marketing plan to help you gain that preferred market.  Being ‘first to market’ is a big plus for product sales as people love to embrace new and different time saving and safety ideas.  Having a strategy to engage with your target audience will be the difference between carving your market share quickly and being superseded or over-run by advanced and improved versions of your product by competitors.  You have a short  window of opportunity is to carve your corporate footprint and build your market share.  Never underestimate your competitors who will be quick to move into your space if it is a lucrative market.

3. Set a budget to meet the costs of marketing, distribution and selling costs.  Track expenditure against results.  This will help you to establish the market price of the items to be sold.  If you don’t have the budget to do this, find assistance so you can launch it well.

4. Make a big splash and noise about the product to launch the idea with a compelling up-beat story that attracts attention from media and purchasers.  You have to spread the word about your new product, and the best way to get the word out is to leverage from others that can help share your story.  Gaining some coverage on programs such as ABC’s “new inventors” can be a great way to spread the word about the new product without spending a lot on advertising.

Leverage Your Message To Boost Your Business Profits

5. Develop a Public Relations campaign to build a plan to engage all types of the media.   Send press releases to magazines and newspapers that your target audience frequently reads.  Radio and TV interviews are also very helpful to inform your market quickly.  Don’t forget to utilize the internet with YouTube and with other social media to demonstrate your offering.     

6. Install a lean but effective Sales and Distribution arm of your business by engaging positive people that share your vision and passion for your product.  You’ll want them to be proactively chasing sales by implementing a sales strategy aligned to your corporate vision.

7.  Stay ahead of the curve by continually researching and developing your product so you may maintain market leadership.  Remember your competitors lack the creativity that you have and at best be able to replicate your offering.  If you continue to modify and improve your product, competitors will always remain one step behind. 

8. If you don’t have the capital to support your strategy the way you must to succeed, and banks are not willing to take the risk on your new innovation, then seek out government grants and capital raising opportunities to assist with funding a strategy to promote your product.  If you’re not sure how, take the opportunity to utilize skills of someone that can help.

9.  Take a business approach from start up to step down.  That means having a vision and direction, like plotting a course with a succession strategy.  You’ve done all the hard work for a reason, and you’ll want to be rewarded financially for the effort and risk you’ve endured.  Utilize my PROFITS™ Keys system (Your Business Succession Book) to put yourself on a path of success through to exit.

10. Dare to dream, and drive your passion to make it become a reality!  You get one chance to get it right, so run forth with ‘informed’ reckless abandon!  It’s the only way to build your business into a valuable asset that will one day sell.

Government Grants May Help

The Exit Experts has access to number of grant opportunities you might like to explore to source some assistance with getting your innovative products and business off the ground and running sooner.  Help is just a phone call (1300 499 225) or email away.

Here’s to your profitable business succession!

Leigh Riley

Business is a Competition

I’ve not revealed this before, but earlier this year I was invited to be on the panel of judges for the “ActionCoach My Business Magazine Awards”.  I felt it was a great honour to be asked so could not refuse the request.  The task was not easy for many reasons.  The number of entrants was significant and thousands of pages of data had to be considered carefully to form an assessment of each candidate.  With most being of such an incredibly high standard, this truly made the task for judges very difficult.  Amazingly though, most of us formed a fairly similar opinion of those candidates that really stood out from the crowd.

It got me thinking about how important it is to stand out from the crowd when you’re in business, and not just to win competitions.  It demonstrated to me yet again, that it’s no accident when a business is successful.  It does become obvious to everyone when you stand out from others in business, and there is a lesson in it for each of us in business.

As a follower and regular reader of this blog, you already know that I bang the drum (rather loudly) about business succession, and I do so because you are operating a business that I know you will one day hope to sell.  You’re working hard building an asset, and often you’re so hard working ‘in’ it, that you can overlook working ‘on’ it.

I want to see my followers succeed and stand out from the crowd, especially the crowd that is gathering around the ‘for sale’ post.  I’m referring to the tsunami I mention in my book “Your Business Succession”, because the average demographic age group of small to medium sized business owners are so near to retirement and are looking for ways to extract their equity to move on to another phase in their life.  With so many about to do this (80% in the next 5 to 10 years) there will be quite a crowd of businesses selling.  It will become a buyer’s market and only those that ’stand out’ from the crowd will gain the most when they exit.

You Business Succession
Leigh Riley

Too Young To Exit?  Think Again

Now before you zone out because you think you’re too young for formal exit strategies and succession plans to matter, think about these two very important points:

• 50% of business owners leave well before retirement because of factors they could not have imagined, such as dispute, divorce, disability and death.  You don’t want to get caught out in a weakened position trying to liquidate your business equity in a crowded market, so take steps to ensure you have an action plan that will keep you in control to capitalise when you exit despite your circumstances.
• Raising Capital to grow your business or release your equity when exiting your business takes time to organise.  In fact it’s damn hard for an SME like yours to get finance for anything related to business if you don’t have a clearly demonstrated and formal exit strategy in place. That means your business growth could be stifled or you could get stuck without any funding when you do leave.  Either scenario is one you definitely want to overcome well beforehand, so get ready now.

Time For Your Business To Stand Out In The Crowd!

The  reason I’ve commenced a series of FREE educational webinars, is so you can see what you can do to ’stand out’ and make the difference for maximised cash flow and profits, with an enhanced  business valuation and a strategy to ensure you get paid what you deserve for your lifetime of effort in business, through most circumstances.

I’m pleased to reveal the finalists have been chosen for the ‘ActionCoach My Business Awards’ .  You may see those that ’stood out’ for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s to your business success and profitable exit!

Leigh Riley

Small to Medium sized business (SME’s) often struggle to raise capital for expansion plans, especially since the Global Financial Crisis.  It’s even harder for SME’s to liquidate part of their business when they need cash to fund other activities, which is one of the reasons having an SME is considered risky.

Financiers are more reluctant to loan on SMEs because of the illiquid nature of them.  If Financiers find themselves having to foreclose on the business they’ve loaned funds to that is struggling financially, the last thing they want to do is run the business.  They prefer to liquidate quickly to regain the capital loaned.  This is typically harder to do for SME’s, and that is why more and more Financiers are demanding SME’s have a clear path of succession and a formal exit strategy to enable them to recoup the funds loaned more quickly if the business folds.

But what if my team could show you a way for SME’s to fund capital raising easily and provide a facility to liquidate the business quickly if needed?

That’s exactly what I intend to do in my next Webinar:  “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”.

When you register for the Webinar, you’re going to discover some of the most innovative techniques you’ve ever heard about raising capital for your business, and you’re going to see a live case in action to demonstrate how easy it is to raise capital.

You’re going to uncover things like:

• 8 Funding Solutions for Growing or Going
• 2 Proven Legal Methods to Raise Capital in Australia
• How the valuation process is crucial for raising capital for your company, and how being able to raise capital easily can help BOOST your business valuation
• 5 Essentials for Good Capital Raising
• 7 Risk factors you’ll want to overcome to ensure you attract the capital you require
• There’ll be a live case demonstrated to show you how easy it is
• We’re going to make you an offer to get started raising your business capital right away.

The best bit is that it’s totally FREE to attend!  You can join our 45 minute Webinar/Teleseminar by registering here now.

The Capital Raising Webinar/Teleseminar will be held on:

Wednesday 5th October 2011  at 7.30pm

Or

Thursday 6th October 2011 at 11.30am.

If you’re looking to Grow or Go from your business soon, you can’t afford to miss “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”

Here’s to your profitable exit strategy with easy capital raising!

Leigh Riley