Marketplace New Year Resolutions Part II
Many years ago, in the early stages of my golfing career, I cried out in exasperation after a particularly ugly shot interred my ball in a watery grave. Looking at one of my older and wiser golfing buddies, hoping for even a tiny crumb of consolation, all I got was a shrug as he said, "It's a rude game."The marketplace is akin to golf in many respects:
1. Neither can be mastered.
2. Both can introduce you to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of depression in the same hour.
3. Success in either is a relative term defined by each participant.
4. Both are so named because hell and damn were already taken.
5. Both are rude games.
And yet the marketplace and golf courses are teeming with eager participants and people standing in line to take their turn. With gratification so mercurial, what's the allure?
Perhaps it is because mastery is impossible. As long as perfection is unattainable, the pursuit of excellence becomes a never-ending quest. And one of the most elemental of human paradoxes is the primordial desire for what is just out of our grasp, like the perfect round of golf and the perfectly operated business.
Below are the remaining four Marketplace resolutions I want you to think about in 2002. If you will incorporate these into your array of marketplace "shots," you just might be able to improve your game.
Marketplace Resolution Five: I resolve to acquire at least one virtual partner or associate.
Just when you thought you had this whole marketplace thing figured out, somebody went and made a new one. And what's worse, this new marketplace isn't real - at least not in the sense that you can walk around in it - it's virtual.
Technology has given us the ability to communicate and transact business in new ways. And I hope you like it, because the virtual marketplace is not only upon us, it's growing and it's here to stay.
Armed with this information, what are you going to do about it? If you're not currently participating in the virtual marketplace, here's a place to start: As you build your virtual community, which is done primarily by communicating over the World Wide Web, you will find opportunities to associate with someone whose interests are compatible with yours. When you find these people, allow for the possibility that any one of them could become a contributor to the success of your business, and you to theirs.
The most empowering thing to happen in the history of small business is the ability to cost-effectively expand our marketplace to virtually anywhere on the planet. Your first step in that direction may well be a virtual partner or associate, whom you will find when you create a community on the World Wide Web.
Marketplace Resolution Six: I resolve to work with at least one of my vendors to create a new advertising, marketing, pricing, and/or service strategy.
This is a type of strategic alliance. If you sell retail, your product vendors are typically manufacturers and/or wholesalers, which means they probably don't sell directly to the ultimate consumer of their products. Consequently, their success is dependent upon their customers, which is you.
If sales volume is not growing as much as you want, talk with your vendors and see what they can offer you. There's a good chance they already have a plan you can participate in. If not, identify what it's going to take to increase sales, and talk with your vendor about participating with you. It might be co-op advertising, or joint calls with your customers to introduce a new product or provide technical assistance in a customer application.
Or there might be an opportunity for the vendor to provide consignment inventory to help you expand your lines at a time when you don't have the capital to fund new products. The main thing to remember is, your vendors' success depends on their customers' success. That's you.
Marketplace Resolution Seven: I resolve to begin my education to find out what it would take for my company to conduct business in other countries.
Importing and Exporting is not just for big businesses anymore. And that statement is becoming truer every year. Three things are converging to help make this happen:
1. Technology is empowering small businesses with capability previously available only to big firms with LOTS of capital.
2. Global consolidation of big businesses is creating import/export niches where small businesses can flourish.
3. There is considerable assistance now available from a number of sources.
Take the next 12 months and educate yourself on what would be required for you to actually import or export a product or service. Here are some places to start: www.buyusa.com, the small business export site of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which you can find at www.doc.gov. Also, be sure to go to www.wtca.org, which is the site that will direct you to one of the 74 World Trade Centers in the U.S. and around the world.
I don't know if you should be importing or exporting. But what I do know for sure is, you won't know until you find out what it takes.
Write this on a rock... The marketplace is like a teacher who rudely challenges you to achieve a level of excellence you previously did not think possible. But, like that same teacher, it will quickly move on to another if you waste time and resources whining about the rudeness, instead of being motivated by the challenge to perform.
